New on Wine List Confidential: Ormer

Ormer – Wine List Confidential Score: 88.6

Andreas Rosendal is your head sommelier here. He has previously worked as head somm at Michelin-starred Brasserie Chavot and as assistant head somm at the two-star Restaurant Sat Bains in Nottingham. He also looked after the largest list in the UK for a time – at Wine List Confidential favourite The Greenhouse.

He’s working with considerably fewer than 3,600 bins at Ormer Mayfair – just 150 for the moment, but with the capacity to grow to around 300.

For Mayfair, this makes the list very approachable, as do the prices, which determine the order of the wines – so wines in the £20s, then the £30s (according to Rosendal, these sections are selling very well), then £40 and upwards, then the ‘Library’ wines. If you do have money to burn, the Library section offers Guigal’s 1990 La Landonne for £1,240.

Pride of place is given to English sparkling, with an extensive range of Nyetimber and Ridgeview (as well as Devaux Champagne) available by the bottle – Nyetimber’s 2009 Classic Cuvée is ageing very well, while you can also sample wine from the Sussex estate’s very first vintage – the 1992 blanc de blancs. Gusbourne and Denbies also get a look in – the latter’s soft, juicy Pinot Noir Dunkelfelder blend makes for a very pleasant pairing with Rankin’s turbot dish.

The 25 or so by-the-glass offerings carry helpful descriptions for food pairing – three words that pick out very well the key flavour profiles – eg: pear drops, dashi, slate (that’s Greywacke Pinot Gris); rosemary, crunchy mulberry, black pepper (that’ll be Tardieu-Laurent Crozes-Hermitage).

Ultimately this is a selection of does-what-it-says-on-the-tin wines – if you want a northern Rhône red, you’ll get a typical northern Rhône red; if you want an Amarone, you’ll get a classically cherry, chocolate and tobacco-scented Amarone. Safe and solid, like the restaurant itself.

To view the full Ormer Wine List Confidential entry, including individual category scores and wine recommendations, click here.

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