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PROFILE
– Who the hell does he think he is?
Being
born (in 1961) to virtual teetotal parents in the gastronomic desert that
is The
next six years saw me on a tour of vinous self discovery, putting myself
through the progression of Wine and Spirit Education Trust courses up to
Diploma standard. I entered the wine business fully in 1986, working for a
local wholesaler (who are no longer in business) selling wine to the
on-trade before moving onto a position with Grants of St James’s in
1989. The decision to attempt the Master of Wine examination came three
years later, and as a student of 1993 we were the first to be challenged
with preparing a dissertation. This presented itself as an additional
hurdle to the already formidable prospect of sitting both the Practical
(tasting) and Theory parts of the exam. For
the first few years after the dissertation was introduced, candidates were
presented with five titles and asked to prepare their paper on one of
them. My chosen subject was to be ‘The importance of temperature in red
wine making’. The options were given to us in January and the finished
paper needed to be submitted by the following October. This meant that if
I was to see a red wine vintage in action (for this was to form the basis
of the dissertation) then I needed to head to the Southern Hemisphere. The
logical place to go at the time was Remember
this was 1993, Mandela was still on his ‘long walk to freedom’ and
free elections were still over a year away. At the time, I’d say I knew
two things about the I
fell in love with Back
home, the dissertation completed and submitted, I concentrated on the
examination itself, sitting and receiving a conditional pass at the first
attempt in May 1994. I was seven-eighths a Master of Wine, but I would
need to return and re-sit the marketing paper the following year.
In
January 1995, I resigned from my position with GSJ and went to work a
three month stage with The
Bergkelder in Stellenbosch. During this time I was introduced to Tim Rands,
owner of the largest independent wine wholesaler in I
was accepted into The Institute of Masters of Wine on the 17th July 1995
and within two weeks of this monumental event I was living and working in
the My
original six month contract became a seven year tenure, but by the end of
2001 I was beginning to think my time in the Cape was up and I was ready
to move back home. After all, I believed that I had achieved my true
‘Mission from God’ in convincing South African winemakers that Chenin
Blanc is, in fact, the world’s greatest grape variety; a vinous resource
as precious to the Cape as gold and diamonds are to the rest of the
country. I’d known Roy Richards of Richards Walford since the early 1990s and there had been a long standing invitation to join the company when the time was right. That moment was realized in June 2002 and I remained with the company until October 2011. Today,
I live, for the six months a year I am not traveling, with Rebekah in an 18th
Century alehouse (complete with cellar) in rural Leicestershire’s Vale
of Belvoir. So
how does this potted history make me a self declared specialist in the
wines of the Despite
my relationship with the South African wine industry, I am a devout
Francophile and the |