Richard Siddle writes about London Wine Fair

Richard Siddle is an award-winning business editor with close to 30 years experience working across a number of fields including drinks, computing, grocery retail, convenience and travel. He is co-founder of The Buyer, along with Peter Dean, a new digital insights and trends platform for the premium drinks industry that looks to help buyers and producers work closer together and understand their needs. 

The first time I reported on the London Wine Fair I did so without actually going to the show. Which is quite an achievement.

It was a few weeks after becoming editor of Harpers and with a press day to get through, in the middle of the fair, there was simply no time to attend. So all the interviews were done on the phone and I had to imagine just how “wonderful” “dynamic” and “exciting” it was for the various producers and suppliers to be there – none of whom I had ever actually met.

I wasn’t going to make that mistake again so the next year decided – rather innocently – to not just produce the magazine from the show, but to do a daily version for each of the three days. I’ve got the scars to prove it. And so too have all the other great members of the Harpers’ team who were willing to go where no wine and spirits magazine had gone before. [Thanks chiefs…!]

It was (I think) great fun, as well as bloody hard work. It meant you simply did not take ‘no’ for an answer. If a wine producer or distributor wanted to be in the next morning’s ‘Daily’ then even a Tesco buyer would have to wait their turn.

But such tales of derring do hopefully reflect just how important the London Wine Fair is for the industry it serves, from the importers, merchants and producers who exhibit, to the buyers who go looking to do business and the journalists that report on it.