‘It’s like stepping back 300 years’: Inside one of London’s oldest wine cellars

National World - LocalTV

We head down to The Stafford Hotel, and venture down into the wine cellar where Winston Churchill is thought to have drunk magnum’s of champagne.

Transcript

00:00 Well, when you step in the cellar, literally like you're stepping in another time.

00:04 Welcome to the Stafford cellar.

00:07 We are in one of the oldest cellars in London.

00:09 Roughly we talk about 380 years back in time.

00:13 And it was the private cellar of Lady Lyttelton, which at the time was, they were saying that

00:19 it was the babysitter of Queen Victoria.

00:22 You touched on the history as well during the war.

00:25 Could you just tell us a little bit about that?

00:27 Well, during the Second World War, Stafford was hosting American and Canadian officers

00:31 mainly.

00:33 So when it wasn't that safe up in the hotel, of course, they were coming down to seek shelter.

00:40 And hopefully maybe with a bottle opener, it would have been a little bit more fun,

00:44 I think.

00:45 Well, for sure, of course, we knew, we were mostly sure that Winston Churchill passed

00:51 by the Stafford.

00:53 He most likely was a guest in the bar and maybe had any meeting down here.

01:00 And we know for a fact that champagne was one of his favorite drinks.

01:06 And he was saying that the perfect size to drink by himself, it was a Magnum.

01:13 And talk to me about some of the wines you've got in here.

01:15 All right.

01:16 So we have a beautiful selection of wine.

01:17 We're talking about something roughly to 600 beans, 600 different wines, roughly, almost

01:24 there.

01:25 And we have a wide selection, of course.

01:29 We are quite strong on French wine with a main focus on Bordeaux and Burgundy.

01:35 And do you have a kind of favorite wine that's kept in here?

01:39 Favorite wine?

01:40 I had.

01:41 Unfortunately, we sold it.

01:43 It was my assistant, Cesare, that sold it quite recently.

01:46 It was the Chateau Mouton from 1982, which we had a beautiful pleasure to last year to

01:54 do the harvest in there.

01:56 And the Roger family actually served it to us on the lunch after the harvest.

02:01 And that was my favorite wine whatsoever.

02:03 Unfortunately, it's gone.

02:05 All right.

02:06 So in the wine cellar is great.

02:08 We have a, it's quite wine focused.

02:10 We are hosting a lot of wine tasting, not just private, but also open to whoever want

02:16 to join.

02:17 We most likely will do it on the last Friday of the month.

02:21 This wine cellar feels very much rooted in London's history.

02:26 Do you feel like that when you're here?

02:28 Do you feel like you're almost a part of London history when you're working here?

02:32 Well, when you step in the cellar, literally like you're stepping in another time, that's

02:37 how it feels like because literally we preserve as much as we could, like the integrity of

02:43 it and the particularity without touching that much or refurbishing it that much.

02:51 And literally when you step inside the cellar, it's like to step back 300 years ago.

02:57 And it's just beautiful.

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