Bill Baker

After Cambridge he joined the then respected house of Avery’s in Bristol where he was employed as sales manager until 1980. After a brief period with the now defunct Robertson Wines, he joined Reid Wines, then owned by Charles Reid.

Reid’s idea of industry was to shoot a hundred days a year. He proved a liability when economic crisis struck in the early Nineties and the firm went under. When it came back to life it was without Reid. He was replaced by David Boobyer.

Baker was a very big man, and his heart and appetite were in proportion. He stood out not simply because of his bulk, but also because he was a rare man of spirit and character in a wine trade increasingly dominated by the faceless representatives of the supermarkets and high-street multiples. Baker was never afraid to speak his mind; shooting out his forceful and pithy political judgments in a loud voice as he paused for an ample lunch at a tasting. The meal was announced by a scrabbling in one of his huge pockets, while he fished for the clip he used to fasten an outsized napkin over his stomach. It was not always politics that obsessed him, but it often was. His voice could be heard from far away: quite often carrying some sharp observation on the subject of another man’s tie or the state of his shoes.

Despite his bulk, Baker was never a slob. He carried his weight with considerable aplomb. He was always well turned out, generally in generous tweeds and waistcoats that made him look like a prosperous country solicitor. In warmer weather he sported striking red braces. On his travels he was inevitably consumed by the local gastronomy. The first time he tasted Iberico ham he was so excited that he returned to England with two slung under his arm. It was illegal to import them at the time, but arguments of that sort would have made no progress with Baker.

He loved everything to do with food, and at one time organised trips to the cinema for customers and wine writers to see a film he admired for its scholarly depiction of 19th-century wining and dining.

The list he wrote for Reid Wines’s customers was vintage Baker. There was a little editorial at the front, generally acerbic in tone, and sometimes directed at our political leaders. In an interview he gave to a trade magazine in 2005 he said that he planned to retire at 60, but he needed to put his children through school and university first. “And then I think I will have to make a decision about just how disgustingly politically correct this country has become, because it drives me bloody wild. I hate living here, with idiots telling you what to do all the time. I will be off, probably to Italy. I fancy being a woodcutter there. I am a log obsessive: I love cutting trees and the smell of them, and stacking them. And best of all, I can bring that axe down and imagine it’s Tony’s head.”

He was equally scathing about the American wine guru Robert Parker, whom he referred to as that “bloody American wine critic” and his “absurd scoring system”. These comments were published and they were noticed. They earned him a vitriolic letter from the man himself.

Baker loved to read, and each section of the Reid Wines list was headed by a quotation from the classics. He amused himself by digging out historic descriptions of wine from the likes of Dickens and Wilkie Collins. He had no agencies because he did not like the demands that were placed on him and his staff. He had no patience with paperwork. He liked old wines, and bought cellars filled with interesting stock. He was always prepared to take a punt. This blend of wine knowledge and literacy made him much in demand as a judge for the very many wine writing competitions in Britain. The quality of the submissions didn’t always please him, and naturally he was not afraid to say so. His personality was such that he was often featured in magazines and television programmes. He was the star of many institutional wine tasting clubs.

He was, of course, solicited for his palate, particularly by restaurants which felt they were incapable of drawing up a decent list by themselves. He became friendly with the chef and later food writer Simon Hopkinson while he was cooking at Bibendum in London and through him he became a consultant for the Conran Group of restaurants. The quality of their lists owed a good deal to the care he took to find the right sort of wines for their customers. He also worked with Rick Stein in Cornwall and notably with Gravetye Manor.

He was an early champion of the new world, first with Taltarni in Australia, but later with Jayson Pahlmeyer and Philip Togni in Napa and Wairau River in New Zealand, but he never lost his fondness for mature claret and burgundy.

He died at his wife’s family’s holiday cottage in Cornwall, having just returned from a tasting marathon in South Africa where everyone had been amazed by his unflagging energy. He had taken four cases of wine out with him to drink while he was there and every night he had impressed fellow jurors by his robust coup de fourchette.

He married Katie Gaunt in 1991, whom he had met at Gidleigh Park Hotel where she was working at the time, and where he was selling wine. He is survived by her and their two teenage children.

Bill Baker, wine merchant, was born on July 6, 1954. He died suddenly on January 27, 2008, aged 53