Three sheets to the wind: we take a wine-centric look at a trio of new local eateries

After Hours at the Whitechapel Gallery’s new Refectory.

Although nothing quite matches the staggering pace at which new restaurants open and close in Hackney, the last year has seen a growing number of local venues with a focus on boutique wines. Since my knowledge of wine doesn’t extend much past avoiding Blossom Hill at the off licence, I was a little anxious to launch myself into reviewing a sample of them, but I needn’t have worried – each place I visited seemed enthusiastic about educating the public. So here we go, three wine destinations of note:

Whitechapel Refectory: The Whitechapel Gallery’s cafe is now run by Luke Wilson and Cameron Emirali, the restaurant veterans behind 10 Greek Street. On Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings they open it as an evening destination called After Hours. With nothing else of its ilk in Whitechapel, it was busy when we arrived. Alongside the interesting wine and craft beer list is a small food menu consisting of nibbles such as olives, cheese, charcuterie, and almonds. Thanks to the building’s remodel a few years ago, it does not feel like a cafe. The wood floor, table and chairs, paired with soft pendant lamps, make the space feel cozy, and the mirrored walls and high ceilings add brightness and airiness to an otherwise quite small space. A stylish cage display of wine was the first thing that caught my eye from the door.

Organised by lightest to “most funky tasting”, Luke walked us through the wine menu and brought us some carafes to try. We started with a very light and quaffable Italian white, versatile and comparable to a Sauvignon blanc, then followed with a heavy contrast, a punchy, floral Austrian. The reds followed the same format, starting with something demeure and ending on a brash note. With the wine list changing frequently, I would recommend relying on the staff’s expertise, especially given the selection, which verges on obscure – in a good way. As for food, the star was a plate of glistening wild mushrooms, served on crusty artisanal bread, with a creamy burrata that had mercifully been allowed to come to room temperature before serving. The charcuterie selection of jamon serrano, cecina (dried Spanish beef) and finocchiona, (fennel salami), tasted rather indistinct from one another – given this team’s reputation for sourcing from excellent producers, I suspect our palates were overwhelmed by the loud tones of the second red. We finished with some wodges of Italian and English artisanal cheese.

Newcomer Wines on Dalston Lane.

Newcomer Wines, on Dalston Lane, specialises in Austrian wines. Started in Boxpark Shoreditch, they are retail and wholesale suppliers, furnishing restaurants such as local Sager + Wilde and the Hawksmoor Group with interesting wines that you could not find in another retail outlet. The Dalston shop is open all week but from Wednesday onwards, there’s a cozy space in the back with raised wooden tables where people are able to sit and try over 200 types of wine. The food menu features Austrian producers: again, we had a charcuterie platter, which here included an enticing pumpkin seed pork sausage served with grated fresh horseradish and a variety of pickles. In terms of wine, I tried a Gemischter Satz, which was explained to me as a very characteristically Austrian field blend with Reisling, Grüner Veltliner and Sauvignon Blanc grapes. Newcomer is a great little place to stop in for a quick glass of wine, conveniently located without the usual hubbub and crowding of Dalston.

Manuel de los Santos and Xabier Alvarez, Furanxo’s proprietors.

Owned by the chef and co-owner of Newington Green restaurant Trangállan, the recently opened Furanxo, also on Dalston Lane, is a tiny gem, a white tiled postage stamp of a shop with on the left, a shelf of quintessentially Spanish conservas such as devilled mussels, and on the right a shelf of wine and line of jamons hanging from the wall, of which we had slices shaved straight off the leg and onto a platter (we tried the bellota: acorn-fed jamon iberico). I tried a white made by a small producer in Andalucia using a traditional variety that I hadn’t tried before, Montepilas. Unfiltered and sulfite free, it was cloudy and dark golden, with a complex fruity and acidic aroma. It tasted citrusy but also of sherry, invoking warm weather. It was quite unlike most wines I’ve had and absolutely mesmerising; for fear of not finding it again I bought a bottle to take home.

This is a pivotal time UK restaurant industry, particularly when it pertains to gourmet imports. I really liked all three places I visited and felt that without great pretension they awakened in me a dormant excitement about wine. With the cost of food set to rise after our exit from the EU, in a borough saturated with dining choices, will these be able to thrive? Is there an optimum number of boutique wine shops in east London? We’ll know in due course; in the meantime, I’d pay them a visit.