[April 09, 2024]

It was 1979 … I’d got to know a hundred or so wine producers around the world and found their lives as fascinating as their wines. Then we had a few thousand enthusiastic club members and customers, keen to learn more.

Our plain-spoken, direct approach to wine had attracted nice, normal people eager to try bottles from all over the world … in direct contrast to the usual (for that time) wine snob with pre-conceived – usually erroneous – ideas on the subject. So, it seemed a great idea to arrange for grower-winemakers and customers to meet.

This was the seed of an idea that became The Laithwaites Wine Festival.

I’d already led a good number of wine tours around vineyards and seen how growers and customers always got on famously … even if they had no common language … because Wine Talks.

Many of our customers lived within easy reach of London, so we looked there for a venue and came up with the newly opened Kensington Town Hall. Pristine in fact, and that proved a problem. They had new cream carpets and, well, wine can spill, and half of it is red, very red.

But we planned another, and this time we chose the Horticultural Hall in Westminster, which was very well used to muck, compost, water spillages etc on its wood block floors and didn’t turn a hair. We decided that we could do better than plain tables and got someone to make the steel stands with market stall roofs and built-in wine coolers that we still use today. Anyway, the second event was deemed an even greater success, so we planned more.

I’d seen other people try to run wine shows in Britain. None seemed to last. I reckoned a large part of our success came down to crowd control. Well, more like crowd-calming. Our nice members and customers stay sweet and calm … even when they’ve had somewhat more than the government recommended intake. Partly because they are experienced drinkers, partly because they, as members and loyal customers, don’t want to let the side down. This is vital … so that our producers want to be there and keep coming back. All say that our show is better than any they attend in their own or other countries. They complain that elsewhere too many attendees get absolutely trolleyed and can become unpleasant. Our customers, however, are always complimented on the interest they show and their politeness. Sure, we get the odd one or two who are taken by surprise (tasting wine does that) but we can handle that with diplomacy. However, we do run a blacklist!   

Over the decades, we’ve constantly tried to vary the offering, because so many people come every year. They come back to meet their grower friends, not hired-in staff, and catch up. And they meet us too, me and our crew, we move around the hall trying to help.

Anyway, variety … there’s plenty of that. We’ve had marching bands from Germany, and what looked like fashion shows as members of various wine confreries paraded on a catwalk in their brightly coloured medieval robes. We’ve installed pétanque pistes (like boules) and brought over the champion of France to take on all challengers; we’ve built a Taste Tunnel – a display of every substance we thought had a smell that sometimes cropped up in wine or matched a grape. All were invited to sniff along. Train the nose. It was very colourful.

We’ve had blacked out rooms where all were invited to guess whether wines were white or red, (harder than you’d think); we’ve demonstrated how music affects taste and how a wine’s taste improves if you drink whilst rubbing your hand over velvet rather than sandpaper.

What to expect at The Wine Festival

• Meet winemakers from all around the world
• Oz Clarke - TV's 'Mr Wine' - will be your Wine Festival host
• Upgrade your ticket to get access to our Fine Wine Room

All our winegrowers get a chance to do a turn in the theatre so they can explain their passion in more depth, but mostly these growers are by their stands, just pouring their wines and chatting to customers. We’ve done a lot to educate but firmly believe it also needs to be entertaining. We do put spitoons at every stand and do all we can to persuade well brought up British people that spitting in this context is necessary, not uncouth; there are over 350 wines to try, after all.

We had 30 years at the Horticultural Hall, then we moved to the bigger Old Billingsgate Hall in the City and now we’ve had to move on up again to Olympia. Will we grow more? I think not. But it’s not up to me … customers will decide. I’m hoping instead that we grow our regional shows. London shouldn’t get everything, and shows must not get so big that the personal touch is lost.

I will be there both days, all sessions, I’ve never missed a single one. I wear a name badge. Please come and say hello.