The joy of ordinary wine

A follow-up post to last week’s piece on navigating wine lists looking at a great meal enjoyed with everyday wines.

It’s very rare to find restaurants in Britain with underpriced wine especially not one with a Michelin star but they do exist. There’s a place called the Sportsman in Seasalter near Whitstable in Kent which was formerly a rundown pub until it was taken over by Stephen Harris, an aspiring chef with no culinary qualifications and very little experience. Since then it has become one of the most celebrated restaurants in the country. 

One thing wine types often say about the Sportsman, however, is that the wine list isn’t very exciting. Despite the elevated cooking, it is still a pub so the beer and wine largely come from Shepherd Neame, a larger regional brewer based in nearby Faversham which owns it (and seemingly every pub in Kent). So most wine bores bring their own and pay a small corkage. At times from my Instagram feed, it seems like all the London wine scene is permanently at the Sportsman consuming the finest wines known to humanity with Harris’s cooking. At the end of the meal, people line up the bottles for the ‘look at my fancy wines shot’ - we’ve all done it at some point.

Since moving to Kent in 2019, I’ve got to know Harris a little, he even gave me a very generous quote for my book but we’d never been to the Sportsman for various reasons: financial, having small children and the difficulty of getting a table. But this September with my bank account looking a bit healthier, I booked a table for my wife’s birthday. I was intending to do the wine bore thing of unearthing the best wines from the cellar to bring along and then doing the ‘look at my wine’ Instagram shot. But seeing as my wife doesn’t drink very much, we’d probably not even finish one bottle so decided to chance the the famously dull wine list. 

When we arrived, Stephen Harris came out and said hello and as it was my wife’s birthday produced an ancient bottle of Nyetimber 2001 Classic Cuvee which we all tried and agreed it was fun but a bit over the hill. At the Sportsman the only option is the five course menu at £80 per person which offers plenty of choice at each stage with a heavy accent on seafood. It was even better than I had hoped: creative and unusual but not wacky, and plenty to eat too. It’s food that tastes vibrantly of the sea. The slip sole in seaweed butter (see above) is justly famous and probably the most delicious thing I have eaten in years. There’s no fuss, nobody stops to explain the concept. It’s a place where the food does the talking.

It quickly became clear that a maderised sparkling wine wasn’t the best fit with the food so we shared a glass of Picpoul de Pinet, the amusingly-named Baron de Badassière. With cooking this good, I didn’t miss having fine wine. In fact pontificating over a bottle of Burgundy would have been distraction. Is there anything better than a glass of co-op Picpoul with seriously good seafood? We also tried a glass of red Bordeaux, again nothing fancy and it was fruity with a nice bite to it, just the thing with roast saddle of lamb. I’m not the only one who enjoys simple wine with great food. Victoria Moore writes in her Wine Dine Dictionary: “the dance of flavours in a plate of precision-cooked food is better enjoyed for what it is than matched to competently spectacular wines.” She recommends drinking an “easy session wine”... like Picpoul. 

The wine list at the Sportsman is actually perfect for the food, and the prices are very reasonable (by British standards): a bottle of Picpoul for £27, Sancerre at £38, Saint Veran for £42 - this is at a Michelin-starred restaurant! My only real criticism is that I wish they did Gusbourne Blanc de Blancs by the glass. Pontificating over wine can be such a bore for the uninterested but it can also be a distraction from other things, like appreciating sublime cookery or enjoying my wife’s company on her birthday.