Maggie Jones

Is this the end of house wine?

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. Just five years ago, it was rare to find a wine list without at least one bottle under £25; now it’s increasingly common to find one 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 90s and early 00s and recall it being fabulously cheap – a point emphasised by the magnums of house wine