A wine list with nothing on it you have heard of

There is no Sancerre on the list. No Malbec, no Picpoul, no Prosecco, and nothing at all from a producer who makes more than about forty thousand bottles a year. This is not a pose. It is what happens when you buy wine the same way this kitchen buys vegetables.

The growers I buy from farm small plots, often organically and usually without much money, and they make between two and six wines a year depending on what the weather allowed. If it hailed in May, there is no rosé. I cannot ring them in November and order more of the thing that sold well, which means the list here changes about as often as the menu does.

What this means when you sit down

You will not recognise anything. That is genuinely uncomfortable for about ninety seconds and then it stops mattering, because the thing you would have ordered out of habit is usually not the thing that would have gone best with what you are eating anyway.

So tell me two things: roughly what you want to spend, and one wine you have enjoyed in the past. I will find you something. If it is wrong, say it is wrong and I will take it away and open something else, and there will be no argument and nothing on the bill.

The twenty-eight pound bottle

There are forty-one wines on the list and eleven of them are under thirty-five pounds. I would rather sell you the twenty-eight pound Gamay that makes the table stop talking than the ninety pound Burgundy that makes you feel you have done the right thing. The first one is a better night out and it is also, quietly, the better wine.