The off licence sent from heaven

Feeling thirsty? No need to venture out into the weather. Pick up the phone and order a margharita from Tipple, a bespoke alcohol delivery service operating out of a rather posh new offlicense run by boys about town Cairbry Hill and Jaspar Eyears, that opens today.

The boys promise to deliver an order to your parched throat faster than you can shake a cocktail. That's any drink from their menu of some 200 still wines, 40 champagnes, 80 spirits, 25 beers and ten cocktails (mixed on order and poured into plastic bottles to travel) rushed to selected central London postcodes within 45 minutes.

For £4.50 you can buy two margharitas, though there is a £10 minimum order and a £3 delivery fee on top of that. It's got to be worth it, though. Just imagine the potential for transforming a dull evening when you get home only to realise you did have the energy to go out after all, or even a slow afternoon at work.

No doubt about it, soaks like me are going to have to ask British Telecom to put a special bar on their phones, because Hill and Eyears are mean mixologists. Both began as barmen under cocktail maestro Dick Bradsell in the early 1990s. They are now connoisseurs who run their own company and set up a bar almost every month at venues up and down the country.

The pair are slowly changing the way Londoners drink. At the heart of their philosophy is a belief in quality. Tipple doesn't sell muck of any sort. The list restricts itself to premium brands and, I must say, the prices reflect this. A bottle of Moët & Chandon, for example, costs a few pounds more than it would at Tesco.

On the positive side, orange juice is freshly squeezed and, quite rightly, much is made of Patron, the tequila star that Hill and Eyears are promoting as their 'it' drink. Because of a shortage of blue agave, tequila's key ingredient, good tequilas are not easy to find. Patron, despite its celebrity following (Jennifer Aniston and Clint Eastwood are fans), is one and Tipple is the first to sell it

in the UK. It is such a smooth, luscious drink that it will change your view of the spirit. Buy a bottle now.

Tipple the shop is also an experience. As expensively kitted out as any Sloane Street boutique, it boasts a curved floor to ceiling 'wine wall' finished with stitched leather and stainless steel label holders, a tiled sandstone floor and teak, suedeupholstered display boxes.

It's also in quite a posh place, County Hall, close to a newly converted (and no doubt ferociously expensive) apartment complex whose inhabitants --the boys hope - will soon be shopping at Tipple. But who else? City boys, I suggest, might be willing to pay the price of flashy drinking. 'Well,' said a colleague of Hill and Eyears, looking me straight in the eye, 'we're hoping to attract people who like to drink a lot but,' and here he threw me a sweetener, 'who care about what they drink. The advertising and media crowd, primarily.'

That'll be me, then.

Tipple
3 County Hall, Belvedere Road, SW1