The best-kept secret in the U.K. wine world is a members’ club called The Wine Society. With a single joining payment, anyone aged 18 or over can access its immense stock of wines, many impossible to buy elsewhere and all extremely reasonably priced. The Wine Society turns 150 this year, and the reason it’s a secret is that it has never really catered to an international market.
However, in late 2023, the society began a remarkable collaboration with London restaurant Noble Rot. Founded in Bloomsbury in 2015 by wine importers Dan Keeling and Mark Andrew (the latter a Master of Wine, the industry’s highest official level of expertise), Noble Rot has expanded into Soho and now Mayfair, thanks to a winning combination of historical premises, fantastic food, and wine lists so good they have taken Wine List of the Year at the U.K.’s National Restaurant Awards five times.
In addition to perennially coveted delights such as Domaine de la Romanée-Conti or Château d’Yquem, their lists offer the chance to try unusual grape varieties grown in obscure regions: xinomavro from Dalamara in northern Greece, with its savoury hints of cherry; or a remarkable blend with electrifying notes of salt and citrus, based on listán blanco, made by Suertes del Marqués in Tenerife. The Mayfair outpost opened last year in a beautiful old building in Shepherd Market, which was a red-light district from the 18th century until recently. These days, visitors are more likely to bump into a banker than a lady of the night, but Keeling and Andrew are proud of the area’s history: “We regard it as our duty to make sure that this reputation for cheerful loucheness will continue under our custodianship,” they announced when they opened. This, however, is loucheness accessorized with a dollop of Avruga caviar or served alongside roast duck in Chambertin sauce. The excesses, these days, are legal.
The wines in Noble Rot’s cellar may change, but they are always exceptional and include a selection from The Wine Society. Photo by Tom Cochran, courtesy of Noble Rot.
As importers, the Rotters aren’t really in need of additional wines: parties that reserve the Mayfair private dining room, which seats 12, were never going to go thirsty. Still, the decision to collaborate with The Wine Society to offer a selection of very special bottles in this cozy little room decorated with curio corkscrews is inspired.
The Noble Rot restaurant menus are overseen by Stephen Harris of the Michelin-starred Sportsman in Kent and could be described as a hedonistic rethinking of English and French cooking, a culinary cruise ship piloted through the Channel. The cod and crab are Cornish, but the former is served with vin jaune (the wonderful savoury wine of the Jura in eastern France), the latter with salted gooseberry and chopped egg—a strange and delicious combination, even for someone who usually dislikes gooseberries. It is possible—indeed, advisable—to order a whole suckling pig with champagne choucroute. Vegetarians will be offered not an afterthought risotto but a salt-baked celeriac with pear, walnut goat’s curd, or that delightfully named English cheese, Lincolnshire Poacher, with potato and egg yolk vol au vent. The crème caramel is made with sauternes, the chocolate sorbet with sea salt and olive oil.
Founded in 1874, The Wine Society was created in the aftermath of an embarrassing error: someone “forgot” to present a consignment of Portuguese wines at the London International Exhibition. The winemakers, who had exerted considerable effort to get their products to the Royal Albert Hall only for them to moulder in the cellars, were understandably furious. In a conciliatory move, two gentlemen planned a series of lunches to showcase the wines. So successful was this project that it became a society “to introduce foreign wines hitherto unknown.” Today, many of the wines are very well known indeed, but the society sticks to its mission. Its relationships stretch back over a century: champagne house Alfred Gratien has worked with them since 1906. The great advantage of this longevity is that the allocations of great wines predate the current thirst. As for the prices, the society is a cooperative, so there is nobody to gouge, and half a million square feet of warehousing allows them to store, and age, a great deal of wine. I received my membership from my father as an 18th-birthday present. It will last my lifetime, and longer, if I bequeath it, and it may be the most useful present I have ever been given.
This partnership between the venerable institution and the sparky newcomer has opened up the society’s treasures to visitors to London. Private diners in Mayfair can pair their duck with Domaine de Bellene Vosne-Romanée Les Quartiers de Nuits 2015 or their suckling pig with Paul Jaboulet Aîné Hermitage La Chapelle 1990. There is Château Mouton Rothschild from the legendary 1982 vintage and the society’s own Exhibition port from 1980, as well as the rare Cuvée Cathelin 1995 from JL Chave, made only occasionally and in tiny quantities.
A former red-light district is now a haven for red wine lovers. And it only took 150 years.
Photo by Tom Cochran, courtesy of Noble Rot.
Read more from our Summer 2024 issue.
