Put down the wine list and ask for a surprise

In good restaurants in normal times, there are two kinds of wine on the list: the ones that sell themselves, and the ones that need a hand. The latter are always the more interesting and they give a sommelier an opportunity to shine. This can happen only when a customer has the sense to ask, of course, and I am forever encouraging people to do just this. There is something wonderful about pushing away the wine list and saying to someone like Talha Pasha in Michael’s of Mount Merrion or Olivier Meisonave in Dax ‘just surprise me, please.’

I have no idea why so few people seem comfortable doing this. Perhaps it’s because a lot of men — and it’s almost always men — have grown to believe that ‘knowing how to handle a wine list’ is something they must have on their unofficial CV, like knowing what a carburettor is or being able to talk about football.

I asked some people, in both the offand on-trade sides of the wine business, about this and they told me that sherry and Rieslings are still, to use the jargon, largely hand-sells but that people are generally delighted with their experiences when the introductions have been made.

Pinot Noir, it appears, often needs a bit of a push. Surely this can’t be all down to the cringeworthy cobblers talked about it in Sideways, the film that also features the immortal, exasperated line, ‘I will not order a f ****** Merlot!’

Gerard Maguire of the brilliant 64 Wine in Glasthule mentioned Savagnin, never to be confused with Sauvignon. It’s a Jura grape and, amongst other curiosities makes Vin Jaune, which I thought of for years as being very like fino sherry but not nearly as attractive. Just over a year ago, in Andrew Edmunds’ lovely little restaurant in Soho, they were offering it by the glass before lunch and I drained mine with consummate pleasure. So yes, a taste worth acquiring.

Mencia — the grape behind Spain’s Bierzo — is still a hand-sell but once converted, people keep coming back for more thanks to its combination of zippy acidity and soft fruit. I suspect what I think of as the white equivalent, Godello, is an even tougher challenge in selling. One correspondent pointed out that tastes in wine are evolving all the time and more quickly than ever. Look at Albariño, he said, it was hard to shift at first and now it’s on every wine list in the country.