The wine list at Bonds

This review was published in July 2002

The wine list at Bonds contains, among its 100 or so choices, some attractive bottles - provided you have £50 or more (ideally a lot more) to spare. Villard's 2000 Condrieu is a pulseslowing £91 including service; Pichon-Baron '89 is a pulse-snuffing £423.

Walking up Threadneedle Street towards the restaurant's front door, I recalled a number of bones I had to pick with the City of London: a dud Equitable Life pension and an emaciated tracker ISA.

Perhaps it's unfair, but nowhere hereabouts, I decided, was going to get a penny more than necessary from my custom. The available bottles at under £30 including service (oddly, there are no halves) proved to be a patchy lot. Under such circumstances, there was only one option: wines by the glass. There are 10 (and three champagnes) to choose from.

We began with two whites. My guest wanted a glass of Chablis (the 2000 Les Deux Rives from Olivier Leflaive); it was £8.44 including service.

If you like Chablis, now is a timely moment to indulge yourself, since the 2000 vintage favoured this small region; it is at least twice as good as the 2001 vintage which will be with us all too soon.

The Leflaive version was model: fragrant with the breadiness of skilfully accomplished barrel-fermentation and, like a well-honed midriff, lean yet ripe.

I sipped a glass of Andrè Kientzler's 1998 Geisberg Grand Cru Riesling, and this, too, was an intense, tongueshocking treat: riper, richer, firmer and fuller than German Rieslings yet more stone-dense and thus more thoughtprovoking than New World versions. A glass cost £10.69 including service, which must be within spitting distance of the wine's full retail price, though I haven't found a stockist.

Two reds for the main courses, next, and a switch from France to the New World. The 1998 Pinot Noir from Mètier Tarraford had apparently run out (£5.63 including service), so I was offered a glass of Geoff Weaver's 1999 Lenswood Pinot Noir instead.

The winery has an elevated reputation, but on the basis of this glassful it was hard to work out why: it smelled of little beyond the plain vanilla of oak, and tasted hard, monotonous and joyless. We gave up after a single sip each.

The South African Hawequas from Mont du Toit Kelder was better, though the toffeed aromas and dense, stewy flavours were primitive in construction (£7.31). I had never heard of the Graves property Chateau Haut-Selve, but a glass of its dark, well-ballasted 1998 vintage (£9) redeemed our assiette of pork and wild mushroom and spring-vegetable lasagne.

This is a good list for a bull market, but bear days have found us, and its lower depths could do with a further investment of work.