The Belvedere wine list

This review was first published in April 2000

There are 170 or so wines in the Belvedere cellar, and the selection is wide-ranging and well-balanced, if not particularly original. Antinori, Coldstream Hills, Guigal, Mulderbosch, Beringer - these are the wine world's new Establishment; discoveries they're not. Prices feel stiff (the Coldstream Hills Reserve Pinot Noir costs £16.99 at Oddbins; here you pay £45 plus £5.63 "optional gratuity"). The list is entirely unannotated.

So what do you do if the names don't mean a thing? Why, you ask for advice, of course, which the personable Jean-Christophe Slowik cheerfully offered.

Once, that was, we'd negotiated the fact that the glasses of Alain Thiénot's pleasingly salty-sinewy champagne we ordered for our apéritif were corked; they were replaced without demur (and Slowik tasted them, too, as he should).

Slowik's first white suggestion was the 1998 La Planeta Chardonnay from Sicily, which I admired for sheer chutzpah; good as it is, you need confidence to sell a £42 Sicilian Chardonnay to three stern-faced gastronomes. Another suggestion was Laborbe-Juillot's '98 Premier Cru Rully (I've never had a gorgeous Rully); the third suggestion, which we signed up for, was the '98 Viognier produced down in the Var by Jacques Seysses of Dujac (Domaine de Triennes). This £27 Vin de Pays did have impressively floral scents, but lacked fat and glycerine and tasted over-brisk, almost as if it came from France's north. This skinny white wine was only a moderate success with our rich first courses. Slowik asked us what we thought. We told him. He took it on the chin.

The suggested red wines for steak, lamb and chicken included a 1998 Syrah Vins de Pays des Collines Rhodaniennes (an unpredictable though occasionally excellent denomination) and the Coldstream Hills Merlot (a calm and intellectual Australian rendering of this warmly creamy red grape variety). I asked about burgundies. We were told that the 1997 Monthélie "Les Vignes Rondes" from Dupont-Fahn was delicious. We'll try that, we said. Alas, it wasn't delicious. It was pale and pinched, with green herbacious notes; a conspicuous failure for such a lovely red burgundy vintage as '97, and not a wine I believe anyone should have bought had they tasted it first. Dismal value, too, at £42.50.

We reverted to the Collines Rhodaniennes Syrah, Domaine Chèze, at £18 and this, the cheapest bottle of the evening, proved by some margin the best: perfumed, vividly fruited and soft-contoured, and an ideal partner for the flesh of two quadrupeds and a bird. Why pay more?

Since his suggestions had been a mixed success, the valiant Slowik then treated us to three glasses of De Bortoli's 1995 Noble One Botrytis Semillon available at £40 per half bottle. It had shovelfuls of sweet-and-sour, in-yer-face flavour, though I couldn't help feeling the Guiraud '95 (at £56 for a full bottle) or the Durban Muscat de Beaumes de Venise (£4 a glass) would have been rather more digestible as well as better value. The coffee was superb.