Bill Baker, wine merchant extraordinaire, has died
Bill Baker has died in his sleep aged just 53. He will be deeply missed.
Bill Baker has died in his sleep aged just 53. He will be deeply missed. Bill Baker, legendary wine merchant and extraordinary taster of wine, died in his sleep on Sunday night and I feel amazingly devastated and bereft. Bill was a sizeable gentleman – his pin striped girth could be easily spotted across a crowded tasting room but he was large in other ways too. His memory of fine wine and old vintages was extraordinary, his appetite for and knowledge of good food would put most food writers to shame and his heart was very, very big. That is probably what I will remember and miss most about him – the incredible kindness he showed me, particularly at the beginning of my career at Conran.
I met Bill when I started working as the Sommelier at Mezzo in the mid 90’s. He, more than any other single person, shaped how I taste and understand wine and although I didn’t realise the extent of it then, there is arguably no-one else in the UK wine trade (or probably anywhere) who was such a master.
He tasted incredibly quickly and he knew instantly if a wine was any good or not. He was also always right. On returning later to wines he had dismissed out of hand which I had thought were good, I would be hugely embarrassed at the fact that I had ever even considered them. He was fearsomely good at blind tasting too but as much as his actual ability was the fact that Bill had exquisite taste and that is a very rare combination. In my experience, many who are good at the technicalities of tasting don’t have anything like the incredibly fine, almost instinctive judgement as to intrinsic quality that Bill had.
It was Bill who taught me two of the wine descriptions I use to this day. ‘Gopping!’ he used to boom at the top of his voice when something distasteful passed his lips. At a tasting with him one day, I glanced at the scrawl on his notes (Bill’s handwriting was as idiosyncratic as the rest of him) and asked him what ‘FA’ stood for, a designation assigned to most of the wines on that particular page. ‘Fucking Awful’ he replied, sailing majestically on to the next.
It was also Bill who was one of the people who was incredibly supportive of me in my struggle with the Institute of Masters of Wine. He had started his and abandoned it soon after, exasperated at the process. He knew the agonies I was going through, particularly when I decided to abandon it before passing the theory part and Bill made a point of coming over at a tasting soon after to tell me he thought I was doing the right thing. “Bunch of tossers, Kate” he said “Fuck ‘em”. That may not sound much but this was a time when certain members of the wine trade would cross the room to avoid me, so it meant a huge amount. Quite soon after that, we were both at a tutored tasting with a wine maker. This particular person was telling a story about a tasting he had done for a group of venerable Masters of Wine. At a point in the evening he had looked around the room and had thought “I wonder what the UK Wine Trade would do if a bomb fell on this room now”. From the back of the room came Bill’s riposte “We’d all cheer”.
God bless you Bill. I will not see your like again and I will miss you enormously.
I met Bill when I started working as the Sommelier at Mezzo in the mid 90’s. He, more than any other single person, shaped how I taste and understand wine and although I didn’t realise the extent of it then, there is arguably no-one else in the UK wine trade (or probably anywhere) who was such a master.
He tasted incredibly quickly and he knew instantly if a wine was any good or not. He was also always right. On returning later to wines he had dismissed out of hand which I had thought were good, I would be hugely embarrassed at the fact that I had ever even considered them. He was fearsomely good at blind tasting too but as much as his actual ability was the fact that Bill had exquisite taste and that is a very rare combination. In my experience, many who are good at the technicalities of tasting don’t have anything like the incredibly fine, almost instinctive judgement as to intrinsic quality that Bill had.
It was Bill who taught me two of the wine descriptions I use to this day. ‘Gopping!’ he used to boom at the top of his voice when something distasteful passed his lips. At a tasting with him one day, I glanced at the scrawl on his notes (Bill’s handwriting was as idiosyncratic as the rest of him) and asked him what ‘FA’ stood for, a designation assigned to most of the wines on that particular page. ‘Fucking Awful’ he replied, sailing majestically on to the next.
It was also Bill who was one of the people who was incredibly supportive of me in my struggle with the Institute of Masters of Wine. He had started his and abandoned it soon after, exasperated at the process. He knew the agonies I was going through, particularly when I decided to abandon it before passing the theory part and Bill made a point of coming over at a tasting soon after to tell me he thought I was doing the right thing. “Bunch of tossers, Kate” he said “Fuck ‘em”. That may not sound much but this was a time when certain members of the wine trade would cross the room to avoid me, so it meant a huge amount. Quite soon after that, we were both at a tutored tasting with a wine maker. This particular person was telling a story about a tasting he had done for a group of venerable Masters of Wine. At a point in the evening he had looked around the room and had thought “I wonder what the UK Wine Trade would do if a bomb fell on this room now”. From the back of the room came Bill’s riposte “We’d all cheer”.
God bless you Bill. I will not see your like again and I will miss you enormously.
