A quick history...
Back in 1969, Tony Laithwaite started out with a small van and the idea of bringing 'real' wines - wines of authenticity and character - directly to customers in the UK. Called 'Bordeaux Direct', Tony's original business had just one wine on the list and only 150 customers.
But slowly he began investigating vineyards further up the Dordogne ... and beyond. In the 1970s he was the first merchant - of any nationality - to visit and buy wine from most of the wine regions of southern France ... Cahors, Madiran, Gaillac, Minervois, Saint-Chinian and on eastwards.
Then came the then unheard-of exotics such as Rioja, Bulgarian Cabernet, even wines from Australia that were first shipped in 1974, well before the great wave of Oz imports over the last decade or two.
Apart from selling these 'new' wines, Bordeaux Direct was unique because Tony always insisted on what he called 'real' wines - wines bottled by the producer - because they simply had more flavour, extra character and somehow anyone, even a newcomer to wine, can still taste that quality and goodness.
The present day...
Nearly 40 years on and we're now called Laithwaites and deliver wine to over 700,000 customers. We may be bigger, but we still go 'direct'. With a huge network of supplier contacts, we still specialise in top-quality, small production wines from growers in every corner of the wine world.
These relationships, developed over three decades, will give you the inside track to wines you just can't get elsewhere, often little parcels (sometimes single selected vats) from smaller craftsman-producers. The big, homogenised mega-blends we leave to others ... small is definitely more beautiful in wine.
And it's for these reasons that our range has won hundreds of medals, including four 'Wines of the Year' at the world's biggest and most respected wine competition, and we were voted Decanter magazine's Independent Wine Merchant of the Year 2007. It's official ... Laithwaites customers drink the best! |
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