Wine merchant and soprano recognised with honours

THE founder of Laithwaite’s wine merchants has been created a CBE in the Queen’s birthday honours.

Tony Laithwaite, from Peppard, has been recognised for services to the UK and global wine industry. 

He founded the company in 1969 as a geography student after taking a job washing bottles in Bordeaux.

He fell in love with wine and the people who make it.

When he borrowed a van to share their wines with friends and neighbours at home, things went so well that hundreds of little wineries all around the world were soon queuing to take part.

Initially called Bordeaux Direct the company expanded and changed its name and is now the UK's number one home-delivery wine merchant, with more than 1,500 wines to choose from.

Mr Laithwaite said: “I’m gobsmacked and absolutely astonished. I had to sit down for a bit.

“When the envelope came I thought it was a traffic summons or something!

“We did have a drink, yes – I’m a wine merchant.”

Mr Laithwaite said he and his wife Barbara, who runs the company with him, enjoyed a glass of her Wyfold Vineyard wine to celebrate.

He said the honour was doubly special as the company celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.

He said: “The industry has changed dramatically.

“I started with Bordeaux and I used to drive up and down between Bordeaux and Windsor.

“People at that time had only really started going abroad on holiday and would go on ferries. They tasted stuff on the continent they found they couldn’t get at home so it was perfect timing.

“For the first 20 or 30 years in the wine business I went to every wine region I could find on the map, and wine regions that had never been heard of in the UK such as eastern Europe, Bulgaria and Romania.

“We started importing wine from Australia and different parts of France.”

Mr Laithwaite said he never envisaged the business would become so big.

“It just kind of happened – some of us get very lucky,” he said. “I was in the right place, at the right time.

“I used to go around doing wine tastings with one wine. It didn’t go that well!”

Soprano Sophie Bevan, 35, from Pyrton, has been made an MBE for services to music.

Her concert repertoire ranges from Handel to James MacMillan and she has worked with conductors that include Ed Gardner, Sir Neville Marriner, Phillipe Herreweghe and Sir Charles Mackerras.

She is the recipient of the 2010 Critics' Circle award for exceptional young talent and the recipient of the young singer award at the inaugural 2013 International Opera Awards.

She sang at The Royal Albert Hall in 2012 in a prom dedicated to the music of Ivor Novello. Conducted by Mark Elder, it was broadcast on the BBC.

For the full story see next week’s Henley Standard.