The shop is filled with a carefully chosen selection of delicious things. As well as wines from small, quality-driven producers, we also sell a small range of interesting beers, Japanese saké, small-batch spirits and grown up soft drinks.
We stock about a dozen cheeses from La Fromagerie and a wide range of gourmet Spanish products from Brindisa including Perello olives and Torres truffle crisps and charcuterie from Tempus. We also sell wine glasses from Riedel, Zalto and Lehman, Japanese knives from Kai Shun, titanium pans from SKK and Coravin wine dispensers.
Our Wine Policy? The Truth and nothing but the truth!
Supermarkets do a great job at blending wines that taste pretty decent given the huge volumes needed to fill the shelves in 500+stores (Matt worked with Morrisons for 6 years so knows happens behind closed doors). However with blending and huge volume comes dilution and loss of identity. Daygustation only sell ’real’ wines that taste of the grape and place they come from. We have selected each wine as we think it is the best, most delicious example of that grape from that place in the world. Too much choice isn’t necessarily a good thing- most supermarkets have 20+ Marlborough Sauvignon Blancs – we have one – the one we think offers you the best taste at a *reasonable price. *Some regions like Burgundy are just unreasonable when it comes to price!
Small is beautiful – sometimes!
Our range is small, but perfectly formed with something for everyone at every price point. You may be surprised to see that we offer a wide range of bag-in-box on refillable bottles from the keg, but in truth the bigger the vessel the fresher the wines taste and these formats offer economies of scale and are better for the environment. Historically the problem with boxes is that they only filled them with mediocre wines – prepare to eat your hat! We will also one on London’s biggest ranges of half bottles – as per the doctors advise drink less, but better. We deal with small producers (I would use the word artisan if it wasn’t such a cliché!) – our Champagne producers Artéis & Co bottle less than 15,000 bottles a year. In comparison Dom Pérignon make 5m and Möet & Chandon a cool 30m – no comment. We know each wine inside out and will tell you how to serve it, at what temperature and with what food (and if it is worth aging).
Mold breaking, but never mouldy!
We know that wine shops can be intimidating and stuffy, so we will do our best to break the mold with truthful, unpretentious service and cutting edge technology. Matt spent the past 5 years developing Corkscrew wine pairing app and we will use technology wherever possible to enhance the shopping experience and keep you safe. Each wine has a unique QR code – simply point your camera at it and it will tell you everything you ever need to know about the producer, region, grape and food compatibility. This means that you don’t have to pick up the bottle to find out about it – or engage with the assistant if you don’t want to! Indeed like a bone china shop we will encourage you NOT TO TOUCH – wines on the shelves are ‘display only’ and we will keep the ‘takeaway’ wines in a sterile, temperature controlled environment. An added benefit is that all wines are already at the right temperature for drinking and are not being harmed by high temperatures and UV light as is the case in most wine shops. We use Coravin to offer samples of rare wines, use fun props like the Nez de Vin ‘perfumes’ to help you discover the world of wine smells.