The wine list at Chutney Mary

This review was first published in May 2002

Can wine, which functions so happily with European dishes, ever step out with Asian and Indian foods in the same way? Tens of thousands of Britons chew over the challenge every night, and many Indian restaurants now offer expressly crafted wine lists to tempt proof.

Chutney Mary is the latest, with a purposebuilt, spice-tested wine list compiled by Matthew Jukes, for whose wine knowledge I have much respect.

Jukes's principles are the following: whites need plenty of aroma to accompany Indian food; they can be rich, but they shouldn't be heavily oaked. Reds should contain "no overt tannin, over-oaked or harsh flavours". So much for theory.

What about practice? They certainly make you feel at home at Chutney Mary. Within minutes, we were into a detailed conversation with the assistant manager, touching on Vasco da Gama, Indian coastal trading stations and edible metals - rarely has a food order (for crab cakes and Cochin-style squid, followed by Lucknow lamb with the "jewel of gravies" and exquisitely stuffed guinea-fowl korma) been so lengthily examined, disputed and reasoned.

He promised to send us "the wine captain" for further disputation. Our first courses soon arrived, however, and we were still waiting for the captain to heave into view. John, another staff member of humour and charm swung into the breach.

We were dismayed to see that only the first wine in each section of the list was officially offered by the glass. John told us, however, that other choices were available on an ad hoc basis: he offered us a glass each of Puiatti's 2001 Pinot Grigio La Puiattino and the Vasse Felix 2000 Sauvignon/Semillon from Western Australia (at £4 each).

My guest felt these weren't served cool enough, but I thought they were just fine, and it was an immense relief to find a Pinot Grigio that was actually ripe, chewy and sappy rather than raw and thin, and an Australian white whose passion-fruit aromas weren't too sweaty or oak-fuddled.

Well-chosen wines, in other words, and they made good combinations with the tender, subtly flavoured timbale-like crab cake and the slightly hotter, though less dazzlingly intricate, mound of squid.

"D'you want to try the weirdest wine on the list?" John asked us (the captain remained anchored in uncharted waters). The oddity came from the "medium-weight red" section: "the vibrant blackberry and herb nature of each of these wines," the wine list reads, "makes them ideally suited to matching with the lamb".

This wine was the 2000 Fonte del Re, Lacrima di Morro d'Alba of Umani Ronchi in Italy's Marche (at £21). I loved its magnificent strangeness: dark, beautifully and powerfully scented with rose and violet, its flavour a mass of charred sloes, with a typically Italian, bitter-edged finish.

Alas, though, it had very little to say to the food, and the feeling seemed to be mutual: the unctuousness of the almond korma sauce and the spiced richness of the "jewel of gravies" made the bitter edges taste almost metallic. We enjoyed this discovery enormously - before and after the food.