Vertical

You can't book, unless you're a crowd, so you push the door and take your chances, and that suits the place. Vertical runs on natural wine without making a manifesto of it: living pours, unfiltered bottles, growers I recognise and rate. The room asks nothing of you. Nobody lectures you on sediment, nobody hovers. My complaint is a small one: the list is sound but it seldom startles. I kept waiting for the glass that would make me grab my friend's arm, and it never quite came. That matters to me, though maybe not to you; an easy, well-chosen glass in a low-lit room is its own kind of evening. I'll drift back the way you do to a bar with no bookings, now and then, when I'm passing.