World's best-selling wine writer sells off private cellar
World's best-selling wine writer sells off private cellar
May 10, 2013 6(Guardian) - The world's best-selling wine writer, Hugh Johnson, is selling off his private cellar after half a century of collecting and like any downsizer, he is struggling to let go.
"I shouldn't be selling them," he says wincing in the direction of a pair of magnums of Chablis waiting to go under the hammer in an Essex auction room. "I don't want to look. You see, when I look at the bottles I know exactly how they will taste."
Monday's sale at Sworder's auctioneers of over £100,000 worth of wines, gathered over a career in which Johnson has overseen a revolution in British attitudes to wine, includes rare vintages dating back to 1830, a £2,000 1945 Chateau Latour made in the balmy summer after VE Day and his own desert island bottle, a single 1971 German riesling for £6,000.
The 74-year-old is trying to be philosophical about letting it all go as he moves with his wife Judy from a house with a five-room cellar to one with a coal hole to be closer to children and grandchildren.
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