Lainston House. Near Winchester.

After a day recording my wisdom - or trying to - for the bits of video/slideshows we are putting pn the web, came down to this lovely place for a dinner put on by 'Decision' magazine. Some very high powered people were collecting awards.

They gave me an award too. Lifetime Achievement. Nice but kind of makes it sound like it's all over, don't you think? Anyway Barbara finds it hilarious I should be associated with anything involving the word 'decision'. But an award is an award. I didn't ask for it. They gave it and who am I to be ungracious?

Tony Laithwaite, Director of the Year....might as well bask in it while it lasts.

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Watched Glastonbury on TV. Reminded me last year we shared a table in a restaurant with two other couples. Never mind why.

The youngest guy seemed quiet. While I banged on about the wines as usual. But we found out he was a musician. Classical? No, Rock. What you play, like pubs? No. We played Wembley last year. Oh. What's the band then, Matthew? 'Muse'. Muse? I later texted the boys and got three earfuls of "Only the greatest live band there is... God, you're so embarrassing, Dad". I am. I'm now like that judge who said "What are The Beatles?" It's all over.

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Borough Market

The greatest bonus in having The Arch is that it sits within cheese smell distance of Borough Market.

I adore markets as much as I don't like supermarkets. Don't get me wrong; I use supermarkets...because I have to. We all have to. They fulfil a role. But I don't love them. My heart sinks as I pick up a trolley; it's no big tragedy, but it's a minus, not a plus.

Whereas... enter a market anywhere and my heart starts to sing. Big plus. Any market will do. I like le Marché de Castillon, Henley Farmer's Market, Ulverston Market, Durham Market. I particularly like that fish market on the Grand Canal by the Ponte Vecchio. Adelaide Food Market is a huge treat because the whole world is there, and Borough Market is getting that way. It's going increasingly cosmopolitan if that's the word I mean.

Guy making raclette, next to fresh Turkish Delight, French Squabs next to those milky italian cheese things look like little pouches tied with raffia. It's endless. I could live in Borough Market. I could quite likely die there too...in a Monsieur Creosote gastric explosion. 'Way to go', as they say.

But my market obsession is not just because I'm a Notorious Guts. The smells and tastes are not everything. It's the people, the life and the colour. And the sheer intoxicating fix got from the lovely creativity and obsessive passion of small producers ...of anything....doesn't have to be edible.

I suppose I just don't like BIG.

Big always sits so heavy. If I had loadsamoney I'd help anyone who wanted, to set up a market or market stall anywhere that didn't have one. I'd have stalls down streets, in car parks, waste spaces, old barns. It's a dream; millions of planners and healthnsafteyers would have to be taken away and locked up for this to happen.

But.....

If everyone's life could revolve around a happy market, a sunny vegetable garden, a big noisy dining table and a deep wine cellar it would mean that we had, in fact achieved heaven on earth.

Today was a day off in the sun. Pretended to be tourists; with Barbara and friends. Did the market, popped into our place for a sip of Champagne, did Southwark Cathedral, then caught the fast cat ferry down to Greenwich for a wander around the Naval College.

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Day at our Wine Arch in Vinopolis planning our grand Christmas Wine Show in November

I think it may be even better than the 40th birthday event we did last year in the Horticultural Hall.

There will be two halls of wine producers, a hall for 'wine theatre'! A hall for customers to meet up with some of us - like the Buyers and the Advisors and Merchants who look after them. And me.

Then there's our Arch itself a great hall with a huge tasting table.

All in one place. Music, lights jollity. Just what you need at the end of November. Make a note. Will be advertised soon.

Evening to Barbara' s vineyard for the annual 'lifting of the wires'. Vines thriving. Saw our first vine flower. A week earlier that last year!   

At home. Hot evening

Did my 'Signature Dish' which is pieces of fish, mixed seafood and colourful vegetables - peppers, peas, potatoes, courgettes - you can vary it a lot depending on what you have - put into a big shallow dish with olive oil, tomato concentrate, garlic, lemon slices, and put in a hot oven until it seems right. Whatever you do ... it seems to come out fine. The 'juice' is especially lovely. Anyway it's about the only thing I can reliably cook.

With it we had a bottle of our Verdicchio, which deserves to be better known. All the fuss over Pinot Grigio...fine. But try this wine in its curious bottle. I remember it as the first bottle of wine I ever bought.

I was underage. But in Italy. On a school trip to Naples by train. God knows why Mr. Roberts wanted to take thirty adolescent boys to Naples but he did. And got us all back.

My late father had asked me to get him a bottle of Verdicchio because he'd had one at La Taverna in Windsor and liked it. I found one in a little grocery in a Roman suburb and fought off repeated attacks all the way home to present it to him undamaged.

Enjoyed doing that. Developed into a full-blown obsession, though.

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Your wife of many years, mother to your young men gets into running a vineyard, this is what you get. Space cadet or what?

The new Chai au Quai...lost for words...only for a while...

"Wonderful day". That was as far as I got. Overwhelmed by it all.

Now pulled self together...

It was good timing; turned up just as the builders left... except the legs under the tasting room sink.

All was already working. Jean-Marc and Mark were giving a nice Belgian Bordeaux producer and his samples a thorough going over on their new zinc bench with its peerless river views. Their room is the heart of the Chai.

Petit Denis and Chris were working the barrels into the new Dordogne Chai, beyond. Libby was prettying up the Keyholder's room; great piles of bottles to sort. "See the swish Toilettes" she says - now there's a change! - "and the little kitchen" - built into the old wine tanks we no longer use.

And now there's a reason to go up those elegant stairs. What was a gloomy, dusty and dangerous attic is now the most wonderful office space I've ever been in. Skylights light up the clean exposed beams, better windows on the river, glasswalls, gleaming oak floor, and, for now, just Clare, Patrick, Helene and Ayme sitting in this tennis-court size of a room. The brains of the building. With two easy chairs facing a large screen TV that turns out to be a window down into the Grand Chai.

But 'Wine TV' is what they call it and later as I was holding forth down in the Chai to 'le staff'; the group over from Theale and Gloucester for a 48 hour 'intensive'... I looked up to see three of them up there watching me and clearly convulsed....Wine TV was on! It's wonderful when a long cherished dream finally comes good and is better than your dreams.

Soon the rest of the staff with move in and customers will start having their calls answered; "Bonjour, Ici Bordeaux"!

And we look forward to many more Keyholders coming down for a visit and being as stunned as me.

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Early afternoon in Bordeaux

As we wait for the Laithwaites party to arrive for lunch at Castillon Plage we can see across the water eight or so brightly coloured canoes landing at the Quai in front of our Chai.

It is a wedding party from England who have canoed down from Ste Foy la Grande for a celebratory lunch in Le Chai. (We do hire it out, lunchtimes, ..it's a memorable place). The swans have now joined the party to show off their five cygnets. So encouraging for the bride! The party now tucking in .. Hope they are now planning to canoe back!

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Castillon

"If it rains on St. Medard's day (8th June) it will rain for 40 days - unless St Barnabé cuts the ground from beneath his feet!"

That's the kind of weather forecasting you get here in Castillon.

It did rain on the 8th AND a week later on St Barnabé's day. So... Looks ominous!

The Dordogne is huge, rolling massively past, fast, with plenty debris. Chocolate colour - means the Vezere tributary is flooding in its own dark way too.

This would be the time to launch your Gabare-load of wine in the old days. Your motorless barge'd be in Bordeaux next day! If you survived the rapids. Today we use trucks!

Everyone is out spraying like mad. 30 degree heat and dampness threatens disaster. Rot! Botrytis! In the old days you'd likely lose a lot of your crop. These days for those who react fast and well - which is all but the dimmest - it's no big problem. Just a lot of work.

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The 20% Rioja offer is selling its socks off

Very satisfying for the half dozen or so families who make our Riojas. Spain is not a happy place just now but I think our customers will have raised a few smiles.


Last night did a tasting at our oldest shop; Windsor. As always there was someone who remembered the early days under Arch 36 just behind the shop.

Lovely warm evening...made it b. hot inside the old place (which was once our sweetshop when I was a boy). So thanks to all who stuck it out despite the heat and the feedback from those loudspeakers. The Theale Sparkling was a surprise wasn't it? The 2005 from the patch of vines behind our HQ always confuses.

Now at Southampton and the Bergerac flights just called....bye!

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Bruno

No trip to Champagne would be possible without paying a visit to the great Bruno Paillard. Legend. I bought his first wine when his father, a Champagne broker I worked with, asked me to.

His son was just starting. Bought a Vintage Champagne with a very fancy label for far more than I had ever paid his Dad!

He is just so convincing is Bruno. An unstoppable force. Not content with building new Champagne House to rank with the great names, he now oversees the second largest group in Champagne. How do you do that? In a tight and fierce little world like Champagne. He admits to being 50+ now and might be slowing. He can.

His stunning daughter Alice seems to be fairly unstoppable too. Bruno is doing the good thing and building up his vineyards - now has 26h top vines. Still wears the old double-breasted, still drives the old jag, still lunches well but lightly, still looks disgustingly slim and willowy. To paraphrase PG Wodehouse; if you like you wine merchants tall and willowy, T. Laithwaite is not your man. But Bruno certainly is.

We dine at a great new place in the gardens of Les Crayeres, Rheims. Best table of course.

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Spent the afternoon with the Hatons. (Pron. 'Aton')

Jean-Noël is quite a success story. Starting out with his father's 6 hectares in Damery, he and Sandra have in just twenty years built a business that is now, in size, 20th Champagne 'House'.

Pretty good going.

From 1,950 botts in 1973 to over a million today.

I have never seen cleaner cellars. And he let me have a ride on his 'tracteur-enjambeur' a machine which straddles three rows of vines and has a motor in each wheel. Great boy toy!

His vineyards are north side of the Marne, beautiful and top quality which means steep... but you do need a good tractor. Or a helicopter like the one buzzing over the road about 3 feet above the vine wires. How long do they live, those pilots?

Delicious stuff. It's hard to work here. Too much distraction.

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In the middle of Avize is a steep cemetery

Being as it's got the right soil, aspect and steepness it is officially classified as Grand Cru land. Worth roughly €1Million a hectare!! How long before someone maybe thinks; "move grandma down the road and.....".

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I had a great stroke of luck in Champagne back in 1975

I didn't know my way around. I was an insignificant buyer of Champagne. None of the 'names' wanted to know me.

Somehow I stumbled on to a new organisation of small-scale grape growers of Champagne. They had just formed a union so as to be able to negotiate better prices from the 'names'; the 'Houses' who totally ruled the roost back then. Well this little group is now over half the best growers in Champagne (the Premier and Grand Crus); a force to be reckoned with. I am very happy to have been the first person they agreed to make a wine for. The Laithwaite label has been going 35 years now.

When you think my old mates are the people who supply all the Chardonnay that goes into Dom Perignon, (to pick just one quite well known brand!! at random). In fact there will hardly be any famous Champagne that doesn't contain a good bit of their wine.

We meet at breakfast, talk a bit, then pose in the drizzle in front of the giant bottle at Cramont. Photographer says he can edit out the rain!

Do a tasting of elements for next cuvée. Already done by Helen but hey, who turns down a Champagne tasting?

Tip; Laithwaites Champagne, being made of Premier Cru and even finer v. rare Grand Cru grapes benefits enormously being kept a while. Like a year. To my mind that doubles the pleasure.

All Champagne vineyards are meticulously mapped. For 'Grand Cru' status a vineyard must have perfect soil, aspect (be south to east-facing) and inclination (be steep).

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Champagne is Chalk

Look at the map of France. The north; big flat expanse without vines. Then... Champagne, like an island in the middle. Why? Chalk.

Chalk hills allow vines to grow on sun-warmed south-east facing slopes angled directly at the sun. You need every bit of sun; it's cold up here.

Chalk also soaks up the rain - it rains a lot - so the soil quickly dries. But chalk also HOLDS that water. Like a sponge. So in summer the vines always have their water supply. 50% the weight of chalk can be water.

The chalk has been quarried since the Romans. Champagne's hills have miles of tunnels. Perfect for the bottles to do their fizz thing in cool tranquillity.

Wonderful stuff; chalk.

P.S. Q: Where else do you get chalk hills?

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Islands! There's something about islands.

Petrol may be £1.40 a litre but the traffic coming the other way all give you a friendly wave. Or a raised finger off the wheel. I assume that is friendly!

Yesterday we spent mostly with the boys at Bruichladdich a distillery with a story that chimes with me... Because it's Independent. The ONLY. Independent on the Island. Bruichladdich (Pron. Brew ic-hladdie!) is a very old distillery as a quick visit will confirm.

Shut and mothballed many years it was spotted by a fellow wine merchant of mine; Mark Reynier who spotted the padlocked gates and fell for the place on a cycling holiday ten years ago and rounded up a bunch of people - many local - to buy it. They brought in possibly the best known Master Distillers; Jim McEwan, took off and flew - by the seats of their pants - in the face of unanimous industry derision. They do with Malt whisky the sort of creative stuff we do with wine at our Chai. They can, we can because we are Independent and not ruled by distant corporate bosses. It's the only way to be.

The whisky got into the hotel last night. Much crashing of furniture till dawn. Hey Ho. Off to Jura.

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Am fascinated by Islay

Should've come here long ago. It's a wild and romantic place, and a real place; not tourist dominated. Yet. The hotels are not what international jet-setters expect. But they are friendly.

Islay lives, clearly, off its whisky. Farming can't be easy and fishing is down to shellfish now and the EC rules are stopping that.

The Malts, here and elsewhere have always interested me. Well, since 1974. After I'd started my van drives to Bordeaux to bring back wine I got it into my head that it would be clever to export something to France rather than go back empty.

So I read a bit and came north to see a grocery business in Tain called Gordon and McPhail. They bought casks from distilleries aged and bottled them. But they wouldn't sell me any.

Twenty years later at my local rugby club in Henley I met a guy who was involved in something called The Scottish Malt Whisky Association, doing a similar thing but more successfully. He explained to me that Scotland was sitting on reserved of hidden 'gold' it did not realise it had.

The malt whisky distilleries of Scotland had got to a state where basically they just supplied the more flavoured element of 99% of Scotch sold around the world which was Blended Scotch. Hardly anyone drank pure malt.

A few lairds, maybe.

The result was that in the vast ageing sheds of the ever vaster international groups who controlled whisky there was gold going cheap.
There were 20, 30, 40 year old casks of malt that were destined to be tipped into some anonymous blend but....amazingly, could be bought for a basic price.

It seems the big groups - constantly 'rationalising' and with a tendency to refer to these glorious distilleries as 'production units' had no interest in all this lovely old spirit. You could buy it for NOTHING. The Groups were so totally focussed on selling their 'Johnny Mackay's Blended' by the millions of cases around the world that selling a few casks of pure 30 year old nectar just didn't occur to them. The accountants just said 'flog it'.

To me it was obvious. We had to do it. So I joined a select band and started buying casks of malt. Sold them under my brand 'First Cask'. Went well. But then we maybe made too much noise and finally ... the giant distiller groups woke up.

The 'Golden Age of Malts was over. Suddenly, all sales of old casks were stopped. But only when there were very few left. Suddenly in the late '90's the Big Distillers started putting out fancy bottles of old Malts and very fancy prices indeed. (£8000 for a bottle is the highest I heard of today).

It looked like we were about to be shut out. I finally understood why Gordon and MacPhail had refused to sell to me.

Ah! well.

We bought a final stack of malt. And we have sat on it for over ten years.
About time we sold some.

Today's visits to Bowmore, Caol Ila, Laphroig, Lagavulin and Ardbeg have inspired me.

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After a day's writing, hopped up to Glasgow for dinner. As you do.

Anderston Cross is not the prettiest. Indeed on a dark night it could be thought scary. A warm June evening though; fine.

It's Partick... of Thistle fame. Billy Conolly country.

Cousin Lorna and her Jim take us the the Buttery or the Two Fats as it's better known here. A famous eatery from the Eighties relocated and reborn here.

Jim's boy Kenneth knows the owner; Gavin since school so we get a good table. You approach what's clearly a converted Bar painted a forbidding grey with some doubts. Looks cold. But the door opens and it's one of those restaurants where you immediately feel 'home'. Wood panelling polished silverware white napkins well-stocked bar. And smiling Gavin.

Dinner with old friends. Very old. What nicer? A great 06 Coonawarra Cab. Forget the name.

Anyway early flight and just coming in to land on Islay. Distillery time!!!!

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Lovely sunny day

Meeting at home with Le Grand Simon and new FD Andrew to review the state of play at Direct Wines (which is what our Company has always been called for reasons I have forgotten).

We've had a good month. Could be down to that Expert's Choice offer which has done way better than expected or - Simon's view - things always pick up after elections.

Anyway, grateful to customers. Things going particularly well too in the US thanks to the inspired leadership of our Adrian (who started out in Railway Arch 36 with me) who was despatched over the pond because we had no-one else to do it but who loves it there so much has been sort of re-born.

Evening put new boat on river (Thames at Henley right by our office). 8 foot dinghy acquired for just three bottles of Theale Sparkling. Called 'Tot'. Made of plastic but otherwise just like 'Kingfisher' the 8' wooden boat my grandad built me when I was 12 ... gave me my love of the river. "Smaller the boat, the better the fun" is true you know.

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Website Man now says he wants a Blog entry every day

I protest. I don't do interesting things every day. He says that doesn't matter. Look at Twitter. Oh yes I see! Yet apparently on account Titter - sorry genuine mistype but worth leaving - Twitter - am getting more readers.

Hence need more blogs.

Thursday.... Wrote stuff. Dull. But evening did a talkie-tasting at HQ Theale for theale shop customers. With Jean-Marc. We have a double-act. Theale Vineyard Sparkling 2005 went down well. Grown just outside our windows. Compared a Los Vascos Sauvignon (I was the first Vascos (Basque) Mr Ezaguirre's first client back in the mists of t) with Hunter's Marlborough Sauv. (I was their first customer too when Ernie the Belfast Boy was still very alive and putting Marlborough on the map.) Vote taken. A draw. Lots more wine but I'm told to keep blogs short.

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