I may not venture off the Island that often but, Bill-Bryson-like, I am very well travelled within the UK. I have been to Bournemouth, Morecombe, Bognor and even Frinton was visited in my younger days but until last week I had never been to Bath.
It is stunning. It is a wonderful town to wander round feasting your eyes on marvellous Georgian architecture. This is not to be a Pevesner Architectural Guide but rather to highlight a lovely hotel with a very good restaurant and an outstanding wine list.
This is not the Royal Crescent, we never got there. Four times we called but no one ever rang us back to take our reservation. So we resorted to Mr & Mrs Smith and we found The Queensberry.
It’s a great, small, well decorated hotel with well-sized, comfortable rooms and, so important, it is quiet. With a very good restaurant. I am a wino rather than a foodie but the mushroom risotto was superb. But it was the wine list that really got me going.
A great esoteric list full of really well chosen wines. I managed to drink a lovely Riesling from our friend Ernie Loosen, an excellent St Aubin from Lamy and a really delicious Hautes Cotes de Nuits 2007 that was recommended by the sommelier from a Domaine that I had never heard of: Naudin-Ferrand.
I looked them up on Burghound. Alan describes the Domaine as an “an excellent source of inexpensive, well made Burgundy. The wines are elegant and pure examples of their type, which I personally admire. The wines are not especially dense though to be fair, few Bourgogne are and this is particularly true of Bourgognes from the Hautes Côtes. But if you love the wonderfully pure aromatics and flavours of unadorned pinot noir, then the wines of the young Claire Naudin are worth trying.”