The wine list at Mju

This review was published in July 2001

An evening at Mju constitutes an exhausting gastronomic workout. Despite the bonsai portions, it is also a challenge to the digestion, since a high proportion of the meal consists of raw or barely congealed protein. Can wine help?

Of course it can. Wine's three great functions are mental inebriation, sensory enchantment and digestive ease; the first two tend to get all the coverage, but regular users know that the third matters no less. Trouble is, if you're having eight courses (or 11 in our case, since the kitchen, with the exuberance of youth, kept sending out supplementary emissaries), what the heck do you choose? Ducru-Beaucaillou '82 is a gorgeous wine (£240 plus £30 service here), but hardly the thing to massage along tartare of tuna with fresh wasabi, roast scampi with tea and scampi oil, or even roasted Scottish rack of lamb with miso and water chestnuts.

Cue the sommelier - or sommeliers. Perhaps it is as well there are three for the opening, to guide the perplexed through this highly wrought menu. Ours was head sommelier Jean Yong, a Frenchman of South Korean extraction. He was, alas, difficult to understand: swift speech, natural diffidence and tenuous English meant that while I managed to catch most of his recommendations, their muttered rationale escaped me. At least, until we switched to French. Less speed and more volume would help.

In the end, we drank almost exclusively by the glass: there are 12 whites and 12 reds to choose from, plus four sparkling wines and four dessert wines. I'm not sure it was the best decision: the servings are swiftly swallowed 150ml measures rather than the more usual 175ml, and an average price of £5.50 (plus 69p for the usual service) soon ramps up the bill. Of the six wines we tried by the glass, easily the best was the 1996 Herrenweg Riesling from Zind-Humbrecht at £7.43 per glass including service: this is a wine of explosive depth of flavour, dredging minerality and almost perfect acid balance. I have not tasted a better Riesling this year. It sent the pleasant but mild-mannered 2000 Nepenthe Sauvignon Blanc from Australia's Adelaide Hills (£6.19 including service) spinning off into the woodwork.

Jean Yong thought that Chardonnay would suit our middle courses (salmon and lobster ravioli), but the by-the-glass selection proved dull. The 1999 Lanzerac Chardonnay from South Africa recommended by Yong was rather green and woody (£6.30), while the 1998 Pierro Chardonnay from Western Australia throbbed with oak and hot alcohol, and was dismally poor value at £11.25 including service for a 150ml glass.

For desserts, again the by-the-glass selection was restricted (two fortifieds, a Tokaji and a Recioto di Soave), so I pulled a half-bottle off the main list. This was Alain Brumont's 1997 Pacherenc du Vic Bilh Brumaire, attractively priced this time at £15.75 for a half including service, and a wine packed with as much mouth-watering detail as a Zola novel. If great Sauternes seems to slide a drowsy, humming Indian summer into a bottle, this wine did the same for a branch-dripping, cool-fruited autumn. The greatest new-wave dessert wines in the world, by the way, come not from the New World (where they generally have all the subtlety of a bag of boiled sweets), but from the little-known vineyards of south-west France.

We had an amusingly mauve cocktail before dinner (the frothy Millennium Martini, which by dint of combining vodka with Chambord and pineapple juice tastes both bramble-sweet and clarety), and memorable green tea afterwards (they layer the tea leaves with toasted rice and corn, which gives it an intriguing pistachio character).

If I was going again, I'd probably do as Fay Maschler did, and have a half bottle of white and a half of red (though this eliminates non-French options entirely) or just settle for a full bottle (that Zind-Humbrecht Riesling would be hard to resist) and hang the combinatory consequences.

Our bill was a colossal £199.35 for two. If you want to double it, take a look at the "Australian Reserve Cellar": a list of middle-aged examples of the old continent's grandest wines. Hill of Grace '92 is actually more expensive than Ducru Beaucaillou '82: £327 per bottle, plus £41 to have the cork pulled. Still, you don't find it everywhere.

Wine list scores three out of five.

Mju
16-17 Sloane Street, SW1X 9NU