Across the Pond

Post-midterms I had the opportunity to join my SO in London as he wrapped up some work. Likely because of this class, I started noticing some interesting differences in the wine lists and selections of the restaurants and stores we visited.

Wine Lists

The most striking thing to me about the wine lists in London were the way they were organized. Instead of being organized in order of light to full body - as is common here - wines by the glass were ordered only by price. Perhaps the assumption is that average wine drinker in Europe knows more about the different varietals featured on a menu - but for someone who is used to ordering by body and who was somewhat out of place with a decidedly 'foreign' wine selection, I found myself a little at a loss.

Some of the other differences were unsurprising given our class discussions, but interesting nonetheless. Even at nicer restaurants, wines by the glass started at 3-4 pounds. I can't recall a time I saw a $4 glass of wine on a menu at any type of restaurant in the states, thanks to our three-tier system. The other interesting difference was the way the wines by the bottles were organized. Most were separated into Old World and New World, and then into country and region from there. The wine lists heavily featured French wine but fairly frequent appearances of English wine on the sparkling list (it really does appear to be an emerging region). New World wines were a much smaller percent of the selection based on what I saw, with Australia, South Africa and Chile often beating out the US in terms of features.

Store Selection

We only visited one wine shop while there - the wine selection at Harrod's - but it was really interesting to see what was offered in their fairly small selection of US wines. Some vineyards were no surprise - Stag's Leap, Far Niente and a few others. But there were also a number of lesser known brands like Cuvaison, a Napa vineyard with a tasting room in Carneros. It made me wonder what kind of distributor/importer relationships you have to have to be featured at one of the pre-eminent stores in London, especially given finding their wine outside of California is rare.

It was only a taste of what wine drinking is like across the pond, but it was interesting to see how differences in the wine business and culture played out in the little we saw.