Our Wine Director Mark Pardoe MW explains how we came to buy unfinished wine, and examines the mechanics, myths and future of wine futures The first Bordeaux vintage I bought en primeur as a wine merchant was 1982. I only bought two wines – 25 cases each of Chx Batailley and Haut-Batailley – and I […]

Ahead of tomorrow’s dinner with Andrew Roberts, Will Lyons sits down with the historian to talk about the way two of history’s most famous figures used wine to their political advantage Like many first steps along the wine route, Professor Andrew Roberts began his vinous journey as an undergraduate. The historian and author of acclaimed […]

Originally published in the spring of 1971 in our Number Three magazine, this article considers the move toward château-bottling and away from shipping in cask, much to our initial horror. Like other traditional wine merchants we have built our reputation by buying wines in cask and bottling them under our own label. Now it looks […]

Demetri Walters MW looks back to the days when Bordeaux’s Left Bank, home to some of the world’s finest wines, was no more than a murky swamp and ponders the road not taken: if the Dutch hadn’t drained the Médoc, revealing its now celebrated soils, what would we be selling and drinking today? It is […]