Stable Wines, the retail offering from Goodbye Horses, is set to open in Islington in December.

Alex Young and George de Vos, the founders of restaurant and bar Goodbye Horses, are joined by Nathalie Nelles as the wine director and Fred Clelland as the general manager. Both previously worked for the P. Franco group.

Stable Wines came about almost accidently, a happy side-effect of a conveniently sourced cellar space.

“We needed additional storage for Goodbye Horses,” explains Young, “and a very interesting space came up a five-minute walk away that has a gigantic cellar. Prior to us opening this as a shop, it was our off-site storage but we managed to get a premises licence to open as a wine shop with a bar downstairs. 

“Essentially it’s a tiny glass cuboid on Essex Road, and behind the counter is the staircase that leads to this huge labyrinthine basement, which is really surprising when you’re going into this tiny little glass cube. It used to be a bank vault, and the vault door is still there, so we’re going to put all the rare cuvées behind there, nice and secure.”

Young adds: “We’re very much into our natural wine, and we focus on the zero-zero end of the spectrum. I think that accounts for about 70% of our range and we always aspire to keep it that way.

“The term zero-zero is less ambiguous than a lot of the terminology that’s used in natural wine, because it literally means nothing added and nothing removed. In terms of what is natural, what is not natural … that’s more of a spectrum, and I suppose zero-zero is more of an absolute. 

“I understand that these phrases cause a significant amount of confusion sometimes, but at Goodbye Horses we found that people are becoming more and more knowledgeable about all of these different terms, and an increasing amount of people are aware of terms such as zero-zero.”

And the equine theme? Goodbye Horses is the name of a song by Q Lazzarus and also happens to be Nelles’s karaoke song of choice. 

“We’ve been working with Nathalie since the very beginning,” says Young. “She’s been steadily building up our wine list and really spent a lot of time preparing for Stable. She is the perfect fit for this role.”