Credit: Shutterstock, London
As any good vinofile will know, nothing hits quite like a crisp white wine on a summer’s day or a cosy red wine in front of the fire. But what you may not know is that Britain’s oldest wine and spirits merchant, Berry Bros. & Rudd, is based in London, and has been operated by the same family at the exact location on St James Street since 1698.
It was founded by a woman, known as Widow Bourne, and the current Berry family who still own and run the company, are original descendants of the founders, with the Rudd’s joining the company in the early 20th century.
Historic beginnings
The shop was originally an Italian Grocers, selling tea, coffee, tobacco and spices and later wine and spirits became part of that. But, to this day, Berry Bros. & Rudd still trades under the ‘Sign of the Coffee Mill’, an image that has remained outside the shop for centuries and acts as a reminder of the origins of the company.
As well as selling to the public, they have also been supplying the royal family since the reign of King George III. Over the years, the merchants have seen many other notable patrons including Winston Churchill in 1944, Lord Byron and even provided wine to the the ill-fated Titanic. Hey, at least we know they were drinking good wine — silver linings and all.
Storied London cellars
Berry Bros. & Rudd now have multiple buildings and shopfronts, as well as two acres of underground cellar space. The family reserve, wines owned by the Berry and Rudd family, can also be found in the cellars, which contain the oldest bottles in the collection from 1864.
Always innovators in this space, in 1967 Berry Bros. & Rudd became the first independent wine merchant to build temperature-controlled wine cellars, breaking with the tradition of the time. These cellars now hold 8.5 million bottles of company and customers’ wine, valued at millions of pounds in total. There’s also another room for precious bottles, including a magnum from Domaine Romanée Conti and a bottle worth £64,000. That’s some seriously fancy wine.
The cellar is also home to three amazing event spaces, one of which was used as a filming location for the second Kingsman film.
Upstairs and just down the road from the cellars, you can find the company’s modern retail space that carries their extensive collection of wines and spirits for you to buy. For those more interested in the history, their original storefront remains open where you can imagine all the people that have walked through its doors throughout the centuries.