Bloomsbury Wine Shop With Aged Riesling: Shrine to the Vine

Shrine to the Vine is the wine shop of the people behind Noble Rot, and it brings their taste for old vintages and small growers to a street of independent shops in Bloomsbury. The original branch is at 48 Lamb's Conduit Street, London WC1N 3LH, a few metres from the first Noble Rot wine bar and restaurant. As the shop's own description puts it, it trades among a community of independent traders, and the bottles on its shelves reflect the same approach.

The shop is owned by Dan Keeling and Mark Andrew, the pair who started Noble Rot as a wine magazine and went on to open the restaurants of the same name. Shrine to the Vine is their retail arm, made up of shops and a delivery service. The selection follows the magazine's interests closely: grower Champagne, Burgundy and the Loire, northern Rhône, and plenty of German and Austrian whites, including bottles with real age on them.

The trade has noticed. In 2025 Harpers named it second in its list of the UK's 50 best independent wine merchants and singled it out as London's standout wine shop. There are now two more branches, on Broadway Market in Hackney and on Stoke Newington Church Street, but the Bloomsbury shop is the first and the closest to the restaurant.

The most interesting part of the range is the back-vintage German wine, which costs much less than you would expect. Weingut Karlsmühle Lorenzhöfer Mäuerchen Riesling Kabinett 1997 is £18.50, a nearly 30-year-old Mosel white for the price of a young Sancerre. Weingut Martin Tesch Laubenheimer St. Remigiusberg Spätlese Trocken 2006 from the Nahe is £37.00. Both are good examples of how dry and off-dry Riesling develops honey and petrol notes with age while staying fresh.

Aged Riesling is also one of the most flexible wines for a holiday dinner. A Kabinett with a touch of sweetness copes with glazed ham, spiced dishes and cranberry sauce better than most reds, and the alcohol is low, which helps on a long Christmas afternoon. If you are cooking a Thanksgiving turkey with all the sides, it is worth putting one of these on the table alongside a red.

The rest of the list runs from the everyday to the special. Triennes Rosé 2025 from Provence is £17.00, an easy bottle for a party. Vocoret Chablis Bas de Chapelot 2022 is £56.00 and makes a classic match for oysters or smoked salmon at the start of a festive meal. Tscheppe Blue Dragonfly 2024, from a biodynamic family estate in Styria, is £59.00 and shows the shop's interest in Austrian growers.

If you are not sure where to start, ask the staff what has just arrived, since the list changes often. Tell them the dish and the budget, and they can usually pull two or three bottles to compare, from a light Loire red to a Rhône Syrah with more weight for a winter roast.

The best way to get to know the shop is its monthly drop-in tasting. A ticket costs £10, and the price can be spent on any of the wines open on the night, so if you buy something you have effectively tasted for free. Pouring starts at 5pm and carries on until the wine runs out, so arrive early for the full line-up.

The shop also sells tickets to occasional verticals, where several vintages of one wine are poured side by side. Recent ones have included Clos Rougeard Le Bourg at £290, Jamet at £180 and Château Magdelaine at £120. These are aimed at collectors, but they give a good sense of the cellar behind the shop.

The shop keeps short, regular hours, so it pays to plan. It opens at noon from Monday to Wednesday and an hour earlier, at 11am, from Thursday to Saturday, and it closes at 8pm every day it trades. It does not open on Sundays, which catches out weekend visitors who wander over from the British Museum. If you want to shop for a Sunday lunch, come on Saturday, and if you plan to join a monthly tasting, leave time after work to get there before the first bottles run dry.

If you can't get to Bloomsbury, the shop delivers. Delivery is free to most of mainland Britain on orders over £100, and £10.95 per address below that. In central London, same-day delivery runs Monday to Saturday between 9am and 6pm, which is useful if a dinner party grows at the last minute. Weekly offers go out by email every Thursday, so signing up is the easiest way to hear about rare bottles before the holidays.

For Christmas, a sensible approach is to buy one or two aged bottles in person, where you can see the condition of the label and cork, and order the everyday wines for delivery. That way you have time to stand older bottles upright for a few days before opening.

The street is one of the nicest in Bloomsbury for a short walk. The southern half is closed to traffic, lined with independent clothes shops and cafés, and at the northern end stands The Lamb, a Victorian pub with snob screens around its bar. Just beyond lie Coram's Fields, a children's playground that adults can only enter with a child.

A few minutes to the east, the Charles Dickens Museum on Doughty Street is set in the house where the author wrote Oliver Twist. Russell Square, with its café and fountains, is a short walk west, and the British Museum is only a little further on.

Shrine to the Vine, 48 Lamb's Conduit Street, London WC1N 3LH. Opening hours are Monday to Wednesday 12pm to 8pm and Thursday to Saturday 11am to 8pm. Closed on Sunday. Russell Square on the Piccadilly line is the nearest Tube, and Holborn is also close. The monthly tasting costs £10, redeemable against wines open on the night. Delivery is free to most of mainland Britain over £100, and same-day delivery in central London runs Monday to Saturday.