BLACK PUDDING AND BOLLY
Business a.m. – Friday 24th May 2002

Alongside the haggis suppers and margherita pizza, an Edinburgh chippy is selling everything from Cloudy bay to a Krug Rosé champagne for £119. He’ll even wrap it in newspaper if you like.

I’m standing in a fish and chip shop, mouth-watering aromas swirling round my nostrils, when a customer says: “Two bottles of Cloudy Bay, please.”
“There you are, sir. That’ll be £33.80.”
Bloody pretentious, I think. What’s wrong with a white pudding supper and some Irn-Bru like everyone else?
But this is L’Alba D’Oro fish and chicken bar and pizzeria (est 1975), which attracts some superlatives with the same consummate ease that the transport minister attracts flak.
L’Alba D’Oro (“golden morning”) has been awarded four-star takeaway status from VisitScotland because, basically, it is different class. Owner Filippo Crolla works hard to make it so, and the charmingly eccentric 48-year-old, originally a farmer from Cassino, is capricious enough to have a bottle of Krug Rosé champagne at £119 sitting alongside mince pie suppers at £2.50.
It is impossible to decide whether L’Alba D’Oro is a fish and chip shop selling wines, or a wine shop that sells haddock from Port Seton alongside Maltesers and teabags.
Crolla has amassed over 100 different – and extremely high quality – wines, bottles that would grace any cellar. He sells Dom Perignon (£69) and Bollinger (£47.50), Amarone della Valpolicella ’94 (£49.50), Prunotto Barolo (£16.80), Baron Philippe Pomerol (£11.80) and Chateauneuf du Pape (£10.26), as well as a host of more lowly priced sluggers such as Cote du Rhone at £3.70. He even has malts and port. And, of course, Cloudy Bay chardonnay, pinot noir and the legendary sauvignon (£14.50). That in itself is no mean feat. The stuff is gold dust. How does he manage it?
“I had to make an offer the importer couldn’t refuse,” says a grinning Crolla, who had originally gone solely for cheaper wines, believing that was what customers wanted. But that was wrong. “People are now wine educated.”
The turning point came one evening when a customer, who “honestly, looked like a bit of a tramp”, asked how much the Dom Perignon was. “I thought, this guy is a mess and he is wasting my time. I was busy. So I took the bottle down and he said ‘I’ll take four’. I thought he was making a joke, but he took out a bundle of £50 notes and gave me the £276. I couldn’t believe it.”
Crolla sells more than 1,000 carry-outs in a weekend and about 130 wines.
“There are some crazy persons,” he says in his delightful quirky English. “Last week, a guy bought five cases of wine and a load of pizzas for the warming of his house.”
But Crolla insists there will ever be a place for a can of juice with a fish supper.
“That’s life. You cannot take that away from the Scottish customer.”
Received wisdom in wine circles is that any dish slathered with vinegar is going to clobber any wine drunk with it. But if you go easy, you can get away with a sauvignon blanc or a dry and fruity rosé.
Crolla says: “I would suggest not too expensive. A £3 of £4 bottle. A soave, perhaps. That wine matches together with the fish. It’s fine.”
Crolla has 886 wines instantly on call “no problem”, and sells mixed cases too. He is adamant he can get any wine for any customer, “as long as it is in the country. It is my pleasure. You know, people say I love my wines more than my wife. But I don’t wish to comment.”
Mark Bargeton, a property management consultant, is the man who bought the Cloudy Bay, after trying to find it all over the city, including wholesalers. “Nobody had it because it has cult status now,” says Bargeton. “In fact, it was a wine shop down the road that suggested I try the chip shop.”

– Bill Clapperton