The best wine led in London
39 places
40 Maltby Street
££A natural-wine importer's arch serving food off a blackboard - the original of the Bermondsey arch format everyone else copied.
Small, largely no-bookings, and closed more days than it opens. Check before travelling.
Bar Crispin
£££A low-intervention list with food good enough that people book it as dinner rather than as drinks.
Bar Douro
££A narrow Portuguese counter lined in hand-painted azulejo tiles, under a slatted, shack-like ceiling.
The cheapest room on this list by some distance, and the only one whose look comes from tilework rather than money.
Bar Etna
£££Joe Beddia of Pizzeria Beddia in Philadelphia partnered with Four Legs to open his only restaurant outside the United States - a New York and Philly pizza site crossed with an Italian neighbourhood bar.
Bertie Blossoms
££Ed Sheeran's pub, opened with his manager Stuart Camp. Small plates, wine and cocktails rather than anything themed - the ownership is the only way you would know.
Refurbished and reopened March 2025. Deliberately low-key: no memorabilia, and no reason to expect a sighting.
Bon Vino
££Neighbourhood Italian near London Bridge, picked out by TOPJAW alongside Flour & Grape.
Bouchon Racine
££££Henry Harris cooking unapologetic French bourgeois food above a Farringdon pub - and named the best restaurant in the UK at the 2026 National Restaurant Awards.
Brawn
£££One of the rooms that brought natural wine to London, on Columbia Road, and back in the Top 100 after more than a decade.
Camille
£££A small Borough bistro doing offal, terrines and the unfashionable half of the French repertoire properly.
Champagne + Fromage
£££French cheese, charcuterie and grower champagne by the glass - a small chain, but the Greenwich site sits right by the market.
Chez Bruce
££££A Michelin star overlooking Wandsworth Common rather than a west end street - the definitive London argument that fine dining does not need a postcode.
Copita
£££A narrow Soho bar built for standing, small plates and sherry by the copita it is named after.
Dehesa
£££A corner site off Carnaby Street running Spanish and Italian small plates side by side, which is rarer than it sounds.
Diogenes the Dog
£££A small Elephant and Castle wine bar run by a master sommelier, which is not a sentence you get to write often.
Dorian
££££A Notting Hill butcher's shop turned bistro where the beef and the wine list are doing the talking.
Elliot's
£££A Borough Market wine bar that is not trying to be a pizzeria and still turns out one of the pizzas people cross London for.
Filed under pizza because that is what the pizza lists name it for; the menu is a small-plates and wine list first. Do not send someone here expecting a pizzeria.
Flour & Grape
£Bermondsey Street pasta-and-wine spot; short menu, low prices, long queues.
Forza Wine
£££A terrace on top of the National Theatre looking straight up the Thames - the best free view attached to a wine list in London.
Half Cut Market
££Buy a bottle off the shelf and drink it there for a small corkage - the format that makes a serious list affordable.
Japes
££Chicago deep dish, which almost nothing else in central London attempts - a pie built in a pan deep enough that the cheese pull becomes the point of it.
Also in Greenwich and Camden. Deep dish is slow to cook - expect a wait that a Neapolitan pizzeria would not ask of you.
Joia
££££Portuguese cooking fourteen floors up beside the Power Station, and one of very few serious Portuguese kitchens in London.
José
£££José Pizarro's standing-room sherry bar on Bermondsey Street - a handful of stools, a lot of jamón, and no way to book.
Mambow
£££Abby Lee named it for her mother's bowls and cooks Malaysian food through an open kitchen, against low-intervention wine.
Motorino
£££Luke Ahearne and Stevie Parle call it London-Italian rather than Italian - the distinction is the point, and the cooking earns it.
Noble Rot
£££Started as a wine magazine and became a restaurant - the list is the point and the kitchen is built to serve it.
Ombra
££Named for the Venetian term for a small glass of wine. Fresh pasta, seasonal vegetables and organic wine by the Regent's Canal.
One Club Row
£££Hidden up a staircase above a busy Shoreditch pub - pork schnitzel with gorgonzola and mustard, and a rice pudding creme brulee to finish.
Paulette
£££A Maida Vale bistro doing short, seasonal French menus for a neighbourhood not overrun with them.
Petersham Nurseries
££££Lunch inside a working plant nursery, under glass and surrounded by what is for sale - the setting is the entire proposition and nothing in London repeats it.
Lunch-led. The Richmond site and the Covent Garden one are different propositions - check which you are booking.
Planque
£££Built around a members' wine cellar you can drink from - the food follows the bottle rather than the other way round.
Porte Noire
£££Idris Elba's wine bar with co-founder David Farber, at the foot of the Gasholders building by the canal - around 800 wine bins and one of the larger fine wine rooms in London.
Bar, shop and tasting room in one, so you can drink in or take a bottle away. Charcuterie and small sharing plates rather than a full menu.
Ria's
££Thick, crisp-edged Detroit pies - baked in a rectangular steel pan so the cheese caramelises against the sides - matched to a natural wine list. Almost nothing else in London commits to this style.
Founded 2023 by a husband-and-wife pair out of tech. Notting Hill is the original; a second site opened in Soho at 29 Foubert's Place, W1F 7QF, with a downstairs wine cave.
Sager + Wilde
£££One of the rooms that made Hackney Road a wine destination, with a list that runs from cheap and interesting to seriously old.
Salt Yard
£££One of the rooms that started London's small-plates habit, still doing courgette flowers stuffed with goat's cheese and honey.
The French House
£££The Soho pub that was the Free French headquarters in the war, with a small dining room above it and beer served only in halves downstairs.
The Laundry
£££A former Edwardian laundry off Coldharbour Lane, running from breakfast through to dinner with a wine shop attached - the kitchen genuinely does not stop.
Food served all day and into the evening, so it works at the awkward hours most neighbourhood restaurants do not cover.
Tollington's
£££Ed McIlroy of Four Legs took over an old Finsbury Park chip shop and put a 25-dish Iberian small-plates menu in it, smoked eel omelette included.
Trivet
££££Two stars from a chef and a master sommelier working as equals - the wine list is the other half of the proposition, not an accessory.
Vori
£££The only wine list in London built entirely on indigenous Greek varieties, in a Holland Park Avenue taverna with tables on the pavement.