Where are they now? Life after wine

They once swirled, sniffed and sipped their way through the wine world — but where did they go? This new series uncorks the surprising stories of those who walked away from wine’s magnetic pull to find fresh purpose, fame, or, occasionally, total reinvention. From actors-turned-vintners to sommeliers-turned-sobriety advocates, we track down the wine world’s great escapees — and ask: did they ever really leave?

Where are they now? No, not Dominic Raab, Matt Hancock or Jacob Rees-Mogg, nor even the once much consumed, albeit little-loved Bull’s Blood, Blue Nun, Babycham, Hirondelle, Mateus Rosé and Lutomer Laski Riesling. No, what we’re aiming to shine a light on over the coming months are the wine people who were once an integral part of the furniture but who disappeared from view after leaving to pursue other interests. They are the rare breed that defied the magnetic force that attracts us to wine and keeps us firmly under its spell.

I recently heard wine described as a ‘passion industry’, which is why it’s a common feature among wine people that they came to wine after starting out from a different job, profession or discipline, and stayed on when they got the bug. The litany of those who left an often lucrative job for wine is a long one. Robin Yapp and Howard Ripley were dentists. James Halliday, Robert Parker, Cathy Marshall and our own Sarah Ahmed couldn’t wait to unshackle themselves from the ball and chain of the legal profession for the world of wine. 

Medics too have always done their best to publicise the benefits of wine, albeit mostly by drinking it, so it’s not surprising that it repaid the wine world with interest. Along with the medically-minded Mosses from Chicago who founded Nyetimber, David Ramey, Paul Hobbs, Robert Sinskey, Emily Haines and Coravin’s Greg Lambrecht were all in a variety of medical fields before discarding their white lab coats and clambering into bed with wine. 

Performers, mechanics and models

Burgundy’s Guy Roulot was an actor, Olivier Leflaive an impresario, Château Haut-Brion’s Prince Robert de Luxembourg a screenwriter, while the Languedoc producer Gérard Bertrand played rugby in the top flight. More prosaically, Domenico Clerico was a mechanic before turning his hand to sublime Barolo. Nigel Greening was a blues guitarist and designer before buying Felton Road in Central Otago. Michel Laroche modelled fashion for Pierre Cardin before turning to Chablis. Erich Berg too was a model with the Ford Modeling Agency before eventually starting Ricochet Wines in Oregon. 

On the home front, wine writer Michael Schuster was on the verge of becoming a herpetologist, a collector of snakes, when he was charmed into marriage by the warm-blooded Monika. Wine writer Brian Jordan was a British Formula 3 racing driver (6 starts, no wins) before steering towards wine, while Oz Clarke played Péron on the West End stage before kissing the Blarney Stone and becoming one of wine’s best-known celebrities. In the early days, Stephen Browett drove a Harrods van before joining forces with Lindsay Hamilton to create Farr Vintners, and, subsequently become a director of Crystal Palace Football Club.

Did anyone hit the wine world coming from outside to quite such effect as Kylie Minogue? Celebrities have been drawn to wine for various reasons, whether vanity projects, a spurious interest in so-called clean and green, healthy wine or hard-nosed business ventures like Kylie’s. 

Stars with a genuine passion

While no and low has its health benefits, it’s only fair to mention those celebrities who have been known to come to wine for, heaven forfend, a genuine love of the product. Notable among such rare examples of the species are the actor Sam Neill with his Two Paddocks in New Zealand, Mick Hucknall’s Il Cantante, simply rosso made from vineyards on the slopes of Mount Etna, the fragrant actress Carole Bouquet, owner of the no less fragrant wines of Domaine de L’Île on Pantelleria and the brilliant cinematographer Michael Seresin of Seresin Estate in Marlborough.

The magnetism of wine has seen many people attempt to leave only to be pulled back by its irresistible force field. After editing Wine Magazine, Margaret Rand got itchy feet, so she joined Opera Now magazine as its editor, turning its fortunes around. When they sold it and sacked the staff, she went back to wine and now writes profiles and edits Hugh Johnson’s Pocket Wine Book. The wine writer Harry Eyres’ weekly FT column Slow Lane took up most of his time from 2004 and when it was terminated in 2015, he returned to wine, starting the weekly Country Life wine column and now writing regularly on wine.

Sobriety, salvation and reinvention

It’s not all a one-way magnetic force. Some have found religion, abstinence or the need to live a healthy lifestyle on doctor’s orders for the sake of their survival. Alice King started as a wine writer with Decanter Magazine and married Nick Davies, whose Hungerford Wine Company went belly up. Her struggles with alcohol led her to write High Sobriety, Confessions of a Drinker, a candid account of her journey toward recovery.

There is one rare breed of individual known not for what they did in the wine world, but for what they have gone on to do in the afterlife on earth. Wine buyer Peter Stafford-Bow adopted the double-barrelled pseudonym perhaps to hide behind the persona of Felix Hart, the charmingly unscrupulous wine merchant and hero of his entertainingly scurrilous novels, Corkscrew, Brut Force and Firing Blancs. Since we don’t know the real identity of Mr Stafford-Bow, we may never be able to separate truth from fiction. In the coming months, we will check in on those who did get away from the wine business, only to turn up in another guise.

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