Kiwi transformed London wine bars
When Don Hewitson arrived in London in the early 1970s, he expected to find a wine bar on every corner.
He didn’t. And the ones he did find served up rather questionable plonk, though Hewitson used other more colourful and unprintable language to describe what he imbibed.
But like any Kiwi worth his salt, he saw this as an opportunity.
On his death, at age 74, his success in revolutionising the wine bar scene was sealed in The Times of London.
In an article following his death that newspaper hailed him as the founding father of the British wine bar, who shook up and levelled a previously stuffy, snobbish trade.
He, along with his first wife, Jean, served up quality wine with good food, instead of flogging rebadged plonk, to a more inclusive clientele – that is, women who were conspicuous by their absence in the more stuffy sexist wine bars that went before Hewitson’s ventures.
‘‘I was just the right person in the right spot,’’ he said in a 1995 interview.
‘‘My interest in wine wasn’t going to allow me just to buy and sell wine that was the cheapest and the most convenient to get. That was of no intellectual interest to me.
‘‘I was ahead of my time I suppose, and I had a receptive clientele.’’
Born and raised in Levin, he and his two brothers went to the local school where their father was headmaster.
On leaving Horowhenua College, plan A was to play the trumpet with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. But he wasn’t good enough so he went to Victoria University on a teaching scholarship till he could work out what else he could do.
‘‘I can remember to this day, ‘‘ he said years later, ‘‘walking down the hill at Kelburn saying ‘What on earth do I like in life?’ ’’
He liked food and he liked wine so he quit university, got a job at the White Heron motor lodge and for six years worked ‘‘front of house’’ at Des Britten’s The Coachman restaurant.
In those days The Coachman was a bit of a renegade establishment. It was fresh and new in an exclusive and small club of Wellington high-end restaurants like La Normandie and Orsini’s. The waiting staff all wore coachman tails and huge bow ties.
This was back in the day when most hotel restaurants had little old ladies in white smocks serving customers, says old friend and Auckland restaurateur Tony Astle, who worked with Hewitson at The Coachman.
Hewitson was flamboyant in the extreme. He loved swearing and had a reputation for delivering expletives with abandon.
He and his cohorts wore bright scarves and bell bottoms. They had long hair and big attitudes.
At the time, New Zealand restaurants served predominantly imported wine. Hewitson knew his Burgundy from his Beaujolais and was able to articulate the nuances of the good stuff.
The Coachman became huge competition for the other well established haunts around Wellington, says Astle.
‘‘They all hated The Coachman and they all hated Don because he always used to tell them how useless they were.
‘‘He was a very confident person who learned quickly and developed a talent for understanding wine. He was a big personality. But he didn’t suffer fools.
‘‘He would have liked the tributes but would hate to think everyone thought he was lovely because he wasn’t and he knew damn well he wasn’t. ‘‘A lot of people disliked him immensely. But if you knew him and you got through that big facade he was actually a big softie.’’
Hewitson left The Coachman with Jean, who had defected from Orsini’s, and headed for London where he imagined a sophisticated wine bar scene awaited.
‘‘He was a big personality. But he didn’t suffer fools.’’
On the first day he and Jean visited Harrods Food Hall. ‘‘We were lucky enough to be invited to a tasting of Muscadet. Lucky? . . . I am not so sure.
‘‘It was malicious stuff reeking of sweaty socks and tasting even worse,’’ he reflected years later on his blog, The thoughts of Chairman Don.
Hewitson was never one to mince words. Later that night he went to a bistro and ordered a bottle of Morgon. ‘‘I had sold some delicious stuff back home, and was unprepared for the insidious, soupy heavy crap with a cloying ‘hot country finish’.’’
When he queried the provenance, the waiter replied, ‘‘Of course it is – it says so on the label.’’
‘‘This was my introduction to the quaint habits of the great British wine trade . . . the common practice of shipping crap, and then bottling in Blighty with an appellation controlee name. It was downright fraudulent.’’
He got a job as a barman at the Cork & Bottle in London’s Leicester Square, which he and Jean bought a year later.
It was the start of his small but influential empire. He would go on to open Shampers, off Carnaby Street; Methusalahs, in Westminster, a favourite haunt of MPs; and Hanover Square wine bar in Oxford Circus.
Back in the early 1970s bars typically served wines from France, Spain and Portugal, and most house wines were uninteresting to say the least. They were the days before UK-bottled wines had to observe appellation controlee laws.
‘‘Tankers of foul North African stuff were brought into Blighty and labelled with the great names. Bogus Beaujolais; Nuits-St-Georges which owed more to nights in Tunisia; malicious Meursault,’’ Hewitson commented. ‘‘I chucked all the wines out and only purchased genuine stuff.’’
He and Jean turned the wine bar around, serving great wines and decent food. It was a huge success.
His signature dishes, which originated in the kitchens of Guy Prouheze (south of France), Brava Terrace (California) and The Coachman (Wellington), helped The Cork and Bottle get a listing in the prestigious Good Food Guide for 23 consecutive years. As Hewitson once observed, ‘‘Not even the Savoy Grill has managed that.’’
The Cork & Bottle became reputed for its generous range of good wines sourced from around the world. He offered a huge range of wines by the glass instead of having to buy a whole bottle.
He had a great many Kiwis work for him in his wine bars over the years, who later returned and opened up places in New Zealand that were very similar to the Cork & Bottle.
Don Fletcher worked for him for three years at that first wine bar having met him at Lord’s cricket ground – a favourite spot for the cricket-mad Hewitson.
The place was always crammed – the Brits have a phenomenal appetite for lunchtime drinking, says Fletcher.
Hewitson was a blasphemous brash Kiwi who railed against the class system. He would be Basil Fawlty out the back and the consummate host out front.
‘‘His enthusiasm for wine washed over everyone. I remember two elderly people arrived early before we opened which we all hated but Don welcomed them in, sat them down and told them they had to try this new drop he had just got in.’’
A few months after arriving in Britain he was asked to fill a last-minute vacancy on the Champagne Academy course in
France which, he said, he accepted with alacrity.
He never forgot his first day in France which was spent at a lunch with Madame Bollinger, who treated him to glasses of pop from the legendary 1966 vintage.
Champagne was Hewitson’s other great love and he became chairman of the academy, a UK organisation celebrating the fizz, in 1978.
Hewitson wrote books, Enjoying Wine and The Glory of Champagne. While researching the latter he found himself having lunch with Christian de Billy of Pol Roger.
‘‘I told him it was my birthday. He asked my vintage and two weeks later the doorman of the Savoy turned up in full livery at the Cork & Bottle with two bottles of Pol Roger’s 1945,’’ he wrote.
Hewitson had been very sick for some time leading up to his death.
He spent the last 15 years living in the south of France with his second wife, Noelene. He is survived by her, his two daughters from his first marriage and a stepson. – By Bess Manson