Direct by Tony Laithwaite: My story … ongoing

Posted on April 4, 2019 by Tony Laithwaite

Tony Laithwaite’s book, Direct, tells the story of how he began working in the world of wine and how his business grew to become the world’s number one home-delivery wine merchant. Here he explains how it all came about … […]

Tony’s Diary: From small beginnings, how a little Fiat helped make this award-winning wine

Posted on March 22, 2019 by Tony Laithwaite

Valentino Schiotti spotted the little Fiat and its trailer filled with small grapes and knew he had to have them

“There’s a remarkable true story behind this world-conquering red … and you played a star role! “30 years ago an energetic young Italian winemaker named Valentino Schiotti was sipping a coffee in the sun as tractors hauled grapes every which […]

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

Posted on January 1, 2019 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 […]

Tony’s Diary: I’ll be drinking a sentimental Saint-Emilion on Christmas Day

Posted on December 21, 2018 by Laithwaite's Wine

Tony and Brigitte enjoy a glass of wine during a recent visit to Chateau Guibeau

I just dug out a couple of seriously old bottles for my family this Christmas… one is a 1975, the other might be older, maybe even a ‘66. Can’t tell till I see the cork. I’m an old guy so […]

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 […]

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