wine
I was 5 or 6 when I first tasted Port at my Aunt Uschi and Uncle Volker's wedding in Hamburg. Grown-ups would foolishly ask me to hold their glass while they took photos. By the time they turned back, the Port had disappeared. I had hoovered them up. It tasted nice - sweet and funny. I was supposed to be reciting a poem in German during the dinner around course number six. My mum told my dad "the child is drunk - you'd better take him for a walk round the block." The poem went OK, although I was very red in the face.
As a child growing up in the 60s, wine was suddenly no longer the exclusive realm of the upper classes. Through the medium of cheese and wine parties (with their amazing food on sticks stuck into grapefruit), wine seemed to be trickling down the social ladder. Wine with exotic names like Hirondelle, Mateus rose and Piesporter Michelsberg.
In my early to mid-teens, we passed through a couple of wine growing regions on holidays in Germany. The middle-Rhine and Baden. We all thought the wine was fabulous. Earthy and fruity.
Wind-forward to the early 80s. When Vera moved in, she said "you'll have to stop drinking this sweet German stuff and start with French." It was natural at that point to be experimenting with Australian. The bright yellow-orange oaky Chardonnays that tasted like Retsina. We moved quickly on to Californians. Then, as I started earning better money, we increasingly drank French, as that was served in restaurants.
After my first hit with Strawberry Switchblade in 1985, I started buying wine from Lay & Wheeler in Colchester. Their brochure was great. I found myself ordering Puligny-Montrachet because it sounded amazing. And a bottle of 1976 Yquem which, at 50 pounds, was the most I had spent on a bottle and was to spend until well into the 90s. I also started sneaking some German wine into the flat again.
Wind-forward until the mid-90s. After lean years of negative equity from 1989-1992 my luck had changed again. I had paid back the bank and had even accumulated some disposable cash after a few years of solid work, writing music for commercials. Having had my fingers burnt before, I was in no rush to buy a bigger house or a fancy car. Maybe another business? I was looking for something more predictable - less all-or-nothing. I thought about coffee, then about wine. I had developed a bit of a Fine Wine habit and had quite a penchant for Burgundy.
The shop I used to stop-by at on my way home from Soho on my bike was The Winery in Clifton Road W9. One day, late in 1995, I walked in and Derek, the pale-faced Manager, said, "we've been bought." It got me thinking. I phoned the new owners, a massive drinks distribution company, and asked them what their plans were for the shop, thinking it possible that paperwork for one shop was more hassle than they needed. "Why?" came the reply. "I'd like to buy it".
So, in the last few days of April 1996, I became a Wine Merchant. The story continues at www.thewineryuk.com
1) wine works its magic early
2) on the Mosel
3) Miami
4) Proprietor - from a photoshoot for Off-Licence News
5) with Russell Hone. I learnt so much from him about Burgundy.
6) Proprietor 2 - from a photoshoot for Off-Licence News
7) on the Mosel