The wine list at Lola's

This review was first published in May 2002

Rarely have I enjoyed an evening's wine drinking so much as the two or three hours I spent at Lola's on Monday night. The rain was unloading by the reservoirful, which always helps, such is the empathy between liquids which fall from the sky and those which rise again from the earth; mostly, though, it was the fact that proprietress Morfudd Richards ("M" to Islingtonians) has put together a great little wine list.

She sells it herself, there being no patrolling sommelier; she is modest, unpretentious and friendly. Almost every wine on it is given a brief, sane description; it isn't too expensive; there are "flights" for the curious; the wines are fascinatingly dud-free. Perfection, as far as I am concerned, best sums it up.

We began with seven glasses of the most undervalued fine wine in the world (as I said, it was raining hard). The whole lot for under 10 quid, moreover: seven 25ml glasses of sherry. This labelled "flight" would normally have included the devastating Coliseo, not so much a wine as an apothecary's essence, but alas supplies were exhausted; there were none the less three glories.

The first was Lustau's salty, bready Puerto Fino; the second the immaculate Inocente, a Fino of gymnastic sinew; the third was the Oloroso Anada 1918 from the Lustau Almacenista range, a small world of flavour in a glass. M, detecting our interest, supplied a glass of Robert Plageoles's wondrously strange Vin de Voile for comparative purposes (this is a French wine from Gaillac made in the same way as Fino sherry).

To match our four dishes we decided on two glasses of white and a half-bottle of red. I had spotted that the hand-written "Obscure wine flight" at the beginning of the list (again fine value: five 50-ml glasses for £10) contained a 1996 Savennieres Roche aux Moines from Domaine aux Moines.

The domain was new to me, but '96 is a great Loire vintage and Savennieres is the least well-known of France's truly great white wines (Chenin Blanc is its grape). M served it at room temperature, which is daringly appropriate since its powerful aromas of apricot and mango and its flavours of honey and minerals are most articulate when unchilled; we were charged a fair £6 each.

The red, if anything, was even better: a Bandol from the fine new domain La Suffrene. The half-bottle was a mere £13.25, which for a dark, close-textured red of genuine profundity and uniqueness is a London restaurant bargain.

M insisted we finish with a glass of what proved to be yet another magnificent wine: a sweet Austrian Ruster Ausbruch from Feiler-Artinger (£7 a glass): becoming scents, brimming sweetness, followed by plunging, cleansing yet ripe acidity. We glowed.

Wine list scores 5 out of 5.