London restaurant cuts price of fine wine

The world's finest wines are always priced astonishingly high in the best and most expensive restaurants making them out of reach for the majority. But a top London restaurant could change all that. Bob Bob Ricard is undercutting its competitors by capping the amount it marks up its wines at £50 a bottle. This means the Soho restaurant can offer top wines at a fraction of the price of other restaurants, which can make profits of up to 75 per cent, adding hundreds of pounds to the best wines.

A 1985 Château Haut Brion 1er Cru Classe, Graves, costs £318 at Bob Bob Ricard, but £1,000 at Gordon Ramsay at Claridge's. A bottle of 1999 Meursault Les Charmes, Comtes Lafon, costs £503 at The Greenhouse in Mayfair but £175 at Bob Bob Ricard. Its everyday bottles are also said to be cheaper than elsewhere. The owners say £50 is plenty to cover the cost of selecting, sourcing, storing and serving the wines and that it costs no more to open and store a cheaper bottle of wine than it does a more expensive one.