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Geoffrey Roberts was importing fine Australian wine into Britain
as long ago as the early 1970s. By 1980 Geoffrey Roberts Associates
could boast a glamorous array of California wines from the likes
of Robert Mondavi, Chalone, Sterling , Château St Jean, Château
Montelena, Freemark Abbey, Trefethen and Schramsberg. Born in 1947
his life was cut short in 1994. The Geoffrey Roberts Award commemorates
his work and his lifelong interest in top quality food and wine.
Son of Cyril Roberts, distinguished soldier and lawyer and Member
of Staff of the National Coal Board, Geoffrey Roberts went to Eton
and was called to the Bar in 1970 but abandoned the law in favour
of starting the Hungerford Wine Company in the English town of
that name with Richard Jacobs. The company successfully sold wine
for corporate entertaining but it was a trip to Australia and a
meeting with Len Evans in the early 1970s which persuaded Roberts
to risk buying an entire container of Hunter Valley wines which
sold out in three months.
He soon moved to Chelsea , his natural habitat, where Geoffrey
Roberts Associates' tastings become important fixtures in the wine
trade diary, attended by all of the great and the good to whom
he introduced the then-radical notion that great wine was made
outside Europe . He was an early member of the Zinfandel Club,
founded by Harry Waugh, Hugh Johnson and John Avery MW to celebrate
top quality California wine in the UK . Eventually he sold the
business to Les Amis du Vin but remained as a consultant, even
though this required working in an industrial park on the western
fringes of London where the nearest restaurant as a Spud'U'Like – very
far from his natural milieu.
He ate and travelled extensively, with no apparent ill-effects
on his uncommonly good looks, and once boasted of having eaten
in every three-star restaurant in France . He was also a great
lover of the opera and ballet and travelled frequently to San Francisco
and the south of France . He was certainly a force for good and
a bon viveur, which is why his loss in 1994 was felt so keenly
by his many friends and associates. |
