Bites: Places where the wine is on show

Foliage, 66 Knightsbridge, London SW1 (020-7201 3723)

The chef changed earlier this year, but the menu at the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park hotel's restaurant remains luxuriously French. There's a wine list of 500 bins, as you can see as you walk past the 4,000 bottles stored on either side of a glass-walled passage between the bar and restaurant. Clock the bottles of Bordeaux and white Burgundies. Then stretch the wallet to suit the £42 dinner menu. For £25.50 lunch includes two glasses of wine chosen by the sommelier.

Hotel du Vin, Church Street, Birmingham (0121-200 0600)

From ophthalmology to oenology, the Victorian hospital in Birmingham has turned into an eye opener for wine lovers. Among the many wines on show in the visible cellar outside the Screwpull bar, are bottles from Napa Valley's boutique Harlan Estate winery and a 1990 Château le Pin from Pomerol for £825. To eat with these, the bistro serves French classics like Roquefort and pear salad, calves' liver, and ribeye with pommes frites.

Teca, 54 Brooks Mews, London W1 (020-7495 4774)

The mainly Italian wines from some of the country's best producers are kept behind a glass wall as a feature of this modish Mayfair mews restaurant. The cooking is also contemporary Italian, drawing on traditional and rustic ingredients for refined results: Pecorino and new potato salad with dried tomatoes; crab cake with roquette sauce, aubergine gnocchi and tomato and basil sauce. Lunch £19.50 for two courses, dinner £32 for three.

Vinopolis Wine Wharf, Vinopolis, Stoney Street, London SE1 (020-7940 8335)

In brick-walled vaults of this wine centre's bar, bottles from every wine-producing country are kept all the way up the wall. There are 300 bins, plus sparklers, ports, grappas and armagnacs, of which almost a third are available by the glass. Food is wine-friendly – there's half a lobster with fries, poached salmon, or a plate of Neal's Yard cheeses, for example.