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Wine List of the Week: Treadwell at The Store

26 January 2026 By Douglas Blyde

Housed within Oxford’s reimagined Boswells, Treadwell is a room that knows how to speak about place, from award-winning gin to carefully framed views. And does it deliver? “In flashes,” writes Douglas Blyde. “The cocktails, the polenta and the warmth of the team hint at distinction, even as the restaurant continues to decide exactly what it wants to be.”

Once a Broad Street fixture purveying cookware, toys, luggage, cosmetics, fashion and pharmacy staples, Boswells spent nearly three centuries schooling Oxford in the art of browsing before COVID hastened its closure. Its reincarnation by Urban R (Stevenage Town Centre Regeneration, Tribeca, King’s Cross) recasts the former department store as a chain of rediscovered “departments”, now given over to sleeping, drinking and eating.

Treadwell takes its name from the passage where fish hawkers, shoemakers and scavengers once earned their keep, its floor traced with pavement lights. SquareMeal promised “it’ll be unlike anything you’ve ever seen before”, without explaining how. OX Magazine was more precise, its reviewer lying awake over an Eton Mess reworked as white chocolate panna cotta, concluding that “there is clearly significant expertise in that kitchen”. A TripAdvisor visitor, dining on “Bowling Day” [sic], praised a team which “found exactly the right balance between being there when needed without being oppressive”.

The building keeps nudging guests towards context. Guest-room windows carry “Discover your view” QR codes, directing attention outward, while large World Gin Award notices on the street signal where authorship already feels settled.

Drinks

Wine is best read against the hotel’s stated values of locality and partnership. Coffee is from Oxford roastery, Newground, while bespoke spirits made with Hawkridge Distillery in neighbouring West Berkshire culminated in The Store × Hawkridge London Dry Gin winning Best in England, then World’s Best last year. Against this, the wine offer feels practical rather than expressive.

Under shared ownership (EQ Group and Reef Group), the wine programme at Pimpan, within Parisian sister property, Hôtel Dame des Arts, offers a useful point of comparison – not because it is radical, but because it is decided. Champagne dominates: from the manifesto maison, Telmont through Krug and Billecart-Salmon, settling on growers such as Larmandier-Bernier, Agrapart and Françoise Bedel. Burgundy follows, from Saumaize-Michelin and Laventureux through to Albert Grivault and Prieuré Roch, while the Loire and Rhône add texture – Alexandre Bain and Alain Graillot appearing as edges. The question Pimpan poses is not “how far can we push?”, but “what is a wine list willing to stand behind once the safety of breadth is removed?”

By contrast, Treadwell is international in reach and built for circulation, across bar, terrace and dining room, where usefulness takes precedence over authorship. It opens with brand-led Champagne shorthand: Veuve Yellow Label NV and Dom Pérignon 2013. More nuanced is the handling of English wine. A once-close relationship with a local sparkling producer cooled after a parting of ways, and the focus now shifts to Hampshire’s Hattingley, with Classic Reserve NV and iced Bacchus NV in prominent roles. Assured and respected, the substitution nonetheless loosens the geographic thread.

By the glass, Aveleda’s Fonte Vinho Verde Rosé feels stranded out of season like deckchairs covered in snow. Cortese from Volpi is clean and slender, offering little dialogue with a menu leaning into spice and fat. More conviction shows in Paranga White from Ktima Kir-Yianni, subject to token bâtonnage, and Langhe Favorita from Azienda Agricola Negro, both of which feel deliberately chosen. The outlier is Not Your Grandma’s Riesling from Chaffey Bros Wine Co., Australia, whose name does the work its selection does not.

By the bottle, familiarity dominates with Chablis (Domaine de Varoux) and Sancerre (Domaine Laporte Les Grandmontains). Reds follow a similar logic: Fleurie (Chermette), Zinfandel (Bogle Old Vine), and Rioja Reserva (Sierra Cantabria). A welcome inclusion is Selección de Familia Cabernet Franc from Patagonia (Humberto Canale), which brings a note of exoticism without financial strain.

In terms of maturity, the range thins. The oldest white is Maison Roche de Bellene’s Meursault Vieille Vignes 2015. At the other end, Savigny-lès-Beaune Pinot Noir 2022 from the same house raises a fair question of readiness. The absence of half bottles and magnums further limits flexibility.

The overall effect recalls the story of someone who wanders into an end-of-pier tarot reader only to be told, “your life will be completely ordinary”. They never recover. The building already proves, through coffee and gin, that it understands locality and partnership. A rotating black book, shaped with Oxford merchants within walking distance, could allow Treadwell’s wines to speak with the same confidence as the rest of the hotel.

The cocktail list shows clearer authorship. Several drinks nod directly to Oxford, including Dreaming Spires and Oxford Garden Party. The irony is that the hotel’s main cocktail energy sits on the roof, where bespoke spirits made with Hawkridge are positioned to shine, yet on this occasion we were excluded because we were accompanied by our eight-year-old daughter, who often behaves better than most adults in hospitality settings.

Behind the bar, Patrick Gomesz, joining from The Big Society after its deliberate move away from cocktails towards a beer wall, builds with conviction around Hawkridge’s range: the headline gin, a gold-medal vodka, an unpeated English 12-year single malt, Caribbean rum aged up to eight years, and a tequila blanco finished here from shipped blue agave. A Ruby Bramble offers a well-judged non-alcoholic counterpoint. The standout is Sunny Side Up, a vodka drink with limoncello, vanilla and fresh egg white, finished with a lemon twist floating skin-up like a yolk, while his Botanist’s Gimlet tightens the frame with lime and coriander syrup. Beer, by contrast, remains an afterthought, with no evident engagement with local breweries.

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Dishes

A-Boards promise “untraditionally British” cooking, from smoked cheddar churros with saffron dip to tuna with papaya and coconut slaw, ideas which hint at direction. Set against them are bangers and mash, fish and chips, and a smashed cheeseburger, staples already ubiquitous nearby and largely unnecessary here.

Oversight of service and pairings sits with Giulia Armillotta, a senior food and beverage leader with a promising CV: educated at ALMA, then trained as a sommelier in Milan and Padua at Ristorante Cracco and Le Calandre, before moving to London for Angler at South Place Hotel. In Perth, she became Head Sommelier at Wildflower, COMO The Treasury, then stepped into large-scale hotel operations at InterContinental Wellington. Tonight, however, she deputised another Giulia from the restaurant team, newly through WSET Level 3, who poured cautiously and sparingly, smiling throughout. It became a tale of Giulia and Giulia.

The cooking is led by Kieran Munday, appointed head chef last May. At its best, on waiter Henry’s recommendation, his kitchen delivered a standout crispy polenta with hazelnut aioli, Parmesan and pickled onion, paired with that Paranga. Particularly successful, the exterior recalled burnt bread ends while the interior stayed soft and yielding. Crab arancini with crab and dill mayonnaise proved heavy with oil, enough to send our daughter’s attention drifting towards the Samme Snow murals on the wall which practically beg to be coloured in.

The lamb belly with harissa yoghurt, apple and fennel salad edged towards end of the night kebab-like richness – not ideal, taken sober, before 7pm. Aveleda Vinho Verde struggled here, drained of the fruit sweetness needed to meet fat and spice. The miso butternut broth with vegetable gyoza, pak choi and pickled spaghetti squash was, in effect, soup. The gyozas floating within offered the sort of fast-food comfort reminiscent of Korean frozen dumplings, while the vegetables retained crunch, suggesting they had actually been made fresh. Hard to square this with the idea of “untraditionally British”, though Not Your Grandma’s Riesling proved the most effective match of the night alongside.

The Store’s cheeseburger, ordered on a whim, was dry and lacking relish, yet people dressed up to eat it despite the less demanding Shake Shack opposite. The steak fared better, cut correctly and paired with MacMurray Pinot Noir from California, alongside bone marrow boulangère potatoes and a slightly fragile peppercorn sauce. A dab of Veuve Rosé cut through pork belly without surprise. Side vegetables, ordered from a selection otherwise 80% reliant on potatoes, were competently handled.

Dessert brought a martini glass of orange trifle, curd-like, and a discreetly flavoured passion fruit sorbet, accompanied with Hattingley Valley Enrìce Bacchus, a controlled ice wine, which here lacked weight.

Last Sip

Evident in the fire plan, and in the reverential photographs charting what stood before, Treadwell sits inside a labyrinthine building which knows how to speak about place. Coffee, gin, and the view are carefully framed, and there are flashes of confidence: the cocktails, the polenta, and, crucially, the warmth of a team who carry the room more securely than any single dish or bottle. Yet this clarity is unevenly applied. Despite the pedigree of the beans, breakfast coffee, much needed given the perhaps overly supportive bed, is flattened by a bank of self-service machines which strip it of character, enough to send us out early past shopfronts lifting their shutters, the city raw after Saturday night, to Black Sheep, where a proper cup restored perspective.

Nothing here is, however, disastrous. Too often, however, execution settles for adequacy where the building, and brand, argues for more. With a tighter wine offer, and greater confidence in the kitchen’s stronger ideas – well supported by a service team which includes Henry, also through WSET Level 3 – Treadwell could align more fully with the ambition which surrounds it.

What stays with you is the senior team, who spoke easily about Oxford and its layers, pointing us towards the University Museum of Natural History, where a panel notes that “a cooling climate around 60,000 years ago brought mammoths, woolly rhinos, wolves and humans to what is now Oxfordshire”.

For now, Treadwell works best as a lively all-day room for people whose conversation runs further than food and wine, hinting at distinction while still deciding exactly what form things should take.