Inside London’s 300 year old wine cellar

Winston Churchill is rumoured to have spent many nights here during the war.

Transcript

00:00The Stafford London's historic wine cellars are among the oldest in London

00:05and house over 8,000 bottles of fine wines and champagnes. It's also a place

00:11where Prime Minister Winston Churchill supposedly spent many evenings during

00:17the war. Today I'm heading there to speak to a wine connoisseur and find out more

00:22about this historic part of London. We are in one of the oldest cellar in

00:27London. Roughly we talk about 380 years back in time and was the private cellar

00:34of Lady Lyttelton which at the time was they were saying that it was the

00:39babysitter of Queen Victoria. Well during the Second World War Stafford was

00:43hosting American and Canadian officers mainly so when it wasn't that safe up

00:50in the hotel of course they were coming down to seek shelter and hopefully maybe

00:55with a bottle opener would it be a little bit more fun I think. Well for

00:59sure of course we knew, we mostly sure that Winston Churchill passed by

01:05by the Stafford. He most likely was our guest in the in the bar and maybe had

01:12any meeting down here and we know for a fact that champagne was one of his

01:18favorite drink and he was saying that the perfect size to drink by himself it

01:24was a Magnum. Talk to me about some of the wines you've got in here. Alright so we

01:30have a beautiful selection of wine. We're talking about something roughly to 600

01:34bins, 600 different wines roughly almost there and we have a wide

01:41selection of course. We are quite strong on French wine with a main focus on

01:46Bordeaux and Burgundy. And do you have like a kind of favorite wine that's

01:51kept in here? Favorite wine I had, unfortunately we sold it. It was my

01:57assistant Cesare that sold it quite recently. It was the Mouton, Chateau Mouton

02:03from 1982 which we had a beautiful pleasure to last year to do the harvest

02:09in there and the Roger family actually served it to us on the lunch after the

02:14harvest and that was my favorite wine whatsoever unfortunately it's gone. This

02:19wine cellar feels very much rooted in London's history. Do you feel like that

02:25when you're here? Do you feel like you're almost a part of London history when

02:29you're working here? Well when you step in the cellar literally like you're

02:32stepping in another time that that's how it feels like because literally we

02:37preserve as much as we could like the integrity of it and the

02:43particularity without touching that much or refurbish it that much and

02:48literally when you step inside the cellar it's like to step back 300 years

02:54ago and it's just beautiful.