Our favourite London wine havens
Craft beer's great and all, but there isn't much we love more than a beautifully matched wine with our dinner – if you do too, check out our recommendations for the best places for a great wine list, fantastic pairing options and more
Nailing one continent is one thing, but the menus at Martin Williams’ M Restaurants represent cuisine and wine from six, with Japan, South Africa, the US, Australia, Argentina and the UK all flying the flag. As well as excellent steaks and sides, the wine list is a thing of beauty, and there are Enomatic machines for by-the-glass access to bottles you might not get to try otherwise. Great steak, great wine – consider us sold. And it gets better still with the news that M is opening a second restaurant in the Nova Victoria development in SW1. Stay tuned...
Clapton restaurant Verden proves there's absolutely nothing wrong with playing to your strengths: it serves beautiful and authentic cheese, charcuterie and wine, sourced with a huge emphasis on provenance, and it does them very well indeed. France and the rest of the Old World is extensively represented, but so too are Slovenia, Austria, California and beyond. Don't miss it.
Toast, in leafy East Dulwich, is upmarket neighbourhood-style eating and drinking at its best – choose from more than 200 wines by the bottle or via specially bought tanks from artisanal producers, and match them to seasonal, European-style small plates.
Along with sister restaurant Heddon Street Kitchen, the Ramsay restaurant brings some serious wine education to the London public in the form its wine dinners. Each one will focus on furthering your vinological expertise through pairing specific grapes with dishes that complement them. Now that’s our kind of further education...
If you're looking for somewhere to spend an afternoon getting slowly sloshed on posh wine, Le Garrick is your place. The almost exclusively French wine list (brilliantly, there's only one bottle in the 'foreign wine' section – an Argentinian malbec) in this subterranean bistro includes a winning combo of hidden gems and big players. Santé!
Mayfair comes up trumps again, this time in the form of Maddox, which has just introduced a brand new wine-pairing menu. In something of a role reversal, it offers four cracking wines, and you choose your canapé, starter, main and dessert to match.
