The wine list at John Burton-Race

What defines a great wine list? Simple. Every wine on it should be an outstanding example of its type. What defines a great wine waiter? The answer is no more complicated: he or she should have tasted every inexpensive wine on the list, and have some experience of the more expensive wines. Our model sommelier should also know the menu intimately, and be able to communicate those wine flavours and suggest appropriate matches for the chosen dishes.

Elementary criteria, yet John Burton-Race's restaurant at the Landmark fails at present on every one. Let's start with the list itself. It's a big, heavy job, assembled by a sole supplier (Anthony Byrne) and stuffed with stentorian bottles: 11 vintages of Mouton and 13 of Latour and Lafite; lots of white burgundy from Sauzet and Alsace from Zind-Humbrecht (a Byrne agency); a couple of vintages each of Hermitage La Chapelle and Grange. Putting this part of the list together is a doddle: all you need is a testosterone-charged chequebook, a telephone and the phone numbers of a few key brokers. These wines are famous for being good; they're priced accordingly and traded like shares.

The real test comes at the other end of the list: the little bottles. Every wine, no matter how modest, can be either a good or bad example of its type.

Fay Maschler and I, having consulted with Marc le Blanc (one of the Landmark's two sommeliers), drank two half-bottles for lunch. One was a dull example of its type, while the other was dismally poor, a wine which had no business to be on any list, let alone one with ambitions for greatness. The first was the uncomely 1998 Saumur Champigny of Domaine Vigneau at £16 a half (a suggested replacement for the 1997 Chorey-les-Beaune of Arnoux, which turned out to be unavailable); the second was the miserable, clanking 1996 Ch?teau Corbin-Larose from St Emilion, at a distressing £18 a half. (OK, we should have drunk Cheval Blanc 1989, but sometimes you have to slum it.)

I don't blame the hapless Le Blanc; he hadn't tasted them either, and there were too few halves to give him much freedom of choice in his suggestions, anyway. He'd arrived fresh from the Ritz Casino and seemingly hadn't had the time or the encouragement to taste every wine on that list at under £40, to discuss them with fellow sommelier Roberto della Pietra and jointly to throw out those wines which didn't merit their place.

The advice he gave us would have been very sensible, had the wines been any good. As it was, the Saumur Champigny didn't have the vivacity to work as hard as it might have done with our terrine of braised rabbit and ballotine of red mullet. Something Italian might have been best for tagliatelle with wild mushrooms and a "risotto cake" layered with French beans - yet the only Italian in anything less than a full bottle was a half-litre of Amarone and we both needed to remain conscious for the rest of the afternoon. Fay's aperitif glass of champagne (non-vintage Drappier) and my glass of Graillot's white 1997 Crozes-Hermitage were adequate, if unexciting.

The fact that Le Blanc managed to open a bottle of sparkling mineral water with a flourish right behind me, lightly dousing my nape, provided a welcome moment of levity in the oppressively sepulchral atmosphere.

Wine-list grandeur is no different from any other achievement: it is built on hard work. In this context, hard work means tasting, tasting, tasting. There needs to be a lot more of that before this list, and this location, become landmarks.

John Burton-Race
The Landmark, 222 Marylebone Road, NW1