One of the most useful places for a wine professional in London is 67 Pall Mall. This members’ club for oenophiles has one of the capital’s largest selections of wine, an enviable team of sommeliers, luxurious surroundings, very reasonable corkage fees and has consequently become something of a hub for the trade. As a freelance writer, I visited it frequently and knew that I would miss it keenly when I moved away from the city two weeks ago.
Fortunately for me, I moved to the city that is due to get the club’s first overseas outpost: Singapore. Even more fortunately, CEO Grant Ashton was in town last week to show me round the site and take some pictures of the club’s new premises.
(Disclaimer: I have previously been paid to write event reviews for the club’s website, and plan to work with them in Singapore in the future.)
The site of 67 Pall Mall Singapore, as it shall be known, is the penthouse of the Shaw Centre on Scotts Road, just off the mall-mecca of Orchard Road. Other tenants of the building include Les Amis, the Michelin-starred restaurant boasting one of Singapore’s most highly-prized (and priced) wine lists, its simpler sibling Bistro du Vin and indeed several other eateries in the same group (about which you can read in Eating out in Singapore), which is also closely related to fine-wine trader Vinum.
The 27th-floor penthouse was formerly the private residence of a Shaw family member, whose fortune originates from the film industry, and was most recently a luxury spa, but it has lain empty for several years, waiting for the right tenant to come knocking.
A members' club for wine lovers – of which, I am discovering, Singapore has an ample number – was evidently the perfect partner. The same interior designer and architect has been employed to recreate the ambience of the London original, whose General Manager Niels Sherry will be relocating to Singapore to oversee development. The provisional opening date is September 2020 – although there is a lot of work to do before that happens.
The site itself is huge, with floor-to-ceiling windows and a balcony that runs around the entire building. A main bar and lounge area will be accompanied by flexible meeting and dining rooms, plus there is a glass box on the second floor (a former bedroom) that will be converted into a spirits bar. The air-conditioning bill, I am assured, will be substantial.
The popularity of the London venue – which recently made a gross profit of £612,000 (€651,000/$736,000) on sales of £10.2 million (€10.8m/$12.3m), according to The Times – as well as the emergence of several London imitators, suggests that the Singapore outpost has got every chance of being a success. I am, at the very least, fortuitously placed to find out first hand.
