In this guide
London has more wine bars than anybody can keep track of, and the usual shortcut is no help here: the country’s judged wine award almost never goes to one.
Star Wine List of the Year UK is a real award — a named jury, a dated ceremony, and it honours venues rather than bottles. But it awards wine lists, and the best wine lists live in restaurants. Of its 2026 UK Gold Stars, eight went to restaurants and hotel dining rooms, one went to a villa in Ventnor on the Isle of Wight, and exactly one went to a wine bar.
So this guide is built the other way round: on which rooms the critics independently keep naming.
💡 The Short Version: Peckham Cellars, Bar Crispin and Diogenes the Dog are named by eight sources each. 40 Maltby Street has the hardest table. Dan’s takes no bookings at all. Farm Shop shuts at 8pm. And at the shop-and-bar hybrids you can drink a bottle at shop price plus corkage — £12 at The 10 Cases — which is almost always cheaper than the list.
📊 The evidence behind this guide. Nothing here rests on one visit. This pass reads 15 independent sources carrying 304 citations across 158 named venues. 57 are named by two or more sources; one carries a dated award. Built on: one judged award, ten mastheads, two independent blogs and two YouTube channels — counted per creator, so a channel’s five videos are one voice. Evidence built 7 September 2026 · How we rank →
Where they are
| If you are near… | Where to drink |
|---|---|
| Soho & Covent Garden | Bar Crispin, The 10 Cases, Lady of the Grapes |
| Bloomsbury & Mayfair | Noble Rot, Farm Shop |
| Farringdon & the City | Winemakers Club, Quality Wines |
| Dalston & Hackney | Dan’s, Binch, Newcomer Wines |
| Islington | Stable Wines, Godet |
| Bermondsey & Borough | 40 Maltby Street, Camille |
| Peckham | Peckham Cellars, Bar Levan |
| Elephant & Castle | Diogenes the Dog |
| King’s Cross & Kentish Town | Half Cut Market |
| Belgravia & Waterloo | Weezie’s, Lower |
Price guide: £ a glass under £8 · ££ £8–£14 · £££ £15+.
The three the sources agree on
Peckham Cellars — the neighbourhood one that outgrew the neighbourhood
££ · Queens Road, Peckham · Cited by 8 sources
Queens Road through the window. The room is small enough that the bar and the tables are one space rather than two.
Wine is handled by Ben McVeigh, formerly head sommelier at 28-50 Fetter Lane, and the list he has built leans on variety and affordability rather than trophies — with enough obscurity in it to interest someone who already knows what they like.
A shop as well as a bar, so the retail-plus-corkage route applies. It went from newcomer to Queens Road fixture quickly, and is part of why Peckham is now taken seriously for food rather than only for drinking.
Bar Crispin — 150 bottles, and not a cocktail bar
££ · Soho · Cited by 8 sources
Number 19, Kingly Street. The by-the-glass list goes up on the board outside, before you commit to a table.
The younger sibling of Crispin in Spitalfields, and the one where wine is the point rather than the accompaniment. The in-house sommelier’s list runs to about 150 bottles weighted towards old-world and indigenous grape varieties, independent producers and natural wines. Food is broadly European and seasonal.
The food is snack-led rather than a menu you work through — Comté gougères with pickled walnut ketchup, monkfish crudo, crab rarebit, lamb skewers. The list itself is curated by Daniel Ilsley and leans mostly European.
It takes bookings, for up to six, with a separate process for groups of seven and over — and it is open seven days, noon to 9.30pm Monday to Saturday and 1pm to 9pm on Sunday, which makes it the most reliably available room near the top of this list. 19 Kingly Street, on the Carnaby side of Soho.
Worth saying plainly, because it is filed wrongly elsewhere: this is a wine bar. Our own cocktail guide says of it that wine is the point and cocktails the sideline.
Diogenes the Dog — the one with no Champagne
££ · 96 Rodney Road, SE17 1BG · Walworth · Cited by 8 sources
The racks are the list. What is not on them is Champagne - Canada, Texas, Poland, Czechia and Taiwan instead.
If you want Champagne, go somewhere else — that is close to the house position. What it stocks instead is wine from Canada, Texas, Poland, the Czech Republic and Taiwan, which makes it the most genuinely exploratory list in this guide and the one most likely to put something in front of you that you cannot place.
Named after the founder of cynicism, which suits a bar built on doubting the received list. There is a bottle shop online as well.
Open Tuesday to Sunday — Tue–Wed 5–11pm, Thu–Fri noon–11pm, Sat 11am–11pm, Sun 11am–10pm.
The rest of the top of the list
40 Maltby Street — the hardest table
££ · Bermondsey · Cited by 7 sources
The wine is run by Gergovie Wines and leans low-intervention. It has been the reference point for that style in London for long enough that the tables are among the most in-demand in the city.
It does not take reservations at all, which is what makes the table hard rather than any booking system — you turn up and wait. Dinner runs Wednesday to Saturday and lunch Thursday to Saturday only, so four days of the week it is shut entirely. The wine shop keeps the same Wednesday-to-Saturday hours for off-sales.
The other practical warning is the street rather than the room. Maltby Street is one of London’s busiest food addresses and is genuinely hard to move through during market hours — go outside them unless the market is the plan.
The Winemakers Club — the table is yours all evening
££ · Farringdon, beneath Holborn Viaduct · Cited by 7 sources
Wine bar, shop and importer at once, in brick arches under the viaduct with stained glass and small tables. The list favours producers you will not have heard of alongside enough classics to anchor it.
Book and the table is yours for the whole evening, with no second sitting — which in central London is close to unheard of and is the single reason to choose it over the others.
Noble Rot — walk-in bars attached to restaurants
££–£££ · Bloomsbury, Soho and Mayfair · Cited by 6 sources
Wine bar etched on one window, restaurant on the other - and at Bloomsbury and Mayfair the bar half is walk-in only.
Three branches, and they are best understood as wine-led restaurants rather than wine bars — which matters, because it changes how you get in. Bloomsbury and Mayfair both keep dedicated bar spaces that are walk-in only, so you can drink there without a reservation while the dining room runs on bookings.
The house line is that there is no room for wine-wankery, and the list is deep without being forbidding.
Half Cut Market — the shop that turned into a Friday night
££ · 396 York Way, N7 9LW · Between Kentish Town and Caledonian Road · Cited by 6 sources
Martinis and meaty skewers over a nineties playlist, in a stretch of north London that had nothing like it. It is four things at once — restaurant, wine bar, bottle shop and deli — which is why the retail-plus-corkage route works here, and The Times has named it among the 45 best wine bars in the country.
It takes bookings, and there is a set menu on Tuesdays and Wednesdays: two courses £24, three for £28, which is the cheapest way into anything near the top of this list. 396 York Way, N7 9LW.
Filed as a cocktail bar in places, which it is not — our cocktail guide says of it that it is a restaurant, wine bar and bottle shop rather than a cocktail bar.
The 10 Cases — 300 wines, and the corkage number
££ · Covent Garden · Cited by 5 sources
Over 300 wines, split across two halves: a cave à vin selling bottles, and a bistrot doing hearty French cooking. The cave side is also a bar.
This is the clearest published corkage in London: £12 on top of the retail price to drink a bottle where you bought it. On anything above the cheap end that beats the by-the-glass route comfortably, and almost nobody prints the figure.
Dan’s — no bookings, and a chalkboard that explains itself
£–££ · 2–4 Tottenham Road, Dalston, N1 4BZ · Cited by 5 sources
No reservations, and it spills out onto Tottenham Road when the weather allows. The chalkboard describes wines in plain and slightly rude English rather than tasting notes — a summery white, an easy red — which removes the part of wine bars that puts people off.
Mon–Wed 3–9.30pm, Thu–Fri 2–10.30pm, Sat 1–10.30pm, Sun 2–8.30pm.
Bar Levan — natural wine, thirty seconds from the station
££ · Peckham · Cited by 5 sources
Natural wine and small plates in a room that fills with locals, and about thirty seconds’ walk from Peckham Rye station, which makes it the easiest of the southern group to reach from central London.
Gordon’s Wine Bar — a candlelit cellar, and no reservations
££ · 47 Villiers Street, WC2N 6NE · Between Charing Cross and Embankment · Cited by 6 sources
The cellar, lit by candles stuck in bottles. It takes no reservations, so the queue on Villiers Street is the system.
London’s oldest wine bar, trading for over 135 years, and the only entry here that is a genuine historical object as well as a place to drink. The cellar is vaulted and candlelit, the walls are covered in old photographs and newspaper clippings, and old oak barrels of sherry and port sit behind the bar — the fortified list is the thing to order, and almost nowhere else in London serves it this way.
⚠️ It takes no reservations at all. Its own advice is to turn up early and speak to staff on arrival; the cellar fills from about six and the queue on Villiers Street is real. The outdoor seating runs under heated awnings all year, which is the overflow and often the faster way in.
Lady of the Grapes — every wine on the list made by a woman
££ · Covent Garden and London Bridge · Cited by 5 sources
Every bottle on these shelves is made by a woman. That is the whole list, not a section of it.
Every wine on the list is made by a female winemaker. That is the whole proposition rather than a section of it, and no other wine bar in this guide does anything comparable — the selection is organic, biodynamic and minimal-intervention, chosen to show what women are making in an industry that has not historically been theirs.
The cooking is modern French. Two sites — the Covent Garden room is a wine bar and restaurant together, and London Bridge, near Borough Market, is the restaurant, with a second bar called Forbidden Fruit alongside it. Both take bookings, which puts it in a small minority on this page.
Natural or classical, because the market has already split
The clearest evidence for how to divide this subject is what the publications themselves do: eight of the sources in this pass run a separate natural wine guide alongside their general one. No other distinction has produced that — nobody publishes a guide to London’s classical wine bars, and a search for sherry specialists returns nothing at all.
Natural and low-intervention clusters east and south. Dalston alone has Dan’s, Binch — a twelve-seater on Greenwood Road — and Newcomer Wines on Dalston Lane, which took the 2026 Best Austrian Wine List and is the only wine bar in the country’s Gold Stars. Peckham has Bar Levan and Peckham Cellars; Bermondsey has 40 Maltby Street.
Classical is where the central rooms sit. Farm Shop on South Audley Street is beneath a Mayfair deli, heavy on Burgundy and Bordeaux, with a courtyard — and it closes at 8pm, which makes it a long-lunch proposition rather than an evening one. The 10 Cases and Noble Rot belong here too.
The hybrids are the London format worth knowing: a bottle shop with a bar in it, or the reverse. Stable Wines on Essex Road is a cave beneath a bottle shop with no written list at all — the staff talk you through it and pour tastes. Winemakers Club sells and imports as well as pours.
What to know
Ask the shop price before you order from the list. At every hybrid here the same bottle exists twice at two prices, and the retail-plus-corkage route is usually cheaper. The 10 Cases publishes £12; most of the others will quote you a figure if you ask, and none of them advertises it.
Booking policy varies more than it does in restaurants. Dan’s takes none. Noble Rot keeps walk-in-only bar space beside a bookable dining room. Winemakers Club gives you the table all night. 40 Maltby Street is genuinely hard. There is no safe default, so check the one you are going to.
Closing times are early more often than you would expect. Farm Shop stops at 8pm. Several of the smaller rooms shut at the start of the week — Bonne Route in Harringay opens Wednesday to Saturday, Lower in Waterloo Tuesday to Saturday.
A wine list award is not a wine bar award. Star Wine List’s UK Gold Stars are worth reading if you want a great list with dinner, and they will send you to Claridge’s, Trivet or a Tuscan restaurant on Dean Street. Only one of them is a wine bar, so the award is doing a different job from this page.
Evidence built 7 September 2026 from fifteen independent sources. Award results read from Star Wine List’s own 2026 UK Gold Stars page. Addresses, opening hours and the corkage figure are from the sources named against each entry; wine bars change hours often, so check before a long journey.
Common questions
What is the best wine bar in London?
Three are named by eight independent sources each, which is as close to a consensus as this subject gets: Peckham Cellars on Queens Road, Bar Crispin in Soho, and Diogenes the Dog in Walworth. They are very different rooms — a neighbourhood mainstay, a Soho list of 150 bottles, and a bar that refuses to stock Champagne — which is roughly the point.
Is there an award for the best wine bar in the UK?
There is a judged award, and it almost never goes to a wine bar. Star Wine List of the Year UK is jury-judged and dated, but it awards wine lists rather than venues of a particular kind — so of its 2026 UK Gold Stars, eight went to restaurants and hotel dining rooms, one to a villa on the Isle of Wight, and exactly one to a wine bar: Newcomer Wines in Dalston.
Can you buy a bottle and drink it there?
At the hybrids, yes, and it is usually the cheapest wine in the room. The 10 Cases in Covent Garden sells from its cave à vin and charges £12 corkage to drink it on the spot. Winemakers Club, Half Cut Market, Stable Wines, Peckham Cellars and Diogenes the Dog all run a shop alongside the bar. Ask before you order from the list — the same bottle is often several pounds cheaper off the shelf.
Where are the natural wine bars in London?
East and south, mostly. Dalston has Dan's, Binch and Newcomer Wines within a short walk; Peckham has Bar Levan and Peckham Cellars; 40 Maltby Street in Bermondsey is the low-intervention benchmark. Eight of the publications in this pass run a separate natural wine guide alongside their general one, which is a fair sign the split is real rather than marketing.
Do London wine bars take bookings?
It varies more than in restaurants, and it decides your evening. Dan's in Dalston takes none at all. Noble Rot's Bloomsbury and Mayfair branches keep dedicated walk-in-only bar spaces alongside the bookable restaurant. 40 Maltby Street has some of the hardest tables in the city. Winemakers Club goes the other way — book and the table is yours for the whole evening.
Which London wine bars are open late, and which close early?
Check before you travel, because the range is wide. Farm Shop in Mayfair closes at 8pm, which makes it a long-lunch place rather than an evening one. Diogenes the Dog runs to 11pm and opens at 11am on Saturdays. Several of the smallest — Bonne Route in Harringay, Lower in Waterloo — are closed at the start of the week entirely.
