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Building a "Perfect" Wine List

09.01.26

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5 min read

Pity the tastebuds of your poor sommelier, when they're a couple of hours into a portfolio tasting and still attempting to discern nectar from plonk. "I can properly taste around 50 bottles," says Luke West-Whylie, co-founder of wine bar and bistro Peckham Cellars. "After that, it's all just 'wine'."

But this is the kind of commitment that gets you Michelin-recommended. And over six years and thousands of wines, West-Whylie and his partners – Helen Hall and Ben McVeigh – have developed an innate sense of how their customers will respond to every bottle on their List.

"If it tastes good and it's at a price that we think is fair – and that we can sell – then those are the guiding lights."

- Luke West-Whylie, Peckham Cellars

On the whole, the people who visit Peckham Cellars are an experimental bunch, with catholic taste. "We've developed that trust," West-Whylie says. In large part, that's because the trio's ever-evolving wine list has guided customers through novel grapes, unfamiliar appellations, and winemaking techniques ancient and modern. "We try to be warm and open, to remove some of the pretension,” West-Whylie says. "Does it taste good and do you want to drink more of it? That's what we've always been guided by.”

Two hundred miles north, in Sheffield, Kelly Boss approaches her lists with the same open-mindedness. As wine director at bistro Bench, its wine-bar sibling Bench La Cave, and boozer-with-a-glow-up The Pearl at Park Hill, her selections always start with the customer.

"People just want a delicious wine to drink," she says. "You’ve got to use that as your centre point when you’re building out a list."

Therein lies the alchemy. As you'll know if you've ever seen friends wrinkle their noses when you pour them your "new favourite Beaujolais", nothing's as subjective as taste. A great wine list rests on how well its curator can translate what's in their glass at a Tuesday morning sampling to every palate that walks through their doors over the next six months. "Less than five per cent of what we taste makes the master list," says Whylie-West.

"The wine list should read like a story...They’re the lists that I find inspiring, when you’re looking at the person or people behind it and not just words on a page."

- Kelly Boss, Bench / Bench La Cave / the Pearl

From that spreadsheet, fewer still make it to the restaurant. So they sample. And sample. Endlessly. Pleasure trumps cost, but prices need to strike a balance between keeping the lights on, and keeping customers coming back. "If it tastes good and it's at a price that we think is fair – and that we can sell – then those are the guiding lights," says West-Whylie. "I spend the majority of my time tasting the stuff that's the cheapest. It's quite easy to find good bottles that sell for £90. It's much harder to find good bottles of wine that you can list for £40."

Inflation has made his job even harder. Originally, Peckham Cellars' list started at around £30. Now, it's £40, and margin's tighter. By-the-glass lowers the entry-level price point (and prevents sticker shock when guests sit down) but great wine lists tend towards a bell curve – a couple at the bottom, huge variety in the middle, then the odd budget-blower up top.

Knowing where that ceiling is as important as not filling your cellar with unsellable Lambrusco. "There's no point having wine you can't sell," he says. "We could have a fridge full of really great references from Bordeaux and Burgundy, but we'd never shift them. Eventually, I would drink them. Great for me, but it's maybe not the most savvy business decision."

Which should be reassuring for those of us who aren't exactly Alan Turing when it comes to decoding a wine list. Yes, there are still restaurants where ordering can feel like an exam (with your sommelier's eyebrows marking pass-fail) but they are, blessedly, on the wane. So if nothing jumps out, just ask. In any establishment that really cares about wine, the people who built the list love nothing more than guiding people through it. "We want people to love the wine they drink with us," says West-Whylie. "If they don't, we'll go and get them a different bottle, free of charge."

This is the dichotomy of the perfect wine list; there's no perfect wine list for everyone. Boss has the luxury of picking wines for three spots in separate locations, and though all share a mentality – "the ethos for high-quality, well-made wines runs through all our venues," she says – there's little overlap in the bottles they stock.

At the Pearl – a busy bar, where conversation and music reverberates off the concrete walls – she picks wines that are "recognisable, with more familiar descriptions and a bit more easily identifiable." That might include things like Sicilian Catorrato, or chilled Zweigelt from Austria; neither the most obvious, nor disconcertingly esoteric. "If you’ve got some obscure grape description on a list, people just won’t feel comfortable shouting that across a busy bar, and they’re going to fall back on something more familiar."

Bench La Cave, tucked next door, is more esoteric. "It's the enfant terrible of the group," she says. "I know I can put something a bit more bonkers or a little funky on at La Cave and the customers will love it." Its Beaujolais Nouveau celebration was a case in point, with Elisa Guerin's all-natural Moulin-à-Vents, alongside a sour-and-saline bottle by Château Cambon.

And the restaurant, Bench, has recently switched to having every bottle available by-the-glass, to encourage diners to explore. "There's definitely been a shift in people drinking less and drinking better," Boss says. "Having a wider by-the-glass offering also gives us a chance to show off some great wines that perhaps people wouldn’t have tried in a larger format."

But for Boss and West-Whylie, the most important part of any list is personality. "The wine list should read like a story," Boss says. "They’re the lists that I find inspiring, when you’re looking at the person or people behind it and not just words on a page."