Crowning Glories
By Peter Grogan
The Three Crowns was so named after James VI of Scotland stopped in for a pint on the way to his coronation in London in 1603 as James I King of England, Scotland and Ireland. Prior to that it had been known as the Serf and Turf. A still earlier incarnation was as the Cock and Harp, and more recent ones include the Samuel Beckett and, sticking with the literary thing, Bar Lorca. Daniel Defoe attended masonic meetings here, apparently, so it all sort of makes sense.
 I went in the first weekend it opened, and it somehow felt like it had been going for ages. Hugh O’Boyle and Caroline Jones immediately shone a light into the darkest recesses where previously there had only been sporadic tangles of tumbleweed and the odd lost Salsaholic, jerking away endlessly in a gloomy corner like some lost Korean soldier skirmishing alone in the jungle for forty years. ‘I’d been thinking about it for ages’, says Hugh above the din, ‘but, between The Londesborough and The Bird Cage, it looked like I’d be my own biggest competitor. As it turns out’, he continues with a big grin and an expansive gesture to take in the happy throng, ‘I’ve barely seen any of them before in my life!’
I reviewed the wines at the Londesborough in Issue 25 of this organ. Glyn, the manager at the time, is now running the show at the Crowns (is that what we’ll shorten it to?) and, satisfyingly, he’s beginning to exhibit a number of the mannerisms and enthusiasms of the wine obsessive. This is good for all of us.
I was impressed from the off. There are bottles from some top-flight names here: Burgundies from Vincent Girardin, Joseph Drouhin, Réné Engel and Domaine Matrot is a very impressive roll-call, and Saintsbury from California and Argentina’s Trapiche are no slouches either. But it’s the quality of the wines from producers I was unfamiliar with that knocked me out.
The very classy Eikendal Semillon 2004 from South Africa (£4.95 for a 175ml glass or £18.50 the bottle) combines crispness with the roundness of the Semillon. There’s a sappy, something-like-bay-leaf twang to the nose and real substance and length in the slightly tarry, peachy flavours. Julio Bouchon’s 2006 Sauvignon Blanc is at the lower end of the price scale (£3.95/£13.95), but not the quality scale as it has bags of the green things – grass and gooseberries – that characterise Chilean S-B. It’s also got some of the more rounded body of the Loire versions to give it a slinkier feel.
Château Routas’ ‘Wild Boar’ Rosé 2005 (£5.50/£17.50) from Provence – the spiritual home of rosé – crashed out of the undergrowth and butted me in the backside in no uncertain fashion. It’s Marco-Pierre White’s fabled rhubarb tart on legs – honeyed, creamy and complex, with great depth and length of flavours – and I pronounced it to be the second-best rosé I’ve ever tasted. (Well, I’ve got to keep something in the bank, haven’t I?) Lauca Reserva 2004 (£3.95/14.75), made from Chile's signature Carmenère grape, is a thumpingly rich, cockle-warmer of a wine for a winter's night, but the huge blackberry fruit is balanced with the proper tannins. Still with blackberries, but mixed up with spicy poached pears this time, California's Copperidge Zinfandel 2004 (£5.50/18.95), gets points too. Glyn called it ‘buttery’ and that's a term I've only heard used to describe white wines. Only someone who feels confident talking about their wines would use it to describe a red.
OK, so there are cheaper lists in Stokey, but the mark-ups are not gouging and they get appreciably lower the further down (or is it up?) the list you go. So René Engel's Vosne Romanée 2003 at £49.95 is reasonable. Other adjectives to describe it are ‘silky’, ‘perfumed’, ‘toasty’, ‘redcurranty’ and ‘fabalicious’. They'll be happy to decant it, or pretty much anything, for you so that you can get the best out of it. There are no Bordeaux wines on the list, which is a bit of a worry – but only for the Bordelais.
Glyn is clearly rather proud of his wines, and I felt rather proud to be trying them and, I’ll tell you what, I think Stokey can be a little proud as well. |
