Drink Bill Knott

Kitchen, Palomar, Hoppers, Volta do Mar, Trullo and Smokestak. And here are some recent finds: two are Persian (Kateh, in Maida Vale, and Berenjak, in Soho).

I am not sure what the protocol is on whether one should use ‘Persian’ or ‘Iranian’ in the nomenclature. But the former is certainly more seductive, and befits such sensual cookery.

I took my godsons to Berenjak in January. It’s typical of the new wave of long, thin restaurants in Soho, where the open kitchen runs down the side and you can watch the flames from bar stools. The boys asked for a ‘Feast’ menu of four shared starters and a main course for £37.50.

So abundant was this extraordinary banquet that we could have had two feasts between the three of us. It was the best culinary start to the year.

Two weeks ago, we arrived late at Kateh, which is very prettily set in a mews. They could not have been more welcoming. We had chicken livers, followed by a delicious chicken stew with the very best rice.

Bancone could reasonably claim to serve the best pasta in London. Our winning dish was the spicy pork and ’nduja ragu with mafalde, and don’t miss out on the polenta stuffed with gorgonzola.

Michelin is undoubtedly far more biased towards formal European restaurants. They certainly wouldn’t make the journey down to Tooting Bec, where I had my best-ever bhaji at the Pakistani Mirch Masala with Piers, the man behind Aleksandr the meerkat. Just £27 for a feast for two. Simples.

Berenjak, 27 Romilly Street, London W1D 5AL; tel: 020 3319 8120; www. berenjaklondon.com

Kateh, 5 Warwick Place, London W9 2PX; tel: 020 7289 3393; www. katehrestaurant.co.uk

Bancone, branches in Soho and Covent Garden; www.bancone.co.uk

DRINK BILL KNOTT GEORGIAN WINE ON MY MIND

I first tried Georgian wines during a bizarre press trip to the breakaway Georgian republic of Adjara, in March 2004. Most of our party were election observers – the renegade president of Adjara, Aslan Abashidze, was desperately trying to cling on to power. I was there to write about Adjaran food and drink.

I spent much of my time in a restaurant near the conference centre in Batumi, where Abashidze was making interminable speeches. I ate Adjaran khachapuri – wonderfully fresh, buttery cheese bread baked with an egg yolk inside – and drank chacha, Georgian grape-based vodka (the local wine was red, medium-sweet and undistinguished).

My departure was delayed several times. I felt rather like the hapless William Boot in Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop, especially when at lunch I was seated next to Abashidze. Through an interpreter he told me that ‘Sakaashvili [the Georgian president] knows you are here. While you are here, he will not send in the tanks.’ There must, I thought, be something in the Geneva Convention deploring the use of food and drink writers as human shields.

Eventually, they let me go home, the Georgian government brought Adjara to heel, and Abashidze resigned, fleeing immediately to Moscow. And I had decided that Georgian wine was not to my taste.

Until, that is, I visited Estonia – with which Georgia has very little in common, apart from sharing the world’s noisiest neighbour, Russia. One of my fellow guests at a Tallinn food and drink conference was John Wurdeman, an American painter who had fallen in love with Georgia’s ancient wine culture and started a winery in the east of the country. John had thoughtfully brought several bottles of his Pheasant’s Tears vintages, and they were delicious.

John ferments all his wines in kvevri: egg-shaped, earthenware vessels lined with beeswax and buried in the ground. They protect the wine from the extremes of the Georgian climate and let it develop subtlety without the overbearing influence of oak. It is a technique that has been practised in Georgia for 8,000 years or so: by comparison, Greek and Roman amphorae are arrivistes.

John’s wines are imported to the UK by Les Caves de Pyrène and are widely available, mostly priced around £20.

I tried more kvevri wines from several other importers at a recent trade tasting. I particularly liked those from Geo Naturals (geonaturals.co.uk), the Georgian Wine Society (georgianwinesociety.co.uk) and Lea & Sandeman (leaandsandeman.co.uk). Many are made with extended skin contact, which gives the whites (and ‘orange’ wines in particular) an astringency that works very well with rich food – a classic Adjaran khachapuri, perhaps.

In fact, had I drunk kvevri wine instead of chacha at that restaurant in Batumi, I might not have fallen asleep for the last four hours of Aslan Abashidze’s speech.

This month’s Oldie wine offer, in conjunction with DBM Wines, is a 12-bottle case comprising four bottles each of three French wines: a Chardonnay that should appeal to lovers of Mâcon-Villages; a classic Beaujolais packed with juicy Gamay fruit; and a Côtes du Rhône that would go very nicely with the Sunday roast. Or you can buy cases of each individual wine.

Great-value, easy-drinking Chardonnay from Rothschild’s vineyards in the south of France.

Ripe, fruity, unoaked Beaujolais from an excellent producer. At its best slightly chilled.

Medium-bodied red, made mostly from Grenache and Syrah; splendid with roast pork.