Tony Laithwaite: My life in wine
The founder of Laithwaites Wine discusses his second family in France, the trade secrets he’s learnt – and how he built his wine business
From 10 cases in a Cortina boot to a wine business, Tony Laithwaite shares the highs, lows and family milestones of his life in wine
Published 03 February 2026 10:55am GMT
Tony Laithwaite is one of the wine industry’s most colourful characters. Having created a wine-importation business called Bordeaux Direct back in 1969 – starting with five labels and 150 customers – he transformed it into a multi-million-pound concern, renamed Laithwaites Wine in 2000, which now has over 1,500 wines and 750,000 customers. In 2019, he was awarded the CBE for services to the UK and global wine industry but, modest to the core, he feared the official notification envelope might contain a speeding fine.
As a youth, Tony dreamt of being a farmer, and his love of geography earned him a place at Durham University. While studying there he went on a field trip to Bordeaux and hatched the idea of importing wine. In 1988, nearly 20 years after starting his wine business, he suffered a heart attack; doctors advised him to seek a less stressful career but he carried on regardless with his wife Barbara, expanding the company into one of the great UK success stories. We had a lot of questions to ask Tony, who celebrated his 80th birthday last December, about his fascinating career.
The husband and wife team at their Windsor base, where they turned a small startup into a national success
When did wine first get under your skin?
We were northerners but Dad got a job in London, where we were surrounded by bottle shops. One day, when I was 16 or 17, he brought back a bottle of Mouton Rothschild, which must have cost all of £5 then. He soaked the label off it and stuck it on the cupboard as a souvenir – and I thought there must be something in this. So I got a bit interested then, and he bought me a little book on wine. I looked at that and thought I’d like to go to France someday to do a harvest.
How did your early days with the business in France begin?
My grandmother had met an older French lady in the street and took her home for tea, where she told her I wanted to do a harvest. The French lady said she lived in Bordeaux and would take me in before I went up to university. And, after a series of lucky breaks, I ended up working for an old couple named Jean and Ginette Cassin, who had a vineyard in Bordeaux. He ran a co-operative winery and I got a job there.
My French was terrible at the beginning but they decided to “adopt” me. They became more than friends – they were my French parents, really. I ate and stayed with them at Sainte-Colombe, but they wouldn’t speak English to me, they made me speak French. They taught me not just about wine but about everything French. I do love the French, I always have – especially those two. Eventually, Jean Cassin persuaded me to start a business, so I owe him a lot. He helped me get some wine from his co-op, and sent it across to London – but cases kept being nicked by the dockers! So I drove down to Bordeaux in my Cortina and came back with 10 cases in the boot. Then I rented a van and put 100 cases in it, before buying a new Ford Transit van (after Jean, four other grower friends of his and my granny all put in £200 each). I would catch the night ferry, drive down and pick up the wine that I had already sold by having already had tastings and collecting orders.
The real reason it worked was that when I delivered wine to people, they would often ask me in to chat about it. This was what got us going.
Who were the winemakers who really influenced you?
The first person I dealt with outside that original co-op was Henri Bourlon, who was a successful vineyard owner in the Puisseguin-Saint-Emilion appellation. I stayed with him, bought his Château Guibeau wine and have bought it ever since. I now deal with his grand-daughter, Brigitte. When I asked Bourlon for some cheaper wine, he said to go down to the Languedoc and talk to his friends in the Midi. I bought wine from a fanatically passionate guy there who had an estate just outside Narbonne on a ridge called La Clape. I sold a lot of Clape. It was an advantage being quite young as people sort of adopted you, took you around the region and introduced you to others. I learnt everything that way. At the time, the Midi was renowned for plonk. But I’ve always believed in that area and, in fact, that’s probably my main stamping ground now. It’s really exciting these days with all the new possibilities coming along.
How much did you learn from the legendary French oenologist Emile Peynaud?
He taught a wine course at Bordeaux University, which I attended when Jean gave me time off work. Peynaud was the professor there and a great taster. He taught us a lot of things I’ve remembered. One of them was that if you think a wine is off, it’s more likely to be you that’s off. If you have a group of people around a table, and one person says, “I don’t like this wine,” none of them will like the wine. People do believe in their wine merchants, not just me. You get loads of comments like “I’ve never had a bad wine from you,” but logically, they must have had some they liked more than others. Some days you’ll like a wine that on other days you might not like. It’s psychological.
The other thing that Peynaud did was to make us try two glasses of wine and tell him which we thought was better. We all agreed on one, but he told us both glasses had come from the same bottle. That was a real lesson.
You’ve built a career finding bottles most of us never see on a supermarket shelf. How do you stumble on those wines?
There’s a network. You’ve got some good growers, and you hear about others from them – especially in places like Australia where everybody’s very open. You don’t do it by sitting in an office and phoning people up. A lot of people do that in the wine trade but it can’t possibly be as good as actually going there and seeing the actual people face to face. I’m not doing so much now, I’m old, but I used to spend so much of my time travelling.
Family has always been part of the story. What is it really like working with Barbara and your sons?
Barbara and I learnt early on to avoid the subject of the business at home. Barbara had her areas to do with finance and management, and she was MD for 20 years. I was never MD. I just did the wines and the marketing. These days, the business is very much run by our sons. They’re all in their forties now and live reasonably close to us in Henley. They look after the day‑to‑day running, while also managing to keep themselves busy with their own ventures. Henry has his own winery and makes sparkling wines over in Marlow. Will’s got a brewery in Abingdon and Tom has a pub. We couldn’t be prouder to see the boys leading the business now, bringing their own ideas and taking it forward for the next generation.
Is there a place that feels like your second home in wine?
It would be Castillon and Sainte-Colombe, where Jean Cassin asked me to buy his vineyard, the first one I ever set foot in. I don’t go there every month but I get there quite a lot as my vineyard at Château La Clarière is a passion, and we go there for our summer holidays. It’s almost unbelievable that I got to go to France aged 19, landed in this village and I’m still going there 61 years later. How lucky can you get?
Can you pick a bottle with a back story?
Would it be cheating to talk about my wife’s wine? After she had retired from being MD, she and a friend who’d been widowed invested in two hectares in a hamlet called Wyfold. Their sparkling wine has got better and better. It was made by the Roberts family until our son Henry took over making it. It’s won awards and is a blend of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir with a dash of Pinot Meunier.
Your mantra has been “We stop at nothing to bring you great wine” – but was there a time that pushed you to the limit?
My annus horribilis was 1988, when my right-hand man, Tim Bleach, was killed in a car crash in Spain on a buying trip. Then I had a heart attack and I was told: “Pack it in or you’ll have another one” but I couldn’t pack it in.
Barbara took on most of the work then. I did a little bit but stayed at home a lot. We got through it. It was just the two of us running the business then. It was stupid trying to do it on our own, so we went out there and found some good people, put a whole team of directors in and then the business took off.
What still excites you most? And what simple advice would you give Telegraph readers for enjoying wine more this year?
I don’t travel much now, although I’m off soon to the Midi and then Australia, where we have an office and a winery in the Barossa called RedHeads. I think I’ve been almost everywhere, and every single wine district in France – which is well over 100! In other countries, I’ve been to all the main regions. I’m not so much thinking about discovering new bits as we have buyers who travel, as well as people in the different regions, who find stuff for us and send it in.
A good day for me is when I’ve got some wine to write about, and I phone up people and find out about it all. And if it works and people buy it, it’s a fantastic day. In our game, if the customers like it, that’s what counts. I just love to write stuff, and people trust me not just to buy them a wine but to put together a mixed case of wine. My simple advice for readers would be to just try a bit more wine. Try new things you’ve never heard of, and pay a bit more. Find stuff that’s £20 or £15 and really enjoy it; focus on the pleasure it’s giving you.