DAVID CAMPBELL STIRS FROM HIS LIBRARY

BRUCE PALLING | UNCORKED | November 16th 2007

Bruce Palling does your wallet a favour by introducing you to an online wine company run by the publisher of Everyman's Library, David Campbell. The wine, by the way, is both good and cheap ...

Special to MORE INTELLIGENT LIFE

Just before the turn of this century, I recall my friend David Campbell, publisher of Everyman's Library, shaking his head in puzzlement and saying that many of his friends in business had been trying to work out how you could profit from the internet. "Do you know, despite spending days thinking of every angle, they can't think of a single way it will ever make money for anyone."

Well, in mitigation, many people thought the same--and it was before the dotcom boom began in the late 1990s, which proved them wrong, though after the dotcom bust they probably thought they were right again.

Now the net has shown it can excel in certain things--for example, it is the most efficient distributor of new and old books known to man as all devotees of Abebooks and Amazon should know by now. David Campbell, along with Esme Johnstone, is going to try and prove that it works well for distributing above-average drinkable wine too.

David was once described by a friend as a Catherine wheel that had fallen off its pin. He has that short, sharp, barking tone beloved of people such as Jeffrey Archer, but that is his only weakness. For the remainder of the time he is a seriously well-connected publisher, who during his decade or so in Paris ran Editions du Chené and launched the Guide Hachette des Vins which is still the highest regarded French guidebook to wine.

Unfortunately, he is a bit of a terroiriste. Once when we were in Venice together I spotted some exceptionally reasonable Chateaux Mouton and Margaux '88 on the wine list. However, David insisted we go local, muttering something about when in Rome. So instead we had a Barbaresco '90 from Gaja for the same price--an outstanding wine, but sadly, infanticide to drink so young.

Still, I really do owe him one, because it was at Spencer House, the gaudy jewel in Jacob Rothschild's crown, that I drank copious amounts of Bollinger at the launch party of Everyman's Library and rashly proposed to my startled girlfriend. The happy ending was that she succumbed in the taxi home.

But back to David. Like many Brits I know, he appreciates fine wine but hates shelling out anything more than the cost of a cinema ticket to buy it. He cheerfully admits that he has never paid more than £20 for a bottle of wine. This is at least a reasonable amount for many--not like one dreadful twit of my acquaintance, a best-selling military historian, who served me a thin, characterless red and then asked me how much I thought it cost. I gabbled out something way over what I actually thought, only to be silently vindicated with, "Three Pounds ninety-nine--from Threshers!".

Once David had shed his scepticism towards the web, he thought there was room for a low-overhead wine business that could undercut other retailers by 15% or 20%. Early last year, friends put him in touch with Esme Johnstone, a charming English vintner who had been one of the original founders of Majestic Wines, before decamping to Bordeaux, where he owned Chateau de Sours, a good value vineyard in the Entre deux Mers.

Together, they launched www.fromvineyardsdirect.com, which, apart from having a slightly mad name, is a first-rate site for the purchase of quality wine at £7 to £20 a bottle. The reason prices can be kept so low is the overheads are low too. Rather than paying huge rents to be located in St James's or in the City of London, FVD uses a bonded warehouse in London to package up orders. Apart from David and Esme, the only employees are a brilliant youth spending time out before he joins the Foreign Office, and a stalwart from Everyman's Library who sails under the great Mauritian name of Faizal Fakeer Bacchus.

In line with the tone of the operation, the blurb on the cover of the marketing material is from John Julius Norwich, the beloved historian and friend of Venice, who says that FVD is "about the best thing that has happened to me this year". Other words of praise spring from Tim Waterstone of the book chain, and David could no doubt turn to others in his absurdly vast range of friends, from maharajas to pop stars. The French ambassador is giving a birthday party for FVD at his residence on the edge of Kensington Gardens next week.

But what about the bloody wines? I was saving that for a bit, but in fact they really are excellent value (I say that despite so many conflicts of personal interest that I begin to sound like a candidate for a Labour peerage).

Esme has lived in France for decades and so has managed to source excellent-value serious wines, such as a brilliantly lush--yet austere--'06 Pouilly Fuissé for £11.75, and the best value of all, a wine simply called "Margaux 2004", but which one might suspect with good reason of being the third wine of a rather grand chateau. (The '04 Bordeaux are gloriously underpriced across the entire spectrum, since this was not so heavy a hitter as either of its surrounding vintages. La Mission Haut Brion '05 currently trades for £4k, but the '04 can be had for around £550.)

The '04 Margaux is capable of lasting for a couple more years but if that strikes you as being a bit young, there is another anonymous treat on the list--"Saint-Julien 2000". A bit of detective work shows that this is the third wine of Ducru Beaucaillou, and another bargain at £11.75. I would happily have this as my house wine: it is fully mature, and shows all the signs of grace and balance that you expect from a Bordeaux 2000.

Others are not to my taste, but they do have their place: for example, a Spanish blockbuster called Les Mines '00, from Priorat. It is composed of a similar range of grapes to an Ozzie Red and has the same ability to thump you in the guts with its 14.5% alcohol content, but it worked well with saddle of hare at St John restaurant. I didn't have the chance to taste Tagonius, another Spanish red, from a winery just outside Madrid that Esme cheerfully admits he didn't even know existed before the grower sent him a bottle. It is on reputable wine lists in Barcelona, Madrid and San Sebastian and has become one of their best selling products.

You'd be thrilled to find anything from this entire list in a decent bistro. Nothing is absurdly expensive--Serge Mathieu Champagne for £14.95, excellent Premier Cru Chablis, and even a Muscadet 2003 for £6.75 that gets 90 points from Robert Parker!

I had better pass over the Chateau Richemont Rosé 2006, as I tend to agree with A.J. Liebling, who said that rosé is semi-aborted red wine, but many people disagree with me.

FVD has had to sack only one grower so far for turning in a rubbish vintage after an excellent first one. The firm has 800 clients, most of whom, the principals are pleased to report, are personally unknown to them. This allows them to break even. Their dream is to get a maximum of 10,000 clients over the next three years.

I think they will succeed, because they are keeping it simple. The web site is one of the most elegant and straightforward I have seen. You can fit their entire offering onto one computer screen as they sell less than three dozen different wines.

If you don't want to pay Britain's heavy tax on wine and Champagne, you can pick up your order at Calais and drive it over tax free.

One of David's proud boasts is that, the great thing about the web, compared with going into a shop, is that you can dig down and get a lot more information on specific wines than you would from a gormless spotty youth on a gap year. For once, I think he is wrong. People buy on the web because it is cheap, quick and efficient--and once they have had a satisfactory or pleasant experience with even one wine, they will happily come back for more.