Laithwaites Direct Wines is part of the Laithwaites Wine group, started by wine merchant Tony Laithwaite 1969 when he drove a small van of Bordeaux from Saint-Emilion to sell from a railway arch in Windsor.
Each year we deliver wine to around 1,000,000 customers internationally in Australia, United States, Switzerland, Germany, India, Hong Kong and Taiwan, with more locations on their way. Our international partners include The Wall Street Journal, London's Sunday Times, Zagat, British Airways Executive Club, and HSBC, while our Hong Kong offices opened in 2009 now serves over 15,000 customers.
The company has grown to one of the world's largest home-delivery wine companies winning prestigious titles within the wine world. At the event they call ‘the Oscars of wine', the annual International Wine Challenge (IWC), Laithwaite’s Wine was awarded IWC Wine Merchant of the Year 2015 and IWC Online Retailer of the Year 2015.
The company was founded by Chairman Tony Laithwaite, who fell in love with Bordeaux as a young man and drove a van of Saint-Emilion from Bordeaux to London in the late 1960s. Tony was recently called "the greatest wine merchant on the planet" in the British press and has been made a Chevalier du Merite Agricole by the French government.
Our senior consultant, Hugh Johnson is one of the most published wine writers in history and author of the World Atlas of Wine. Hugh oversees our wine polices and visits Hong Kong on our behalf to hold tastings.
Justin Howard-Sneyd, a Master of Wine with a perfect Palate, is our Wine Club President. For the past 20 years, Justin has experienced on every aspect from grape picking and small wine shop ownership to sitting on the judging panel of international wine awards. With his great passion, he is constantly looking for great wines for our customers.
Steven Spurrier is a great guest consultant for the team and contributes decades of experience. He famously organised the Judgment of Paris tasting in 1976, founded the Academie du Vin, France's private wine school and works as a consultant editor to Decanter magazine.
In addition to buying wines from established estates around the world, Laithwaites Wine also makes small parcels at our wineries, Le Chai au Quai and Redheads Wine Studio in South Australia.
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