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History
Julian Eggar started his career in Hotel Management, working for the Ritz Hotel in London and for a large hotel group in South Africa. It was during that time that Julian developed his love of wine, and after returning to the UK in the late 1980s joined the UK Wine Trade.
Julian has now been in the Wine Business for 21 years, eleven of them as Head of Marketing for one of the UK’s leading Wine Importers. In Spring 2001, he formed Wine JEMS as an independent wine merchant to supply wine to private clients, schools, private caterers and corporate business. Julian tastes (several times) and believes in all the wines he lists. They are not normally available in the UK High Street.
The Team
Wine JEMS is a family run business, consisting of Julian and his wife Nicky, who supports him in all aspects of finance and administration, as well as tasting a few wines! Nicky says “The best thing about Wine JEMS is that it doesn’t bother me when he brings his work home!”.
There is a third member of the team Abby - aka ‘The Wine Cat’. Abby is a 15 year old, long haired tabby cat, who spends her time languishing seductively on Julian’s desk, which is why you sometimes might get muddy paw prints on your invoices! She once unknowingly called one of Julian’s suppliers (by lying on the redial button) and reportedly talked more sense than he did! |
Wine Philosophy and the Wine JEMS Name
Julian says “It is a fact that over 70% of all wine in the UK is sold in the High Street and a lot of it made in a formulaic way to specific price points. What I am trying to do is give people the chance to drink great value wines. How do you choose them? In two ways, firstly, on my recommendation:- I taste nearly 2,000 wines a year, targeting specific regions, prices and styles and will only list wines that I love and consider give great value for money. Secondly on tasting them yourself: - It is all very well buying wines because the label looks good, but if the wine tastes awful, you have wasted your money. I do several wine tastings a year (and can arrange private ones), where you can choose specific styles that suit your palate and also your pocket.
As for my own taste, it is very catholic and I definitely believe there are certain wines for every occasion and have a very open mind. I think in the case of Old World versus New World, there are a great deal of fantastic wines from the latter, which in many occasions are better than anything Europe can offer, although there is nothing like a superb wine from the classic regions. My feeling is that as regards France it makes some of the greatest wines of the world but also some of the worst.”
There are several reasons, why the company was named Wine JEMS: firstly the wines are Gems, and that is all I can say on that! Secondly my youngest son Jeremy has always been known as Jem although at fourteen he has yet to develop his palate for fine wine, the real reason is it stands for JULIAN EGGAR MARKETING SERVICES!”
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