New on Wine List Confidential: Le Coq

Le Coq: Wine List Confidential Score – 85.4

What does one drink with roast chicken? Offer me a toasty white Burgundy and a buttery breast and I’ll consider you an esteemed friend. A nice Nuits and a meaty thigh or, better yet, the parson’s nose (or more Gallically, ‘sot-l’y-laisse’) and I will very likely compose sonnets in your honour.

Having said that, one of my most enjoyable roast chicken pairings came at this very restaurant: Lopez de Heredia Gravonia 2005 which, despite the vanishingly small size of the list (just 17 wines all told, though all are available by the glass and carafe), manages to be hit the organoleptic nail very squarely on the head.

Yes, the short selection at le Coq may look like it’s not worth exploring, but care has obviously been taken with the choices: biodynamic Grenache Blanc from Barathym in the Languedoc (£7 per glass, £20 per half-litre carafe or £28 per bottle) is a fresher, more herbal white alternative to the old Rioja; well-priced mature Rioja from Bodegas Urbina (1999 vintage) is also good to see on such an apparently cursory list.

You’ll also find mead on this menu. From Peckham. Which is nice.