The Savoy's Beaufort Bar Becomes a Wine Bar

The Savoy is taking the cocktails out of the Beaufort Bar and reopening the room in October as the Beaufort Wine Bar, with more than 250 wines from 18 countries and roughly half of them poured by the glass. The news went round the trade press in the first week of September (Harpers had it on the 7th), and my first reaction was a slightly petty "good luck getting a seat."

My second reaction took longer to arrive. Half a cellar that runs from First Growth Bordeaux to Grand Cru Burgundy, sold a glass at a time, is about the most useful thing a hotel that expensive could do for someone like me.

What they're opening

The Beaufort Bar opened in 2010, when the Savoy came back from its three-year refurbishment, and it was built around the hotel's old cabaret stage (the one Gershwin played). It then spent years as a cocktail bar good enough to make the World's 50 Best Bars list. So this is a hotel taking one of its best-known rooms and changing what it's for, which doesn't happen very often.

Here's what has been announced for the wine side:

• 250-plus wines from 18 countries, with vintages from 1975 to 2025
• about half the list by the glass, poured through Coravin (more on that below)
• mature Champagne and the big Bordeaux and Burgundy names, next to smaller regional wines
• a spirits list cut back to things made from grapes, so Cognac, grappa and pisco, plus wine-based cocktails built on them

Food is sharing plates. Jamón Ibérico carved at the table off a flywheel slicer on a trolley, British cheeses, Hampshire trout with Dorset wasabi, a black truffle cheese fondue and a caviar list. The live music carries on from the cocktail days.

The head sommelier is Romain Audrerie, who was on the opening team at Chiltern Firehouse and later ran wine across André Balazs's hotels as global wine director. Nobody has published a single price yet.

Why the Coravin part matters

A Coravin pushes a thin needle through the cork, pours the wine out under argon gas, and lets the cork close back up when the needle comes out. The rest of the bottle never meets the air, so it keeps for weeks instead of going flat in a day or two.

That gadget is the whole reason a list like this can exist. Without it, no bar opens an old First Growth for one glass, because if nobody orders the other five by closing time they've poured a few hundred quid down the sink. With it, they can sell you a glass and put the bottle back on the shelf.

For someone at my level (WSET Level 1, plenty of enthusiasm, a budget that is firmly not First Growth) that changes the maths. Buying a whole bottle of Grand Cru Burgundy just to find out what the fuss is about isn't something I can justify. One glass, once, for a reason, I could. And honestly, I'd rather pay for the glass and find out I can't tell what makes it special than buy the bottle and have to pretend I could.

Using a list this long without panicking

Big by-the-glass lists can be oddly stressful. A hundred-odd wines to choose from, a sommelier waiting politely, and prices that climb faster than you can read them. A few things help, here or anywhere else:

• Ask for the 125ml. In England and Wales, anywhere licensed that sells still wine by the glass has to offer a 125ml measure and show it on the menu, and if you just ask for "a glass of red" they're meant to tell you the small one exists. At expensive places that's the difference between trying three wines and trying one.
• Tell the sommelier what you normally drink and what you want to spend. Saying a number out loud feels awkward for about four seconds, and after that you get a better recommendation because they aren't guessing.
• Pick one wine you'd never otherwise get near and build around it. A mature Champagne next to a young one will teach you more than two glasses picked at random.

You don't need the Savoy for this

This is where I'm a bit torn. I like that a famous London hotel thinks wine by the glass deserves a whole bar. But most people reading this won't be on the Strand in October, and plenty of them live nowhere near London. I'm in Essex, and even from there the Savoy is a train, a Tube and a fair amount of money away.

The same idea, tasting several good wines side by side without buying the bottles, is what an independent wine shop's tasting night does. A flight at a wine bar. A producer evening at a bottle shop. A masterclass on one region with six glasses lined up in front of you. They cost a fraction of a hotel bar, and you tend to get more explanation, because the person pouring chose the wines and wants to talk about them.

That's what Sommly lists, all over the UK. If the Beaufort news has you wondering what old Bordeaux or grower Champagne actually tastes like, have a look at what's on near you before you book a table on the Strand.

Would I go? Probably, once. To see the stage, and to find out whether a glass from the 1970s end of that list is worth whatever they end up charging for it. I suspect it isn't. I'd quite like to be wrong.