Noble Rot

About Noble Rot

In 2013, two wine-obsessed friends decided that the world of wine writing was run by fussy old men — and that it needed a dose of punk. The result was Noble Rot, a London-based magazine about wine, food and pop culture that has since become one of the most influential independent food-and-drink publications in Britain. Describing itself as “the home of exciting writing about wine and food,” Noble Rot pairs irreverent, jargon-free prose with bold illustration, and along the way it has blurred the boundaries between gastronomy and the creative arts — putting chefs, musicians, artists and actors on the same pages.

Founded by Dan Keeling and Mark Andrew, a Master of Wine, the magazine is published every four months in print and digital formats from London. What began as a cult A5 magazine sold in a handful of independent wine merchants and music shops has grown into a small empire: three celebrated restaurants in Bloomsbury, Soho and Mayfair, and a trio of wine shops trading under the “Shrine to the Vine” name. Below is a detailed profile of the magazine, its founders, its editorial character and the hospitality business it spawned. Visit the official website at noblerot.co.uk.

History and Founding

Noble Rot was founded in 2013 by Dan Keeling and Mark Andrew. Keeling came from the music industry — he had been managing director of Island Records and head of A&R at Parlophone, where he was responsible for signing acts including Coldplay, Bombay Bicycle Club and Lily Allen — and was studying for his WSET Diploma in wine. Andrew was a Master of Wine and a senior buyer for Roberson Wines. Together they wanted to create a magazine that made wine less pretentious and more approachable: a publication that would educate readers about what was going on in the world of wine without them even knowing they were being educated.

The first issues were modest affairs — an A5 magazine, initially without colour pages — sold mainly in independent wine merchants and music shops in London. Contributors to the early issues included respected wine writers Jamie Goode and Alice Feiring, chef Stevie Parle of Dock Kitchen and Stephen Harris of The Sportsman, alongside rock stars and new writers looking for their first break. The name, a nod to Botrytis cinerea — the “noble rot” fungus that concentrates the sugars in grapes to produce great sweet wines such as Sauternes — signalled that this was a magazine written by people who loved wine deeply but refused to take it solemnly.

The Kickstarter Beginning

Like many independent magazines, Noble Rot began life hand-to-mouth. In September 2013 the founders turned to the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter to keep publishing, seeking to raise £8,000 to fund another four issues over the following year. At the time of the announcement they had 117 backers who had pledged £4,726, with a deadline of 21 October; they promised that if they raised £10,000 or more they would add colour pages to the magazine. Anyone willing to pledge £1,500 was offered a tutored tasting of French and Italian wines for up to twelve people in their own home. The campaign captured the magazine’s spirit exactly: democratic, convivial and built around the simple pleasure of drinking well with friends.

Dan Keeling and Mark Andrew

The partnership at the heart of Noble Rot is one of the great double acts in modern British food and drink. Dan Keeling brought the instincts of a record executive — an eye for talent, a distaste for stuffiness and a contact book spanning music and media — and went on to be named Louis Roederer Food & Wine Writer of the Year in both 2017 and 2018, as well as Fortnum & Mason Drink Writer of the Year in 2016 and Louis Roederer Emerging Wine Writer of the Year in 2015. Mark Andrew brought deep trade expertise as a Master of Wine. Stephen Harris, the chef behind the Michelin-starred Sportsman pub in Kent, summed up their impact: Keeling and Andrew started the magazine, he said, “and I absolutely loved it and thought it was the best thing that had happened in the world of wine for a long time, because I always felt the world of wine was run by fussy old men. Noble Rot felt like punk.”

Editorial Character: Wine, Food and Pop Culture

Noble Rot covers wine and food through the lens of pop culture, and pop culture through the lens of wine and food. Its pages have brought together chefs such as Fergus Henderson, Valentine Warner, José Pizarro, Pierre Koffmann, Yotam Ottolenghi and Honey & Co with artists and musicians including Brian Eno, Mark Ronson, David Shrigley, LCD Soundsystem, Madlib and Gilles Peterson — “blurring the boundaries between gastronomy and the creative arts,” as the magazine puts it. Interviewees and subjects have ranged from Keira Knightley, Nigella Lawson and Lily Allen to Professor Brian Cox, Irvine Welsh, Ed Balls, Caitlin Moran and even Francis Ford Coppola.

The writing is the point: funny, erudite, opinionated and allergic to tasting-note cliché. Regular contributors have included restaurant critic Marina O’Loughlin, broadcaster Shaun Keaveny, novelist John Niven, wine critics Neal Martin, Jamie Goode and Jon Bonné, and writer Kate Spicer. The magazine’s tone — warm, mischievous, intellectually curious — has made it as popular with chefs and sommeliers as with the merely thirsty.

Illustration and Design

Every issue of Noble Rot is, in the magazine’s own phrase, “beautifully illustrated.” Rather than relying on conventional food photography, the magazine commissions artists — David Shrigley among them — to illustrate its pages, giving it a visual identity closer to an art zine than a wine trade journal. The knallbunt — riotously colourful — aesthetic has become one of its signatures, and back issues are collected as much for their artwork as their articles.

From Magazine to Restaurants

In 2015, Keeling and Andrew did what few magazine publishers dare: they transposed their cult wine magazine into bricks and mortar, opening a wine bar and restaurant on Lamb’s Conduit Street in Bloomsbury. Stephen Harris acted as consultant chef, guiding head chef Paul Weaver — formerly of Harris’s Michelin-starred Sportsman team and of Fergus Henderson’s St John Bread & Wine — in creating a menu of St John-style classics such as duck hearts with braised chicory. What began as a wine bar “grew a lot bigger,” as Harris put it, when the pair found themselves with a full restaurant site.

A second site followed in Soho in 2020, and a third — the group’s most ambitious, at 5 Trebeck Street in Mayfair, the former site of the brasserie Le Boudin Blanc — opened in 2023, coinciding with the magazine’s tenth anniversary. The restaurants serve the magazine’s philosophy on a plate: fine cooking, trademark warmth and a wine programme built around characterful, honestly farmed bottles.

Shrine to the Vine: The Wine Shops

Alongside the restaurants, Keeling and Andrew launched Shrine to the Vine, a bottle-shop concept selling what they call “living wines” — “vibrant, characterful and alive, the opposite of industrial plonk.” The first shop opened in summer 2021 at 48 Lamb’s Conduit Street, across the road from the original Bloomsbury restaurant; a second followed at 27 Broadway Market in Hackney — a site with personal resonance, since the pair had sold the magazine to its previous incarnation, Noble Fine Liquor, since 2013 — and a third opened on Stoke Newington Church Street in 2025. The shops stock only wines the founders would be excited to drink themselves: thoughtfully farmed, minimally processed bottles that represent the people and places they come from.

The Tenth Anniversary and Beyond

Noble Rot celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2023, marking a decade since the magazine’s launch with the Mayfair opening and the continued expansion of the Shrine to the Vine shops. From a Kickstarter-funded A5 pamphlet to a multi-site hospitality group, its trajectory is one of the great independent publishing success stories of the past decade — proof, as Harris observed, that wine writing didn’t have to be run by fussy old men after all.

Awards and Recognition

Dan Keeling’s back-to-back Louis Roederer Food & Wine Writer of the Year titles in 2017 and 2018, his Fortnum & Mason Drink Writer of the Year award in 2016 and his Louis Roederer Emerging Wine Writer of the Year award in 2015 testify to the regard in which the magazine’s writing is held within the trade. The restaurants, too, have been garlanded with praise, becoming fixtures of London’s dining scene and regulars in critics’ best-of lists.

Frequency, Format and Where to Find It

Noble Rot magazine is based in London and published every four months — three issues a year — in both print and digital formats. It is sold through the magazine’s website, in the Shrine to the Vine shops and in independent retailers. The restaurants in Bloomsbury, Soho and Mayfair, and the shops on Lamb’s Conduit Street, Broadway Market and Stoke Newington Church Street, extend the brand into daily life. For subscriptions, back issues and restaurant bookings, visit noblerot.co.uk — the home of exciting writing about wine and food.