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“……we should be thankful. At a time when most supermarket wine lists are getting more commercial and bland, the choice on Scottish high streets has never been better. Chris Lockett, who runs Lockett Bros in North Berwick, is an example of an emerging breed of wine merchant. Often fresh out of college, they are sourcing lively, unusual wines, giving it a go and succeeding”
Will Lyons Scotland on Sunday, December 06
A tour of the New World yielded a rich harvest for one intrepid wine merchant.
Chris Lockett’s story has a peculiarly noughties feel to it. He won’t thank me for saying it, but spending 10 weeks away from Scotland trundling round the wine lands of Australia and New Zealand in a VWcombi is rather, well, Jamie Oliver. “I asked the Logan vineyard if I could do a vintage,” he says with bubbling excitement in his well laid-out shop on North Berwick’s high street, “and stayed for eight weeks. I did all the whites and the pinot.” No matter that it’s first thing in the morning: we’re tasting one of the wines he had a hand in making, Logan’s Weemala Gewurztraminer 2007. Lockett was there just at the right time for the southern hemisphere harvest, roughly in line with our spring. But this was no off-the cuff scheme. “It was a year in the planning,” he admits, confessing that as he’s since got married, a 10-week solo trip on the other side of the world is something that may not happen again. Which perhaps explains why this sort of experience is so rare today. Many of Scotland’s most highly regarded wine merchants – Alexander Wines in Glasgow, for example, or Inverarity in Biggar – started with someone setting off for a wine region and coming home with a van laden down with bottles. Although doing it on the other side of the world means Lockett doesn’t bring the wine straight back himself. “The Gewurztraminer is on the water at the moment. It’ll be here in a week or so and we’ll stock it. Cornelius Beer and Wine [in Easter Road, Edinburgh] are taking some too,” he says as we sip the grapey, apple-scented white. It’s fresher and less oily than is usual in the New World, with a long, clean finish. Most wine companies will tell you how close they are to the producers or how they’re committed to “close relationships with our suppliers”, but few can match the tales of how Lockett came to stock wines never before seen in Scotland. “I bought this pinot noir in a bar in New Zealand,” he explains as we sniff the wine. “I loved it, so I looked on the internet and just turned up at the winery. The owner and his son were shooting pigeons and covered in feathers. But we just had a chat and agreed that I could have a shipment.” The wine is stunning. But because of the way it was bought – bypassing agents and importers – it’s also £5-£10 cheaper than other central Otago wines of this quality. Lockett is keen to acknowledge the secret to his trip. After all, while he was away he still had a shop to keep up. Graham Kinniburgh, the shop’s manager, has years of experience in the wine trade behind him. We look over the shelves, which are filled with fascinating discoveries new to me and inspired selections from the world’s best winemakers. Australia and New Zealand are a focus and there are wines from all the world’s great regions. But we chat about some common friends in his unusually large Portuguese section, next to a stunning Italian range. I mention Paolo de Marchi and his Isole e Olena Chianti Classico. Turns out Kinniburgh has just been there. I’m glad. If your boss is away for 10 weeks, you deserve a treat.
Joe Fattorini Saturday Herald
