Obituary: Bill Blatch

Stories that pay tribute to Bill Blatch’s enormous influence on the world of wine will be deservedly frequent following the news of his death, a few days ago, after almost exactly 50 years in the Bordeaux wine trade, and a decade after his retirement from Vintex, the négociant that he set up in 1982.

Mine is probably a little different from many, in that I owe him one of the more significant moments of my wine career. For a man renowned for his indefatigable work ethic, I can be quietly relieved that it didn’t extend to deadlines for writing copy, because my commission to write Inside Bordeaux came about after he stepped down from the task.  It was tough completing it, he told me at the time, ‘coming off 40 rather intense years of commercial activity in the Bordeaux wine trade’ – not that it stopped him being on the end of the phone for any questions that I had.

Chris Foulkes and Carrie Segrave, publishers of Inside Bordeaux, remember Blatch as, ‘A lovely man, his  unassuming grace at total variance with his extraordinary depth of knowledge of Bordeaux, backed up by years of meticulous research. Our abiding memory is of him opening the boot of his car, filled end to end with boxes and boxes of files for just one chapter. Of course, he said, I will need to revisit each one to check…. Bill had so many things going on in his life — he never quite managed to retire so that he could write. Undoubtedly the best book we never published’.

It meant that he remained, to many, the ultimate ‘secret agent’ of Bordeaux, where he had lived since 1974, sharing his vast knowledge in a remarkable number of ways – as wine merchant first of Vintex and then Bordeaux Gold, as educator, as author of his legendary Annual Vintage Report, international consultant for Christie’s auction house, longterm champion of the luscious wines of Sauternes and Barsac, and organiser of the legendary Southwold annual tasting of Bordeaux wines for the UK wine trade.

Before moving to France, he worked as buyer at Grants of St. James’s before moving to the home country of his French wife Tita, spending the first decade as  export director of A. Delor et Compagnie, Bordeaux négociant, and then founding his own company just in time for going ‘all in’ on the 1982 vintage, encouraged he said by Raoul Blondin, cellar master at Mouton Rothschild.

In 2014 he was named Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Mérite for his services to the wine trade (which is how I learned his full name was William John Beachcroft Blatch).

Stephen Browett, chairman of Farr Vintners and fellow organiser of the Southwold tasting, said, ‘Bill was one of the most knowledgeable people on the wines, the estates and the people of Bordeaux. He knew everyone and everyone knew, liked and respected him. I know that I speak for all of us in the wine tasting group when I say how very fond we were of Bill as well as admiring him for his expertise and tasting ability. He was a thoroughly good bloke and a great champion of the wines of Bordeaux – and in particular of Sauternes. He will be hugely missed by all of us’.