It’s one thing to look for food in the gov­ern­ment quarter, but what a politico bar­fly wants to know is “Where can I get a decent Cham­pagne with­in crawl­ing dis­tance of Par­lia­ment?”. As DPF and Cac­tus Kate found out (stand­ard Kiwib­log warn­ing: com­ments con­tain copi­ous amounts of poo), there is noth­ing worth­while at the Back Bench­er (Kate evid­ently shares my lack of excite­ment for Mumm).

Apart from Maria Pia’s and Le Canard (which pre­sum­ably have fine selec­tions, but don’t count as bars), there really is not much prop­er bub­bly around in Thorndon. Fol­low­ing the Wel­ling­tonista tra­di­tion of pre­fer­ring use­ful inform­a­tion to vin­dict­ive invect­ive, after the jump I have provided a list, in approx­im­ate order of dis­tance from the Back Bench­er, of Cham­pagne selec­tions at nearby bars and pubs.

Thistle Inn: Gos­set NV
Occi­dent­al: Laurent-Per­ri­er NV
Plate: Mumm NV, Moët & Chan­don NV
Trade Kit­chen: Laurent-Per­ri­er NV (and prob­ably oth­ers)
Par­is: two NV plus Dom Perignon

Once you get to that dis­tance, you reach Arbit­rageur and the Wine Loft, and all but the fussi­est flies should have no com­plaints at either. But that’s a fair stag­ger, and while one would not expect great things from the Back Bench­er (des­pite the excel­lence of Cel­lar­vate), it does raise the ques­tion of why there are no prop­er bars (just pubs, cafés and res­taur­ants) up that end of town. Sure, the ste­reo­typ­ic­al grey-car­diganned civil ser­vant would have tut-tut­ted at the thought, but times are dif­fer­ent now, and I’d have thought that a Vivo- or Beau­jolais-style wine bar would go down very well in that loc­ale. Per­haps someone should buy up that old sub­sta­tion next to the MfE build­ing and turn it into a real cock­tail and wine bar, with enough choice of Cham­pers to keep even the prick­li­est cac­tus happy.