Wine list at Monte's

This review was first published in August 2000

Strange surroundings, these, for ingenuous kitchen exuberance; piles of Naked Chef books on the windowsill can't quite erase the sensation that, chez Monte, one is lunching in the directorial dining room of Price Waterhouse or Unilever. Gay it ain't. A splash of blue-and-yellow paint would work wonders.

Lunching, of course, is what one will be doing, unless you can afford the membership fees, which makes it strange that there are a mere eight wines available by the glass. A decent naked wine list, I would have thought, would have featured wines climbing out of their glass gear all over the place. As it is, this one looks sober, almost besuited. Since Jamie and Ben's (see Fay Maschler on previous page) inspiration taps the River Café delta, Italian wines are listed in separate blocks to their "elsewhere" counterparts, but apart from that - no notes, no enthusiasms, no suggestions. Just style, name, vintage, price.

The list has been put together by Matthew Jukes, assembler of good lists at Bibendum and The Crescent, and now wine writer for the Daily Mail and one of those in the square frame to become TV's naked wine buff. (Is the nation ready? Does it really work like that? Moreover I would have thought Oz Clarke would be delighted to perform nude; perhaps they just haven't asked.) Anyway, exhortatory exuberance has yet to make its way on to this list, but maybe they don't want to upset the evening crowd.

A little supplementary sales info would be useful for another reason, too. When we asked if there was a wine waiter who could give us some advice, our waitress told us firmly that he'd left and had not been replaced, adding zest-fully, if incongruously, that everyone had loved him.

Assistant manager Jamie Smith strode into the breach opened by our queries, beginning by coming clean on the fact that he had neither tasted nor knew all the wines on the list. He'd mastered our order (which we had cunningly placed to solicit a delicious Italian red), and his firm recommendation was for a white: the Soave La Rocca of Pieropan. Since I had asked him to recommend a wine for which he felt personal passion, it would have been churlish to solicit more suggestions when none was offered. Soave it was.

This is no ordinary Soave. It's harvested so late that Nino Pieropan has been obliged to fence the vineyard to stop the locals gleaning what they assume are abandoned grapes. This gives it an oily density, a tight succulence and the whisper of sweetness behind its softly tropical fruit. What it can't provide is a personality transfusion for the Garganega, a grape which I always feel would really like to be Pinot Gris if it could. No matter; personality can get in the way of a great food combination. Jamie insisted we let it warm slightly before drinking it.

Well, it was interesting. I began with the cappollacci "(it's a bit like tortellini!)". As the menu went on to promise, it was laden with "loadsa fresh herbs". Indeed loadsa fresh herbs was the order of the day, since my main-course chicken quaked beneath an avalanche of sage, and even the superb apricot tarte Tatin had been detonated with thyme before dispatch. My guest ate carpaccio beef encrusted with more herbs, and a fine summer risotto (herbed, naturally). I'm all for seasoning with herbs and lemons rather than mundane salt, but I think in the end these lightning-rod flavours required a perkier wine partner than the languid, houri-like La Rocca. Our aperitif glasses of Falerio (an odd Marche white, musky, intense yet slightly oxidised, too) and the unexceptional Tantalus Australian white blend lingered but were no more engaging. Two of London's most fastidious professional gourmets were lunching the same day, and they ferried across glasses of '94 Meursault from Coche-Dury and '95 Pommard from Comte Armand from the heavy-duty "Reserve Cellar" section of the list. Jolly nice, though not perhaps quite in the spirit of the menu.

Let's not be too hard. This is, in general, a well-chosen list, with almost 30 wines priced at under £20 a bottle (before the 12.5 per cent service charge has been added; only 10 wines remain under £20 including the service charge). It needs more wines by the glass, and so long as there is no wine waiter, the list itself needs to supply much more information, and ideally a dose of naked enthusiasm too. But you can drink well here and still leave with most of your limbs intact.

The Restaurant at Monte's
Monte's Club, 164 Sloane Street, SW1 9QB