A St James’s wine merchant since 1698 — the great coffee scales that weighed Byron and Beau Brummell still in the shop, two royal warrants, cellars running under St James’s.
Best for Fine wine, whisky, the Good Ordinary Claret
The scales are the thing to understand first. Just inside Britain's oldest wine merchant stand the great coffee scales, and for two centuries the custom of the house was to weigh not the goods but the customers. Byron sat in those scales. So did Beau Brummell. The ledgers recorded their weights alongside their wine bills, with a discretion that made the practice a privilege rather than an indignity — an intimacy between merchant and client that tells you what kind of relationship this shop has always sold alongside the claret.
Trading at 3 St James's Street since 1698, Berry Bros. predates the very idea of the wine list as most of the world knows it. Beneath the shop, cellars run under St James's itself — bottles aging below the pavement where London walks unaware. Above ground, the house holds two royal warrants, supplying the palace as it has across centuries of coronations.
And yet the most quietly radical thing Berry Bros. sells is honesty. Its famous house claret is named, with three hundred years of confidence behind the joke, Good Ordinary Claret — a wine whose entire marketing is the refusal to oversell. A house that has tasted everything, weighed poets, and cellared bottles through every war since the Glorious Revolution has earned the right to tell you plainly: this one is good, ordinary, and exactly what it says. Fine wine and whisky for the collectors; the Good Ordinary for everyone who understands that the oldest merchant in Britain has nothing left to prove.
Founded in 2009 by Sam Galsworthy, Fairfax Hall and Jared Brown, Sipsmith became the first new copper-pot distillery to open in London in almost 200 years, after the founders successfully lobbied to change an 1823 law that had banned stills under 1,800 litres. Its 300-litre still, Prudence, still produces small-batch London Dry Gin from the distillery's home in Chiswick, now a certified B Corporation.
Sorbito is an agave spirits tasting room and bottle shop at 178 Stoke Newington Road in London, launched by The Sin Gusano Project and reported by trade press as London's first venue of its kind dedicated specifically to mezcal and agave spirits.
Best for Agave-spirits tastings, mezcal and bottles to take home
Sorbito is an agave spirits tasting room and bottle shop at 178 Stoke Newington Road in London, launched by The Sin Gusano Project and reported by trade press as London's first venue of its kind dedicated specifically to mezcal and agave spirits. The site describes it as "a hub for education, exploration and appreciation of traditional agave spirits."
The venue uses preloaded tasting cards paired with dispensing machines to let visitors sample from a rotating selection before buying, with bottles available to take home in standard packaging or in Sorbito's own returnable 200ml format. Independent trade coverage (The Spirits Business, The Upcoming) reports that most of the mezcal poured is sourced directly from Mexico, consistent with the operator's own framing of the venue as agave-spirits-specific rather than a general spirits retailer.
Sorbito opened in October 2025 in Stoke Newington, an area trade press has nicknamed part of London's "mezcal mile." Its dedicated agave-spirits format combines self-serve tastings with bottle retail.
Visit official site ↗
Visit Instagram ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗