Gerard Basset
Sommelier with ‘the finest nose in Europe’ who began his career washing dishes on the Isle of Man
GERARD BASSET, who has died of cancer aged 61, was a Master Sommelier regarded as “the finest nose in Europe”; he also had a nose for business. Though born in France, he made his name in Britain, a base from which he scooped just about every award going, including two UK Sommelier of the Year awards (1989 and 1992), a Best Sommelier in Europe award in 1996 and the World’s Best Sommelier award in 2010. In addition he notched up four “Cateys” (the equivalent of industry Oscars) and an OBE for services to the hospitality industry in 2011.
He became a Master of Wine in 1998 (he won the Bollinger Cup for being the best taster among that year’s candidates) and was the first, and remains the only, person to have held three major titles simultaneously – Master of Wine, Master Sommelier and MBA (Wine).
In 1994 he was one of the cofounders of the British Hotel du Vin chain of boutique hotel-bistros. It was sold in 2004 and subsequently he and his wife, Nina, opened Hotel Terravina, an 11-room establishment in the New Forest which was voted the UK’S best newcomer by The Good Hotel Guide.
Within the trade Basset, who despite a strong French accent regarded himself as an Englishman, was greatly respected for his role in training many of Britain’s leading sommeliers, including 10 winners of the UK Sommelier of Year award. Unassuming, friendly and with a delightful sense of humour, he was also credited with helping to challenge negative perceptions about the profession.
“When I first came to England,” he said in 2005, “[sommeliers] were perceived as being arrogant and snobbish – an image that was fairly true to life, although not all of us were like that. When I teach, I say we want customers to come back, and for that to happen, we have to be attentive and friendly.”
Perhaps surprisingly, he did not rate a refined palate high on the list of requirements: “I’d much rather teach someone who knows nothing about wine but is good with people than the opposite. Even if you’re not a good taster to begin with, you can develop the skill if you’re prepared to put time into it.”
Basset’s achievement was all the more extraordinary in that, despite being born in France, he was not brought up to appreciate wine; nor, when he arrived in Britain for a football match in 1977, did he have any thoughts of a career in wine.
Gerard Francis Claude Basset was born on March 7 1957 in Saint-étienne in the Massif Central, and grew up in a family who drank vin ordinaire, often mixed with water.
His parents’ marriage was not happy and as a consequence he was a shy child who did not do well at school and left at 17.
He drifted in and out of jobs until his passion for football took him across the channel in 1977 to watch Saint-étienne play Liverpool in a nowcelebrated game.
“They lost 3-1, yet it was the best football match I’d been to … The atmosphere was great. I said to the friend I was with: ‘I’m going to come back to live here’.”
Two years later, aged 23, Basset was as good as his word, landing his first job – as a dishwasher on the Isle of Man. He then found a job as a waiter at a hotel at Lyndhurst in the New Forest, recalling: “If you were French, people thought you had a natural talent for that kind of thing. But I’d never done it before and I was rubbish.”
He was a quick learner, however, and after six months he returned to France to train as a chef. In 1983 he came back to Lyndhurst, but soon decided that he preferred dealing with customers to being shouted at in the kitchen: “You’d try your best but if after nine hours you made one mistake, you’d be treated like you’d committed murder.”
He went back to waiting, quickly working his way up to the post of head waiter at various establishments around Hampshire and East Sussex.
Basset attributed his love of the grape to a restaurant manager who put him in charge of wine service because he was the only Frenchman on the staff, and encouraged him to take the exam to qualify in France.
He passed and returned to his adopted homeland, where he started entering wine competitions. In his first competition he reached the final. In the second year he won.
The biggest turning point of Basset’s professional life came in 1988 when he was appointed chef sommelier at the Chewton Glen Hotel, the New Forest’s Michelin-starred country house hotel, where he continued to develop his expertise, spending his holidays in vineyards and studying hard in his spare time.
It was here that he met Robin Hutson, the hotel’s managing director. In the early 1990s Hutson mentioned to Basset that he had been thinking of opening his own hotel, and invited the Frenchman to become a partner.
At the time, what is now known as the “boutique hotel” concept was a novelty. As Basset recalled: “Chewton Glen was at the top of the tree, but we realised that, during a recession, the top of the tree is vulnerable. We wanted to aim for the mid-market, to create the kind of place people could go to every month instead of once a year for a special treat.”
The pair borrowed £750,000 from the bank and raised £500,000 from shareholders to buy a 13-bedroom town house in Winchester. Basset built working capital through wine company sponsorship of the bedrooms. It opened as the first Hotel du Vin in October 1994.
Its reputation was made when dozens of lawyers and journalists descended on the city a year later to attend the trial of Rosemary West at Winchester Crown Court. Hotel du Vin found itself booked solid.
“The journalists who came told their friends about us, and reviews began coming in that were very positive. We were completely full even months afterwards.” By the time the pair sold out to the rival boutique hotel chain Malmaison in 2004, they were building their seventh Hotel du Vin.
Basset also established and ran the École du Vin, a residential weekend wine school, and wrote a book on wine tasting, The Wine Experience.
In 2006 he began studying for an MBA and a year later he and his wife Nina, having renovated an old country house in the New Forest, opened Hotel Terravina, where the customer continued to come first.
“One thing that drives me mad,” he told Restaurant magazine in 2012, “is wine in an ice bucket three metres from the table. The waiter is often too busy to refill your glass when you need it, but you can’t go and get it yourself without seeming impertinent” – commonsense advice to which many restaurant-goers would respond with a heartfelt “Hear! Hear!”
In 2017, however, Basset was told he was suffering from cancer of the oesophagus and the couple turned the New Forest business into a boutique B&B called Spot in the Woods to give Nina more time to look after her husband.
In January last year Basset was presented with the French Order of Agricultural Merit, an award second only to the Légion d’honneur, at an emotional ceremony at the French Embassy in London. Later that year, however, he was told that his illness was terminal.
He is survived by his wife and son.
Gerard Basset, born March 7 1957, died January 16 2019