Fine wine on a magic roundabout

Log fires, guns on the wall, hams dangling from the ceiling, drying mushrooms on the open windowsill: that's the kind of image that the word "Osteria" conjures up. Anywhere looking less like an Osteria, in other words, than this Knightsbridge version would be hard to find. It resembles a club-class airport lounge in chilly granite, leather and steel, while the waiters and waitresses wander around in grey uniforms from the Kim Il Jong school of fashion design. Fortunately, you don't eat or drink the surroundings, and inside those unflattering slacks and pyjama tops are human beings of sweet-tempered professionalism.

Or so I found. I was deal-hunting again, and had been lured down the steel steps beneath the street by the promise of a £10-per-head selection of antipasti misti, served in the bar between midday and 7pm every day except Sunday. Bravo. I live a life of such chaos that 3.30pm is often the ideal moment to eat lunch. On the day my guest and I went, we were the only mid-afternoon takers. I've always thought the best flights are those peopled only by three other morose passengers, while the best cinemas are those which are entirely empty save for me and a sleeping tramp; why shouldn't the same go for a good restaurant? Service was impeccable; we could hear ourselves talk. We also had the chance to get to know assistant manager Leonardo Clementi, a true gentleman of Verona. And that's not all.

There's also a strong wine draw here. Isola (the restaurant upstairs) and Osterial d'Isola not only have a superb Italian wine list, but they also offer around 60 wines by the glass and 10 different wine "tasters". A taster is a magic roundabout on which dangle five different, themed glasses of wine. We ordered two. What with the eight antipasti and the 10 glasses of wine, our session quickly turned into the gourmet equivalent of an afternoon in the British Library.

We sniffed; we masticated; we compared notes; we made scholarly observations. We almost asked for the music to be turned off, but felt the grey ones needed some distraction as the languid afternoon unwound.

So what was it all like? Pretty good, in truth. The antipasti were well-considered, comely on the eye, and contained highlights (like aubergine caviar, seared beef on chickpea pur?e and soft marinated peppers); they were served with doorstep slices of genuine osteria-style bread and a dish of olive oil which contrived to staunch the appetite of this invariably hungry bloke without further supplement.

Our first taster was the basic number one: Italian varieties (£13.50 plus 12.5 per cent service charge) of which the 1999 Dolcetto d'Alba from Prunotto was probably the star, though it needed to be served lightly chilled. The white Falerio and the red Grannero were splendidly obscure and, on the basis of this tasting, likely to remain so; the white Falerno failed, alas, to justify its legendary classical reputation, though it held a kind of smoky archaeological fascination. Fifth wine was the chunky Tuscan Pomino.

The "Powerful Reds" taster, though, was a different matter altogether. It costs £32 (that's £36 with service), but it did contain three of the best wines I've tasted in a restaurant for a long while. Best of all was Nino Negri's 1997 Sfurzat "5 stelle". This Nebbiolo-based, barrique-aged, lengthily macerated Valtellina red deserves every one of those self-awarded five stars for its ethereal, perfumed scents and lush, ripe, richly spicy flavours, silky tannins and overall intensity: it was like drinking a Zanzibar warehouse. A bottle on the main list costs £48 (£54) and I guarantee it will be better than 90 per cent of all Burgundy at that price in every other restaurant in London - though hurry, hurry, hurry. The list is changing and it goes up to £60 (£67.50) from the 18th.

Very nearly as good was the brilliant 1995 "La Poja" single-vineyard Corvina from Allegrini, all bitter-cherry scents and liquorice-charged fruit; and the sexy, creamy 1996 Vignaserra from tangle-haired rocker and Barolo star Roberto Voerzio. My old fave Rosso del Conte from Regaleali in Sicily was also there, in its sweet, voluptuous, toffeed 1997 incarnation. The only dud was the rather dry and inarticulate 1996 Taurasi "Radici" from Mastroberardino. Leonardo told us that the servings were all 17.5cl. They weren't, though, since we finished the lot and there was no way I could have cycled away with 87.5 cl of strong southern wine in my bloodstream and not caused traffic mayhem in the Hyde Park area.

I've since discovered they are 7.5cl, which means the tasters are something of an expensive luxury: one taster equals half a bottle. It does, though, explain why I made it home in one piece.

Osteria d'Isola, 145 Knightsbridge, London, SW1 (0207 838 1055).