Nicolas Belfrage, who has died aged 82 of complications arising from Parkinson’s disease, was an authority on Italian wine, whose knowledge of Italy and its long history of producing and exporting wine was second to none. He was one of the first to realise the country’s enormous potential for quality, against the tiring cliche of a cistern of cheap wine, which he powerfully counteracted as early as 1985 in his first book, Life Beyond Lambrusco – Understanding Italian Fine Wine. The book’s editor, Jancis Robinson, originally wanted to title it The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, but Nicolas objected, emphasising that fine Italian wine existed, even if, at the time, few people were aware of it.
Nicolas was born in Los Angeles, the son of the British journalist Cedric Henning Belfrage and his wife, the writer Molly Castle. Having only briefly joined the Communist party in 1937, Cedric was summoned in 1954 before the House Un-American Activities Committee and, after a bout in Sing Sing prison, was deported. Nicolas and his mother had already returned to Britain the previous year.
He went to St Paul’s boys’ school in London followed by University College London, where he graduated in French and Italian in 1964. At the age of 25, Nicolas went to study Italian in Siena. His early ambition was to become a writer and he produced three unpublished novels as well as a work on Dante Alighieri. His later work had a literary quality rarely seen in wine writing.
As a budding wine journalist, I asked Nicolas in 2011 during an interview: “Why Italian wine?”
“Why wine at all?” he replied.
By sheer coincidence, in 1970 he had begun working in a late-night grocery business in Gloucester Road, west London, set up by his friend Albert Vince. A second store in Paddington, this time with an off-licence, opened up the route to wine for him.
After his first marriage, to Baiba Krumens, ended in 1974, Nicolas continued to visit her at her new home in Bergamo, and there discovered that great Italian wine did exist. In 1986, he founded Wine Cellars in Wandsworth, the first non-Italian-owned store to ship and distribute high-quality Italian wine. Having passed the notoriously difficult Master of Wine exams in 1980s, Nicolas now had the authority, as well as the buying acumen and critical voice needed to conquer a sceptical market. In 1996 he founded Vinexus, an agency specialising in top Italian wine.
His magnum opus was contained in two volumes, Barolo to Valpolicella: The Wines of Northern Italy (1999), and Brunello to Zibibbo: The Wines of Tuscany, Central and Southern Italy (2001), in which he described in great detail the diversity of the Italian wine world and its indigenous varieties while, crucially, putting everything in a historical context.
Nicolas is survived by his two daughters, Ixta and Beatriz, both from his second marriage, in 1988, to Candida de Melo, which ended in 2009.
