A window for world wine
Not long ago, ordering a glass of wine in a pub attracted nothing but a round of guffaws. And that open bottle of house white which had been sitting on the bar for five days didn't help convert real ale fans to the delights of the grape.
Those times are slowly changing, however, and even in a pub owned by a large brewery the chances are that there will be one or two decent bottles of wine on offer.
What there probably won't be - now or in the conceivable future - is a wide range of rare and fine bottles, a good choice of wines by the glass, plus a hefty mail-order list of wines for customers to take home. Unless, that is, you've stumbled into Nick Borst-Smith's pub, the Nobody Inn at Doddiscombsleigh in Devon.
A fairy tale
It looks like something from one of Grimm's fairy tales, a sixteenth-century beamed pub with small-paned windows, sitting on the edge of a tiny hamlet. The Nobody Inn is certainly a quaint local - with seven guest rooms and an excellent restaurant to boot - but it is a surprise to learn that this is the nerve centre of an award-winning wine merchant's business that grew out of the inn's wine list.
Borst-Smith (pictured) bought the Nobody Inn in 1970 when he was 23. He had previously trained as a manager at the Savoy hotel in London, then went to work for Bass. He soon became disillusioned with a corporate career and, while visiting his parents in the West Country one weekend, noticed that a favourite local pub was for sale. He snapped it up.
"Because I came into the pub business from a hotel background, I had a different viewpoint from many inn-keepers," he reflects. "I immediately wanted to change the lay-out, and set about converting the upstairs area into guest rooms. Then we built a restaurant onto the back and a proper kitchen had to follow. The only thing we left alone was the old pub area - apart from pulling out the fruit machine."
Although fairly knowledgeable about malt whisky, he had yet to develop a passionate interest in wine.
"When I bought the place it was a chicken-in-the-basket and Liebfraumilch pub, and we inherited the wine list," he says. "One day I woke up to the fact it was awful. I started tasting wine - taking notice of tastes and flavours for the first time."
The list developed and expanded region by region in line with Borst-Smith's latest discoveries, and evolved to include all the classic areas, plus the New World. Twenty-five years later, the range is vast, taking in 750 different wines and covering the vinous globe.
Although the beginnings were humble, he did cause a stir among the local Devonshire community in the 1970s. "We first bought Beaujolais Nouveau in 1978, then started a Muscadet promotion involving a rally to Nantes. Customers started to associate us with wine," he says.
The off-shoot mail-order business was suggested, reassuringly, by Borst-Smith's accountant. Now the Nobody Inn's merchant list goes out to 2,500 customers, "many of whom have either eaten here or stayed at some point over the years".
The wines are identical to those on the restaurant list, which has twice won the Nobody Inn the West of England Merchant of the Year award at the International Wine Challenge. In the 1994/95 awards it picked up the national prize for Small Independent Merchant of the Year.
For his list, Borst-Smith uses more than 400 suppliers from all over the world. The merchant version shows bottle prices between 20% and 40% cheaper than in the restaurant. "Although we deal in some rare wines, I am conscious of prices - I am always scanning the shelves at Oddbins to keep up to date with prices on the high street." Indeed, the Nobody Inn lists many down-to-earth wines for less than £10, alongside classics costing nearer £100.
Borst-Smith is particularly fanatical about sweet Loire wines. He admits that this style does not have mass appeal - "but we have converted a lot of people". He says the 1989s and 1990s are "asleep at the moment but will be fabulous in another five or six years".
Another speciality is the Australian liqueur Muscats. The Nobody Inn lists 29 of these unctuous, sticky dessert wines, from Chambers Rutherglen Old Liqueur Muscat at £48.63 a half-bottle, to examples costing nearer £8. He says they go marvellously with Devon blue cheese, something the Aussies probably have not discovered yet.
But when it comes to table wine, he believes that tastes are heading back to the Old World, and to France in particular. "Our Aussie list has been diminishing slowly for a year or so. People want more complex, subtle flavours right now - it is as though the world has moved on."
He is building up an unusual Italian section at the moment: "Italy has much more to offer than I ever imagined".
He admits to loving the occasional glass of "big, oaky wine". And he reserves special praise for Adam Wynn's Mountadam Chardonnay: "Because Wynn was trained in France he was able to take some Old World ideas back to Australia." Wynn has tutored tastings at the Nobody Inn, as have many other top producers.
Moving on
To try to help customers move on from Australian Chardonnay, he lists more unusual grape varieties from Down Under: Marsanne, Verdelho and Sémillon. And if diners won't buy a bottle, they might venture to try it by the glass. "Wines by the glass are immensely important to us in the pub," Borst-Smith says. "It is like a little shop window, and I always choose bottles that have full flavour and scent - wines they will take some notice of." He has had notable success selling Alsace Gewrztraminer this way.
Remaining in the Old World, Borst-Smith claims that German wines are becoming gradually more popular, "in the quality band, not for cheap commercial wines". He is particularly loyal to the wines of Dr Loosen, and he is a fervent supporter of English wine, listing about 12 examples.
Borst-Smith's wine list is a long one, complete with lively commentaries on each region and style and his inimitable tasting notes. One wine, a Spanish Rioja, is described as having the character of ‘rubber bands, plasters, coffee, plum and cream'. A quirky way of describing wine, but then this is a mildly eccentric business all around, and Borst-Smith's humour shows at every turn of the page.
This, after all, is a pub that got its name from a ghoulish joke - the Nobody Inn was re-named after a previous publican's coffin was found to be empty. Borst-Smith jokes that in those days the pub was usually empty, so the name was particularly appropriate. Now, it couldn't be further from the truth.
