My Round: Starter's orders

It's pointless discussing food without also mentioning drink, but what's the best aperitif to get your taste juices flowing?

Two weeks ago I had the pleasure of cheering raucously for my colleague Terry Durack, when he won his first Glenfiddich award for Restaurant Critic of the Year. The award pleased me for several reasons. One: it was well deserved. Two: it was long overdue. Three, and most importantly: the judges cited Terry as one of the few restaurant reviewers who talked about wine as an integral part of his meditations upon the meal in question.

Two weeks ago I had the pleasure of cheering raucously for my colleague Terry Durack, when he won his first Glenfiddich award for Restaurant Critic of the Year. The award pleased me for several reasons. One: it was well deserved. Two: it was long overdue. Three, and most importantly: the judges cited Terry as one of the few restaurant reviewers who talked about wine as an integral part of his meditations upon the meal in question.

Terry's emphasis on wine does not just please me as a drinks specialist. Writing about a restaurant without discussing wine is like presenting weather forecasts without mentioning the temperature. When I see reviewers talking about the waiter's hair and the conversation at adjoining tables, without once mentioning the merits of the wine list, it makes my blood boil. Terry gets in all the local colour that makes a restaurant experience distinctive, but he also gets in the necessary information about drinks. Full marks, and well done.

I have particular reason to care about wine lists because my wife and I recently went out to celebrate a serious anniversary, the kind that reminds us we're really getting on in years. Dinner was at the excellent Lindsay House, showcase for chef Richard Corrigan's prodigious talents, and mighty fine it was too. But I bridled nonetheless at the cost of a glass of the house champagne: Nicolas Feuillatte, £12 a pop. With service at 12.5 per cent, that brings the single glass up to the cost of a full bottle of some pretty reasonable supermarket champagnes. Indeed, if you buy three bottles of the same stuff at Majestic, you pay £13.99, just 49p more than we paid for a glass.

The champagne prices at Lindsay House are not wildly out of line with other, comparable establishments; we are not dealing with highway robbery here. The restaurant would point out rightly that around £2 out of the £12 total goes to the VAT man, not to them, and their expenses in serving that one glass are not inconsiderable. I'm really not Lindsay-bashing here, just lamenting the expense of fine dining (and wining) in London.

Of course, one solution is to drink something other than champagne as an aperitif. Those bubbles are more or less a legal requirement for a mega-anniversary, but on other occasions the alternatives are just as good and a lot cheaper. My top choice will always be a bone-dry fino or manzanilla sherry, whose mouth-watering acidity gets the salivary glands racing just as efficiently as fizz. And at Lindsay House they cost a good five pounds less. A glass of good vermouth is another option, perhaps with a splash of fizzy water. Or a glass of dry Madeira, especially Sercial, which has an even bolder bite of acidity to whet the appetite.

I am some way away from recommending dry cider to serve in that role, but after enjoying a recent tasting of wines, beers and cider from the wonderful range sold by Booths, I'm edging in that direction. If anything can budge me from my generalised lack of ciderphilia, it's Booths' large range. And other consumers have got there before me: its cider sales have been growing at a rate of 8 or 9 per cent for the past few years. I've highlighted a favourite below, but it could just as easily have been the warmly autumnal Dunkertons Black Fox from Herefordshire (£1.75/500ml). I've also highlighted a beer of distinction.

But in alcohol, the big noise at Booths remains wine: its range is more like that of a wine merchant than of a supermarket, emphasising distinctiveness and character over mass appeal. There's one bottle below, from a producer whose basic wine (Les Ruffes La Sauvageonne 2003, £4.99) is just as good at a lower price. And there's lots more on the shelves. Blessed are they with a Booths in the neighbourhood.

Top Corks

Pica Broca La Sauvageonne 2002, Côteaux du Languedoc (£7.49, Booths) Big, spicy blend of Syrah/Grenache, loads of juicy ripeness kissed with a sensible dose of warm, toasty oak. Beautiful.

Hawkshead Gold (£1.49/500ml, Booths) The burnished-gold colour is deep. The intense hoppy bitterness persists on the palate for ages. Perfect summer brew, with or without a cheese sandwich.

Sheppy's Dabinett Cider (£1.59/500ml, Booths) From a Somerset maker, a just-off-dry cider with strangely floral scents and a nice touch of apple-skin astringency. Aperitif of the future?