My brother, Bill Blatch, who has died aged 76 of a heart attack, devoted himself joyfully to the wine trade in Bordeaux for 40 years, selling across the world and supplying the influential Southwold annual tastings for the UK wine trade, which he organised each year with the London traders Farr Vintners.
Bill – described as “the wine whisperer of Bordeaux” – made Sauternes his life, and played an important role as a bridge between Bordeaux wine houses and their many followers in the UK and the US. Never pretentious, he had the habit of decanting fine vintages into plastic cola bottles he carried around for the job, most memorably a 1964 Moët that he produced for a Masters of Wine meeting. He relished his American road trips promoting his beloved petits châteaux.
Born in Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, Bill was the son of Pamela (nee Beachcroft), a Wren in the second world war, and John Blatch, later company secretary to the fishmonger business Mac Fisheries. He boarded at Bradfield college, Berkshire, then spent a year teaching in France.
An early entrant into the wine trade, he worked for a period with Stowells wine merchants in Gerrards Cross before starting a modern languages degree at Magdalen College, Oxford in 1967. Beginning a pattern throughout his life of generosity and conviviality, he befriended his college cellar master, who recognised his palate early on.
Bill could not resist the allure of France. In 1973 he married Tita Marsan, a Frenchwoman, and the following year they set up home in Bordeaux, where Bill became an established wine personality. He qualified as a master of wine and worked for two different wine merchants before founding his own business, Vintex, in 1982.
After selling the company in 2006, he established an online business, Bordeaux Gold, specialising in Barsac and Sauternes. This is where he is best remembered, working with his beloved Sauternes, about which he was incredibly knowledgable; in 2014 he was made a Chevalier de L’Ordre Nationale du Mérite for his services to the wine trade.
Two of Bill’s great passions were fishing and scuba diving. He loved his annual expedition into the Canadian wilderness, setting up camp at various rugged locations, where he fished and lived off the land, once unexpectedly shooting the rapids in Hudson Bay. Bill had a huge and varied cohort of friends, one of whom described him as a “joy to be with”, remembering his “incredible wealth of stories and information”. Bill’s life ended doing what he loved, watching the fishes and swimming among them while snorkelling off Tahiti.
He is survived by Tita, his nephew, Adam, and me.
