The Coral Room

Having researched the places in London which have the most English sparkling wines on their wine list I thought it might be appropriate to pay the winner - The Bloomsbury Hotel's Coral Room -  a visit. Thanks to their wine consultant, Anne McHale MW, The Coral Room stands head and shoulders above every other London bar or restaurant with an otherwise unheard of 30+ bottles of ESW on their wine list. In fact 33 at the current count. Here's the current list of English sparkling:

Also previously unheard of is to find a total of 6 ESWs available by the glass:

The by the glass selection is apparently rotated once every two or three months.

I intended to start with the Exton Park Pinot Meunier Rosé but owing to a slight mishap instead ended up with the Coates & Seely "Britagne" Brut Reserve NV. I got a lot of green apple and citrus character from this, as mentioned in the tasting notes in the wine list, but not much else.

Next the Exton Park Pinot Meunier Rosé. I was very keen to try this, both for having recently visited the village of Exton whilst walking the South Downs, and having read some opinion pieces which predict single varietal Pinot Meunier ESW could be the industry's "secret weapon". The sort of thing we're happy to try here because the industry is a bit more experimental, and less constrained by tradition and the industry bodies which govern winegrowing regions like Champagne. It's a grape which rarely gets the opportunity to shine by itself, typically third in the billing, and in relatively small quantities, in a classic cuvée, or second fiddle to the Pinot Noir in a blanc de noirs.

This was pale pink in colour. Restrained notes of plum (in a slightly savoury sense - like umeboshi perhaps?) on the nose, with a hint of cherries later. A lean and dry minerality, crisp and yet quite mouth watering. It struck me as being relatively low dosage - and after looking it up it is apparently 6.5 g/l residual sugar, so at the lower end of the brut range, borderline extra brut. I wish I could have isolated a bit better what it is that Meunier is delivering here that its cousin wouldn't - had I been told this was made from 100% Pinot Noir I would have happily believed it. That said, I really like the style of the winemaking here, and would very happily buy this again - I'm very happy to see this trend of lower dosage English sparkling.

For my third wine, I chose the Albourne Estate Blanc de Blancs 2013. This was the first of the three which was not freshly opened, and I had my suspicions that it might have been open a while, and consequently the condition may have suffered a bit - or some other kind of taint may have occurred here. The nose was overwhelmingly yeasty, and slightly soapy, something I've never really encountered in an ESW before. I'd like to try a freshly opened bottle of this at some point in the future to verify, but if that is the intended aroma there's either something wrong with my nose (a conclusion I'm quite happy to accept) or this is just not a style for me. Either way I just couldn't enjoy it, and left most of the glass. I know it has spent 3 years on the lees, so some autolytic character is to be expected, but I've tried plenty of other ESWs with that sort of duration of lees aging and never had quite this level of yeastiness.

I have to admit to a slight twinge of disappointment overall in my first visit to The Coral Room. I was quite comfortable with the fact that the by the glass offering was a bit hit and miss - you can't expect every wine to be to your liking - and there was at least one here (the Exton Park) which was a hit.

It was more that I had expected a bit more of a tangible buzz about the English wine scene here, and the reality is that nobody else seemed to be drinking it, and frankly the staff didn't seem particularly enthused about it either.

Having spent a lot of time recently wondering why English sparkling wine is so under-represented in London, and then having discovered that there was this bar with 30+ ESWs on the list, I had a brief moment of hope that here would be the enclave of like-minded ESW fans I had been searching for, and I would be surrounded by people eagerly chatting about the importance of malolactic fermentation in cool climates like ours, or how much Rathfinny had spent on their windbreaks, or debates over the use of grapes outside of the classic three for sparkling wines.

...but of course that was a bit naive. At the end of the day it's a hotel bar, with the usual mixed hotel bar offering of cocktails, wines, spirits and everything else.

There is clearly still work to do here. Even when presented with a wide selection of English sparkling wines on a very nicely designed wine list, the majority of people seem to just stick to what they know. I'm not completely sure what the issue here is - anybody leafing through the drinks menu here will surely encounter the English sparkling pages. The by-the-glass selection is on a pull-out card and in total there's a whole 10 pages devoted to ESW - no other section of the menu really has the same length or level of detail... and yet there were people while I was there ignoring all of that and just ordering Champagne - which IIRC just got half a page on the wine list. If you're in the mood for traditional method sparkling wine and prepared to spend in that price bracket, and find yourself in this bar with its unique offering of highly acclaimed wine from the country in which you're currently located why would you not give it a go? I found that baffling and frustrating.

Maybe the ESW is just not what people are here for - for me that was the sole reason to visit - but for other people maybe it's the decor, the atmosphere, the location. Nothing in the name says the bar specialises in ESW (or even wine for that matter) - and perhaps people just arrive here with the standard expectations they have of hotel bars.

I still think, as I said before, what London needs is a dedicated English wine bar. Commendable though the Coral Room is for its impressive wine list, it isn't a dedicated bar for English wine - it's still a bar with a broad and mixed offering, and the majority of people seem to stick to familiar territory. The staff aren't evangelising the product, and it doesn't seem to be a clear focus of the experience of most of the customers who visit here.