John Mortimer portrays Rumpole as an ageing, henpecked, curmudgeonly barrister married to “She Who Must Be Obeyed”. Rumpole’s favourite watering hole is Pomeroy’s Wine Bar, where he regularly drinks the house wine, Château Thames Embankment. Pomeroy’s was based on the El Vino Wine Bar in Fleet Street.
El Vino appeared not only in Mortimer’s Rumpole novels but also regularly in the satirical magazine Private Eye. There, it was portrayed as the habitual haunt of the journalist Lunchtime O’Booze [1], the stereotype of the Fleet Street journalist - until the 1980s, Fleet Street was the centre of the British newspaper industry.
El Vino’s prominence in the last century is best illustrated by the case of Gill and another v El Vino Co. Ltd. [1983] 1 All ER. The case was brought by a solicitor, Tess Gill, and a journalist, Anna Coote. Under El Vino’s policy, women were not permitted to drink at or near the bar. They could pay at the bar but then had to sit at a table at the side or in a room at the back and wait to be served. If a table was not free, they had to wait until a table was free before they were served. This rule was introduced “to reduce congestion at the bar and to spare the ladies the discomfort of standing at the bar where they might be pushed about and jostled.” Gill and Coote went to the bar and ordered drinks; when the barman refused to serve them there and directed them to a table, they declined and sought an injunction under the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, alleging discrimination. Gill and Coote lost their case in the Mayor’s and City of London Court, before His Honour Judge Ranking who was influenced in his judgment by being told that the system had been in place for some thirty years and there had been very few complaints.
Gill and Coote brought the case to the Court of Appeal. The judges, Lords Justices Eveleigh, Griffiths and Sir Roger Ormrod, all had to declare an interest because they had all been customers of El Vino - it was thought that it would be difficult to find a judge who had not been a customer so no objection was raised. In his judgment Lord Justice Griffiths said “El Vino is no ordinary wine bar. It has become a unique institution in Fleet Street. Every day it is thronged with journalists, solicitors, and barristers exchanging the gossip of the day. No doubt it is the source of many false rumours which have dashed the hopes of many an aspirant to a High Court appointment”. By a unanimous decision, Gill and Coote won their case.
Each of the four Inns of Court has now opened its own restaurant or bar (The Garden Room, Pegasus, The MCR and The Bridge), offering a cheaper and uncrowded alternative to El Vino’s. Nowadays El Vino is virtually empty at lunchtime, and El Vino would welcome anyone, standing or not.
[1] https://www.johnjessop.com/el-vino-redux/