The whole cellar, every bottle, updated on the first of each month.
hibotel.com/cellar/the-full-listSofia keeps nine thousand bottles at thirteen degrees under the old kitchen, and she would rather you looked at the list at home than squinted at it over dinner with a waiter standing there.
It is not a wine list in the restaurant sense. It is every bottle in the cellar, what we paid, what it costs on the terrace, and a line about why it is there. About four hundred of them have a note from Sofia that is closer to an argument than a description.
Three Things Worth Knowing Before You Read It
Half the cellar is from within ninety minutes of here, which is not local-for-the-sake-of-it so much as the fact that this coast has been making the stuff for two thousand years. The markup is flat rather than a multiple, so the interesting bottles are the good value.
And if the thing you want is not on it, tell us a fortnight ahead. Sofia enjoys that far more than she will admit.
Marc Devaux
General ManagerTwenty-two years on the headland, started as a night porter, and knows every pipe in the building by the sound it makes.
Comment By Anders Holm
We were there the week before you closed in 2024 and the whole place already felt like it was bracing for something. Now I understand what. Worth every euro of the shoulder rate.
ReplyComment By Priya Raghunathan
Seconded. We asked at the desk what happens in January and got a twenty-minute answer from somebody who clearly loves the building.
ReplyComment By Daniel Okonkwo
The detail about re-pointing the sea wall by hand is the kind of thing nobody would ever put in a brochure. Thank you for writing it down.
Reply