Reigns of terroir: the rise of the regional wine list

Having a wine poured and explained by a passionate, knowledgeable professional is not the same as pouring yourself a glass at home. Most hospitality businesses make up their margins through selling booze, as I frequently remind anyone I hear moaning about how they saw “the same bottle in a shop for much less”. Well, yes, obviously. Retail and restaurants don’t have the same overheads. If you drink alcohol, one of the best ways to contribute to the survival of a place you love is to order booze with your meal.

A wine list is written considering very many things: what food is being served? How big is the venue, and when will it be open? Does it attract the obsessive oenophile, the casual drinker, or both? The sommelier (or owner or wine director) will then create a programme, often one that spans regions, wine styles and flavour profiles. They might aim to balance the familiar with the novel, the big brands with the independents, personal taste with public preference – all while maintaining a healthy profit margin.

And, as trends emerge in restaurants, so drinks menus follow. Right now there is a penchant for hyper-regional, specialised offerings. There’s often an aim to recreate a “sense of place”, where the food, cocktails and wine capture the vibe of a trattoria, a taverna or a New York bar – plonked down in London, Glasgow or Birmingham. More restaurants and bars are leaning into specificity by creating a wine list that could exist only at their venue, alongside their cuisine, championed by their team. We’re all getting nerdier, and I’m so here for it.

To have a wine list that seeks not to cover every single regional base but instead to more closely represent a vision is an exciting shift, and doesn’t necessarily mean forgoing anything. The recently opened Maza in Mayfair has a list almost entirely of Greek wines (save a couple of bins of champagne), but spans such a breadth of styles. For lovers of deep, brooding red wine, I have one word: agiorgitiko. And there are so many different expressions of assyrtiko by the glass that there’s something to scratch any kind of white-wine itch.

If there isn’t much of your nation’s wine in the market you operate in, you can always import it. That’s the level of dedication at Akub, Fadi Kattan’s Palestinian restaurant in Notting Hill. Its wines, organised by sommelier Anna Patrowicz, are almost exclusively Palestinian (except, again, for a few champagnes). The wines have been imported directly to the restaurant, pulled from family cellars and even custom-made for the restaurant.

The menu is split into Terroirs of Palestine and Terroirs of Jordan, and hits include a succulent, dark rosé from Taybeh, a bright sauvignon from Jascala and a rich, brooding shiraz from Ashkar Winery. Despite the list’s focus on region, drinkers aren’t missing out on many flavour profiles, and the identity of the restaurant feels all the stronger for it. It’s an expression of a place and a celebration of what is born from it.