Inside London's secret wine cellars

Times

15 hours ago

The grand hotels of London stand like sentinels across the city, guarding a certain version of the good life. Here, doormen gesture us through a portal to high-ceilinged lobbies and corridors unfurl towards fine restaurants and plush bars. They have much in common, these places. All, for instance, have plenty of delicious options in their cellars, and the visitor who wants vintage Krug, La Tâche or Romanée-Conti knows they have come to the right place. But a guest who wants something unique won't be disappointed either — each also prides itself on having something subtly different to offer the thirsty visitor. I descended into their cellars to find the bottles that make each of these places unique.
'We have about ten vintages of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti,' says the cellar master Aurel Istrate, 'and around 30 vintages of Pétrus' at prices ranging from £5,900 for the 1994 Pétrus to £45,000 for the DRC 1985 — some guests fly in specially for those. He and Lucas Reynaud-Paligot (the head of wine at Hélène Darroze at the Connaught) are giving me a tour, but they have lost me at the wine fridges guarding the cellar entrance. I'm peering longingly through the glass doors at Jean-Louis Chave's 1990 Hermitage (£25,000) and Château Mouton-Rothschild from 1945, L'Année de la Victoire (as it says on the bottle) and a great vintage for wine, as well (they sell this at £45,000). They buy everything ex-cellar (that is, from the château or winery where it was bottled), for all five of the hotel's restaurants, and have expanded to suit changing tastes. While they were once asked only for Champagne and top Burgundy or Bordeaux, now people are more adventurous. 'We used to have 250 labels, now it's 3,000,' Istrate says. 'During lockdown, everyone experimented. Now, for instance, we get asked for grower Champagnes [those made only from the makers' own grapes].'
Between those wine fridges and the main temperature-controlled cellar, there's a small room with a round wooden table. This is where bespoke gatherings and the smaller private wine dinners, catered by the three Michelin-star Hélène Darroze team, happen. 'We discuss the wines with the winemaker, then match the food to them,' Reynaud-Paligot says. Upstairs, when a diner wants something unexpected, Reynaud-Paligot might suggest a wine from Sancerre, Savoie or the Jura — 'the grapes are getting riper, the wines richer, due to global warming' — and if they prefer classics, well, they've come to the right place. 'Our job is to curate our suggestions to make sure that the guest is happy,' Istrate says. 'It doesn't matter what we like, because we like everything that's good!'the-connaught.co.uk
It isn't your average back of house that can boast two escalators, carrying staff and lucky guests down to the kitchen, then back up. The escalators are small but their destination isn't — the kitchens are the size of six tennis courts. Even though, of the hotel's four restaurants, China Tang has its own kitchen and the dishes for the three Michelin-star Alain Ducasse restaurant are only prepped here — they also have their own kitchen next to the restaurant. Just off this vast, bustling space, is a glass door: the wine vault. In cooled air, the hotel's most glamorous bottles — the Grand Cru Burgundy (the Coche-Dury Corton-Charlemagne 2016 is £15,000), magnums of vintage Champagne (£4,500 for the Cristal 2000) — glow alluringly across the long table. Beyond, through another door, is the chef's table. It works very well to have drinks in here before a dinner in there, says the head of wine Matteo Furlan. 'Some diners with a big budget just come in here and pick the bottles they want.' They also hold tastings, masterclasses and bespoke events for up to 12 people. One couple recently came in to learn how to pour their own Champagne tower at their wedding.
Furlan is particularly proud of their selection by the glass: 30 Champagne and sparkling wines, 40 each of white and red. And of course, if you want a glass of La Tâche, the great Grand Cru Burgundy, then you can have it — although if you want more than one glass (on request, at £1,700), it probably makes more financial, and social, sense to buy the bottle (£10,000). But mark-ups are reasonable: 'We don't take a huge mark-up, or inflate prices over time' — even though older bottles will be worth a lot more now than when the team bought them. Until recently, the Dorchester held the record for Pétrus sales in the UK, and they have 1,200 labels, most stored in a larger, less fabulous cellar. 'We have 20,000-25,000 bottles, spread across the restaurants,' Furlan says. 'So if you don't see what you want on one list, we can just look elsewhere.'dorchestercollection.com
Once the War Office where Winston Churchill directed operations for the Second World War, this beautiful Whitehall building is now a 120-room hotel with a bewildering number of restaurants and bars. But the director of wine Vincenzo Arnese — assisted by six sommeliers — has everything under control. A quarter of the list is French, he tells me, but that leaves a lot of room to play. The flagship restaurant, plus a chef's table and Saison, an all-day Mediterranean restaurant, are by Mauro Colagreco, who has three Michelin stars at Mirazur restaurant on the Riviera and, now, one here. As anyone who has seen his magnificent French gardens knows, he is very keen on sustainability, so 'we like to have local wine,' Arnese says. Although what precisely that means depends on the outlet — they all have some English sparkling, but Saison focuses on a few Mediterranean wines, which change monthly. Meanwhile the Spy Bar downstairs celebrates James Bond with, among other treats, Château Angélus 007 (£145 by the glass or £870 by the bottle).
Arnese enjoys a challenge, which is good, because Colagreco's tasting menus are magnificent — led by vegetables or sometimes, by flowers, with beautiful drawings of the star product presented with each course — but can't be easy to pair. 'I'm lucky, Mauro is open-minded. So many chefs just say, 'This is what I produce and it's your job to find a match'.' And Arnese likes daring matches: 'lobster with Masseto [the great single-vineyard Tuscan merlot] — 'sometimes you have to be bold!' That includes the rarities on the cellar's acacia-wood shelves, where guests can arrange to have drinks and canapés while admiring, for instance, a barnacle-encrusted bottle of Champagne Drappier that has spent time ageing underwater in Brittany's Lannion Bay (the different pressure levels and oxygen-free environment are supposed to change the way the liquid matures — for the better). Drink it for £595, or try a comparative tasting with a bottle aged normally, at the estate, for £660.raffles.com
The stately red-and-white building on the edge of Hyde Park is home to Heston Blumenthal's two Michelin-starred Dinner and to the Aubrey, a sultry Japanese restaurant, so it's no surprise that the cellars are full of sakés as well as wines, or that Maxim Kassir's title is director of wine and saké. 'We have 60 sakés, including 27 by the glass,' says Kassir, who has also worked with a saké brewery in Japan to produce an own-label saké, tailored to fit their cuisine, for the restaurant. Fruity yet delicate, it has been a big success, and he'll be heading east to collaborate on a second batch soon.
But fermented rice is not his only preoccupation. 'We want to be sustainable and leave the planet in a better state than we found it,' he says. They support small growers and those practising organic and biodynamic viticulture, 'and if we can find an alternative to an Australian or New Zealand wine we do'. He keeps a lookout for labels that are unusual yet interesting: recently, the Perrin family (makers of both the renowned Château de Beaucastel in Châteauneuf-du-Pape and Brad Pitt's Miraval rosés) approached him about a grenache they grow from pre-phylloxera vines. The phylloxera louse destroyed Europe's vineyards in the late 19th century, so these are old. 'The wine is not crazy expensive [£285 a bottle] but quantities are diminishing, we don't know how long the vines will last.' He is also proud of his Champagne range, with Krug by the glass as well as prestigious smaller houses including Bruno Paillard, Billecart-Salmon and Eric Rodez. By the bottle, there are several rarities including Largillier (£600), a non-vintage made by Guillaume Selosse, the youngest generation of the most famous grower label, Jacques Selosse. Max likes Champagnes that don't necessarily seek consistency but reflect the idiosyncrasies of the vintage: 'They can surprise you every time.'
Champagne is their biggest seller; then Burgundy, then … saké. Here, too, there are interesting options, such as a super-premium (Junmai daiginjo) saké from Yamagata prefecture made with rice polished down to just 1 per cent — which means exceptionally small quantities, and a price tag of £2,450 a bottle. Kassir is proud to have an allocation, as London receives just six bottles a year. But then, he knows that the ability to offer delights that a guest can't find elsewhere is precisely what makes a hotel great. mandarinoriental.com