Into the wild; listing unknown wines.

A few years back, I opened a small Balkan restaurant in Peckham with chef John Gionleka. The wine list ended up being mildly influential, as I hadn’t realised that no one had been bold enough to list only Eastern Mediterranean and exclusively indigenous varieties. Looking back it was a list that put my name on the (very small) map.

 Peckham Bazaar burned bright early on, we were serving food with a vibrancy of spicing not seen elsewhere at the time. People really seemed to get it. 

It was immediately obvious to me that we should have a wine list covering Greece and the other Eastern Mediterranean countries whose food we were representing. I made a few phone calls, John spoke to one of his suppliers and I cobbled together the beginnings of a short list. 

Annoyingly, the most popular wine was a Sauvignon Blanc, Ugni Blanc, Muscat - I reasoned this was probably because it was familiar. This annoyed me a bit, because I thought it was the least interesting wine on the list, especially compared with the Santorini Assyrtiko and Pela Roditis. 

I rationalised that the wines we were serving weren’t actively scary; it wasn’t like we were going fully natural (in 2015 Nunhead wasn’t ready for a fully natural list), so I took a punt on taking off the familiar wines. 

We were lucky in that we were a small enough restaurant that everyone coming through the door could speak with me, so there was always someone to ask what they liked to drink at home and point them towards the appropriate part of the list; you want something like an Argentine Malbec? Have a look at this Agiorgitiko. You want something crisp and fruity? This Roditis will be perfect. 

I realised that I could happily have a wine list with nothing familiar on it, so long as I took time to listen closely when guests described the styles they were looking for. Then, once they were happy you had listened to them and weren’t going to serve anything unpleasant, they’d be very willing to try other, perhaps less usual, styles of wine. 

It was an eye opening realisation for me: how to take somewhat conservative guests well out of their comfort zones without it being an upsetting experience. A realisation that I think I’ve carried with me in the lists I’ve written since.

It’s been a particular joy seeing the way the reputation of the wines I loved has grown in the intervening years. Santorini Assyrtiko has gone from being something I could afford to list by the glass in a small neighbourhood joint to being acknowledged as one of the Mediterranean’s great wines (frustratingly its price has followed its renown). I’m also no longer one of the few people shouting about how glorious Nemean Xinomavro can be.

Sadly, we saw the passing of Haridimos Hatsidakis, who’s Assyrtikos I’d properly fallen in love with. Thankfully his daughters are carrying his legacy forward.
Anyway, below is the list I finished with (the footnotes didn’t last), looking at it now I’m still pretty darn happy with it.