Noble Rot Soho wins Best By-the-Glass List

Noble Rot Soho has won the Best By-the-Glass Wine List section of the 2023 Star Wine List of the Year UK with The Buyer award.

"We just try to represent different wine regions and different grape varieties, and also being sensitive on the prices, making it affordable to everybody. It is a showcase of our wine lists and an opportunity we give to people to taste different things," says Head Sommelier Ana Rey at Noble Rot Soho.

Presented by Catena Zapata, this award recognises the best by-the-glass list.

"We don’t have much of a brief apart from making fine wine accessible for everyone so they can come in and drink a smaller or a large volume of wine, regardless of their budget," says Noble Rot Soho's Joshua Castle.

"The sign of a good wine by-the-glass list is that you want to try everything,” says jury member Ronan Sayburn MS. “Great choices here, and a fine wine Coravin list, too.”

These venues won the silver medals in the Best By-the-Glass List category:

• Carters of Moseley, Birmingham
• Corkage, Bath
• Les 110 de Taillevent, London
• Noble Rot Lambs Conduit, London
• Pollen Street Social, London
• The 10 Cases, London
• Wild Corner, London

About Noble Rot Soho

Noble Rot Soho is the second venue from the team behind the wine magazine and Bloomsbury bar/restaurant of the same name, installed in the former home of the Gay Hussar, the iconic Soho restaurant loved by politicians and writers, established in 1953.

There’s no bar space here, but rather two classy but cosy restaurant floors and a stylish private dining room up top. ‘Old Soho’ is reflected in the interior with proper wooden furniture; antique mirrored walls and vintage decanters line the length of the walls along a ceiling-height shelf giving full bistro glamour.

The first floor features wall-sized murals of Soho at night time, painted by the same artist responsible for the political cartoon portraits that lined the ground floor of Gay Hussar and a walk-in glass wine cellar.

The menu is European-bistro in style, with a few nods to the Hungarian Hussar classics – game stuffed cabbage leaves, beef shin goulash.

Noble Rot in Soho has been awarded a Star Wine List Red Star.

About the 2023 Star Wine List of the Year UK with The Buyer awards

Star Wine List of the Year is an international celebration of the great wine lists of the world and the people who create them.

“These are awards that celebrate the work of those who work at the very pinnacle of wine,” says Krister Bengtsson, the founder and publisher of Star Wine List.

In the UK, the award has been a joint offering of Star Wine List, based in Sweden, and The Buyer, the UK’s top digital wine trade publication.

The judges included a star-studded lineup of sommeliers: Ronan Sayburn MS, Piotr Pietras MS, and Jan Konetzki. They were joined by Star Wine List’s UK Ambassador, Ruth Spivey.

The 2023 Star Wine List of the Year UK with The Buyer is part of Star Wine List’s international awards, now the benchmark for wine lists. Other competitions have taken place in the Nordics, South Africa and Australia.

As the winner of the Best By the Glass List, Noble Rot Soho hahas qualified to take part in our International Final in June, where they will face off with the category winners from other countries and continents, such as South Africa, Australia, and Sweden.

Read about the terms and how Star Wine List judges the wine lists here.