A taste of California in Berks

There's an architectural spirit of place which cannot be ignored or overlooked, even by the fattest cheque books and the steeliest wills.

This "restaurant with suites" proves it. Were Europe to federate by noon tomorrow, Britain would always look and feel irreducibly British, France French and Germany German. The spirit of place is ineradicable.

The Vineyard at Stockcross, you see, is a modest piece of Californian suite-and-restau-rant glitz beamed down into the Berkshire countryside. In Sonoma or Napa, indeed, it might even be thought cute and Olde Worlde. There are, after all, a mere seven tongues of flame leaping from the circular water feature outside. The automatic doors glide open to reveal staff ready to valet-park your car without jabbering to each other on headsets.

Only a single pianist in glittering evening dress provides the evening's musical schmooze. The white lilies rear up above the tables by little more than four or five feet. Staff barely outnumber diners, and the 68-inch bottom might find the small thrones into which diners install themselves mildly constraining. None the less, it's hard to avoid the impression that, in turning off the A34 onto the B4000, you have accidentally crossed an ocean and a continent. It just doesn't feel right.

Despite the inducements to flamboyance provided by a pit-like dining area surrounded by terraced tables and an intricate wrought-iron balcony, none of our fellow diners seemed to feel much like waving to each other, roaring with laughter or talking loudly about having tied up a brilliant deal that afternoon. Voices, if anything, were lower than the British provincial norm, and some sat in meditational silence, cowed utterly by the extravagance of the surroundings.

Tie-less and tanned, they looked, sure enough, like music-industry success stories and silicon over-achievers ... but British ones, who would have been more comfortable down at the gastro-pub. Even the wine list failed to jolly matters, which it certainly should have done, and most tiptoed away from their tables at the end of the evening with still more mouse-like stealth than they had crept in. They didn't seem to feel right either.

I mentioned the wine list - but in fact there are two; both are among Britain's most astonishing. Of all the world's great wines, the ones we know least well are those of California. This is partly because the best are produced in small quantities, face huge demand, and thus cost a great deal more than wines of equivalent quality from Australia or even France; and partly because of the depressing dominance in the UK of the Gallo brand and its sweet-edged and soulless wines.

The Vineyard houses the best collection of California wines in the UK and devotes an entire list to them. Indeed, it has recently launched itself as a specialist merchant, too, as "Vineyard - The Cellars", to supply the wines of 15 small, top-quality California producers, now including the long-absent Caymus (01635 589405), as well as those of The Vineyard's owner, Sir Peter Michael.

Michael is an electronic engineer who made his first fortune in California with Quantel; he has now made a second in Britain by founding Classic FM, and is probably well on his way to a third with the Peter Michael Winery. It's based in Knights Valley and its philosophy is everything Gallo's isn't: limited production, non-interventionist winemaking, emphasising the taste of the volcanic soils and the vineyard's mountainside sites before those of grape variety or technique. Wine guru Robert Parker loves them, as (probably consequentially) do American collectors. The complete Peter Michael range is here.

As well as the 500 or so California wines, there is also an "International" list with just as many wines from other sources, including an outstanding French and Italian selection. Faced with choice of this mind-fazing order, there is nothing much to do other than request advice. And it was in trying to settle on a glass of apéritif wine that the list's only real shortcoming became apparent: there is too little available by the glass.