Dear Diary, August 2020

Okay, I have had over 20 years’ experience in the wine trade covering every area from retail, private sales, buying and selling to restaurants and everything in between. With a full range of contacts in the wine world, a booming restaurant scene and private customers super keen to celebrate the end of Covid there could not be a better time to start On The Source

November 2020

Might have made a teensy error there!

Things did not go exactly as planned but like nearly every person on the planet it was time to adapt and come up with new ways of doing things. I started a new way of doing wine tastings over Zoom. I spent a lot of time delivering wine to people’s doorsteps and having great chats from 6ft away comparing bad haircuts. I even learned to use Instagram. And besides it’s not like I was the only person who made mistakes in the last two years

Wine Tastings

Zoom tastings became the thing, everyone would log on at the same time with a bottle of each of the wines on tasting. The winemaker would then log on from their country and talk through each of the wines and I loved it. There was a real sense of fun on the tastings, and everybody had the added bonus of peeking into each other’s houses. This year I finally got to do my first large scale in person tasting which was Pitch & Pour. Not wanting to do the same old tired tastings I decided to take over a campsite and hold an open air tasting of beers and wines there. I have to admit I was a little worried that people would not like the concept. That was another mistake, people loved it, there was alfresco movies, 30 wines and 7 beers on tasting, a beautiful location, and BBQs.

May you live in interesting times

There is a Terry Pratchett book where the curse of the people is “may you live in interesting times”

I think that the past two years have been very interesting times for us all, and perhaps we are now hoping for a little boredom. I have enjoyed the sense of community, clapping for the NHS, supporting our local businesses and the appreciation of normalcy in my life. Also, I have to say thank you to all the customers who have supported me through the first two pretty challenging years. Every sale was appreciated, made a difference, and helped to keep me sane(ish)

Yours Sincerely

Gerry Higgins