Corking idea - well, nearly!

It was one of the first ads ever to root in my brain. For Nicolas, it was, and probably spotted in France: it showed a beautiful woman stepping alluringly over her threshold to bring in a daily doorstep delivery of wine.

We in Britain woke up to bovine lactalbumin; in France, they greeted the dawn with burgundy. No wonder life seemed more fun over there, and the name Nicolas became forever associated in my mind with corkscrews at breakfast proffered by semi-dressed models. Like the promises of most advertisements, reality lagged behind.

Nicolas has been here in London for a decade now, having bought the chain of drink shops once called Buckinghams and converting them to its own, almost exclusively French cause. The selection is extensive; Nicolas shops are a good place to find those obscure appellations which might trigger a happy holiday memory or deepen your pool of knowledge.

They're a bit expensive (as Buckinghams always was); perhaps you pay for the posh locations. It's conceivable that we'll need to take them more seriously soon, since its owner, the French company Castel, is one of the enthusiastic suitors for the Oddbins hand. When I spoke to Pierre Castel at Vinexpo in June he told me that, were Castel to buy Oddbins, the company would not merge the two chains. Phew.

Nicolas has also been trying something different at its Canary Wharf branch by setting up a Bar à Vins next to the shop (and my thanks to reader Sophie Butler who first alerted me to the venture). This adapts the old Reynier Wine Library/La Réserve notion of serving simple food while encouraging customers to drink any bottle off the shelves with their lunch - for zero corkage. Great idea, in other words. And in practice?

In practice, it's moderately successful. I attempted to engage the manager in conversation about some of the many bottles on the shelves before deciding what to buy, and was nonplussed by his lack of knowledge. OK, maybe the grape varieties used in a bottle of Cabardès isn't the easiest question, but either you own up to having no idea whatsoever, or you make a better guess than Pinot Noir.

There were further lacunae on the white varieties typical of Languedoc in general, and "Meursault, they're always good", is the kind of statement which any drinker with a few bottles under his or her belt can smell the steam on from 30 paces. He was, to be fair, a stand-in; the usual managers, Daniel Rodriguez and Jean-Michel Clement, were visiting Rhône vineyards that day.

Four of us ended up drinking a 1999 Château de Jau Côtes de Roussillon Villages, which was pleasant enough but utterly unmemorable, and a 2000 Menetou-Salon from Domaine de Chatenoy, which was crisp, clean and leafy - everything it should be, but nothing more. At £6.90 and £10 respectively, these are poor retail value but good wine-bar value. They seem typical to me of Nicolas's buying in general which starts from a different premise from, say, Oddbins's buying. Nicolas offers you typicality; Oddbins offers you excellence. (I'd love to see wine bars next to Oddbins shops, Monsieur Castel.)

The food, too, could be better. You'd expect Nicolas to do what any decent French bistro does, and greet every customer who sits down with an automatic basket of freshly cut bread and dish of unsalted butter.

Pathetically, though, you have to ask for bread here; derisory little diskettes of it then arrive for which you are charged an extra pound. The worst British practice, as ever was.