By Simon Berry

This has been a momentous week here at BB&R.

Eighty seven years after it was born in the parlour at 3 St James’s Street, the Cutty Sark brand has been sold. For as long as I can remember the familiar yellow label has been part of our identity. Somehow this always seemed to be paradoxical: very few of our UK wine customers automatically associated BB&R with an international whisky blend, but the reality is that the wine division of our business would never have survived, let alone prospered, if it hadn’t been for Uncle Cutty paying the bills for forty years or more.

(more…)

Best wishes for a very Happy and prosperous New Year from all of us at Berry Bros. & Rudd.

This year’s January Sale shelves are going to be heaving, but remember that if you want to grab a real bargain, visit bbr.com today – some wines are going to be discounted by over 50%!

Today also marks the start of our 2007 Grand Burgundy En Primeur Offer and you’ll be glad to know that it is as brimful of fine Burgundy as its predecessor.

Back in 1987, as the newly promoted Marketing Director, I was responsible for replacing the old

Back in 1987, as the newly promoted Marketing Director, I was responsible for replacing the old ‘waistcoat pocket’ Price List with a new, all-singing all-dancing version. To some people, including my father, it was as if I had taken a twelve bore to the ravens in the Tower. The old list was an icon of the business: shamelessly old fashioned in an increasingly modern world. I had to take my father to lunch in his old club to show him that he was the only one there still wearing a waistcoat.

21 years later, I am delighted to announce that we are bringing the style of our old list back for our 2009 Price List. Why? When even my father (now aged 93) has grown accustomed to the new one? Well, in many ways the world has moved on so far that its time has come again.

Ironically enough, it is the emergence of the internet that has revived the old-fashioned Price List. Our website bbr.com continues to win awards and is recognized throughout the world as one of the best sources of information available to the wine buff. Continually updated, with new wines as well as new snippets of information being added several times a day, the website requires a companion printed price list much more flexible and concise than the current model. Something that will give you an overview of the wines we have available for you to buy, but which will encourage you to visit our website to learn more and discover our full range. Something, moreover, that is less wasteful of natural resources in these ecologically conscious days. The more we looked for the perfect answer, the clearer it became that we were describing a wheel already invented: the pocket-sized list.

To celebrate its return, we are also publishing a limited edition reprint of our list from 100 years ago; our 1909 Price List. 1909 really was ‘a foreign country’, to use L.P. Hartley’s famous phrase. The list leads off with Sherry and Port, for example, and ‘pre-expulsion’ Green Chartreuse is over three times more expensive than 1869 Lafite or 1880 Romanée Conti. But even as we gasp at the prices of some of the wines from those days, it is comforting to realise that some good ideas never go away – they just need time for the world to catch up with them again.

View 1909 Replica Price List

View 2009 Price List

Gerry Casey, who died in Bordeaux last week, was an integral part of the Wine Division for 20 years. Already well known to the company through his work with the negociant house of Mahler Besse, he was the obvious choice to run our Bordeaux Office when it was established by Christopher Berry Green in 1974.

Many current members of BB&R spent time with Gerry in Bordeaux, learning about the region through his unique insights. Also unique were his driving skills (slow down the straights, fast round the corners), although they had the advantage of keeping the occupants of the rear seats awake after a good lunch at the Plaisance in St Emilion or le Mar aux Grenouilles in Lesparre.

His Irish background, coupled with an RAF/ ham radio vocabulary, and an adult life spent almost exclusively abroad, meant that Gerry’s way of talking was instantly recognisable. He relished the English language, and his ability to write meant that his ‘Vitsits’, sent vie the trusty telex, became a required read for anyone who wanted to know what was happening in the vineyards of Bordeaux.

His French, of course, was equally immaculate (he had a wine column in the local Bordeaux newspaper for many years), even if he resolutely refused to waver from his British accent. The message on the answerphone of the office in the Boulevard President Wilson – “Ici le Repondeur de la Maison Berry Bros and Rudd…” was worth the price of the call alone. He once, famously, tried to explain the rules of cricket, in French, to a group of Bordelaise vignerons. It didn’t catch on.

Of all the things we learnt from Gerry, we could never hope to replicate one of his finest achievements: the ability to spit wine at a tasting, accurately, powerfully, and without letting a drop spill! He claimed that the best practise should happen in the bath, with a mouthful of water aimed at the big toe.

Gerry spotted Francoise in the English section of the Bordeaux library, and they were married soon afterwards. The mainstay of his life, she helped him through his final illnesses with great dedication and good humour. She, together with their children Caroline and Jerome, and everyone who knew him, will miss him greatly.

Ever since we first designed a website for BB&R in 1994, we saw it as an extension of our business. We might have been breaking into unfamiliar territory in those days, but we always wanted to remain true to the ‘culture’ of Berry Bros, built layer by layer over the course of 300 years.

I like to think that we succeeded, and even if technology continues to surprise us (and who would have envisioned videocasts even three years ago, let alone thirteen) we believe that it’s the medium that changes, never the message.

However one aspect of life at BB&R has not yet translated to the internet: the discussions that are an everyday part of our business lives. Wine is a subject that demands different opinions.

Whether it’s over a tasting, at a private lunch with producers, in one of our shops or a public dinner down in our cellars, there is always some debate going on. The relative merits of corks, or glasses, or new grape varieties, or fermentation techniques. Has one vintage developed according to expectation, or has another taken us by surprise? Do we agree with an opinion on the relative wine making skills of a father compared to a son, or that a particular wine is under-valued? How was wine appreciated in the past, and how will things change in the future? And with representatives in cities as far apart as Dublin and Shanghai, these conversations continue all around the clock!

Finally, this crucial strand of our existence reaches the internet! With the introduction of Berrys’ Fine Wine Blog, you will be able to read the opinions and the experiences of the people who make up our company, and to question them, agree with them, disagree with them or even put them right!