We have all become only too used to the surging cost of heating our homes, filling up our cars or doing the weekly shop. But there’s one price increase that hurts me more than all of these combined: the cost of a bottle of wine in a restaurant.

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Whereas just five years ago, it was rare to find a wine list without at least one bottle under £25, today it’s increasingly common to find one with little under £40. We have reached a point where £35 house wine is now normal. Take Maggie Jones in Kensington. I used to eat there regularly in the late nineties and early noughties and recall it being fabulously cheap, a point emphasised by the magnums of house wine on which they’d mark with a pencil how much you had drunk. Often it was quite a lot. When I returned this spring, however, after an almost 20-year absence, the cheapest bottle on their list was £37. 

Next month’s biggest London restaurant opening will be Ornella in Dalston, the second offering from The White Lotus actor Theo James and partners. Their menu hasn’t been published yet but the wine list for his existing site, Lupa in Highbury, shows that the cheapest bottles are £38.........

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