For anyone taking the A1 north from London, Stevenage is simply a road sign; somewhere to crawl past on the journey home.
Its claim to fame is that it was the first New Town to be built after the Second World War, but it is also home to the Wine Society, the world’s oldest mail-order wine business, founded in 1874.
After 17 years commuting there from London, Toby Morrhall sneaked out the back door and escaped to Glasgow, where he is the buyer for burgundy, Chile and sherry. “It’s closer to the family cottage on Mull,” he explained over lunch a few weeks ago, “and it’s a friendly city. In London someone talking to you on the Tube is a nutter. Here it’s normal.”
Having been a buyer for Sainsbury’s, faced with the obsessions of price-points, promotions and targets, working for the Wine Society seems a breeze for Morrhall. As it is a non-profit organisation, he is free to travel the world “buying wines I think my friends would like”. Officially his remit is “to improve member satisfaction”, which sounds pretty woolly to me.
Members have to pay £40 to join but there are compensations, especially for far-flung Scots. Wherever you live, delivery is free, in a sense subsidised by members in Tunbridge Wells or Windsor. As for satisfaction, the society trounced its rivals in a recent Which? magazine survey of the major wine clubs.
We spent much of our lunch discussing Burgundy, Morrhall’s favourite region and one he says is “ultimately unknowable” given the number of growers and styles. “The great failing of burgundy is that everything is ranked according to the vineyard, which would be fine if every producer made the best wine possible from that specific site, but of course they don’t. Some are bad or simply lazy.” Sifting out the good ones takes real skill when wines are tasted from the barrel soon after harvest, when their charms are well hidden.
The other sad truth is that you need deep pockets. According to Morrhall, “the sweet spot – where burgundy can deliver real value for money – is between £30 and £60”. Below that he advises members to buy their pinot noir from elsewhere. The top-seller is the Society’s Red Burgundy at £8.50, however, a wine that provokes more complaints than any other. For the money, people would be far better off with something from Chile, but then it would not have the magic “B” word on the label.
If there is a downside, it may be that the job engenders expensive tastes. When I ask Morrhall what he’d buy for a tenner a bottle – twice the average UK spend – he looks pained at the thought of no more bourgogne rouge. “I think I’d just drink beer.”
The reason good red burgundy is never cheap is down to the low yields, the small scale of production and because demand invariably outstrips supply. This last fact is gloriously absent from sherry – still as unfashionable as ever and still probably the best bargain – which you can certainly buy for less than a tenner. n
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