Jeremy Watson's 70th

05-Oct-08 - Jeremy Watson and I go back a long way: to the early 1970s in fact, when we were both in the wine trade. I was general manager of Vintage Wines Ltd. in Nottingham, and he was running an importing firm in Gerrard's Cross called Pengallic Wines. We had been selling 2-litre bottles of Campo Viejo Rioja (for £1.49!) And the restaurant trade just loved it. This was the era of the red-and-white checked tablecloth with an empty Chianti fiasco in the middle with a candle in it, and the Rioja botellone was even better for the purpose (the wine was pretty good, too, which was a help). We didn't sell enough to ship directly ourselves, and we bought the Rioja from a firm called Daims Ltd. in London, who got in to a bit of bother with Customs and Excise and were forced to close. Whilst still scratching our heads over how to replace it, our Sherry supplier, David Trimby, visited. He'd got some wine from La Mancha in large bottles wrapped around with wicker baskets. They weren't really as attractive as the Rioja, and the wine wasn't as good, but the price was right and we were getting desperate, so the boss, Reg Haward, gave him a provisional order and David promptly took him out to lunch - this was the era when wine-trade lunches lasted about three hours. During that three hours a young chap came into the shop and introduced himself as Jeremy Watson. I say 'young' - although he's older than me, Jeremy has always had the irritating habit of looking at least 20 years younger than he actually is. Anyway I invited him in and we opened a bottle, and he told me that he'd just taken over the Campo Viejo agency, and we were on his list as a past customer. I asked for a quote and a sample (although we knew the wine intimately) and, to cut a long story short, it was the start of a long term relationship between our two companies (David was miffed about having his order cancelled, but he was still supplying our Don Quixote Sherry, which was then a fabulous range blended for us by Lustau). I went solo in 1975 and continued to do business with him, as he moved from Gerrard's Cross to Paddington in London (the shop now occupied by Moreno's), and we met at wine-trade functions and tastings.

In 1981 I started my first regular wine column (in the Coventry Evening Telegraph), and soon syndicated it to, at one time, half a dozen other papers. I wrote regularly about Spanish wine as it wasn't fashionable at the time and I thought it represented excellent value for money. Then one day in 1986 I was at the London Wine and Spirit Trade Fair at Olympia and was approached by Tony Lord, the then editor of Decanter magazine. He asked me to write a piece on the wines of La Mancha and Valdepeñas, and said that what was then called Vinos de España would be in touch about flights and accommodation. In the event, I received a letter from them signed by the director - one Jeremy Watson. Somehow I hadn't clocked that he'd sold up and gone to work for the Spanish Embassy Commercial Office (now known as ICEX). I duly went with a small party to La Mancha, the trip was very useful, I wrote the piece, and got paid, but most importantly I was back in touch with Jeremy again. Apparently Vinos de España (which had now become Wines from Spain - WfS) had been getting press cuttings of my various columns, and in 1988 Jeremy approached me to bring the Spanish Wine Education Notes up to date. They'd been done sporadically over the years, and there was a fair amount on Rioja, Navarra and Sherry, but not a lot else. One way and another I visited, trekked through uncharted areas and discovered wines that had hardly been heard of outside their native regions - the brief from WfS was that the Notes had to be comprehensive and include all the QWPSR wines in Spain, of which there were 34 in 1989 (there are now 75). The book proved popular with the trade and students, and I did updates on it at approximately two-year intervals thereafter (until 2001, when it was moved to the web). This meant quite a few trips to Spain, often with Jeremy, and we spent many nights in jazz bars and enjoyed a lot of very late dinners, most notably when visiting Vinos de Madrid and Méntrida (both hardly known outside Spain) in 1995, and Mallorca in 1996. I was driving up the coast from Málaga visiting all the DO zones I hadn't got to before, and he'd just moved to Pollença, so I'd arranged to fly over from Barcelona, visit the DO Binissalem (then the only one in the Balearics) and stay over with him. He was renting a lovely old house with a roof terrace which we found with some difficulty (James was with me) and this was the first time I'd met the gorgeous Margaret Schellerup, whom Jeremy had recently met and who from then on has been his 'other half'. They moved to Rioja some time later and then back to Dorset, and it was Margaret who'd made all the arrangement for his 70th birthday party, along with Jeremy's son Barnaby, whose company does catering business at the Royal Overseas League.

The weather was miserable but the Hall of India and Pakistan was warm and welcoming, and Jeremy was there, glass in hand, and looking, of course, about 50. There were some 90 of us and we were entertained by a jazz trio and served canapés with Marqués de Monistrol Cava Rosé and Pazo de Seoan Albariño. There were quite a number of familiar faces - old stagers from the trade, of course, former colleagues, friends and, inevitably, half-remembered faces to which I couldn't put a name. The meal was excellent, and simple: roast fillet of beef, Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes with baby roast vegetables in a red wine and wild mushroom jus - a typical English Sunday lunch, indeed. And washed down with a classic Sunday Lunch wine - Marqués de Riscal Reserva 2003: splendid. Cheese followed: truckle Stilton and Double Gloucester with Muscatel grapes and walnut and raisin bread... And more Rioja. At some point around here Jeremy ceremonially cut the birthday cake to bursting flashbulbs (yes, I know they don't do that any more but it sounds better than 'electronically-generated high-intensity flash'), a chorus of 'Happy Birthday' and a vigorous round of applause. We went back to lemon tart with mixed berries and clotted cream. Margaret had, very wisely, hired an entertainer to keep the children happy while the rest of us lingered over coffee and birthday cake, reminiscences, anecdotes and memories. It was a lovely occasion, and good to see Jeremy looking so well and Margaret radiant, as always.

Jeremy and Margaret