Growing up in the 1980s and 90s, the idea of the “wine bar” gave me the creeps. To my late teenage self, it basically stood for soft-focus bad taste and desperation, all soporific saxophones and Sade at a barely perceptible volume while ladies in red endured singles’ night cheek-to-cheek chats with smart-casual regional sales directors. In those pre-All Bar One, days, “wine bar” was a euphemism for “drinking hole that isn’t a pub”. And, when it came to defining a wine bar as a softer, safer, supposedly more female-friendly and sophisticated alternative to the traditional boozer, the quality of what punters actually drank was far less important than the yucca plants, half-baked bistro food and relaxing jazz compilations.
The wine bar has now returned with a vengeance and unlike most 80s revivals there’s nothing ironic about its comeback. The new breed of wine bar has little in common with its predecessors: decor, music, and even food mostly play supporting roles. Run by obsessive oenophiles, they are, instead, all about the wine.
What happened? Like many of the changes in our food and drink culture, the advent of the low-cost city break is key. When you’ve been charmed by unpretentious wine shop-cum-bars in even the smallest southern European airline destination, you begin to wonder why there’s nothing similar back home.
It’s no coincidence, for example, that one of the original, and still best, of the new wine bars, Vinoteca, which opened in Farringdon in 2005 and now has four branches around London, claims “the wine bars of Spain and Italy, which often also function as wine shops” as its inspiration. The trickle of openings has turned into a flow, particularly in London, where the likes of Hackney’s Sager & Wilde, the two Square Mile bars of retailer Planet of the Grapes and Farringdon’s Quality Chop House, among many others, have each put a slightly different spin on the Italian enoteca or Parisan bar à vins idea. And it’s not just London: the recipe of uncomplicated food (often just charcuterie and cheese) and intelligently chosen wine (often available as a takeout) has also been adapted by Brighton’s Ten Green Bottles, Edinburgh’s Divino Enoteca and Cambridge Wine Merchants’ Wine Bar (the list put together by wine writer Matt Walls at timatkin.com is a good place to start).
Though all of these places have enticing bottle lists, it’s the range by the glass that marks them out. Technology has helped: the advent of affordable Enomatic machines that keep wine fresh for up to a month after opening has meant bar owners no longer have to worry about waste if they open a bottle, particularly an expensive one, for a single glass. Now its manufacturers have resolved the problem with exploding bottles, a new gadget, the Coravin, takes things even further, extracting wine through the cork via a needle, and using inert gas to preserve the remains as if it had never been opened at all.
The result is that bars can take a chance on the esoteric, and drinkers can try wines they’d never be able to afford by the bottle. I’m thinking of the 2008 Domaine Jamet Côte-Rôtie (£14.50 a glass, £80 a bottle at Sager & Wilde at time of writing) or the 1989 D’Oliveiras Sercial Colheita Madeira (£11.20 for a 50cl glass, £100 a bottle at 28-50) – wines so good even a Kenny G sax solo couldn’t spoil them.
Six wine bar favourites by the bottle
Domaine de l’Ecu ‘Gneiss’ Muscadet Sèvre et Maine Sur Lie, Loire France 2011 (£15.99, Market Row Wines, h2vin.co.uk)
On the list at Hackney’s Sager & Wilde for £7.50 a pop at the time of writing, if you add a fiver to the retail price, you can also enjoy a bottle of this superbly salty-mineral and nervy dry white on the premises of the excellent wine shop Market Row Wines across town in Brixton.
Robert Plageoles Mauzac Nature, Gaillac, France NV
(£17.99, Joseph Barnes Fine Wines)
The local mauzac grape variety makes for a lipsmacking dry but rich, slightly honeyed and green apple-flavoured fizz from southwestern Gaillac, a typically adventurous selection on the list at Terroirs in London’s West End, which is owned by the wine’s importers, natural wine specialists Les Caves de Pyrene.
Villa Wolf Pinot Gris, Pfalz, Germany 2013
(£10.49, The Oxford Wine Company)
Longstanding wine merchant The Oxford Wine Company bought up the former Somertown Wine Café last year, and this rich but rippling quince-laden dry white from top winemaker Ernie Loosen is a standout on the bar and retail shelf.
Les Cépages Oubliés Marsanne-Roussanne, IGP Pays d’Oc, France 2012
(£7.35, slurp.co.uk)
The cheapest by the glass white on the list at 28-50 in Marylebone the last time I visited, but this is way above the level of most house wines: a Rhône-style blend from the other side of the south of France, it mixes fleshy peach and blossom with brisk acidity.
Produttori del Barbaresco Nebbiolo d’Alba, Piedmont, Italy
(£17.50, shop.vinoteca.co.uk)
You can buy any of the wines on the Vinoteca list to take home, but I’d be happy to share a bottle of this rosso in one of its bars at £35: made by an over-performing Piedmontese co-operative, it’s a friendly, fragrant take on the sometimes astringent nebbiolo grape of Barolo and Barbaresco.
Craig Hawkins ‘Z’ Zinfandel, Swartland, South Africa 2012
(from £10.15, ampsfinewines.co.uk; vinovero.co.uk)
More like a particularly succulent blackberry-fruited beaujolais than a massive Californian Zin, this bright and juicy natural Cape red is one of many great by-the-glass choices at Farringdon’s Quality Chop House, part-owned by Will Lander, the son of leading wine-writer, Jancis Robinson.
