A cynic, talking to four nomadic British winemakers, would conclude that making wine is one thing, selling it quite another. A romantic would say: How can I do this too?
"Doing this" is making wine with no qualifications, little money, minimal training, in probably out-of-the-way places, often from grape varieties nobody knows about, in tiny quantities. Oh, and with no distribution. And having huge fun doing it.
If you want to make wine and you happen to live in France, or Italy, or Australia, or New Zealand, then you get a job in a winery and with a bit of luck they'll let you have a tiny project of your own.
"When I was in South Africa everybody working in the winery had a plan for their own wine, or a couple of barrels in the corner," says Alex Brogan, of whom more later. England is just not that big an industry; and this nomadic winemaking seems to be very much a British thing.
Imagine that not only are you English, but you already have a career – probably related to wine, maybe journalism, or maybe you're a sommelier – but you're too old to want to start from scratch again, with years of study and then a job somewhere as junior second assistant to the assistant winemaker. "I don't have several million to bankroll myself," says Donald Edwards. "And I know what rural France can be like."
So who are these people? Alex Brogan's company is called Not Yet Named Wine Company; he started his career at Majestic, which imbued him with a love of wine but not necessarily the wherewithal with which to buy it. So he went into consulting with PwC for eight years before deciding to return to wine.
Donald Edwards is a sommelier, most recently head sommelier at Michelin-starred La Trompette in Chiswick, west London. Chris Boiling was a journalist and still is; his label is Crazy Experimental Wines. Darren Smith’s wines are The Finest Wines Available to Humanity (you might recognize the quote from Withnail and I). He was a journalist and sub-editor and, again, still is. These are all second careers, but none has yet replaced the first career in terms of earning a living.
But the fun of it! To make your own wine, in whatever way you fancy, experimentally, learning as you go – for Smith, it started out as a learning experience, a way of investigating in forensic detail the things that fascinated him.
Porto in a storm
He started out as a sub-editor on newspapers, but it was working in a kitchen for a couple of years ("I’m not good at nine-to-five") that got him into wine. He couldn't afford to go to wine school and didn’t want to.
"I wanted to get my hands dirty. The desire to make wine became more and more insatiable, and it wouldn't be satisfied until I was in a winery getting my hands dirty."
He got an internship with Dirk Niepoort, making table wines. "It was a brilliant place to start that sort of learning. He's a brilliant person, lateral-thinking, open to ideas and projects; he inspires people." And Niepoort, to Smith’s amazement, let him make a wine. "He let me use his estate biodynamic grapes, and he held my hand all the way."
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