My Life in Wine - Part 5

Starting Up

From Summer of '68 to summer of '69 I lived in Ste Colombe and Castillon. All the Grands Evenements riots and collapsing governments in Paris completely passed us by in our bit of La France Profonde. My French got pretty good.  But I saw that I couldn't stay. This was before Britain joined the EEC, I was a foreigner, my work permit was only as a temporary 'stagiere' and anyway I couldn't find a real job. I tried. The French wine merchants always turned me down politely when they realised my father wasn't also a wine merchant, but the British!!! The man at Grants of Saint James actually laughed at dissertation; my precious little book on the 'Wines of Saint-Emilion and Surrounding Areas'. Another couldn't be bother to get out of bed when I'd travelled since early dawn to his hotel.

Life was good, though. Still medieval; winter parties in vast, bare castle halls heated by huge fires, summer playing Creedence and Abbey Road in another vast old place I was supposed to be helping to restore. This was before the British invasion of the Dordogne region and I was the only Brit around, which had its advantages; there were girls who believed I actually knew Paul McCartney. But it couldn't last. I really needed to find something – anything – fast.

Then one day; THE BLINDING LIGHT! My particular Road to Damascus was the winding RD17 between Puisseguin and Ste Colombe.  Monsieur, driving me home after work one day, suddenly suggested that if no-one else would let me work in wine, I should do my own thing; I should try selling his wine. Now what he meant was become a rep, what in France they call a 'Multicartes'. I should go round calling on restaurateurs and shopkeepers and wine merchants ... basically set up as a freelance agent. But I saw something very different.

I have maybe embroidered the story over the years in the frequent retelling, but his suggestion seemed to explode in my head. It ignited a sudden welling-up of a string of ideas to do with writing letters to people with an offer of a free wine tasting, going round giving tastings, telling the story, collecting lots of orders, sending orders to Bordeaux, shipping back the wine, delivering it, maybe actually earning some money, and never having to go for another humiliating job interview.

Monsieur did not disagree but weighed in with stern practicalities. We talked on in the car … and talked and talked … into the night … sitting in that old 2CV Citroen in Monsieur's darkened garage. A worried Madame eventually had to come and drag us to dinner, so hard did the idea bite, so long did we sit, plan and argue.

The next day a Sales Letter was drafted – I still have it.

We wrote it together, me persuading Monsieur to leave in his quaint English grammar. (I added a couple more Frenchisms). He even let me draw my own label and got it printed for me. The prices were then worked out. He did that. A bit beyond my abilities, that sort of thing. Still is. Monsieur believed it was very important to always make a profit – no half-price deals, but that it should never be a large profit. He said it was important the margin was fair all round. Too little and service and quality would inevitably drop for lack of funds. Too much and the customers would leave. He said that you develop a nose for where your price should be. I followed his dictums … sometimes.

Setting up a business!  So Exciting! Finally, There Was A Goal! No risk really, what did I have to lose by trying? And meantime the Bordeaux sun shone and there was divine wine and food and, well, a very nice French girl.

So, Monsieur Cassin had fired me up about this selling wine thing. I'd decided I didn't want to sell to the trade but rather direct to the public. I needed a name, and came up with the name 'Bordeaux Direct'. I'd seen it on a road sign south of Castillon. "Bordeaux par Langon" to the left, "Bordeaux Direct" to the right. (The name was subsequently registered as a Limited Company by an early customer of mine who wanted lots of shares in return for letting me use it. Almost everyone is kind to young entrepreneurs … but not quite everyone. I stormed out of his house, really panicked. Then I remembered Dave Wright. We'd played rugby together at school. He – our Captain – never liked it when opponents took liberties and we often had to restrain him. Unsurprisingly he'd become a lawyer. I called him and he calmed me down saying as I'd traded as 'Bordeaux Direct' this guy couldn't use the name or Dave would have him for 'passing off'. Dave became my lawyer henceforth. The Company didn't get into many fights but when it did Dave won them. This time we told the ******* to sod off but then had to register our limited company as 'Direct Wines (Windsor) Ltd’ which caused a lot of confusion and is easily copyable. And today it amazes me how many Companies now add the word Direct to their names.)

Had to face reality one day.

The summer had to end.

I had to set off for home, leaving all I loved behind. To cold Britain. I remember clearly October 1969 sitting at home in front of my bedroom electric fire lying out the 24 half-bottles of Monsieur’s Co-op claret in a neat row on the bed.  This was what my wild dreams came down to. I had my ‘reps’ samples case and 100 printed letters signed by Monsieur. It looked awfully bleak.

I posted them to 100 names lifted from the local phone book. And waited.

I got two replies … for a ‘Free Tasting in Your Home’.  It looked bleaker. I didn't know then that 2% was actually the average response rate to a 'cold' list. I thought it was a disaster. My balloon was popped. No car, no money, forced to live with my parents – father already fuming.

I wrote to my mate Tony Parkin still living the life at Durham. A caring friend. He replied and I remember it so well "Dear Nod," (the nickname I had had since schooldays, due to my tendency to 'drift off' during lessons, lectures, matches and even, once, a Pink Floyd concert). "Thanks for telling me your problems. Well, in Yorkshire we have a saying; "Tough Titty". You've had a great time in France, you've chosen a path to follow, just shut up and get on with it, will you." This is what friends are for. I fell of the loo, laughing, resolved to continue and got a Christmas temp job at a gents outfitters, Simpsons in Piccadilly, to tide me over. This was the shop that inspired the sit com 'Are You Being Served'. I worked for the real Captain Peacock, and was not tempted to change trades.  

But those two wine tastings had worked.

The First was in Burnham (one case ordered).  The Second on a trading estate in Windsor. With a man who was a property developer. He came up trumps - five cases!  And rang loads of friends there and then to tell of this wonderful little man and his suitcase of samples.

From that guy Roger, the whole business grew.

But so slowly.

My first shipment had come in via London Docks at what was the East India Dock (now, rather changed into Canary Wharfe). It was expensive. I had to go through agents called Thomas Trapp. It took forever and when I finally got to my order … quite a lot had been pilfered. Ah! The dockers of yesteryear. They knew am good claret when they saw one.

Luckily things then changed and my next shipment was able to come in through Shoreham on Sea; a tiny, honest harbour, which had regular shipments from Bordeaux on a boat called the ‘Zephyr’. Over a year I came to have a regular route down to Shoreham – a much better run than having to fight my way through London Docks … and Grandmother lent me enough for a car, a rather battered but serviceable Cortina estate.

  

About once a month I did the Shoreham run – for about 20 cases a time. It took me a month to do enough tastings to sell the 20 cases. Of course, I wasn’t earning enough to live … but Mother managed to keep Father from throwing me out until the following summer. I then got a room in the house next door so I could still nip home for the odd meal when the Old Man was out.

But it was a depressing time. Until by amazing chance, Barbara, that feisty girl from Durham crashed back in to my life and started to take me over.

I splashed out on an office behind a junk shop in Victoria Street, Windsor next to the barracks. I splashed out on the very first ‘pocket’ calculator on the market – a ‘Sharp’ Y200. Sales didn't justify its cost of £200! But remember I couldn't do maths. So kind of them to invent it just then.

I also splashed out on one of the first Phillips hand-held Memo Recorders.  The idea was to send the cassettes to France where Monsieur had one.  It kept us in touch. It lifted me to hear him talking … Or lecturing. I hated being so far from Bordeaux. In those days if I, or anyone, wanted to phone abroad, I had to call the International Operator the day before and book a call. Then, when it eventually came just pray the operators didn't cut me off mid conversation. Trading wasn't made easy back then.

But commercially it was all still quite hopeless.  I avoided my friends; they all had real jobs and real money. The gadgets helped morale.

Incessantly arranging and re-arranging the office helped too.  It avoided real, proper ‘crunch’ work. But cold calling and doorstep selling was all I had and it was tough going. All the while I pined for Bordeaux for the Paradise I had known. Then it came to me that the solution lay there.

Why didn't I simplify everything and drive on past Shoreham, onto one of he new Roll on-Roll off ferries and down to Bordeaux to fetch my orders myself in the Cortina?

Which I did.

Customers liked this. They not only got the wine direct but the latest news from the vineyards and a happier salesman. And cheaper prices.

I was cutting out a lot of middlemen. Wine traditionally went grower to courtier (broker) to merchant to shipper to importer to merchant to retailer (not forgetting the unofficial 'Levies' taken en-route by dockers and shippers). I seriously cut costs. And I really, really loved doing it. Sales went up to about 100 cases a month.

I hired a six wheel, 35cwt Ford Transit box bodied van from Godfrey Davies in Reading for four days in September 1970. I drove to Southampton and took one of the new Townsend Thoresen roll on-roll off ferries to Le Havre. I was so petrified I think I drove all the way without a stop – no I must have stopped for petrol.  But when I got there I had trouble prising my hands of the wheels and stopping shaking. The Cassins took me in as always and Monsieur had arranged a few fellow wine producers from Bergerac to Saint-Emilion. Things were moving.