Nicolas

Nicolas is a French wine specialist, so if you’re strictly a New World oenophile you’ll want to look elsewhere. Their Clerkenwell outpost is small but brimming with bottles at all price points.
Tell ‘em your bubbly budget and they’ll supply you with a Champagne that’s sure to please your host/​ess. On my most recent visit, two French chaps were minding the store and they were keen to share their vino literacy with me as I searched for a bottle to take to a dinner party.

As I am an adult, this wine shop provides the same joy that the local sweet shop in my village use to when I was a kid. You walk into a cave, covered floor to ceiling, with fabulous booze.
Nicolas is a chain but this shop beats every other wine shop I have been in. It has to be the fabulous red headed Frenchman who will advise and serve you that makes this place so damn special. This is customer service. I go to a lot of events and parties, and I want to show up with a bottle of something nice that won’t show me up. So I come here. I set a budget and give this gent the event details and he will bring me a selection.
For Christmas I needed some Champagne to take home for the family. This is a bit of a joke really as most of them are T-​total or pregnant at the moment, so mainly it was for me. This wonderful fella has a way for making you thirsty when he talks about the drinks in his shop. I went for a bottle with «teeny tiny bubble» and on Christmas day was not disappointed. Well done Nicolas. This is by far on of the best wine shops in London.