The wine list at Neat

This review was first published in June 2001

It was a grey evening out on the Thames. Our table in Neat was one of the ones by the river-front window; a curved banquette for two excluded our gaze from the restaurant itself, projecting it instead down onto the sinister sucking water. The entire picture window, we noted, could be opened were the weather to suit, making this a berth of unrivalled appeal for barge-spotters. The fact that Neat diners sit on the Oxo tower's second floor rather than the eighth would, no doubt, add a wealth of telling detail, even without binoculars.

Actually, a pair of binoculars would have come in handy for our conversations with sommelier Christian Aaroe. The banquette was squat. He is tall; very tall. Being Danish, of course, he speaks English with greater articulacy, clarity and lexical exactitude than most natives, so we understood each other, even if he disappeared behind low cloud from time to time. He's blond, confident and affable, ready to make suggestions with cleaverwielding speed.

It's not his list yet, since he seems to have arrived chez Neat just a few minutes before opening; it's been assembled by Robert Saunders, one of the directors. Aaroe intends to extend it and amplify it. Well, fine; though I have to say Saunders has made an excellent job of it so far, and in many ways it is refreshing to come across a list which doesn't ramble on endlessly. France constitutes its core, as you'd expect from Neat's Cannes connection. There's lots of Bordeaux, which Aaroe says he doesn't like much, so perhaps that will shrink (if you want a tip, try the 1996 vintage of the emerging St Emilion star Château Faugères at a drinkable £34.95, or £39.32 by the time you've paid 12.5 per cent service).

Only five red Rhones, by contrast, but every one impeccably chosen and punt-worthy; while the single Languedoc red on the list is so good that I instantly bought a case myself when I came across it recently at a trade tasting. It's the dark, dense and tremblingly ripe 1998 Clos de l'Escandil from the new AOC of Minervois la Livinière: £37.07 here including service, whereas I paid £11.63 a bottle delivered, so you can work out the mark-up for yourself.

Thirteen dry wines by the glass and six dessert wines is a good showing, so we tried three whites (after an Anchor beer and a Sea Breeze in the bar next to the Brasserie) to accompany first-course roasted sea scallops with black pudding, scrambled egg and caramelised pear, and a dense and towering tian of panfried skate wing, shredded crab and cucumber velouté. Didier Dagueneau's 1999 Pur Sang Pouilly Fumé was all lime peel, cool glades and river pebbles: fine wine, but then so it should be at £11.81 per glass including service.

The 1999 Jurancon Sec from Domaine Castéra was disappointingly raw (£5.06), while Olivier Leflaive's 1997 Rully Les Clous was unpolished (you can't polish Rully) but intense, and the extra year or two's age was welcome (£7.31).

So what would the lofty Dane recommend with veal sweetbreads with Parma ham, wild-mushroom polenta and shallot juice, and with breasts of pigeon, white-bean gnocchi and a pea velouté? It had to be, he said, the 1998 Les Terrasses from Alvaro Palacio in Spain's Priorato (£27 including service, which constitutes good value for this much-listed wine).

In one sense, it was superb: it's packed with cherry, coffee and herb notes, and has jaw-dropping intensity for a restaurant wine at under £30. Yet (as great wines always should) it also tastes of its place on earth, and Priorato is a suntortured, frost-splintered, rubble-filled zone of Catalonian schistose wilderness. The wine reflected that southern upland violence with its long lance of acidity, the faintly medicinal hue to those cherry fruits, and its almost acerbic, crushed-herb finish. Impressive, yes; food-friendly, maybe; easy-drinking, no. Anyway, that was quite enough alcohol for one night, which was a shame, as I'd love to have tried the 1990 Sauternes from one of my favourite châteaux, Nairac (£11.81 per glass) with dessert.

The shorter Brasserie list contains some of the same wines and some different ones, too, with a few more New World choices. The prices are mostly the same, though, tricksily, the Sancerre is a pound more expensive in the Brasserie, while a bottle of Taittinger will cost you all of £10 (£11.25 including service) more in the Brasserie than in the Restaurant. Cheeky or what?

Neat
2nd Floor, Oxo Tower Wharf, Barge House Street, SE1