FOOD & DRINK
A VINTNER’S TALE (ACT 2, SCENE VI) Peter Law, Chairman and MD at Wine Wizzard in Castle Cary, continues with his fascinating tales of life in the wine trade… Firstly, a big thank you to all our many existing and new customers for all the support and custom over the last, difficult year. I have always been interested in art and would like to have been an artist myself, but lacked the talent. However, I regard the making of good wine as an art form – another reason why I became a wine merchant in the 1960s. My first wife is a painter and I met David Hockney who was sitting in the row behind me with a friend of mine, stroking my hair, much to the concern and annoyance of my wife. I hadn’t realised that the private cinema in Old Compton Street, Soho, was what today would be called a gay cinema! He is and was then a great painter. Amongst many others, I met Bridget Riley, John Hoyland, Barry Fantoni (Private Eye and That Was the Week That Was), and Patrick Procktor. At the time (60s) I shared a pub in Islington with Willy Rushton (That Was the Week That Was and co-founder of Private Eye). The pub was always great fun. For younger readers, this was the beginning of modern satire. There was much irreverence and mostly harmless fun followed by the hippy times when it really did look like ‘the times are a-changing’. This was the era when I was No.2 in the original Oddbins. On a wine buying trip in the early !970s, I visited the Fondation Maeght in the hills above Nice where I met Joan Miro, a small man stepping out of a very large Rolls Royce, killing himself laughing. I don’t speak Spanish so we conversed in French and I asked him what was so funny and he replied that he couldn’t believe that
people were paying so much money for his ‘arts plastiques’ phallic sculptures. Many works by Alexander Calder were on display and while a recent exhibition of Calder’s work at Hauser & Wirth in Bruton was good, it was even better in the sunshine and warmth of St Paul de Vence. My sister who had moved to Crickhowell in Wales phoned to ask for help with a fairly large birthday party for one of her children. George Melly phoned her needing a lift as he had lost his driving licence (again); his moped wouldn’t start and he wanted to go to the pub. As my sister was too busy cooking, I went to collect him from his splendid twelfth-century house on the river Usk which he and his long-suffering wife, Diana, had bought along with the fishing rights (he was a keen fly fisherman) from the sale of some of his art collection – reportedly including a Matisse, Picasso and Paul Klee. On the way to the pub, we had a wonderfully eccentric, surrealist conversation for half an hour over a packet of biscuits! In the 1970s, back at The Malmesbury Vintner, Howard Hodgkin (later Sir Howard) was a customer and I always enjoyed looking at his latest works when delivering to his nearby studio in Castle Coombe. In one of our many conversations he was explaining his success in the USA. I told him that I was contemplating opening up a business there and he actively encouraged me. At the time I was enjoying huge success in the UK with a particular chateau for which I was the UK agent and thought it ideal for the US market. As luck would have it, a customer who exported cheese to the US had a coast-tocoast distribution network in place, so we
joined forces and set up a US company. Regrettably at the last minute, one of the sons of the chateau owner was sent to handle the US market. Unfortunately, he was a ‘chasseur des jupons’ (literally a skirt chaser) who neglected the business whilst pursuing his hedonistic lifestyle. Surprise, surprise, it failed – he must have cost his father a fortune. Luckily I was not financially involved. Last heard of, he was running a night club in Barcelona, but that was the end of a very successful business arrangement. At the time of writing, the world is in a rather precarious place, but being the eternal optimist, I am looking forward (amongst other things) to drinking some very good wine in the future. I have greatly missed my buying trips to mainland Europe – the younger and up-and-coming vignerons are so passionate about their skills and I always like to hear the opinions of other nationalities. I hope to resume this, this year. We are awaiting numerous samples, mostly from France as shipments from Spain and Italy still seem to be slow. Bureaucracy is increasing here in UK, and unfortunately has to be paid for. The government is considering increasing duties dependant on the alcohol level. This will further increase bureaucracy and cost, and as a trade we are already overtaxed. It will also lead to further inflation. It is nothing new, but honesty, common sense and politics have never been happy bedfellows. We will continue to try to find and sell properly made, good quality wines at the best prices we can. SALUD! 33
