Julian Brind interviewed by Mark Bilbe, An Oral History of the Wine Trade, 2004, catalogue reference C1088/40. © British Library Board.

Transcript

I saw an advertisement in Harper’s, and it was for a buyer for Waitrose supermarkets.  And in those days supermarkets were not considered really the thing to go into, you know, it was socially probably not terribly acceptable to go into the supermarket.  But I went along for the interest of it.  And the interviews took place at John Lewis in Oxford Street, and I eventually was offered the job.  I was told later that there was over a hundred people went for it, so I was very lucky to get it.  I count myself incredibly lucky, because I have not really planned my life at all, I’ve just rather taken the opportunities when they arose, like the fact Don Lovell, I went for this job with John Lewis, and Don Lovell supported it.  If he’d have said no, I think it was, you know, don’t do that, that’s the last thing you should do, I probably would have not gone.  But I don’t think he was trying to get rid of me, I think he actually genuinely thought it was a big opportunity, and it was.  And, you know, he put me forward for the MW, he put me forward for the Vintners’ Scholarship, it all sort of fell into my lap, whereas other people actually say, I want to do the MW, they do it on their own, they don’t have the backing of a large company or people like Don Lovell, and I think they’re fantastic.  I think I passed the theory first and missed the tasting by a little bit.  I missed the tasting, which is very easy to do because, you know, I don’t know if you know the exam, but three days of different tastings.  In those days it was things like clarets, comparing Saint Juliens with Margaux and getting the vintage right, and the chateau right if it’s a famous chateau, all that sort of thing.  Very, quite detailed.  Now it’s not so detailed because it’s a much broader canvas.  So I might have got the chateaux mixed up or the vintages mixed up, or something.  And then there’d be fortified wines on the third day: ports, sherries, other fortified wines, Madeira, Marsala, things like that.   But very difficult exam.  If you’ve got a cold, you’re not feeling very well, to do the tasting is very, very difficult, so you’ve got to be absolutely on key for the tasting.  And the next year I managed to do it.  You do the tastings in the morning, then you do written papers in the afternoon for three days, and the half day you have to do – in those days, I think it’s changed – then you had to do an essay, which is very difficult.  You know, you had three hours or something to do an essay on something as nebulous as ‘In Vino Veritas’.  

[ends at 0:03:10]

Julian Brind (In those days supermarkets were not considered the thing to go into)

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