Tony’s Diary: My first big lesson in how to buy wine

Posted on December 4, 2018 by Laithwaite's Wine

Tony Laithwaite in France during the early days of his business

Take a trip down memory lane with this excerpt from Tony’s memoirs, published next April to celebrate 50 years since he brought those first few cases of claret back to Britain. We join the story with our hero taking on […]

My Life in Wine – Part 18 – A man in a van in France

Posted on November 4, 2015 by Tony Laithwaite

This is the cover of a Bordeaux Direct Catalogue from 1976. Just France? Yep. The Sunday Times Wine Club may have started me off globetrotting for wines, but France was what I stuck to doing for BD customers back then; […]

Puisseguin

Posted on October 26, 2015 by Tony Laithwaite

I can’t write this week. Nothing jolly at any rate. Puisseguin is the village near Bordeaux where I first worked in wine, at the Cave Coop fifty years ago. Yesterday’s bus disaster was on the road I know so well, […]

The 2015 Harvest continues

Posted on October 21, 2015 by Laithwaite's Wine

Friday 9 Oct Harrow and Hope vineyard, Marlow I’d washed 150 grape baskets before the sun came up, this morning, before I paused to think “what the **** am I doing? In a few weeks I’ll be 70 so why […]

Blog break for harvest

Posted on October 7, 2015 by Tony Laithwaite

Wine harvest dates can be hard to nail. This Spring the vines started early so harvest dates were pencilled in early; mid-September for our Bordeaux vineyards, early October for our English vineyards. Then, cool August pushed the dates back […]

My Life in Wine – Part 16 – California

Posted on September 29, 2015 by Tony Laithwaite

Perhaps the best way to learn about wine and wine people is by taking customers around the vineyards, being a tour guide. I first did this when I worked in Bordeaux in ’69, occasionally hiring myself out as an English-speaking […]

My Life in Wine – Part 15 – Selling Wine in the Seventies

Posted on September 23, 2015 by Tony Laithwaite

Back from Georgia and back to trying to remember the Seventies in the UK – which nowadays seems like it was a foreign country too. What was it like selling wine in the UK back then? Well, despite the generally […]

Beyond the Black Sea

Posted on September 10, 2015 by Tony Laithwaite

Tbilisi looks like it needs work done on it. Rather dusty and bedraggled with all kinds of dangerous-looking add-ons to old concrete buildings. But there are some gorgeous churches and castle-y things we won’t have time to investigate. There are […]

My Life in Wine – Part 14 – Behind the Iron Curtain

Posted on September 8, 2015 by Tony Laithwaite

Today my blog comes right up to date as I am on a plane to Tbilisi, Georgia, and one the few wine countries I haven’t yet visited personally. It’s a long trip; six hours, all in and we couldn’t fly […]

My Life in Wine – Part 13 – Sail away, sail away, sail away

Posted on September 2, 2015 by Tony Laithwaite

Astrid’s Cargo Much of the dinner conversation with the Cassins concerned the history between Bordeaux and the UK. I realised I was lucky in that Bordeaux and its surrounding regions – Aquitaine – are the most Anglophile part of France. […]

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