I love wines from Domaine Amirault in Bourgueil and have its Les Quarterons 2022 (£24.99 The Wine Reserve) on the rack, and the La Ferme des Fontaines, which has a daft label with a donkey on it. Cabernet Franc can be sharp and thin, but here you get richness plus a lower abv.
I love a good Chianti Classico – Villa Cafaggio 2022 (£16 Waitrose) is a beautiful organic wine. Alongside that is usually a Rioja – at present Viña Pomal, but I keep Artesa, too.
I adore Champagne and I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t. I can’t live without Bollinger and Ayala. I’m also a big fan of Waitrose half-bottles.
(Image credit: La Ferme des Fontaines, from Decanter February 2026 issue.)
Where do you keep your wine?
I have two racks in the house: one in a larder, where I keep whites and Champagne, and one in an unheated under-stairs cupboard, where I keep a couple of dozen reds. I also have a small wine fridge in the kitchen.
How did you become interested in wine?
When I was a student at Oxford I ran the bar to earn money. I soon realised that there was more to life than rum and Coke. Oxford colleges have amazing wine cellars and that’s how the journey began.
Your favourite food and wine pairing?
Raw fish with pickled cucumber and homemade bread paired with Champagne. Or lamb chops, veg from my garden and whatever red wine comes off the rack.
(Image credit: From Decanter February 2026 issue)
And your favourite restaurant?
The Market Coffee House in Spitalfields is at the end of my street. I bought my London place derelict more than 30 years ago, and owners Peter and Kay Sinden did the same and created a world.
If I’m late or tired, they give me short ribs and mash with a glass of Marcillac red. All their wine is from small French producers they know. That kind of thing is hard to find these days and I value it.
Do you have a signature dinner party dish?
Dinner parties are my idea of hell. There’s always good wine here and something on the stove, but the rest? No!
Where do you buy your wine?
Vintage Roots is an excellent supplier of organic wines, and the Co-op does a terrific Albariño by Codorníu for a tenner, which I drink stone-cold.
I also buy from Waitrose Cellar and direct from suppliers like Chapel Down in Kent – their rosé is a marvel. If I try a wine I like, I source it from the supplier and see if I want it to be part of the family. Some wines come to visit, others move in.
What’s your go-to special occasion wine?
I have some lovely wines tucked away in a dark part of my house in the Cotswolds. When something good happens, I go there and see what might be ready.
I was pleased to find a case of Château Gruaud Larose 2000 from Berry Bros & Rudd that had better be opened soon. There’s some Krug 1985 as well, which I must have bought to mark the year when I published my first novel Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit.
(Image credit: From Decanter magazine February 2026 issue (book published by Pandora Press).)
The best bottle you’ve ever had?
A Château Latour 1985 that my agent gave to me. I’m pretty sure she stole it from her husband’s cellar. We drank it on Hampstead Heath in tin mugs.
And the most memorable glass?
The wines I’ve enjoyed most have often been ordinary – wines out of a vat in a crowded back room of a bar where someone is serving olives with their own house wine; on a train when I’ve decanted a Pinot Noir into a flask and brought a fistful of rough-cut cheese; on a Christmas Day walk with a pocket of mince pies, a slab of Stichelton cheese and a Château Potensac or Cissac that deserves better than the rain and a dog but can stand it anyway.
The wine you’d most like to try?
A 1945 Taylor’s Port or an imperial of Pol Roger – Churchill’s morning, noon and night tipple. Aged wine is liquid history; you’re drinking time. The bottles, the dust, the cool cellar, the stories within stories. Wine is time, wine is life, wine is love.
Lucy Shaw is a wine and spirits editor and writer, based in London. She joined Decanter 2007 as Editorial Assistant and left three years later to join The Drinks Business, where she is now the editor. Her special interests are the wine regions of Spain, South America and Champagne, as well as reviewing the latest restaurants on London’s dining scene.
