Scoring anything is a dubious business. Restaurants in particular. There is something so timeless and noble about the art of giving hospitality and indeed of receiving it that is being devalued by the business of posting ratings on Google, Tripadvisor, etc. If you have a crap time somewhere, tell the staff what the problem is / was, and if it’s not resolved, just don’t go there again.

So I’m not sure if it was with the same spirit, or just a sense of mischievousness that the owner of h.o.t restaurant Dorian, Chris D’Sylva said in a recent interview; “We operate a tiered system whereby we rank how much we like the customer and the value of the customer, or the destructiveness of the customer. It’s just like any sales business does.’

Either way, it sure generated some inches in the press, already circling the waters, excited by the Notting Hill bistro’s celebrity clientele.

The food was terrific, I’m told the sourcing of ingredients is without compromise. In particular some monkfish cheeks were incredible, managing the trick of being sort of chewy like meat, but tender and flavorful like the best fish.

The wine list is excellent, and long, the team were super friendly, and the whole thing was much more laid back, quieter and more relaxed then I could have hoped for.

We didn’t actually order from the list as my date generously offered a bottle of 2010 Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Clos St Jacques from Domaine Fourrier. There is something so hedonistic and joyful about these wines, even at the very top level. That comingling of intense cherry, vanilla and red fruit makes these such lovely wines all the time – almost the opposite of an estate like Henri Gouges, where you have to wait forever and even then, the wines rarely lose a certain sobriety and respectability. I’d give it 5*, but doesn’t that seem such a meagre way to show appreciation for such a jewel. So I won’t.

Over August, I was on holiday just outside Lucca, and although not a lot of wine was drunk, I enjoyed comparing 2 Sangiovese made in completely different styles.

2023 Sassoarollo – is made by Jacobo Biondi-Santi using the families unique BBS clone of Sangiovese – the building brick of the appellation of Brunello di Montalcino. I think the Biondi-Santi wines are superb, I would probably want them in my cellar if I had one, albeit a tad expensive and a bit unreliable – they are unique and arguably the single greatest wine of the appellation. Whatever Soldera is – it is more Soldera then it is Brunello.

However, this bottle was very unremarkable in every way and I only managed to drink half a bottle. It wasn’t offensive, it was just like talking to someone at a party who has nothing to say, as many questions as you try to ask, nothing comes back.

Then a 2019 Vino Nobile from Tenuta Saint Agnese then comes on the scene, stumbles into you, spills some wine on your suit but then launches into digressions on digressions, stories and leaves you thinking – wow, who was that guy?

It’s an estate relatively new to me, I only brought it because I liked the traditional label. It’s kind of too much, but in a nice way, a Nobile for people who like Chateauneuf-du-Pape, but it’s full of flavour and nuance, flirting with a certain raisined character but still keeping it all together – it’s winemaking that suggests a commitment to maximum expression and I absolutely loved it. So much so that I was thinking of getting in touch and buying some direct.

The quality of the 1985 vintage in Bordeaux has been argued over for some time. Everyone agrees it was good. But how good? For the very British palate of Michael Broadbent, it was pretty much perfect, five-star – ‘almost as entrancing as 1953’ but he notes as well ‘Not block-busters, Claret at it’s ingenuous best’. The lack of blockbusters might have been a problem for the American Robert Parker – who is notably less impressed with the vintage.

To my taste, even the very best wines like Lafite and Lynch-Bages, lack a certain quality to be found in their very best vintages. 1985 is missing perhaps just the extra concentration and fine detail that separates the good from the very best.

In Hampshire for a few days, we popped a bottle of Domaine de Chevalier, which was in a nice spot – probably fading but with no huge rush to drink. Very unforced, lovely fresh fruits on the nose. Small production of 4,500 cases this year.

A lovely producer, and nice people. I visited in 2008, escorting a Saudi collector, who was more interested in telling them how many cases of Petrus he owned then learning much about their operation, but they were very gracious and it remains one of my favorite Pessacs.

The night before, we entered the twilight zone with a bottle of 1966 Beaune 1er Cru from Bouchard Pere, certified by the Confrère de Chevaliers du Tastevin. This group awards prizes and endorsement for strong wines of the vintage through tasting alone. The label is not one you see much of today as the cult of producer is now the guiding sign of quality for better or worse, but in my experience their picks are often worth a bit more attention.

Whilst I have my Broadbent on my knee, he tells me that ‘at its best, a five star vintage, and if good wine to begin with, still marvelous to drink’. I can imagine a well stored Rousseau Chambertin would be quite incredible.

After opening the very unusual hard plastic capsule and butchering the cork with a rental corkscrew, this exploded in aromas of faded raspberry and strawberry into the decanter. It’s alive! Was very nice indeed and is performing about at the top level for a Beaune 1er Cru of nearly sixty years.

If you are looking for terroir in the UK. It’s not in the vineyards, it’s in the orchards.

That’s not to say that there’s not some great wines being made here, but in terms of history and national culture they simply can’t hold a candle to the heritage of apple growing we have here. A heritage that is woefully underappreciated by ‘connoisseurs’ who can talk about the lieux-dits of Burgundy or Jura but not the heritage of their own country. People like me that is.

But I can change right? I was blown away by a recent visit to Will Chambers’ Smith Hayne Orchards in Devon, where he makes a tiny amount of glorious cider that will make you think about the entire category in a whole new way.

Currently the orchards have 13 different cider varieties: Tremletts Bitter, Dabinett, Browns, Chisel Jersey, Porters Perfection, Brown Snout, Fillbarrel, Michelin, Sweet Coppin, Yarlington Mill, Harry Masters Jersey, Lambrook Pippin and Stembridge Cluster, as well as walnut, plum, cherry, Bramley, Katy, Reinette d’Obry and Charles Ross. Only 3000 bottles per year are produced from his old 12 acre orchard, planted in an L-shape around the farm. It is hard to convey just how hands-on and artisanal this way of production is. Each apple and bottle has been touched many times.

Everything here is done manually. Harvesting the apples, washing, bottling and labelling. The ciders are unfiltered and unpasteurised. No sugar or yeast is added, with the exception being the Methode Traditionelle (yellow) which is made using the champagne method and so requires yeast and sugar dosage. The orchards are unsprayed and the grass is looked-after by sheep.

Devon was making cider from at least 1280 and was once comparable in terms of production to Somerset and Herefordshire – but now for various reasons declined over the last 200 years, perhaps because what consolidation there was couldn’t rival the big brands like Thatchers, Westons or Bulmers.

Forget about chugging it back – Poured into a wine-glass, it really is an absolutely thrilling counterpoint to pet-nat wines and Champagnes at a fraction of the price and alcohol, and perfect for outside dining and drinking. The ciders being made here are incredibly well-balanced with a touch of tannin, which creates a much more sculptural style then people might be used to. The Petillant Natural method of carbonation gives a really attractive texture and helps balance the natural sweetness from the apples.

I can feel my divining rods twitching right now seeing a new-wave of ambition in small-production English wine and Cider. Producers who have benn influenced by the natural wine movement in France and the market for those styles in larger cities. Why can’t fine English Cider confidently assert itself in that context?

Will is a keen wine-lover as well as leading cider-maker, and I think it shows in his cider, as he has a much broader sense of what is possible, to look not just back at the historic methods of the English but draw on the lessons of the crafty French and their genius for vinification. To this end he even has a few Francois Freres barrels, the tonneliere of choice of Domaine de la Romanee Conti and Armand Rousseau, which he uses for some of his blends, although they are a bugger to keep clean it seems.

Adam Wells of the Cider Review puts it well when he says: “The ciders that Anne and William are bottling at this tiny Devon operation easily stand company with the very best in the UK. “Part of me almost doesn’t want to share the secret when there’s so little to go round. But mainly it’s an absolute pleasure to tell you all about one of the UK’s true, hidden greats. Buy whatever Smith Hayne you come across – in 2021 I expect they won’t remain an inside-tip for long.”

“Each cider I have tried from Smith Hayne has been exceptional,” echoes Cider Voice’s Ben Thompson.

About 100 metres apart, there are two very different versions of Vosne-Romanee laid out upon the RN74. The spotless winery of Charles Lachaux, projecting plenty of ‘quiet luxury’ and the homely one of the Vigot family, that you suspect, has barely changed in the last twenty years.  Whilst for good or bad, everyone is aware of million pound / yen / euro bottles of Bourgogne Rouge made by the new Arnoux regime, less is known about the quiet and incremental progress of the wines by Domaine Fabrice Vigot. I have only visited the Arnoux winery once, whilst it was in a transitionary stage, but you could see what Charles was trying to do – push everything to the max in the pursuit of the highest standards of viticulture and expression in the cellar.  On the basis of this goal, you must say he’s succeeded.

Yet to me, it’s all a bit much, the wines were not very lovable or charming, more like sitting on a modernist chair, that looks great in an interior magazine, but has a hard bit of wood where you want to put your derriere. I got the vibe that the old-school importer who I was with was looking around rather tentatively at all the new oak and expensive lighting and thinking – and how much more are these wines going to cost this year?  At what price 5 extra points from the wine critics?

Leaving the Lachaux winery, you can stroll a few meters down the road, past the Hotel Richebourg and it’s a bit like going back in time to Burgundy in the 1990s. No sculptures or clay eggs, just a warm smile and a great collection of wines for extremely fair prices. The Domaine is not an ancient concern, it only dates back to 1990 when the newly married Fabrice & Christine decided to, in all senses, throw their lots in together. Fabrice inherited relationships from his father with the Mugneret-Gibourg family, where he, like his dad, managed and farmed many of their vineyards under a metayage agreement. His wife Christine brought some prime family vineyards from Gevrey.

Christine from a visit in Dec 2023

That the Mugneret-Gibourg wines are some of the greatest in Burgundy is not disputed. But prices? Like Charles Lachaux, not so great – So what’s to lose in investigating the lovely wines from the family that did much of their farming over the last 40 years. The metayage agreement with the sisters came to an end in 2016 after nearly 60 years – The pay-off was just too small for the massive amounts of work they were having to put in – So from 2017 onward all their wines are from their own Domaine.  

They have some great vineyards, Damaudes – above Malconsorts and abutting La Tache, Chalandins and Les Eletois, just below Griotte-Chambertin, among others. All the wines, from the Gevrey to the Nuits, have been filtered through a Vosne lens, with plenty of spice and fine tannin, but mostly built on the same floral and feminine character that you see in the wines of the Mugneret-Gibourgs.

There has been a lot of progress in vineyard management also – and work now on biodynamic principles, Christine tells me is having really good results to mitigate the stresses caused be the changing climactic conditions.

 With only 2.5 hectares much of their production is sold to private clients and a substantial amount goes to Japan.

Keith Levenberg, one of my very favourite writers notes: “These wines easily transcend village-wine status. The fruit is vibrantly toned, almost has the energy of a Beaujolais but with darker, earthier tones on account of the gingerbread and cinnamon-spice mix which screams Vosne-Romanee in personality”.

Anthony Hanson M.W calls then: “A little-known gem of Vosne-Romanée”

Amongst all the mega developments, ill thought-out swimming pools in the sky and various crappy, soulless and dead-eyed architectural schemes stands Lassco house and the increasingly sophisticated cooking at Brunswick House. Always excellent, our meal last night seemed to be even more precise, flavourful and interesting then my past memories of meals gone by.

Unfortunately, the glasses were a bit on the crap side, or to be more accurate, for the Burgs, did not really work that great. More on that later on.
We did the wines sort of blind, and they were all great, difficult to choose a wine of the evening.

Starting with a Chablis, a 1er Vaulorent from Patrick Piuze – was very nice, probably could have benefitted from more time in the decanter. Young Chablis must be the one style that benefits the most from a decant. It was good. I read that he ferments and ages 1er and Grand Cru for 10 months in used barrels. It was pretty difficult to detect any oak at all on the wine. Probably much better the day after. Unlike me.

As the glasses emptied, we moved to the reds – starting with ooh, what is it? It is New World? It’s oaky, it’s full bodied – is it Cabernet? Ah, no Gilmour, you total boob, it’s 2003 Volnay 1er Clos des Ducs from d’Angervillle. Well, ahh. What can I say? The glasses were difficult to get the Pinosite, and really it is very dense and oaky. 2003 is a weird vintage, but the winemaking style at the domaine and the sun didn’t combine in the best way. It would have been fascinating to try the Lafarge version side by side, which I feel might have had a bit more natural character to it.
The next wine was utterly lovely, a 1995 CNDP Cuvee Laurence from Pegau. I really dig this wine – the Laurence iteration always seems a step up from the regular cuvee. Perfectly drinking now but in no hurry at all.

Finally came bit of a cuvee-ball, which I knew about, so not so much for me. 1979 Barbacarlo from Lino Maga.

This iconic Italian arguably deserves to be more widely known than it is. But it really is in a category all by itself. As Alice Feiring writes: “Maga lacks the star status of Bartolo Mascarello, the rakishness of Lorenzo Accomasso, or the established sanity of Emidio Pepe, but he should be up there for those who seek out the most profound traditionalists.”. Luca Veronelli, the great Italian intellectual adored the wine, and put it on the highest pedestal as offering satisfaction to mind and body. It was superb, almost timeless, very perfumed and drinkable like the great Barolos of the period.

And that was that, like the German saying, ‘everything has an end, except a sausage, that has two’, we stumbled into the night, sure to return soon.