"Ever since a brute called Giles Foster tried to beat me for some schoolboy idiocy - the other prefects stopped him - I've had both a problem with authority and a wariness of Gileses. So it was a delight to come across Giles Burke-Gaffney, who shows no sign of beastliness. Perhaps that's because he has one of the wine trade's best jobs, as buyer for Justerini & Brooks, the royal wine merchants, and certainly one of its best views. From his desk, he looks up St James's Street towards the fleshpots of Mayfair. His Chairman, Hew Blair, sits opposite him with an even better vista down towards St James's Palace (and the black front door of Berry Bros & Rudd, the old rivals). On the day I popped in, the chairman was away, but he had left his dark-blue pinstripe suit neatly folded over his chair, facing our Giles. I swear I caught Giles bowing to it.
Justerini & Brooks has always been a bit of an enigma to me. Its fortunes rest on a popular whisky, J&B, yet the wine end of the business has seemed a bit aloof. When I dared to enter its splendid office as a mere punter a decade or so ago to ask about buying one of its wines, the responses ranged from nonplussed to sniffy. Things have changed, I think. Much of its trade is still with restaurants and traditional private clients, but it has a well-functioning website that, if you ignore the plutocratic bottles and search for JandB House, reveals a gem. Justerini & Brooks red burgundy, a house wine, costs less than £10 yet is much better than the price suggests. Giles won't say who makes it, but hints at an illustrious name who doesn't want to be associated with low prices. If I were the Queen, I'd cancel the Corton (about £500 a bottle) and serve this at my Buckingham Palace banquets with my own salmon or lamb.
I've been trying other cheap house wines from other independant merchants and I'm afraid that, so far, they've all gone down the sink. So, after St James's, it's off to Tesco and Waitrose for two more of the best bargains in the realm." Bob Tyrer, On the Bottle. Sunday Times Style, 05/09 2010
