Hong Kong Tatler gave a special award last night to L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon for the Best Wine List in the city. It was part of the launch of its Hong Kong and Macau Best Restaurants Guide. I personally made the choice of the restaurant as Tatler’s wine editor.
The chic and modern restaurant of the famous three-star Michelin French chef Joel Robuchon offers more than 3,200 different labels on its list. No restaurant can compare for the beauty and service of its wine cellars, not to mention the excellent food and beautiful modern dining room. Moreover, customers can access the incredible cellars of its sister establishment the Grand Lisboa Hotel in Macau with more than 9,000 selections and an inventory of 380,000 bottles. Patrons can order wines either from a number of massive leather bound wine lists or an electronic version on an iPad.
L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon’s wine list is a little less daunting than the Grand Lisboa’s selection, which supplies Robuchon’s formal restaurant Dome au Robuchon and the Italian Michelin starred Don Alfonso 1890. Its list is methodically arranged and particularly strong in selections of Champagne, Bordeaux, Burgundy, Rhone Valley, California, Italy, and Germany.
Of course, you would expect the list to begin with deep collections of various vintages of famous Champagnes such as Dom Perignon, Louis Roederer Cristal, Bollinger RD, and Krug. However, it’s the white and red Burgundy selection that really tells you that this list is world class. No less than 32 Batard-Montrachets, the famous white grand cru vineyard, start off the section. It continues to all the major appellations from Chablis to Montrachet with all the top names from Domaine Francois Raveneau to Domaine Coche-Dury. And close to 100 Montrachets are on the list; prices start at about HK$3,250 a bottle. The list continues likes this into white Bordeaux, Rhone Valley, Germany, Austria, California and many other areas and countries.
The red section starts with Burgundy with literally hundreds of producers, appellations and vintages available from little-known names to the best in the world. Loads of trophy wines are available such as Domaine de la Romanee Conti, Comte de Georges de Vogue and Henri Jayer.
The selection of Bordeaux is just as vast with dozen of vintages of first growths and less ranked estates from Lafite-Rothschild to Lafleur. There’s a giant Rhone section as well as California with all the cult wines well represented. Australian reds are also numerous but the choices reflect mostly yesterday’s highly rated but now out-of-fashion wines. The Italian section is much better informed. And the sweet wine selection with all the Sauternes, particularly Chateau d’Yquem, is amazing.
As a whole, L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon’s wine program is next to phenomenal. It worth just coming to the bar, ordering one of the dozens of excellent wines by the glass, and spending time reviewing the list. Better, come after dinner and order by the glass a wine I scored 100 points, a 1977 Fonseca Vintage Port. It’s only HK$560 (US$72) a glass.
