House Wine: White
2019 GOLD: 3 SILVER: 15 BRONZE: 9 COMMENDED: 24
2018 GOLD: 4 SILVER: 13 BRONZE: 7 COMMENDED: 21
It’s hard to believe that when the Sommelier Wine Awards started in 2007 our cut-off for House Wines was £4. Now it’s £6, with the vast majority of our medal winners comfortably over the £5 mark. Nowhere are the rising prices of wine production more obvious.
So much for the bad news. On the plus side, our tasters found a lot of really decent wines here at the kind of prices that still allow you to make a decent margin. Most of them (unsurprisingly) were in the ‘clean and fresh’ rather than ‘sweet and oaky’ ballpark, but that was seen as a positive by our tasters.
FROM THE TASTING TEAMS
‘Even at the entry level, around £3.50, they were delivering quite a lot.’ Raphael Thierry, Street XO
‘It’s important that a restaurant’s house wine has a bit of body, but the difficult thing is finding balance.’ Marco Marcuzzo, Aster Restaurant
‘We found a lot of aromatic flavours and classic styles in some of them. I’d be happy with these. They were really worth it when it came to price and flavour, even for food pairing.’ Elisa Soggia, Kai Mayfair
‘You never know what to expect from this flight! Some of these were food wines, not just for by-the-glass, and that’s quite exciting.’ Laurent Richet MS, team leader
‘To have a great wine list, you should start with a great house wine.’ Chiara Sieni, Bottles Group
‘I’m looking for things that are crowd-pleasers, that tick boxes, and they were great today.’ James Fryer, Woodhead 17