Waitrose Head of Wine Moves to Laithwaites Wine.

Nostalgic talk with our Dan Snook today. Leaving. Been buying for us fifteen years, apart that time he went to Paris to do Chateau Online. So always knew he and Jo had this yen for France.

Going to be a Pukka Fine Wine Negociant in Bordeaux - which was always his dream since he, like me, worked in Bordeaux as a student.

So it's not as if we'll lose touch.

Anyway, we needed a New 'Global Wine Director'.

We feel we've done very well indeed to get Justin Howard-Sneyd, M.W.

Justin; Head of Wine at Waitrose is instantly likeable, never mind being super-qualified and experienced. He'll fit in here perfectly well. Especially being as he's also a wine producer. In Maury too (Roussillon), where, in fact, our Mark Hoddy used to work on his 'Domaine of the Bee' (which is ace). Small world; wine.

Next year looks like it's going to even more packed and manic than this one.

Some might be surprised at the term 'Global'. But Justin will be in overall charge of all wines for the Wine Merchant businesses we now have around the world.

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Down to Gloucester DC ('Distribution Centre' tho' I prefer to think of as our Cellars)

It's the start of that annual marathon tasting for 'Wines of the Year'. Seven hundred wines!

Don't have to taste them all. There are 25 of us. Seven teams = approx 100 wines each. Can still do that. Just!

Lucky draw. My team start on champagnes. I think. (Everything is bagged up so we can't see and cheating invites severe social censure.) But champagne, well, not to difficult to guess really.

Then it's a 'flight' of Australian reds, one of Chilean - we think - reds, Spanish reds, Bordeaux reds... Some nice white and more Bordeaux.

From next door... a buzz ... every desk is manned and still the calls are overwhelming them. I'd gladly go help but there isn't a spare phone.

It's afternoon. Approaching the end. We haven't found a bad wine yet. A corked one, yes. Well, two.

I've been doing these tastings for so long! I tell the girls on my team (who were not born when I started Laithwaites) that less than 20 years ago the Chilean reds we tasted just didn't exist. The Spanish reds wouldn't have had any fruit and the Australians hadn't arrived yet.

Truly, it's a Golden Age of Wine.

We chose 300 wines to go through to the next round in Jan. I suggest one way to improve things. All the tasters bar me are young. Many customers are not young. There's age differences in taste. So... Next year, maybe round up a few older persons to come help get the balance right. I think I know where to find a few volunteers!

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Up to the Lakes to see my old poorly mother

I send her cases of wine. She'll only have a tiny sip. Sends all the rest around the village. Always been very popular, my mother.

Called in to see Dave Kerr at Estate Bottled Food, Preston. They've been busy. The thing about "the new eating out is eating in" seems to have given his jars a boost.

The M6! How much of my life have I spent sat on the M6?

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Christmas was a little slow taking off this year. But it sure is making up for it now!

It’s everyone to man the phones again. They are getting hot. 30 extra people drafted in today ... they're sitting on top of each other. It’s lively in there! And the Gloucester cellars are humming round the clock. All running smoothly.

Can't tell you how encouraging that is. Thanks to all our lovely customers. I am touched by your loyalty.

Did my 'stand-up' and tasting act yesterday for 100 or so enthusiasts at the Locksbottom-Orpington shop. So many coming up to say they've been with us 20, 30, even 40 years. Wow!

Last venue for the TL 40th Anniversary Tour is the Virginia Water shop on Jan 25th 2010.

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Google Smart phone

Saw today that Google have a service for their Smart phone where if you take a pic of a wine label on a bottle and send in, it'll reply with tasting notes. Mmm! We'll have to see about including something like that in our all-singing/dancing new website due out soon.

Spent the day up at Vinopolis, the 'wine experience' under London Bridge Station.

We are to take over the shop there next month. It's very exciting for me. I guess I have railway arches in my blood, having started off under Windsor Central Station. We plan to make it more of a events place than a shop.

All our shops do events (I'm doing a tasting tonight at the Surbiton shop) but Laithwaites at Vinopolis should do far more. Ideas welcome. Tho' we already have a few.

I look forward to appearing there regularly,  even if it's only because each time I go there I can also visit Borough Market right next door. My idea of heaven. Quite a buzzy part of town, Southwark; the Tate, the Globe, the Market ... the Laithwaites ?


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We had a absolutely lovely dinner last night in Windsor Castle. The last of our 40th celebrations.

I grew up in Windsor from age 7. Went to the 'Royal Free' school. As did a whole bunch of Castle and Park residents. My best friend's Dad was Castle Policeman on the Gate in the days when there was no security to speak of and his job was mostly rescuing the Guard from being embarrassed by tourists.

The Castle is a small, self-contained village, really. It is very much the Queen and Prince Phillip's home. Laithwaites is one of a handful of Companies who are of St George's. We must surely be the smallest. But we have history you see. My mother was a 'Friend of St Georges' because her friend Watty used to be secretary.

I spent long days wandering the Windsor Parks and riverbanks and seeing 'the Royals' was almost an everyday thing if you had a dog needing walks.

And of course I started the business now known as Laithwaites Wine in Windsor.

First from my bedroom in Grove Road, then from an office in Victoria Street, then (finances being zero) from a basement room in Victoria Street, then - the Big Time! - from Arch 36, Windsor Railway Viaduct.

After that we went to Slough which many did not see as progress but I quite liked. Finally Reading. But the Windsor link has never been broken; we now have a real shop in Arthur Road (previously Mrs Battersby's Sweet Shop selling soda 'Penny Drinks' that turned your tongue yellow. Today we'll give you a taste of a young syrah that will turn your tongue black! That's progress for you!)

So last night we and our guests attended Choral Evensong (I was so mortified to arrive late; there are times when you just don't want to 'make an entrance'. But the Dean was charming about it. Laithwaites even got a mention in the Service). We had good old Bruno Paillard's best Champagne in the cloisters and then dinner in the Vicar's Hall. Just where Henry II got scourged and Shakespeare is supposed to have give Queen Elizabeth I a preview of Merrie Wives.

A Falstaffian meal, then, by the Castle kitchens ... and lovely wines, of course; Philippe Bourlon brought the last of their Guibeau '70, and we enjoyed the Bujanda 1970 Gran Reserva Rioja too. Hugh Johnson brought his very own Tokaji Essencia 1996

A few speeches. Sir Michael Hobbs was really on form. And Ted Cochrane, on behalf of the customers said some really nice things about us. We hardly had to twist his arm at all.

Thank you Anne, John, and Amy. Having made your lives hell for years I didn't deserve it. But Barbara did. And she loved it.

Thank you everybody.


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I don't know what it says for the new XV du President, but our Labrador seems keen on it.

Snoop is always hungry, so we don't leave any food on the kitchen tops when we go out. But last night I left a decanter of XV du President when we went out. On our return … bits of decanter and red wine all over the floor! Labradors! Anyone else had this problem?

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Today the Polish team came in. Up to this year that would probably have meant we had a deputation from Gloucester Cellars. Big Polish contingent there. Lovely lot.

But this year we have begun selling our wines in Poland … I've always had a soft spot for the Poles. My father was in the Air Force and always spoke glowingly of the brave Poles.

Anyway it is going very well there and we just found our thousandth customer. Lots of statistics, but one in particular. Which group of people would you think could produce a rate of response to our offer that is more than double what we've ever experienced anywhere? Normally that'd be doctors. Every country it’s doctors who buy most. Doctors; those people who tell you to cut down your drinking … them.

Well in Poland they are trounced by … the Priests! Love it!

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