Source:
https://www.podbean.com/eau/pb-ezncp-1628202
After stints working at Sainsbury’s and in a Guildford nightclub, Daniel Lambert set up his own wine business in 1992 and has turned it into an award-winning success story, specialising in French wines. I caught up with him from his new home in Montpellier to discuss his outspoken criticism of the UK’s proposed new alcohol duty scheme, the role that Sauternes played in his early career, what he’s learnt from being dyslexic, going viral on Twitter and which regions offer the best value for money.
To read more about Daniel have a look at the Daniel Lambert Wines website. You can also follow him on X at @DanielLambert29.
Don’t forget, Cork Talk is now available on Spotify as well as Apple Podcasts. You can listen to this week’s episode, plus my back catalogue of interviews with some of the world’s most extraordinary wine figures.
[Music] thanks for downloading this episode of cork talk with me Tim Atkin a wey conversation with some of the most famous people in the world of wine after stint working at sses and in a Guilford nightclub Daniel Lambert set up his own wine business in 1992 and has never looked back back I caught up with him from his new home in melier to discuss his outspoken criticism of the UK’s proposed new alcohol Duty scheme the role that sturn played in his early success what he’s learned from being dyslexic going viral on Twitter and which regions offer the best value for money Daniel and welcome to the podcast hello Tim how are you I’m very well thank you and nice to hear your voice you’re in France are you lucky man yes yes I’m just outside melier it’s very sunny day again down here so all is good I think I hate you I’m going to find out we’re going to find out later why you’re in Melly and why you’ve moved down there tell us a bit more about yourself because you’re Daniel Lambert if you’re English and i’ assum if you’re in France you’re Daniel LOM like the actor Kristoff which you prefer the French one or the or the or the or the English one uh it depends who I’m talking to um if it’s the family then it’s definitely LOM but in the wine trade it’s definitely Lambert um as I say it depends who I’m talking to and were both your parents French no no no my father is was French my mother was from Dorset um but he moved to the UK um when he was 18 to escape the the rabble that was the south of France um bordeau area that he lived in um he was one of one of 10 children number nine in line wow you’re not one of 10 as well no no no no no I’m I’m one of four and the youngest four the best last as I tell my regular and and was wine part of your life growing up I mean you know French people normally drink wine did your dad drink wine at home yes it was uh my father was very much into his wine um he didn’t actually sell wine he sold glassware from a French company into the UK but um I remember from a very early age that you would have wine mixed with water at your Mill from the age of 567 which I think was a a nice stepping stone into the industry yeah but it’s something is very civilized I think I mean you know some people regard it as child abuse I’m sure you know giving young kids alcohol to drink when they’re young but it’s just kind of part of life in France isn’t it wine in that sense or used to be I don’t know if it still is absolutely I think that um you know a natural product like wine being given to Children mixed down with water it’s the same as squash really and it it it almost gets rid of that Mystique that alcohol is bad for you you know it’s it’s a cultural thing in France where wine is part of everyday life and and and and and it should be I don’t see any problem with that whatsoever Ian you you were sort of brought up in Wimbledon to start with not far from where I’m sitting today actually and then farum in s um you didn’t go to university because you found out I think when you were 14 or so you were dyslexic and this affected your confidence has it gone on affecting you in life dyslexia because it’s not something you get over is it no no no I mean dyslexia you have it for life it’s it’s basically word blindness it’s it’s it’s the inability to see um written to text as everybody else does and being unable to write it in the same way it’s it’s a word blindness and um when it was diagnosed when I was 13 back in the early 80s they you just had to get on with it really there was nothing else you could do about that um my understanding is that it’s improved today and you can buy certain AI programs that allow you to get around it but I prefer just to get on with it and leave it as is I’ve never seen it as a disability but um as some people love to point out my Legend tweets sometimes have lots of typ POS in them but I’m quite happy with that and it’s the sentiment that matters isn’t it we’re going to talk about those later yeah I mean is it a condition that we understand better today than when you were a kid growing up my understanding is so but you know technically I suppose it’s a disability but I don’t see it like that I just see it as who I am really I don’t worry about that’s all your first job was at SSB of all places because you’d end up one day supplying wine to them uh and that included some responsibility of the beers wines and spirits I believe now was the wine bug starting to bite you a little bit as a what were you then 1920 yeah exactly I’d left school at um I finished College um in Guilford when I was 18 and I I was looking for something to do I’d always I’d always had a poral with with the alcohol industry of such and I always wanted to be part of it wasn’t sure how to get into it but wine was something I certainly wanted to experience and um it makes me laugh today that when I was working for SSB and I’d started my company up I was in the process of not only supplying Saints wine working for them at the same time which was which is quite incredible I’m sure that if head office knew that I was an employee in one of the region of branches they wouldn’t have been impressed would they put you in the back of the queue or the front of the queue I don’t know but it is quite funny when you are working to subsidize your income as I was at that point yeah and actually putting own products on the shelf that is quite what a what a brilliant moment where you can actually think yes it’s mine let’s just say I gave it extra face to your space yeah yeah exactly put them at the front I mean you had this little interlude didn’t you where you worked as a in a nightclub um in Guilford for ranked Leisure what were we doing you don’t strike me as as a bouncer but maybe I’m wrong I were you no no no no I was I was I was basically I mean again it was it was to have an income I was still hadn’t left home from my parents at this point and I was looking to just have spending money more than anything and I thought well you know working at night and and and striving to create the career during the day that was the way forward so yes it was uh working behind the bar and doing cocktails and all that stuff I actually worked on the cocktail bar in in in in there and I I can make some mean little cocktails actually and I did quite well at that I enjoyed it thoroughly so we do sabur and the nightclub and setting up your own business which we’ll talk about in a sec yeah no I did sabur for uh one and a half years in a in a in a junior management position um got very fed up with how they exploited their junior managers at that point so then decided to do the nightclub thing and at this point my father I think was losing the will to live and suggested maybe I should get into the wine trade properly and then you went back to saintsbury and then I went back to saintsbury night shift because I obviously had I was working effectively two jobs then um so yeah so I was doing night shifts Thursday Friday Saturdays and working fulltime in the week doing the wine side of things so that was in 1992 when I started all of this up and what made you decided to set up Daniel Lambert Wines in 1982 because I think your your uncle um who’d worked a little bit in the wine business but or had worked in the wine business all his life isn’t he um was he kind of influential at the start did he push you into it saying go for it yeah yeah yeah no he was really quite almost the stepping stone into it I mean he he worked for D crestman the negoti based in bordo all of his life he retired about 15 years ago now but um he basically said look you know I could put you in touch with a couple of producers who will be interested in having their wines onto the UK Market if you can find somewhere to sell for them so it was very much in at the deep end from the very very start my role was at the time um I was given three properties that he knew who were friends of his that he had shared space with at Vin Expo or this at the time I knew none of what this all meant of course but um he had these contacts around France one was in alzas one was in berser and one was in rioka of all places um so I took these wines and started to go and visit wine shops and I think probably the first phone call I ever made to a supermarket was waitr and David Grand JW and uh an agency I sourced myself which was an UT Renna from a property out there and I was trying to educate David grel genw on where utel Renna was and that what Spanish wine was really something he should be looking at and those days you could just pick the phone up and speaking to a buy direct you’d have trouble now wouldn’t you exactly yeah yeah yeah and bless David he he he entertained the phone call for nearly 20 minutes so off to him putting up with that and did he buy the wine did he buy the wine no obviously not no 20 minute FOC but he even Bu The Wine but this was the days of gentleman in the wine trade and you know this was way tros then I mean it’s a very different cat of fish now obviously but I I it still tickles me pink today to think about that so when did the business become self-sufficient because you were you were doing that and as you said you were also doing the the Saints B night shift when when did you finally think okay this I can make a so yeah it was it was 1999 that I basically didn’t have to work nights anymore so it took it took the best part of seven years to get to a point two jobs yeah to have two jobs yeah yeah yeah and to be self-sufficient in that time I met my wife Helen we got married in 97 um and by 1999 we were self-sufficient and starting to really develop something that was interesting I mean what what made you successful do you think in those early days how did you turn it into a business was it it was just hard work obviously but did the fact that you were French or that you worked in retail as well do you think that helped you knew that side of it I’ve always had the same I’ve always kept the same ethos all the way through I’ve always wanted to S something that was really good and representative of the region appalation da aop whatever it happens to be of the region that was offering value that I thought this is a nice product that hasn’t made it to market yet but most importantly the most importantly e thought for me was it’s coming from a family business I’ve always fundamentally believe that the wine world when it comes to family businesses they just care a little bit more than the bigger producers and the cooperatives and the negoti etc etc I’ve always had that belief and it stood me well over 32 years now um whereby the portfolio is still made up at 99% of Independent Producers and those Independent Producers are very keen to look after their brand and look after developing their sales in the market so if you’re working with who we try to work with is she’s you know more up market and Independent Producers stroke retailers the two sort of go hand inand so it’s 32 years of sticking to my guns and saying well actually this is what I want to do I don’t really want to follow what everyone else is doing yeah and it’s slightly unlikely especially given where sweet wines are today it was a Saturn agency wasn’t it that played an important role in your syst that was probably the one you were putting on the shelves at Sab wasn’t when you working there exactly was yes it exactly was that I mean yeah shat um shio sa gron crew class um we started the agency with them and it is my longest serving agency I got that in 1994 four if I remember correctly it was two years in and the uh family owners then both sadly since deceased but the family owners at the time how can I put it they were pioneering they were really pioneering they could see the faults with the pl and the bordo system and they they wanted to try and break free from it and again at the time I was blissfully unaware of how political the bordo system was um so for them it was like w of fresh air and I was like well h on this is a gr Cru CL say this should be easy to sell you know people are going to know what this is so when I approached pretty much every National retailer in the UK they all snapped it up because I guess again I’m showing my naivity at the time I didn’t realize that the buyers at the time realized that they were bypassing the system they were bypassing the plus and they were actually the plus is basically the plus just explain to people is a system whereby people have to sell through negoti so a middle really and CAU exctly yeah we wiped out two tiers of middlemen to be able to provide a s a gron crew class from producer direct to retailer and something that bordo’s been trying to not let happen for many many many many decades so shat filo in that response were seriously pioneering and and took a massive risk in doing it because they could have effectively turned their back on the pl and that wouldn’t have gone down well because obviously today you know on pre continues and it’s important that you’re part of the plus and that the negoti will support you I understand that but they felt that they weren’t being supported at the time and so contacted me and I mean we achieved incredible things we incre we achieved 120,000 bottles of sales per anom for nearly three years back to back incredible it is it is tell us a little bit about Awards because you won lots of awards I know you’re very proud of them um how important have they been to to your success enabling you to build on on what you established again I think it’s been interesting Journey that in um 19 2009 we received our first IWC award we received um the Welsh wine merchant award obviously at this point I’d moved to Wales and had settled there um so we were basically the best and then the following year for the first time ever the burgundy specialist award had had left London and the southeast and I think at that point people were like who is this guy who is taking what is one of the most traditional Awards you can get I mean between Bordeaux and burgundy you can’t really be any more traditional in the industry so for suddenly a guy at that stage you know literally a guy in the secretary in a warehouse in in South Wales to have the prestigious burgundy award it you know that that sent shock ways through the industry people were like okay who is this guy who how has he managed to beat the established names to to this award and again I go back to the ethos that we had at that time you know a very very broad brand range of burgundy wines from Independent Producers from from shaby through to Bo in in pretty much every appalation but it was all individual producers and it was all wines that had done particularly well in that year in the IWC competition for wine and so I think the judges at the time recognized hang on a minute this is a guy that’s taken the industry by storm and is actually selling this wine to large sedes of the industry and this needs to be recognized and I think it it was a wakeup call to the industry generally that anybody can achieve great things in this industry so long as you’re keeping to an ethos keeping to a plan trying to do the right thing since then I mean we’ve won 29 Awards so yeah so two a penny now on they I mean what what makes a successful why Merchant and and just has that changed since 1992 do you think you think of yourself as a good salesman you’ve talked about the relationships you have with families and often you’re finding stuff that nobody else has got they’re you know they’re Unique Products aren’t they what else makes a good wine merchant I just wonder has that changed in the 32 years you’ve been doing it I think it I think it’s I think it’s evolving for sure it’s absolutely evolving and the wine ranging is definitely evolving um I think I think that um it’s a two-tier question there’s there’s a very different purpose to importers to retailers so wine merchant is a term that can cover both so it’s important that people understand that in the day and age of when the post brexit world it’s difficult to be a wine retailer and be into importation that’s actually become very hard but I’m sure we’ll touch on that later uh in terms of what makes a good wine merchant I think that you’ve got to have integrity I think that’s the most important characteristic to have integrity and to stick to trying your very hardest to Source commercially good wine that doesn’t mean necessarily expensive because some of the wines I Source are ridiculously cheap and and inexpensive but so long as you know what the public is actually looking for which I think sometimes the public don’t know what they’re looking for and it’s easy to put wines on promotion and it’s easy to get things sold in volume if you just discount that that’s the easy way but to be a solidly good wine merchant I think you have to have a range of wine that’s been responsibly sensibly and sustainably sourced personally my view is that if you get that from sustainable responsible producers who um more often than not care about their land and care about their grape and care about their vulture and viniculture then you’re going down very much the right road because that will come through in the end product you can see what well I can see a mass-produced product a mile off when I try it you know where you’ve got overuse of sulfur because it’s been through flexi tank and it’s been through bottling in the UK or such and such those wines are the wines that will leave you with a bad head in the morning I always say when I when I when I have a bottle or two of my own products from various producers I never ever ever get a hangover I never get a headache in the morning ever I like by Daniel Evert wines folks they don’t don’t give you a hangover yeah exactly but I I I’ll tell you what I was in a hotel um about three weeks ago and I won’t say the hotel and I won’t say the supplier to it because I know who they are but I won’t say it but I was in I was looking through the list I thought well this is a pretty D list there’s not very much exciting stuff and I W I went for the least bad option which was the Eden Valley Australian reasing and what I didn’t realize I didn’t notice until after I drunk it that it had actually been bottled in Germany and I only had two now the wine itself at at the moment was fine but the following day the headache was unbelievable unbelievable and that was purely down to the fact it’ been flexy T from Australia to Germany and obviously they had numerous sulfa treatments along rout with sulfa yeah just tell us which areas you specialize in we know about France that’s the focus of the business isn’t it but I mean you’ve done stuff from California you’ve done stuff from Wales I know you know Spain as you said you’ve had a long relationship with r where else do you buy from I source currently from France is 80% of what we do then I’m I’m getting very excited about what’s happening in the us both north you know north of the Border in Canada um California obviously we’re doing some in really fantastic stuff from New York state I’m very excited about those wines uh next week no sorry the week after next I’m off to Mexico to judge at the Concor Mel to Brussels but we get the opportunity to go and visit the Mexican Vineyards which I’m really looking forward to because I would love to coming from Mexico that would be really fun um but yes we also Source from Austria Germany France um a little bit from Italy quite a lot from Spain we’ve done stuff from Australia South Africa I Used To Source from New Zealand but every single time I took a New Zealand agency within two years the winery sold out to a bigger corporate which was a real pity because I found some Ms gems in New Zealand So currently today we’re we’re sticking to our guns um I would say our four say is France number one the US number two Spain number three those are areas where we’re really very very good now I’m interested in what you think about value for money I mean as you said value for money is not necessarily the same thing as cheap although it can be where’s the best value to be found these days and I’m also going to ask you where you think the worst value is to be found okay it’s a fantastic thing I think that value is is not about the cost of the wine it’s it’s it’s it’s a number of things it’s about the quality of the product I always put the quality of the products as first for me that’s the most important thing because there’s no value in something if you don’t like it you’re wasting your time you’re not going to drink it so you might as well buy something that you like now it doesn’t have to be expensive but equally it doesn’t have to be cheap it has to be good and and I think that’s sometimes in my humble opinion I think some buyers miss out on that they’re they’re constantly being pushed to find the cheapest cheapest cheapest they can find and that’s sometimes not the best way forward I don’t actually think consumers want cheap cheap cheap the whole time I think that they’re actually looking for something that’s really lovely to drink it’s the old aage oh yeah I bought a bottle of wine and it’s lovely if you drink it with a bottle of soda water that’s really well that’s not good is it not so come on where’s the best tell us the best worst value I’m going to P okay so for me value it’s it’s from producers that are able to produce something around the 35 to 50 Hector ler Mark where the quality comes through and value-wise in terms of price you’re not really paying ex sellers more than say five five EUR that’s where it really is interesting what would that be on the Shelf then sort of 12 quid 1213 quid yeah that that seems to be unfortunately where the UK government has put it now is 1213 quid this all being said I mean last year I did a lot of work in gany because I wanted to change the current incumbent we had uh for the independent sector and we sourced a product that hadn’t been in the UK at all and um I so I I I basically sourced 20 different properties I tried all the wines came back with a result of a particular property which was domain Gillman and they had never been in the UK Market at all ever they’ never sourced it they they were producing 1.3 million bottles but they was going to Belgium Germany and Holland and obviously France and on visiting them I I thought well you know it’s going to be tumble weed in this part of France it’s pretty remote it’s it’s not somewhere you’re going to go but actually the winery turned out to be absolutely state-ofthe-art um the the to the point where they were they were vinify under zero oxygen conditions by capturing nitrogen in the actual atmosphere and pumping it through to the winery so that they could actually vinify and store at 100% 100 nitrogen now that’s really France France still good value obviously Spain pretty amazing value I think I think France you get fantastic value bizarrely if you if you hunt around you can actually get good value in Canada so our Canadian agency when you look at it Canadian wine is generally quite expensive but Westcott their wines should be double the price that they actually are but they’re not because they’re trying they’re new to the game and they’re wanting to actually break International Market rather than local so when you can pick up a bottle of Canadian p no that’s on par with somewhere like Sav Leone in burgundy but retails out for 24 25 quid that sounds good that’s great value for money so it’s it’s it’s it’s all relative it’s all relative to what you’re looking at I think it’s very true listen we got to talk about politics now as you’ve become something of a political figure over the last few years I mean were you always interested in politics were were you political as a kid were you a member of a party did you go on demonstrations and marches and stuff like that I’m somebody that wants to see a system that’s fair for all I believe that everybody needs to put into a system and everybody should get a fair amount out of a system um and we haven’t really had that in the UK recently you’ve had a system that’s been very weighted towards one agenda and when I look at what’s happening with our industry the wi industry I despair at how the industry is being kicked time and time again with legislation that is just going to make it more and more expensive for consumers to enjoy a glass of wine and at the end of the day if you go to most countries in the world wine is nowhere near tax the level it is in the UK now I fully accept that wine should be taxed I have no problem with that at all um and if the UK decides to tax it at this level again that’s fine at the end of the day wine is a luxury product we have to accept that you know if we didn’t have wine in our lives it would be very sad but nobody’s going to die so yes wine should be taxed but the government have a responsibility to make the administration of movement of wine particularly in the UK where 99.1% of all wine is imported as easy as possible and the converse is currently happening it’s it’s now virtually for for a lay person to import wine it’s virtually impossible it’s specialist importers and there are not that many in the UK that are actually doing the job now for much of the UK when you talk to Independence who used to bring in you know a pallet of wine from a small producer in France or Spain or Italy or wherever they no longer do that now they’re completely ring on agents like me and and the other guys and I think that’s a sad thing you know I think that’s really sad I think that’s it’s it’s diminishing the it’s diminishing what was available previously in the UK whereby the UK used to be the place where everybody tried to keep up to as a market and today I think that there’s a lot of producers that look at the UK and think can I actually it’s not worth it I just wonder what you say to people who tell you to stick to Wine this happens to me a lot you know I’m reasonably political too and you know do you think it’s silly in a sense to look at wine as something which is disconnected from the rest of Life politics included I think wine is Central to life I mean it’s it’s it’s it’s a product that brings everybody together in a in in a in a in a really lovely way I mean it’s it’s where we should all strive to be together to have a conversation and thrash out issues over a glass of wine I can’t think of anything better frankly M um but when you’ve got the situation we currently have in the UK whereby registration of this that and the other is making it more increasingly difficult and more costly more than anything to actually do your day-to-day job that’s that’s not good that’s that’s quite oppressive in fact you know when I compare to living here in France and you look at the Taxation and how wine is distributed in France it’s very relaxed it’s very easy and most things accessible and obviously the French are very patriotic and you struggle to find non-french Wines in France that’s true but the UK used to be a global leader and and I feel that that’s slipping you know when I when I go to San Francisco and I visit the wine independent shops there bearing in mind that you’re in a wine region San Francisco these days is years ahead of where the UK is as a market in terms of ranging sophistication and we’ve lost that we have yeah I absolutely think the UK’s Lo it hasn’t totally lost it yet but it’s certainly losing it and that’s very very sad indeed I mean you you’ve been particularly critical of of brexit uh you regularly call it a [ __ ] show um very publicly um how did brexit affect your business pretty badly didn’t it it’s not been a bundle of Ls it’s got to be said I mean we prepared for brexit seven eight months before it actually happened um bearing in mind you have to remember that brexit deal or the Free Trade Agreement was done on December the 24th so unless you were going on the premise of No Deal you really had no time to prepare for it nor did the government for that matter but in terms of my business yeah no we we prepared seven eight months before time and I went on the basis that we were going to get no deal and I thought the only way around this is to actually have our own Bonded Warehouse and bring the border to US rather than the Border being do or folkton or or or a Cort so we brought all of the issues in and we we got all the certification which was incredibly time consuming um but we achieved it by I think it was October n 2019 we had our bonded facility agreed uh we had um our roro licenses and I won’t go through all the other various licensing that we needed but we got everything in place um and then brexit happened and then the legendary tweet came out that I put out in in early 2020 because I spent 16 days trying to clear stock into the UK on a system that clearly wasn’t designed to let you clear stock from Europe into the UK and I’ll never forget getting a call from the head of hmrc 15 days into brexit and pointing out to them that the Free Trade Agreement code which was U 110 hadn’t actually been applied to Chief the importing system so for the first 15 days of the UK having an FTA with the EU nobody imported anything tariff free because hmrc had applied the code I mean that really does make it a [ __ ] show doesn’t it I mean you you moved to France and you mean because of it really yeah I mean by this point I mean I’ve always wanted to move to France I won’t I won’t try to say that I moved because of brexit it certainly encouraged me to move a lot faster that’s for sure but um yeah I mean like it’s got to the point whereby the the the implications of brexit and and and what’s required to move stock and the fact that you’ve got the cartel of Brokers controlling the amount of money that they can wean off everybody importing across the border I thought that all fundamentally wrong I mean it’s just not correct it’s just not right it’s just not fair for importers trying to do their job so by moving to France the idea is and was to be able to obtain all the French certification requirements for French Customs or EU customs should I say and have the Rex number because we now do all the certification for the UK government we don’t pay any broker fees on the UK side at all which gives us a Competitive Edge obviously but I’m trying to do the same on the French side or the EU side so that we don’t pay any fees in terms of importation out of Europe and uh one of the big hurdles that a lot of producers didn’t want to sign up to was getting a Rex number they didn’t see why they should get a Rex number but to to supply the UK Market they’ve all had to reply apply for this extra burden to be able to export out of the out of the EU and so it’s it’s putting Baris trade and this is the interesting thing people think oh well there’s an FTA what are you making a fuss for yes there is an FTA but an FTA is not the same as barriers to trade people still today don’t understand the two of very very different things yes we have an FTA that’s just about tariffs and tariffs only adds 10 F Free Trade Agreement yeah yeah Free Trade Agreement it only adds 10p on a bottle because that’s would be what’s known in the industry of CCT that’s that’s a minimal amount of money various to trade on the other hand it’s a huge amount of money because you’re talking about brokers who are charging up to 175 quid for a piece of paper on both sides of the channel so that’s 300 quid added to your cost I recently spoke to somebody I again I won’t name the person but they actually voted they’re in the industry but they actually voted brexit and they said to me oh we stopped importing from from Europe because it just got too expensive and he said oh so it used to be about 180 quid to ship a pallet I’m guessing it’s probably what2 200 300 I said no no no a single pallet from Europe from pretty much anybody now with all the fees Etc is about 600 Quid now and that’s what people don’t realize that the Reas got to go on the bottom line right it’s going to go on the price of the bottom line this this is what this is this has driven a lot of the inflation in the UK has been driven by brexit clear and simple clear and simple there’s no there’s no doubt in my mind if you’re going to Triple the cost of shipping stuff to the UK from the previously it’s only going to do one thing and that’s going to cause inflation on price points and I correctly forecasted at in my thread from 2020 that the bottle of wine cost would go up around about 150 to2 a bottle I was absolutely correct in hindsight you were right yeah tell let’s take a little about these threads I mean you know a couple of them have’ gone viral hav’t they these sort of 26p part threads and one of them you know 18,000 likes um lots of papers picked it up and James O’Brien you know the chat show host he picked it up um what did it do for your profile and I mean you know did you get attacked as well I mean I find if you know if you stick your head above the parapet there’s always going to be people that have a you as well yeah yeah there’s always going to be the hardcore that don’t like you sticking your head above the parit I mean look I’m I’m a guy who’s always been very independent of mind and independent of thought and I’ve very much done my own thing for 32 years I’ve been self-sufficient and I haven’t you know I have my fantastic customers and I’ve got some great relationships in the industry and I’m very grateful for those but my opinions are my opinions and like them or leave them I’m try trying to do the right thing by the industry now yes it’s sure that that particular thread got 6 million impressions in the UK million it had six million impressions and so obviously you’re going to get people that don’t like the fact you’re pointing out how it is and so I’m very very careful what I put out on social media and what I say to people like James o Bren when I go on his show and when I’ve been in the guardian or the financial times or any of these papers because you’re opening yourself up to um scrutiny I think is the word that would be best suited and so therefore it’s it’s for me it’s essential to keep it as factual as possible if you keep it factual and what you’re saying is factually correct then you don’t open the door to the people that would like to shout you down to be able to shout you down as much as they try because I know what I’m talking about is factually correct and so yes I’ve put my head above the parit and yes I got KN in the indust IND and there are Tim my salesperson who works for me a number of Agents or competitors who I think should be putting their head above the parit as well but that’s their decision often say well you know his politics is one thing but you can’t argue with his wine range which I suppose is the nicest way of putting it your latest battle is is you know the the duty scheme uh that’s going to be going to come in in February 2025 we’re currently in something known as wine easement I mean the new Duty bands are are Bonkers I mean another [ __ ] show or who knows May that may not happen now because if the Tores lose the election on July the 4th who knows what’s going to happen what do you think is GNA happen I think it’s probably the most important thing that everybody in the industry needs to be really quite worried about I mean v1s winning that was one thing um VI On’s would have been pretty damaging what were v1s just tell everybody quickly the vi1 um VI ones are something that the EU basically put into this into European system so it was it’s basically a declaration from an importer outside the EU to show the quality of the product the alcohol levels and to confirm where it was made so that you don’t get a shab from Mexico or a champagne from Australia it’s basically protecting the doc’s the aops the igps within the European community so so that those areas of origin if you like pdos are protected and that nobody outside the Europe can sell those names inside the European Union a very sensible measure actually um because it wasn’t long ago that you used to have uh Canadian Champagne For example and obviously champagne as we all know comes from northern France so that was the vi1 form and it prevented that from happening the UK was going to introduce VI ones because of its withdrawal agreement being B so bad that they were basically in a position where they wanted to introduce VI ones for European producers to send a UK vi1 so it was completely unnecessary and you overcame that didn’t you but but tell us about the tell us about the duty system now I mean because we’re in wine eement which is what 267 between 12.5 and 14.5% alcohol what’s going to replace it in theory on February 1 2025 okay so the replacement the easement was put in place because when they when rishy sunet came up with the legislation in 2020 it came from a it’s Justin how stmw who actually revealed this I didn’t know this and then with the would have help from Gavin Quinny down in Bordeaux the two of them revealed that the actual legislation has come from a think tank prohibitionists on tufton Street that’s where the actual legislation has been Dred up and the idea was that prohibitionists obviously know that they wouldn’t be able to um how I put it they wouldn’t be able to say to the general public you mustn’t drink it’s bad for you so they try to find in their words a way of making it more difficult to import wine and this really does make it more difficult because what they actually want to do is tax pure alcohol that’s the idea now on paper that makes perfect sense I don’t see an issue with that but the practicalities of wine don’t allow that because ABV and wine is not predetermined and that’s the most important thing to understand in this whole debate that alcohol in wine isn’t predetermined alcohol a bottle of whiskey whiskey which is 40% alcohol most of the time right yeah exactly the wine can be 5.5% to 20 2% alcohol exactly it’s exactly that and it all depends on the sunshine hour so if you’ve got whiskey or beer you have a you have a recipe if you like you make your recipe and you end up with your product at the alcohol percentage that you wanted and so therefore with labeling marketing and predetermined alcohol levels you know exactly where you’re going to be for years and years and years because you’re following recipe wine does not work like that wine on the other hand is predetermined in the fact that the sun is what’s ripening the grapes and so therefore alcohol levels in wine will vary every single vintage and if you’re making some of these flexi tank wines there’s no reason why an alcohol in a flexi tank wine is going to be the same because you’re bringing in raw product from various sources and blending something together yes you can predetermine an alcohol level but it’s but it will change it’s insan you’re talking about stuff I sell you know small producers who are literally growing grapes letting the sun ripen them hopefully without too much rain just the right amount of rain but etc etc that alcohol level can vary from 12 to 15% in any one vintage and every1 of perc will pay a different Duty level right exactly yeah so what they want to do is they want to basically tax at every they did originally want to do every 0.1% I think even they’ve realized that that isn’t going to be very clever so you’ve got this um you’ve got the N I believe the way it’s currently stands is that it’s at 0.5 so every .5 you basically increase the duty level by effectively 10 to 12 p a bottle in excise cost ACC so anybody who likes wine that has 14 half% alcohol like shat toap or a lot of Argentinian malbecks or something is going to pay more for their wine right exactly exactly there’s so many silly things that come out of it so for example your bre teers who who who who just who really dislike um let’s say European wine but the reality is and they’ll tell you I mean I get it regular on Twitter oh well I’ll go and buy my wine from Australia I okay fine no problem buying a wine from Australia but what they don’t realize is that this policy that’s apparently a brexit freedom is going to make Australian wine considerably more expensive and German reasing on the other hand which is a cool climate wine is going to be considerably cheaper so what brexit in this response is actually doing is making German wine cheaper which is which wonderful already well I mean let’s let’s hope you stop it or that you or that a labor party a new labor government if we get one uh we’ll do away with it because it’s crazy last question because we’re running out of time how do you get away from wine I mean you know you’re looking tanned you’re looking healthy you’ve been to the beach you nasty man um has what you how you get away from mine has that changed since you since you moved to France um yeah I mean we have a we I’ve I’ve got some I’ve made some good friends down here so just last night we went down to a lovely little beach bar for dinner so yeah that was great um but yes I mean it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s a different lifestyle now I’m here I mean obviously I’m working during the week and and visiting the UK twice a month I’m in the UK visiting customers on my flying visits but um when it comes to getting away from wine there’s plenty of other things to do you know I’ve got a family that of my young my kids are now just leaving home so after 20 years years of bringing kids up we’re actually going to be free to go traveling and visit new things so you know um my wife and I for the first time ever we’ve got the we’re doing our Barbados thing because obviously I do a lot of sales in Barbados but she’s coming with me and she’s going to be joining me on these trips whilst they’re wine trips but actually also sightseeing and touring some really exotic places so we been to maresh in July which that sounds sound sounds brilliant and I like the fact that you know you’re still Daniel Lambert to me but I think obviously in France now you’re Daniel LOM um it’s been a pleasure to talking to you thank you all for everything you do for the wine industry uh and I think it takes guts to do what you’ve done you know as you said I think sometimes it’s meant that people may have delisted wines you’ve done but you’ve spoken your truth and I think we should all thank you for doing that because I think at least from my point of view it’s a truth that needs speaking yeah and as I say I mean we’re all in this industry together we all have to look after each other I always say and it’s the nicest analogy of all we live in a global village in the wine trade and the nice way I like to think well I shall see you very soon somewhere in that Global Village Daniel Lambert thank you great to see you cheers I love Daniel’s energy honesty and work ethic as well as the fact that he’s willing to put his head above the parit and if you’ve been listening from the start this was our 200th episode hooray next week on [ __ ] talk my guest is the spanish-based master of wine no Robertson known as the flying Scotsman see you then thanks for listening to cor talk if you want to read more reports articles and tasting notes by me go to my website timken.com you can also follow me on Twitter @ Tim Atkin and on Instagram @ Tim Atkin MW see you next week