Wine List Confidential: Sune, Hackney

Douglas Blyde heads to Hackney to visit Sune. With 100 bins of wine and sake, is the drinks offering too much, too soon for this new opening?

“You’ll want to come to Sune with a view to getting up close and personal with the wine list,” wrote Hot Dinners’ Gavin Hanly whose readers voted it their second favourite restaurant of 2023 despite there only being 32 days left of the year post its launch. He added: “During our visit, we were sat next to a table that had stuck to beers and we only just managed to stop ourselves leaning over and saying ‘You’re doing it all wrong!’”

Design

Formerly bike shop and café, Lock 7, its pavement tyre pump still in evidence, then Japanese eatery, Mio Yatai, replete with Manga wallpaper and, perhaps concerningly given the bijou nature of the site, 65 food items grazing the menu, 129a Pritchards Road is set at the start of the Cat & Mutton Bridge, diagonal to defiant sports pub, The Perseverance, a short wander from the mesmerising Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities whose current exhibition celebrates “Death Cabarets”.

Baptised Sune (“Soon-er”) after Sune Rosforth, the Danish mentor of co-founder, Honey Spencer, the site is shaded by a deep canopy, with a riverside balcony scheduled for summer. Beneath slender wooden joists is a drinking and dining counter facing a tall, chockfull wine rack and high-spec wine fridge, handmade wooden tables held by half dovetail joints, and an open kitchen with charcoal grill. Alas, rather flat studies of ingredients by Victoria Achache which evoke inserts put in frames before you add your own pictures, are illuminated by a miscellany of terracotta lamps.

Featuring such tracks as “La Dance de Nadia” (Elias Rahbani), the playlist represents the 12-year fascination for music of co-founder, and husband to Spencer, Charlie Sims, who managed Jamie Oliver’s Barbecoa and Fifteen, Brunswick House, Maõs (RIP), and Brawn in the UK, as well as Noma in Copenhagen.

Drinks

Printed on attractively speckled paper by The Green Stationery Company, the wine and sake list runs to 100 bins. This shows the signature curiosity and confidence of the celebrated Spencer, who “followed the trajectory of natural wines for ten years” she says, to a point where “they have grown up” in part owing to “perfected harvest time”, “longer time in the winery”, “temperature control”, and “improved cashflow”.

In addition to Sune, Spencer oversees London lists at Evelyn’s Table, The Barbary, and The Palomar, as well as Akoko, and Bossa, and in Somerset, OSIP. She previously implemented lists at Sager+Wilde, Den Vandrette in Copenhagen, 10 William Street in Sydney and Noma, Mexico.

Marked in bold, fourteen options by the glass range from Artefact #2 Tempranillo, Finca Venta de Don Quijote 2022 from Toledo at £7, to Campanian Greco ‘T’ara rà’, Cantina Giardino 2021 at £16 from magnum. By the bottle, sparkling options include Waiting Love sake, Niizawa, Miyagi at £64 per 360ml, Petr Koráb’s “Orange On Leaves” Moravian pét-nat at £75, and the 2018 Rupture Meunier Champagne (Sans Sulfites) by Marie Copinet (£135). Equitably, the highest-priced bottle of all is Frédéric Cossard 2021 Gevrey-Chambertin Les Genevrières at £188. Another bin of note is Grenache 186 from Ochota Barrels, Adelaide Hills, where Spencer was a cellar assistant.

Corkage is set at £29, equivalent to the cheapest bin, though to quote wine personality, Tom Harrow, who initially said this of Enoteca Turi, attempting BYO in such a venue as Sune might be seen as attempting to “hang your A-Level art project in the Uffizi”.

Spencer is assisted by appropriately named Chardonné Cooper, a fashion PR turned sommelier of Planque, while mixologist, Spencer Large (formerly of Barbecoa and Nuala where Spencer also worked – both venues RIP) operates the bar, dispensing clean citrus-pepped house martinis, starring No. 3 gin and Cocchi Americano, as well as being a partner in the business. The ethos of sustainability characterising the wine list doesn’t seem such an imperative when applied to Large’s spirits collection, however.

Dishes

The kitchen brigade is led by Michael Robins, formerly of Sous Sol in Winnipeg, who previously worked at James Ramsden’s Pidgin, as well as Bibendum, Lyle’s and Leroy (the latter currently doing free corkage on Saturday lunchtimes).

Dinner opened with perfectly pudgy Carlingford oysters dressed in subtle koji mignonette, paired with Midori-scented, silky, racy, “friendly, house sake”, said Spencer, Tokubetsu Kamo Kinshu, from fifth generation Hiroshima brewery, Kanemitsu. This was poured, as per the majority of drinks for the table, in Riedel Overture stemware – proving to be good tools.

Next, homemade grilled flatbread, which tore like milk bread, was served with invigorating – perhaps too much for some diners – horseradish cream dressed in ample trout roe. Following, a considered take on the post-lockdown staple of Caesar salad, a dish which “got Michael the job” said Spencer, was arranged as a series of whole, white lettuce leaves clasping depthful smoked eel from the sustainably accredited, Devonshire Eel Co. With this, Spencer chose Jura grape, Savagnin, albeit from the improbable location of Hauts Côtes de Beaune. Something of an “outlaw” said Spencer, Jean-Yves Devevey’s declassified “Jus Rare” (2021) is already a Sune favourite, being as crisp and invigorating as a paper cut.

As tiny dogs walked past outside, looking rather grand given diners sit low at Sune, the Savagnin continued with a showstopping tartare. Dairy beef from local-ish free-range butcher, Flock & Herd was heaped over a croque monsieur of aged Cheddar and Gruyère – the cheese blend intended to make the dish feel “a bit more Big Mac” said Spencer. This “emblematic, irreverent”, almost lasagna-like dish, based on a combination of dishes ordered, then put together by off-duty chefs at Montreal’s late-night Le Express, delivered layers of umami.

Not one, but three drinks ensued with the final savoury course of Gloucester Old Spot pork chop precisely sliced on the bone awash in a deeply hued prawn and lemongrass sauce. Warmed in a ceramic structure, the “vegemite”, said Spencer, evoking Kimoto Junmai Te To Te from Tsuchida, made from barely polished brown rice, was rather jolie laide on its own, until applied to the tender pork and accompanying pink fir potatoes with hollandaise. Spencer also offered the 2020, 10-day skin contact Peaches from Manon Farm, Adelaide Hills, a field blend of Chardonnay, Pinot Gris, Sauvignon Blanc, and Savagnin by Monique Millton, scion of the compelling bon viveur and pioneering biodynamic New Zealand winemaker, James Millton. Indeed, Monique features in Spencer’s upcoming book, “Natural Wine, No Drama” out on 11th April (Harper Collins/Pavilion). A light Bourgogne Rouge, Marthe Boillot, alas, felt out of place.

Finally, Tarte Tatin topped with a cross between vanilla sorbet and gelato, met marzipan-scented, oxymoronically titled, Passito of Chaos being the second release from “The Vineyard of Chaos” where rows of white and red vines are interspersed. Finally, a drop of Barney Wilczak’s concentrated 1,000 trees made from an orchard on Highgrove at Capreolus distillery, could be tasted well into the walk to the tube.

Last word

A highly competent, humble-seeming team, forensically focused on details right down to the beauty of the eco-friendly paper stock and Gaudi-esque loo sink, though with room for improvement on wall art, look after their guests as if they are prize vines at this ideal local with appetising, worldly food and a pleasantly provocative drinks list.

Best for

• Honey Spencer’s indie snapshot into the Illuminati of natural wine producers
• Fine-tuned, comforting dishes
• Candlelit setting
• Warm welcome, and freezing, impeccable martini

Value: 94, Size: 89, Range: 95, Originality: 95, Experience: 97; Total: 94

SUNE – 129A Pritchards Road, London, E2 9AP; 020 4568 6675; ciao@sune.restaurant; sune.restaurant