Littler, welcome to Adventures of a Black Belt Sommelier.We're thrilled to have you join us today.Are you in London?
Manchester.So tell us, share with us today how, what was your path to being a wine merchant?
We owned a family company in Manchester. that was wholesale and retail groceries, wines and spirits.My father and his two brothers ran the company.
And when I joined, I looked at the fine wine part of the business, which we didn't really do much with, we had fine wines.And
dabbled around in cheaper wines and other aspects of the business, and basically decided it was much easier for a lazy person like me to sell one bottle of wine at 100 pounds than 100 bottles at one pound.
I have said the same thing many times.Although I'm not sure it's that easy these days to sell them.Well, I think it's probably pretty easy to sell the 100 pound wine. It's those thousand pound and 6,000 pound wines that are hard.
Do you do much business with DRC?
Yes, we used to do quite a bit of it, bearing in mind the small quantity that's available. And we could always sell Romney-Conti, Richebourg-Latache, and Romney-Saint-Vivant later on.
And I remember we had vintages like 52, 53, 50, that's all right, 64 I remember was a big one. The prices were all under £100, but we could sell them very easily.And I decided that we would have a standard price for the Romani Conti of £100.
Everybody said, you won't get away with that.Funnily enough, we did.
How many bottles did you get of Romani Conti in those days?Well, we really never concentrated on new wines.
So we were always selling older vintages.We got a case of 1919 Romani Conti out of the Barolet collection.We didn't have an allocation.We didn't buy new wines.There was always a specialist.
The reason I asked is The company that I work for here, we received a small allocation of 2021 DRC wines this past week, and it generated by looking on WineSearcher.
Do you know what the lowest price for 2019 Roman E. Conte on WineSearcher is right now?
I should have to think.Yes.$30,000 a bottle.
Yeah, it doesn't surprise me that I saw when it was released, I sold it for six.And now it's 30.I have a friend in Virginia who has he had five bottles of strong quality as for love.30 I mean, you can buy a new car.
Well, it's still for only six year old grape juice.It's ridiculous.
You know, there used to be a very prominent wine collector in Fort Worth, Texas, named Marvin Overton.Did you ever meet Marvin?
And I had several events with Marvin at my restaurant in Nashville, annual events.And he always said sommeliers are the best salesmen in the world because they convince you to pay $200 for something that's going to end up in the toilet tomorrow.
A good way of putting it.
Yeah.Sounds like it.Did you have model trains growing up?
Yeah.We were talking about that a few minutes ago.I did.I loved my model trains.But I didn't end up in the train business.So tell this bottle of port.We met about a month ago or so.
at a very unusual wedding reception, where a friend of yours poured, you know, Mouton and Logellus and Silver Oak in a six liter bottle and various other highly sought after wines.
For a group of about 90 people, I would say eight of which, eight of whom might have actually known the difference between what usually is poured at a wedding reception and what was poured at this one.
But it was certainly incredibly generous of him to be pouring Mutual Shield for 90 people at his daughter's wedding reception.But that night, you shared a quart with me.It was very generously.
Well, first, you shared a glass of DRC Romanesque Sauvignon 1984. which that was very generous.But then you also shared a glass of port with me.Would you?Can you?Well, I have two questions.Can you tell us about that bottle of port?
Because it's certainly a very unusual and interesting bottle.Did you bring the glasses that you served it in, or did that venue have those glasses?I was just wondering.
No, I just brought the bottle of port.
And so it was a very special bottle.Can you tell us about it?
Yes, well, the wine was from 1880.We were always very strong in port.One of our biggest suppliers was Quinte de Novo.And at some point around, I am really, I'm guessing the mid 90s, I think,
the family of Quentin de Noval, the Vanzellas, sold the business to Axel, who were on a wine acquisition, fine wine acquisition phase of their lives.
And Quentin de Noval- Is that when Jean-Michel Caz became the director at Noval?
Yes, yeah, yeah, exactly.And the head of Quintana Nova at that time was Cristiano Vanzella.And he left the company after a short while and was doing many things.But one of the things he became was the director of my wine company.
And a couple of years later, he called me and said, I'm going to send you a sample of some wine I found at a winery in Regua that's closing down. from 1880, and I think you should taste it.
He didn't tell me how much there was at the time, but I said, what was selling at that time, just before the millennium, was anything that was 1900.And I sort of said, well, you sure it isn't 1900 that would sell like hot cakes?
And he said, no, no, it's all registered with the Port Wine Authority and it's 1880. So I was going down the lines of, well, in that case, let's make it a hundred year old, put some younger wine in it and call it a hundred year old tourney.
That's not allowed.Apparently you can't go any more than 40 plus.So that doesn't work.Anyway, the wines arrived and I said, don't touch it.It is unbelievable. We can certainly sell this."
And it turned out that in the wine cellar he was visiting to buy some, as it was closing down, he was looking to buy some stone lagars for foot treading his vintage port at the place called Quinta Donna Maria, which he was setting up for himself after selling Quinta Donova.
They had some, so he bought those, and they said, would you be interested in any old stock?He said, well, not really, but what have you got?So they showed them some barrels on the floor, and he wasn't very interested.
And then at the back, in the loom at the back of the che, or whatever they call it in Portugal, there were three 20,000 liter wooden barrels.And two of them were empty, but the middle one was half full of this 1880 vintage wine.
Small amounts have been taken out, people have bought a bucket to put in their 20-year-old blend or whatever, but mostly it had evaporated, 10,000 liters had evaporated over the years.
And because it was stored in the douro, the water and the alcohol had evaporated at the same rate.If you don't mean in...
Villanova de Gaia, apparently the water would have not evaporated at the same rate and it wouldn't have been very good wine because of the humidity.But in the Douro, they both evaporated at the same rate.
In fact, the alcoholic content was exactly the same as it was when it was made, which I think was 19.7%.I might be wrong.But it was the same.That was the point.
And what it basically was, was 20,000 liters of wine flavor concentrated into 10,000 liters.And the wine was, as you now know, stunning.
And one of the things, the very first bottle we opened was that the next day when I came back into my office where we tasted it, it was like perfume.The entire office smelled just from the little drop that was left in the wine glass of this port.
So we bottled it off as Millennium Port for the Millennium.
And we actually, Christiana found another smaller quantity of 1853, which is something to do with the coronation of King Pedro V, which I have to say, I didn't know anything about, but apparently the,
That was why several pipes had been laid down and there was one left.So we got a pipe of 1853 as well.So we had 1853 in a smaller quantity, but something like 1,200, 1,500 cases, I can't remember, a huge quantity of old port.
Cristiano Manziel was a close friend of Dirk Nieport and they agreed to bottle it for us, the specialists in Old Woodport in Portugal.They tasted it and said, we think if we add 5% of our 1945 that'll make it even better.
So I said, well, I'll do that.And they did.And what you tasted was the 95% 1885% 45 blend.And what was the, who produced the 1880?Do you know?Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It was a small winery who,
I've got it, I have it somewhere, but his surname was Lopez, and that was the name of the winery.I think they didn't bottle much off, if anything, for themselves.They were just producers and sold to other people who would put it into their blend.
I know they had sold Mount of the 1880 to Taylors.Is it?
But it has more than one vintage.So the 45 Neaport was also Tawny.It was a 1945 Collieta from Neaport, blended with this 1880 Collieta from this Lopez winery.
Yeah.And you're allowed to do that?
Yeah. And so I don't really have the context for 144-year-old tawny pork that you have, I'm quite sure.Once it's bottled, it doesn't really change, correct?
No, I think it does, but it's in the context of it being 124 or something years old when we bottled it.No, it wasn't.It was 119 years old.The wine in half bottles has certainly aged, and you can tell the difference.
In bottles and magnums, it's not changed very much.
What I tasted was from a bottle, correct?It was not the least bit tired or oxidized.I mean, it is oxidized, but it's not oxidized in a negative way.It's hard not to be influenced by the knowledge that it's a blend of 1880 and 1945, but
I think if I wasn't influenced by that, I would have thought it was extraordinary, but I don't know.Again, I don't have the context for that.I'm sure you've tasted it quite a few times.Can you describe it to us?
It's never been my job to do that.That's been your job.It's just delicious. not heavy, but it's not light and sort of disappearing.It's robust in that sense.It's the longest taste of any port I've ever tasted.
That would justify my statement earlier on that it's like perfume.It's It just goes on forever.And the next morning when you come down to the room, if you're not watching the buses, then it's just as powerful it was the night before.
We've, by mistake, had a bottle open for 11 months with about two inches in the bottle.And I would say it had lost 10% over 11 months.So still beautiful.Sorry, 10% of its flavor.
How many cases do you have left? Well, how many did you bottle?
Oh, I'll have to work it out now, won't I?
Between 1,500 cases and 2,000 cases.
And how many do you have left?
I don't know.I just asked for a stock figure the other day and I've not had it back.25 at the most.
Is it for sale?Yes. at your old stomping grounds?
Your old Whitlam's?It's for sale at Whitlam's?
Yes.I sold Whitlam's in 2003, but the company that bought Whitlam's had no feeling that they could sell such a lot, because it was still quite a lot then, there was probably six, 700 cases, that they could sell that amount of old port.
I had no problem thinking that I could.I had another company with, I think it was called Whittam's International or something, which we weren't using, and I changed the name to GW Wines, which is
GW, the founder of Whittam's in 1788 was called Gerald Whittam, hence the GW.GW became the name of my travel company.It doesn't now, but we had GW Wines and GW Travel.We changed that name in 2013 to Golden Eagle, which is the name of our trains.
I want to caution you that I may ask you questions that I asked you that night at the wedding reception, but I only heard about every 10th word you said that night because the music was so loud.
That's one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you today was to hear what I didn't hear that night because the music was so loud.I really honestly heard very little of what you said in our conversation.Did you know Hardy Rodenstock?
Have I met him?Yes.Have I done any more than meet him?Not really, but I haven't been involved in transactions of wines that were allegedly or actually from him.
And the point about Hardy Rodenstock and the other guy, the Malaysian guy, whose name escapes me just for a minute, was the... Rudy Karnia one.Yes.Who I have had dinner with and he's owned unbelievable wines that I'm quite sure are authentic.
This is where they, how it becomes, they mix real wines with, and then sell fake wines, if you see what I mean.So, well, that seems to be the modus operandi.And the wines that, the Rudy that I had were sensational.
I never drank any wines with Hardy Rodenstock, we did buy some very old wines, either through him or indirectly.
One of the bottles we bought was from the supposed Thomas Jefferson collection of old Bordeaux's that were found ricked up in a cellar in Paris.
And it was always very strange to me that when the bottle sold for 105,000 pounds at Christie's to the Forbes Foundation in New York.
And it was strange to me that the guy with the wrecking ball that found the cellar didn't stand up and say, hey, that was me.And there's nothing, nobody knows anything about it.We, in the trade, I think, between us,
satisfied ourselves that all these funny wines that he was finding, really old gems, were... I don't know if you read the book Wine and War, that the Germans had decided they'd take away the heart of the French if they took all these old wines to Eagle's Nest.
a lot of things found their way to South America.Hardy was German or Austrian, I can't remember which one he was.It seemed logical that maybe he had connections in South America where all these old gems were still there or being released.
That was not the case, as it happens.They were being made in Austria.That was how we justified to ourselves how he was finding all these wines.The bottles in question were, of course, authenticated by Christies before they sold any.
And one of the things I remember, it's in the book, but one of the things I remember was the engraving on the bottle, which they determined it was of the period and the glass was of the period.And that those engraving tools don't exist anymore.
And then who's the guy in New Orleans who took him to court? No, no, no.Or the Koch brothers.Yeah, yeah.
He ripped off the Koch brothers.That's the biggest mistake.
Yeah, that's what I'm thinking of.And they came to the conclusion, well, yes, those engraving tools don't exist, but dentist drills will do just exactly the same job.So there was a very inconclusive book that, because actually, they never got the
By the end of the book, they hadn't actually had Hardy Rohn locked away.It was a bit of a... This is a billionaire's vinegar book, by the way.Sorry, I've moved on to another book.
Yeah, it's billionaire's vinegar.You know, I asked Bartholomew Broadbent what he thought, what his father thought.His father was convinced, of course, that every bottle was authentic. or he wouldn't have sold them.
Bartholomew believes that every bottle is counterfeit.Every bottle he tasted was counterfeit.And, you know, Bartholomew has a very, very educated and intelligent palate.But he and his father disagreed diametrically on the authenticity of those wines.
Rudy, Kurnia wine, Before I moved here, I used to own a wine store in Nashville, and Rudy was one of my best customers.Rudy Carniawan, the Indonesian guy.And he bought a lot of like $100, $150 Bordeaux's for me.
And I thought he was, I had no idea what he was doing with these $100 bottles.I had no idea whatsoever that he was turning these $100 Bordeaux's into $5,000 bottles of Chateau Patrice, but apparently that's what he was doing.
I can honestly say that I had no involvement in the fraud of supplying him with some of the raw goods that he used to fraud people. Have you tasted 31 quintet in a bottle of National?
I don't know.Because there's no clear record in my view that they made it National.
Really?Why do you say that?
I've never... There's a lot of people who didn't understand the difference between national and the regular going back.And a lot of these things are bottled in the UK.
I have a feeling that somebody somewhere bottled some 31 as national, because they printed their own labels, everything.They just bought a cask of the wine or whatever and bottled it in the UK.
And I don't mean fraudulently, I don't think people really in those days understood the difference. Because I think the first vintage might be 27 anyway, of National.
I don't think I've seen all of them.I was a sommelier at a tasting of every vintage of the National.I don't know, it's a long time ago.I opened two bottles of the 31 National. Those two bottles, it said Nacionale on the cork.
That was the only way that you, the label was the same as the regular bottling, but the Nacionale had Nacionale branded on the cork.That was the only way that you knew.
You didn't know, I didn't know until I opened the wine that it was actually the Nacionale.
Well, I'm not saying it didn't exist, but I've never actually seen one that I thought that's national.And Cristiano was never that clear about it, or Fernando, his uncle, who I knew before him.
He, in fact, I was at dinner there at Quinta de Naval when I was- Can you hold on?
Hold on just one second, please.I'm sorry, sir. Amacone, the Amarone, we don't have that right now.We should be getting some, but we don't have any.
You could ask one of the guys at the cash register to see if there's any in the company, and we could have it transferred here for you.I'm sorry, I'm back.
Yeah, sure.It was 1973, and we were already buying I started in the company in 1969.We were buying, we were a good customer of Kent at the Nobel, and I and my now wife, we were on our first holiday together. and I was invited to go up to the Quinta.
Fernando picked me up from the hotel and drove me up in some great big Mercedes up to the Douro Valley.The police were standing on the corner of the street saluting me as we went up.We went up to Quinta de Nova, the first time I'd been there.
We were there before the people arrived about 20 black cars came up the driveway carrying all sorts of important guests, including the head of the railways, who I happened to sit next to.That's nothing to do with the story, though.
We went down in the cellar.He said, well, we're going to pick the proper wines to drink tonight.We're going to have a 63 Dao, as in D-A-O, a table wine.And now we've got to pick the port.So he said, have you ever tasted the 47 Nationale?
Well, at that point, I probably wasn't sure what national was, but I said, no, I haven't.That's what we're gonna have.And then he said, have you ever tasted the 31?So I said, no, sir, I haven't.
So he put the 47 back and he took the 31 out, but it definitely on the label didn't say national.So we have that at dinner, at the end of dinner.And Fernando said, I asked everybody and everybody knew about 31 and how fantastic it was.
And he said, well, personally, my personal, I personally think the 27 is better.And they said, hang on a minute, he goes down and brings the 27 up.So we actually have the 27 and the 31 together.And they were, well, who cares?
They were both phenomenal.Which one was better?
On that day, we tasted the, in theory, the regular bottling of the 31 and the Nacinol 31 and the 63.We didn't taste the 27.The 31 was the oldest, but the regular bottling and the Nacinol were very different.
And again, you know, it's easy to be influenced by label, but on that day, those bottles, the Nacinol was, in my regard, enormously superior wine. but I actually wasn't influenced by the label.
I was influenced by the cork because it said Nacional on the cork, but they were very different.And kind of the Nacional was a little bit like 47 Chevrolet Blanc.
It's not really a technically correct wine, but it's the greatest wine you've ever tasted.
It's the flaws that make it special.
We were very fortunate to buy from Brasenose College in, I've got to think, I think it's in Oxford.
These colleges in Oxford and Cambridge have gigantic supplies of wine and they were doing some thinning out and they had, we bought 28 cases of 31 of whatever, whichever one it was. And we were selling like two cases a year.You couldn't get it.
And we said, this is a gigantic investment.But if we want to control, if we don't want the whole market flooded with 31, we better buy it all.So we did.And it was a good investment because the price went up.And we took five years to sell it, I think.
But what an enormous quantity.
I was the general manager of a restaurant in Nashville, Tennessee, I think it was in the 80s, or it might've been early 90s.
The owner of the restaurant, when Marvin Overton decided that he was born again and was going to start preaching and stop drinking, the owner of this restaurant, John Lindahl, bought Marvin's wine collection.
And Marvin Overton's wine collection was the wine cellar for this restaurant, you can imagine.And there were two cases of 31 Pinto de Naval.And again, you don't know until you open it, whether it's the regular bottling or the Nassau body.
But you've referred In both of our conversations, you referred to the Barlet Lake Collection.There were a lot of those Burgundies in this cellar, Pierre Penel from the 30s and 40s.
And you never knew until you opened the wine, about half the bottles were completely dead, but the ones that weren't completely dead were absolutely mind-boggling. It's a long time ago, I don't remember exactly.
But there were the Bar-O-Lay bottling, Pierre Pinell.So it was always a roll of the dice if it was going to be one of the greatest wines you've ever tasted or completely undrinkable.Where did those wines come from?
I don't really know anything about them except what I just told you.
I think he was a private collector, doctor.I mean, an actual doctor of medicine, I think, as opposed to anything else.
And he lived in the right place to go around picking up bottles in the thirties, forties, fifties, at a time when Burgundy wasn't doing very well.And anybody would come and they had one they couldn't sell. That's all I know.I can't remember.
There was a company in London called James Richards, I think they were called.I can't remember.Somebody managed to get a direct supply of them.Actually, there was a big company of wine stores called Peter Dominic.They seemed to have supplies of it.
There must have been quite a lot.
Yeah. Well, we had, I mean, we probably had 10 cases at this restaurant in Nashville.I mean, well, it was because it was smart.Marvin had 10 cases, so we had 10 cases.
I actually drove a water heater truck, a semi to New Orleans, or not New Orleans, to Fort Worth to pick up the collection of wine and drove back to Nashville with it in a semi that was normally used for delivering water heaters to seers.
So now you have this, the reason I asked about the model trains, now you have this train company.Luxury trains.I feel like I'm a pretty worldly sophisticated guy.I don't know that I ever realized there was such a thing as luxury trains until I
until Steve Sandberg told me there was such a thing as luxury trains.And then you, what is that all about?Tell us, please tell us about, if you would, about the luxury trains.
Well, it's quite a small business in terms of worldwide coverage, but, and it can never be as big as the cruise line or river ship business with luxury product, because it's just not the capacity on the railways, but there've always been luxury trains.
The Pullman Car Company in the United States, I think they attached Pullman cars to regular service trains, so you could have your Pullman parlor cars and things on a long distance train.
The Waggon Lee Company, who built some of the carriages now, the Venice Simplon Orient Express, running between Paris and Venice and Paris and Istanbul, those were
luxury trains of the day when they're beautifully appointed with marquetry and glass panels and things in the cars.They were not en suite.The toilet was down the end of the corridor.
There were no showers on the train, but that was luxury in 1926, around that time when those carriages were built. That wouldn't work today.
Even the VSOEs had to, the Venice-Simpton-Orient Express has had to build, like put two cabins together to make a cabin with a bathroom, which is about the size of our smallest cabin on one of our trains.
So we didn't come along until... We started running trains in 1989, 1990.And in 1991, started running trains in Russia, which is where the most part of the business has been until about 10 years ago.
We ran on the Trans-Siberian railway, longest railway in the world.In 2007, we had a special luxury train built, brand new.The train cost $25 million at that time to build.And that was incredibly successful.
The number of people in the world that wanted to travel on the Trans-Siberian is enormous.And there's a huge backlog at the moment because, of course, we're not able to run.
Does it run from Moscow to Vladivostok?
How long a trip is that?How many miles?How many days?
In miles, I think, and I might be wrong on this, I think it's 5,000.Or kilometers.Kilometers, 10,888.And we do a slightly longer trip than that.Because we go down to Ulaanbaatar as well as part of the tour in Mongolia.
It takes two weeks, in answer to your second question.So they have a tour.
And you also have a trip from Moscow to Ulaanbaatar, where?
Ulaanbaatar is the capital of Mongolia.
There are a lot of people.Do people take the train, your luxury train from Moscow to Vladivostok because they want to go to Vladivostok or just because they want to have this trip and the luxury?
Well, it's a bit like Mount Everest.You've got to do it because it's there.I mean, that's more of an effort to do that, though, of course.
And do they fly back or do they take the train back?
No, no, they go by train one way and then fly the other.
And you serve them food on the train, like three meals or something?
Yeah.We have a very high standard of Over the years, it got better and better and better.
I think the European train, anyway, because we have another one based in Budapest, if it was a standalone restaurant, in other words, it didn't move, we could get a Michelin star for it if we wanted one.I'm not sure we do.But Michelin, you can't
First of all, we go through seven or eight countries in some of the tours, say in the Balkans.So which country would it be attached to?They don't have a moving restaurant classification.
And secondly, they also have, as they should have, inspectors arriving unannounced.Well, the only way you can get on one of our trains is by spending $20,000.So they're not going to do that, obviously.
And is it Russian mafia, ex-Russian mafia people that are taking your train to Siberia?
Do we know?Yes.We're able to get the train out for running in the Stans, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, the five Stans.
And we do that, and also Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia, we do that during the spring and autumn, but the rest of the time it's back in Moscow.We've never had a problem with the Russian mafia at all.
I didn't ask that question correctly.Who is the passenger?Who buys a ticket?Who is that person?$20,000 is a lot of money.
Traditionally, on average, the luxury trains start in 2007, so 17 years. Over that period, the percentage of people buying the tickets, as you say, on average 25% US, 25% UK, 25% Australia, New Zealand, 25% everywhere else in the world.
It's changed slightly since COVID.We're getting much more from South America. But overall, in America, because the currency in the States has been very strong versus the European currencies, we've had more like 35, 40% from the US.
Do you have any carriages in the United States?
So it's just Eastern Europe?
We're just about starting.
We have a train in China.We don't own any of the trains.They're on long-term leases.I think the day after tomorrow should be signing for a new Chinese train.
It's absolutely gorgeous, which we'll start using within China and also on combining that with our Russian train when it's out. in the stands to run on the civil road.So from Beijing and Xi'an to the Russian border, basically, in Uzbekistan.
So that's about a three-week trip.
And you don't have any trouble with disquiet, unrest in these countries where you operate?The security is fine?There's no...
Russia has always been fine, but we have run a trip to Chechnya in 2019.That was fine.The security was amazing, but there was no problem there anyway.We didn't need the security, but they wanted to put this big show on for us.
We ran 20 trips to Iran. There was a period when it was okay to run to Iran.Sadly, we can't.It was a fantastic tour.I hope we can go back soon, once all this aggravation in the Middle East has died down.It will at some point, I suppose.
To answer your question, we've run to North Korea as well, once.
Well, the good news, happily.So my podcast, it's about two and a half months old.It's been downloaded.Well, over 5000 times around the world, which I don't think is a whole lot, but it seems like a lot to me.
But this it's of course, it's downloaded the most in the United States, but the second most is Russia.All right, which I think is astonishing, but it is it's the second most country that is the most downloaded in.
And it's been downloaded a couple of times in Uzbekistan, but I think that was you.You were in Uzbekistan when it was downloaded in Uzbekistan, so I think that's you.
But maybe this podcast will get you some publicity in Russia, because it'll probably be downloaded five or six hundred times in Russia.
Well, we've had very few Russians on our trains.But I think, let's say in South Africa, they have a lot of Russians going.
Russians aren't big on traveling on trains in their own country, or even having holidays in their own country, because they've had 70 years of not being able to go anywhere.
And now they can go anywhere, and they're taking full advantage of it, if they've got some money. And quite a lot of them do have a lot of money.
Do you have wine cellars on your trains?Do you serve wine with the meals?
Yes, I was just thinking where we put a wine cellar on a train, but anyway, we have an above ground wine cabinet.
Yeah, well, yeah, yeah, right, right.But do you serve wine with the meals?
Yes, of course.I have a So that's the one I was looking for.So that's a wine list.
All the wines are included.And the current onboard wine list has 50 wines that people can choose.We bring out two or three every day, but they can look at the menu and say, no, I don't want that.I'm going to have this instead.
And that's the premium wine list that people have to pay for.So I'd say I'm going to... Is it mostly French?So Champagne, White Burgundy, White Bordeaux, Red Bordeaux, Italian Red, Rhone Red, Spanish Red, Californian Red,
South African red, Australian red, New Zealand white, New Zealand red, and Argentinian red.Argentinian red, excuse me.So I'm guessing there's about 40 wines there, varying in price from 470 down to, the cheapest is 40, no, 65.
So people have paid for the, if they want, we don't sell much because the actual collection we have for the train that is included, we spend, from our research, we spend about three times as much as anybody else.
So our average cost price is about $22 a bottle, trade price.
Well, I asked you for a half an hour and you've given me an hour.
Well, thank you.That's good.Tell us an aha moment in your life.We'll wrap things up.Share an aha moment in your life with us.Because I know you've had some amazing aha moments.
Wish you had told me that before, and then I could have thought of something.Well, you can invent something if you need to.No, no, no, no, no. Let's talk about provenance.
It was something I was going to mention earlier on, but we went off the subject.Provenance is really very, very important for older wines.We came across a wine cellar in Freiburg in Switzerland.
Two old ladies who were fed up of drinking the Chateau Margaux vintage that they had too much of, which turned out to be 1892, and they had 27 cases.They wanted to move on to something a bit younger like 1893.I don't know what else they had.
So they sold all this 1892 and we shipped it over to the UK. which I haven't mentioned, we used to recork all our old wines in-house.And it was anything prior to 1945 for many years.And then we changed it to 55 shortly before I sold the business.
And we followed the recorking regime that they used at Chateau Lafitte.We had a negotiate business in Bordeaux as well.So we knew all the Chateaus pretty well.And We caught all this 1892.We sold it all.
I kept, I don't know, 10 bottles, I think, myself, and slowly we opened them, and I had one bottle left.A great friend of mine who, when I, my father sent me to Bordeaux in the summer of 1967 before I came in the business to knock the corners off.
Didn't work, but that's what he intended to do. John Salvy, who was about to become a master of wine.Basically, I was under his wing, as it were, at Chateau Palmer.Or Seashell, who owned half of Chateau Palmer.The French Seashell.
The French side of the Seashell company.It owned Dongle Day. and also half of Chateau Palmer.So from 1967, I knew him for many, many, many years.And he came to retirement.He was coming to Altrincham, to Manchester to see us.
And I said, well, we'll arrange special dinner, come and stay.And so that was all arranged.About a year before that, I'd been at a Christie's auction and they had a bottle of 1892 Chateau Margot.
in the auction, and I thought, well, I'm down to one bottle, I'll buy this one, it's one of ours.
And so when John came, Gonsalve came, I intended to open the bottle I'd bought at Christie's, keeping the original bottle for some other special occasions down the line.
I opened it, the cork, our cork, which is brand, we all put branded corks and everything, completely shriveled, and the wine was terrible.So the distance, it would probably been maybe 30 or 25 years maybe since we recorked it.
And I said, well, we'll have to open the other bottle then.So I got the other bottle out of the cellar and we had that, and that was perfect.Every bottle had been tasted when we recorked them, when we had a record of each bottle.
So I knew the bottle two, nine, six, four, three or whatever it was. There's a difference of only about 50 numbers.They're all recalled at the same time.
We've no idea what happened to the bottle that was off, but clearly it'd been stored incredibly badly somewhere. the bottle that had come straight from being re-corked and put in my cellar, been there for 25 years, was perfect.
So provenance is very important.
I was in Napa early in September and at the invitation of Michael Mondavi to taste the 73, 74, and 75 Mondavi Cabernets with them.
I assumed it was going to be the reserves, but it turned out to be the regular bottling of the 73, 74, 75 Mondavi Cabernet.I asked him about why the regular bottling.
He said that the regular wine has actually aged better than the reserve because the reserves have higher alcohol, they're not as well balanced.The regular bottlings have better acidity.But to your point that Providence is everything,
This 50-year-old Napa Valley regular wine that probably sold for $3 when it was originally released, especially the 74.But the 73 and the 75 too were magical, superb, and the 74 are youthful wines.
But that bottle has never been moved since it was originally laid down in a cellar probably you know, a week after it was bottled or something.You know, a guy, you know, a guy in Paris named Francois Oduz?You should look him up.
You and he would get you'd like you'd like each other a lot.His his definition of young wine is 70 years old.
I had lunch with him at a restaurant in Paris called Patrick Pignon a few years ago, and he brought a 1929 Chateau Chalon.We had it with fettuccine with fresh white truffles, and it was one of the best experiences of my life.
Did you ever taste the 1870 Glamis Castle Lafite?
Yes, out of a Magnum.I think we did actually drink a Magnum, because they weren't very expensive. But we bought quite a lot of magnums from the Grand Castle Cellar, 1870, 1874, definitely.1870 and 1874.
And I mean, they've been stored at, what, 48 degrees for years and years and years.And it shows.
A hundred years.A hundred years, right?
I mean, because his great-great-great-grandson discovered the cellar in 1975, I think. They'd been, anyway, I opened a magnum of 1870 Glamis Kessel Lafitte at a restaurant in Nashville in 1994.
It had been recourt at Lafitte, at the winery, at the Chateau, and topped up with something old, not 1870, obviously, but something, and it was absolutely magnificent, you know, magical wine.
Well, do you know the story about the 1870, we had a Jeroboam 1870 mouton, which had been donated by the chateau, but never moved from the chateau, donated by the chateau to, there was a I think it was in the 70s, actually.
Venice was sinking and they were trying to raise money to stop it sinking.They had a big auction, they had all sorts of stuff, and then the mafia stole it all.They never did anything.But this bottle never left the Chateau, and it was sold.
Philip Tenenbaum of the Chicago Wine Company bought it and sold it to us.We picked it up from the Chateau. and sold it to somebody called the Texas Art Gallery in Dallas.I think I'm in Dallas.Yes, I'm sure I'm in Dallas.
Through American Wine Imported, Tony and Barbara in Dallas.And they opened it at the mansion Turtle Creek.And Philippine de Rothschild
came and brought a jeroboam of 1970, and Robert Mondavi was there and brought some of his wines, and I seem to remember there was an awful lot of Krug around as well.Anyway, the 1870 blew away the 1970.1870 is such a spectacular vintage.
Well, the 1870 Glamis Castle Magnum that I opened in 1994 I've always got an easy answer for what's the greatest wine you've ever tasted, because I think it's impossible for anything to be greater than that.
It was a 124-year-old Magnum from a cave in Scotland. under the Glavis Castle, you know, there's the whole Macbeth connection and so there's the Michael Broadbent connection.
There's, I mean, there's just, it's, you know, such, it was a very, very special night.And coincidentally, Chateau and Estates found out about, we had a dinner and we served 1929, 1945, 1961, and 1982 Lafitte. and then the 1870 Magnum.
We served 76 DRC Montrachet, 82 Krug, and a Magnum of 59 and Kim.At this dinner, we donated everything.We donated $120,000 that night to cancer research.
But Chateau and Estates found out about it and they gave us, at this restaurant called the Wild Boar, a case of 1970 Lafitte.
And so everybody in the restaurant got a free glass of 1970 Lafitte that night, just because they were lucky enough to be there that night.So that was nice of Chateau and Estates to do that.
Next time you're going to be in Paris, I'll connect you with Francois because you guys should meet.
He's a hoot.The travel business was set up to run a train called the Champagne Express. and using my connections in Champagne, basically.And we never did it.Never.Because running on French railways is virtually impossible.
They will find every excuse for you not to run.It's illegal, but they will find a way of doing it. Only a few years ago, they were threatened with a fine of 10% of their turnover.They didn't allow open access, basically.And they have now started.
So we're starting a trip in Paris to Istanbul trip starting in May next year.And we'll be running it five or six times a year.
Well, you and Francois need to meet.And I want to be there when you meet.
Yeah, well, you're going to have me.
Well, thank you so much.This has been a delightful time.And I can't thank you enough.Can't thank you enough for sharing your part of your day with us.
It's been a pleasure and look forward to meeting you soon in Paris.
