ON-TRADE PROFILE: Bar Battu

Bar Battu took a gamble by opening a natural wine restaurant in the notoriously conservative City of London. Gabriel Savage reports.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Terroirs must be blushing at the compliment.

Walking into Bar Battu, you could justifiably assume this was the promised second branch of that Francophile natural wine ambassador, which has been packed full, often by the UK wine trade, since it opened back in 2008. Wrong: that’s Brawn, which the Terroirs team opened a month ago in London’s Bethnal Green.

Despite its cosily arranged wooden tables, A4 paper menu placemats offering charcuterie and rustic Gallic dishes, French posters on the walls and Les Caves de Pyrène wine list, Bar Battu is no more Terroirs than Terroirs is any of the Parisian wine bars which in turn inspired its creation.

Owner Simon Binder accepts the similarities – it would be perverse if he didn’t – but is equally quick to flag up the independence of his own venture. “The big difference here is that we’re very close to Les Caves de Pyrène, but not directly involved in their restaurants so there’s that freedom for me as a restaurateur,” he explains, maintaining: “If I went into Terroirs and copied it brick for brick, it would still be different and have my stamp on it.”

That stamp may not be obvious to the naked eye, but location certainly forces a key distinction. Nestled in the shadow of London’s City powerhouses, Bar Battu is serving a rather different clientele than either Terroirs in the West End or Brawn in the East End.

As a result, Bar Battu offers a slightly smarter restaurant option upstairs for those in search of a quieter, more classic bistro for business lunches. While the suits and braces tucking into cloudy Prosecco in the main dining area support Binder’s claim that most of his customers have been receptive to an offer which is, after all, rather a hippy concept for hard-nosed, conservative City folk, he does admit that not everyone who comes through the door is entirely on the same page.

Looking back to the October opening, he recalls: “Some of them didn’t quite get the menu, being told you can pick whatever you like.” Moreover, especially with the lunchtime business which drives the City’s restaurant sector, Binder notes: “People coming in have more of a time constraint so there has to be a difference.”

However, while Bar Battu has adapted the natural wine bar format to fit its environment, there are signs that it is also breaking the mould. “Our evening business is stronger because people are travelling to find us,” remarks Binder. “To be busier at dinner than lunch in the City really tells you something.”

In fact, despite its name, Binder notes that Bar Battu is “moving more and more towards being a proper restaurant rather than a wine bar that does a bit of food”. This shift is surely due in part to the fact that the majority of wines on his list cry out for some slices of ventreche “noir de bigorre” or rabbit rillettes. Indeed, the copper-coloured “white” Malvasia from La Stoppa in Emilia-Romagna positively demands food.

Despite the popularity Bar Battu has enjoyed in its first few months, Binder’s own experience tells him that existing restaurants should be aware that converting their customers to these wines may be no easy task.

Bar Battu is actually Binder’s second City restaurant, having taken over Luc’s Brasserie in Leadenhall Market five years ago. Despite the similarities in location and cuisine, however, Binder has struggled to make natural wine take off at Luc’s.

"Customers are just not interested,” he remarks, although he observes that “the same customer might come and drink those wines here.” It seems when you take over a 20-year-old institution, there’s only so far you can push the makeover.

Shake and serve

Binder’s relationship with Les Caves de Pyrène actually dates back 15 years to when he set up the Café Med chain. In fact, it was during a dinner hosted by this supplier that Binder experienced his own natural wine epiphany.

Sitting next to a producer, Binder recalls: “He actually shook his wine before pouring it – that was so different to what I’d been told about how to treat wine.” Indeed, that moment and his subsequent exploration of the subject proved pivotal on both a personal and professional level. “Natural wine got me excited and focused again,” explains Binder.

“I’m at a point in my career where I don’t need to sell out, but I still need to be commercial. This place should stand up on its own merits – you don’t need to come in here and know anything about wine. The thing that makes a restaurant work is value and I hope you get that in here. We’re not trying to be smarter than you, we’ve got to be part of that joke. It’s not textbook stuff, it’s much more exciting than that.”

From a trade perspective, anyone looking for evidence that natural wine is gaining support beyond the small circle of Caves de Pyréne strongholds, Binder reveals: “On a couple of nights we’ve had sommeliers from other restaurants coming in to work the tables because they love the wines.”

Nevertheless, London still has some way to go before it catches up with the scene across the Channel. Binder notes: “If you’re recruiting in Paris there’s such a big circle of people who understand natural wine. In London people worry whether they should follow the classic sommelier route or do something a bit different.”

If there is one particular corner of the wine industry which continues to drag its feet about natural wine, it’s the sector which arguably has the most important role in raising awareness.

Douglas Wregg, sales & marketing director at Les Caves de Pyrène, finds: “The biggest resistance comes from wine educators and journalists. Natural wine is something outside their control, they can’t explain it.”

This is certainly a movement which relies on a solid trade support base if it is going to take off. Inspiring customers to embrace natural wine without scaring them off requires a floor team fully equipped to guide the uninitiated through a list which contains few of the familiar safety nets. To this end, Les Caves runs an impressive twice-weekly staff training session at Bar Battu.

“It needs a bit of confidence from us – that’s the battle,” notes Binder, drawing a parallel with the world of bookshops. “They have their top 10 picks, their books for the beach, the books their staff can’t put down. That’s what we need to do. The symbols on the list help you start to break it down.

The other important message is that everything is available by the glass. If you don’t like it, we’ll take it back. People shouldn’t be frightened.”

Despite being vocal evangelists for natural wine, both Binder and Wregg are wary of the movement gaining too high a profile. “We must always be perceived as the underdog, otherwise it’ll become a trend,” argues Wregg. “We need to keep that slightly anarchic streak.”

With an eye on the evolution within the organic camp in the past decade, Binder outlines his concern about natural wine becoming similarly mainstream. “The word natural is so much better than organic; I’m afraid it’s going to get hijacked,” he comments.

Monitoring the advance of this threat, Binder observes: “There are lots of very receptive people in London, but the next bit is scary. There’s a little movement now, all the big boys will see what’s going on, someone will roll out 10 of these and that’s the problem.

"It’s like the supermarkets all doing organic now – but do we really want to be flying in blueberries from Botswana? The protection is people like me working with Les Caves and saying ‘Don’t sell to Tesco because we’ll buy it’, because we in turn have customers who will buy it from us.”

Natural vs organic

One important distinction between natural and organic wines, which may potentially prevent, or at least hinder, this scenario, is highlighted by Wregg, who notes: “There’s no certification for natural wine. What we’ve arbitrarily said is a limit of 10mg of sulphur for red and 20mg for white wines.”

Beyond this, he simply states: “Our only stipulation is that wines should be as low in alcohol as they naturally can be and don’t have too much oak.” From an alternative perspective, however, there is every chance that this very wooliness makes the term “natural wine” an even easier bandwagon to board than the organic train.

For now though, it’s still early days for both Bar Battu and rest of the UK’s fledgling natural wine bar scene. There is, however, every possibility that this movement could catch up with, or even overtake, its French template.

Considering the London restaurant scene more generally, Wregg recalls the original comparisons drawn by critics between Galvin restaurant and Racine in Paris. Binder seizes on this point to end on an inflammatory, yet not indefensible remark: “In some ways we do France better than the French.”

Gabriel Savage, January 2011