Here's To The Future

The scion of the family wine merchant on tradition–and making a break for it.

- Harry Eyres

BERRY BROS & RUDD has two Royal Warrants and has supplied wine to the Royal Family since the time of George III. The company’s storied premises at 3, St James’s Street are within a stone’s throw of St James’s Palace, however, the air of stately respectability has always masked a more colourful reality.

The young bloods who frequented the Widow Bourne’s original shop, which began as a general grocer in 1698 and still trades under the sign of the coffee mill, behaved no better than recent members of the Bullingdon. The business has survived not only the Blitz, but repeated riots and demonstrations as recently as 2011, which was the last time it had to put up its famous iron shutters.

Simon Berry, who is stepping down as chairman after 12 years, fits both sides of this history, I reflect. (Full disclosure: we’ve known each other since we were 13, are both sons of wine merchants, studied English together under the same inspired teacher and were both bitten by the acting bug at Eton.)

Affecting double-breasted, widestriped pin-stripe suits just a little more flamboyant than the SW1 carriage-trade norm, he combines the air of Bertie Wooster (whom he played brilliantly as a schoolboy) with something more mischievous and even subversive. You can’t even be sure his endearing stammer is not being deployed quite deliberately, for expressive effect (it disappears completely when he’s on stage).