Wine list at The Admiralty

This review was first published in July 2000

Cuisine de terroir is the pennant fluttering above the Admiralty's deck, illuminating its menu, and marking its calling cards. Terroir, of course, is a concept filched by gastronomy from the wine world; it provides the philosophical base for France's system of appellations d'origine controle, pioneered in the 1930s for wine and since extended to specific food; regional food products like butter, cheese or lentils. It means "placeness": a gustatory specificity derived from the conjunction of growing conditions (soil, aspect, climate) and particular plant or animal varieties. The stamp of terroir means the taste of a place.

That's the theory, anyway. In practice, it's used as shorthand all over France whenever those selling a product wish to evoke (without necessarily delivering) a gritty, gutsy regionality. Very José Bové, of course; very anti-McMerde. Homogenised burger culture quakes at the knees when it hears those two awesome syllables.

The Admiralty has approached terroir equipped with a blunderbuss rather than a laser-guided missile; the Rhone valley, Provence, Languedoc and the South-West all feature on its wine list. Not that this matters; it's a good, interesting selection of wines, intelligently chosen. Three out of the four regions are convulsed by quality surges at present (only Provence has it too good to care greatly). There are 104 bottles to chose from; no halves, perhaps oddly, yet the 15 wines by the glass cater well for the modest thirst. Eleven champagnes are on offer if you really must (as my two neighbouring tables felt obliged to. Well, let's be fair; champagne is a terroir too.)

Anything wrong? Well, the list is unannotated, aside from a few of the vaguest regional generalities. My spirits always dip slightly at the sight of an eight-kilo wine list, so I can understand the desire for spareness and simplicity. Someone should be on hand, though, who has just a crow's-nest of a clue about what strange names like La Clape or Brezeme or Porquerolle might promise. Our waitress smiled bewitchingly when we asked for wine advice before confirming that we'd drawn a complete blank with her; she fetched head waiter Ceri Thomas. The Admiralty does possess a sommelier, apparently, but Karine Zartarian was tired and was having Saturday night off. Ceri had a little notebook with six recommendations in, this half-dozen being his solution to all known wine-matching conundrums. Further questioning saw Ceri swiftly raise the white flag, declaring he knew nothing, and couldn't even speak French. He was utterly charming, seemed very capable in other respects, and had beautiful fingernails.

So we fended for ourselves. Glasses of white Chateau St Martin de la Garrigue from the Coteaux de Languedoc and Pech Redon from La Clape were both terrific: complex, fresh, intense, mercifully unbefuddled by oak, the latter slightly more intense than the former, and both offering a kind of mélange of fruit and vegetal flavours. When it came to a bottle of the red, that Porquerolle had caught my eye. It's actually an island off the coast of Provence, and the Domaine de la Courdade wine made was billed as pure Mourvedre, this being Provence's very own grumpy red grape variety, and one which is meant to taste of black olives. I'd never tried this isolated wine; I'd never even seen it, indeed. I thought it might go well with the "basket of organic vegetables and selection of regional starters".

It was, at first, intriguingly odd, smelling of hamster cages and tasting vaguely Portuguese; later it grew ungratefully acidulous, and fought like a man-of-war with our monkfish and salmon. Ceri's Top Six would have served us much better, but that's where curiosity gets you. And it cost a whopping £43.48 (including the 12.5 per cent service charge). Fay Maschler had better luck with her delicious Pécharmant from Domaine Bertranoux (at £34.08) and slightly less rewarding Collioure Non-Filtré from Pietri-Gérard at £30.56.

Prices, as you see, are wildly unregional. A mere glass of Vieux Télégraphe Chateauneuf-du-Pape '96 costs £15.28, which is more than a whole bottle of the '97 vintage from a wine merchant such as Tanners (£13.50; 01743 234455). Almost all the selections are more than £15 and most more than £20, which is awfully Grand Cru for a bunch of try-harder little guys from the deep South. The '96 Brezeme costs £28.50 here, while merchant Yapp (hardly known for his cut-throat pricing) will sell it to you for £9.75 (01747 860423). To be fair, Taittinger Brut at £35 isn't overly grasping (it would cost you £56 at John Burton-Race). Only one of our fellow diners looked to me like an admiral. The crocodile wasn't telling.

The Admiralty
Strand, London, WC2R 1LA