our guest is richard siddle, reflecting on the reality of the trade where being made redundant is practically a rite of passage for anyone with a long-term aspiration in business journalism. a man who built a career out of those very redundancies, leading us from the niche world of optics and grocery retail into the heart of the wine biz with the buyer.
the news this week kicked off with a sobering look at the english wine industry, currently sitting at a crossroads. we dug into the fact that much of the recent expansion has been fueled by debt in anticipation of a market that might not be ready to meet the price point. with only 8% of production heading for export, it is the big players who are carrying the burden of market research and logistics while smaller estates focus on a domestic crowd that still sees £20 plus as a significant barrier for a bottle of local fizz or still wine. there is optimism, but it is cautious, grounded in the need for actual sales rather than just planting more hectares and hoping for the best.
we then turned our eyes to france, where the government is paying to uproot 28,000 hectares of vines to solve a chronic oversupply problem. the real tragedy here, which we will hopefully get sarah abbott mw to weigh in on soon, is the mandatory uprooting of vines older than 10 years. it is a policy that threatens historic monuments of viticulture, 60 or 70-year-old vines that produce quality over quantity, simply because they are in the wrong place at the wrong time for a government spreadsheet.
richard siddle joined us to discuss his journey from editing optician during the margaret thatcher era to co-founding the buyer ten years ago this may. his perspective is refreshingly trade-focused; he is a business journalist first, someone who understands that wine is a category on a shelf before it is a liquid in a glass. the buyer was born out of a gap in the market for deep analysis rather than the daily churn of eight or nine press releases that often pass for “news” in this industry. richard’s philosophy is simple: focus on how people buy and sell, from the producer to the distributor and finally to the sommelier or merchant who holds the keys to the consumer.
we wandered through his favourite and most difficult interviews, from a dream hour with advertising legend sir john hegarty at the groucho club to the wall-like experience of interviewing former tesco boss terry leahy.
the conversation inevitably turned to ai in journalism, where the chief offered a grounded view: ai can handle the foundation, the “top ten distributors” listicle style of content but it lacks the “guts” of interpretation. it cannot replicate the nuance of sitting through a tasting or the insider knowledge of who is actually respected in the trade versus who just has a good pr firm. if anything, the rise of machine-generated text should push human journalists to be braver and riskier with their opinions.
on a more personal note, we learned that liverpool fc and family dominate richard’s downtime, though he did recount a particularly bruising cricket match in south africa where he was bowled out by winemaker andrea mullineux and forced to drink a litre of beer from a wellington boot. while we take the business of wine seriously, we shouldn’t take ourselves too seriously.
we also found out, finally, why the chief is called the chief. you’ll have to take a listen to find out the true reason.
we wrapped up with updates from dan at the vineyard and the winery, where the focus is on blending pinot noir precoce for a light-bodied red destined for clear glass bottles. the industry is currently on “frostwatch,” a period of collective anxiety across the northern hemisphere as we pray temperatures don’t dip below -1.5 degrees celsius.
brad shared highlights from the wine society press tasting and a meeting with matt gant wines from both australia and the douro. we finished with a nod to our growing community on substack and spotify, even the person who gave us two stars (we have moved on).
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https://londonwinefair.com/news/
“one thing you learn being a business journalist is if you told every publisher who made you redundant to f off, you wouldn’t be around very long.” (08:47)
“we’re a bit like an old school sunday newspaper whereby we might do a bit of analysis... it’s more about picking out the global trends and analysing what do these trends mean for the industry as a whole.” (13:02)
“and he just goes, well, let’s go to my other office and go and talk in there. so i’m sitting with sir john hegatey in the groucho club for about an hour. i was literally just going, my god, this is like the biggest dream going.” (15:40)
“ai will struggle to do something like what i described... whereby you’re collating 30, 40 different people’s views into one. i guess ai does that to a certain degree, but it doesn’t necessarily give its own rationale. it might give you all the facts, but it doesn’t then interpret it.” (18:49)
“i think actually it kind of might encourage ourselves to be a bit braver as well, to be a bit more risky... you kind of don’t want to shake things up too much, so you might back away from writing certain things. but i think actually in the years to come, ultimately it’s all about your reader.” (21:32)
“i stood there and the next ball she kind of did this reverse yorker, took out all three of my stumps... i then, as a forfeit, had to drink a litre of beer out of one of the winemaker’s wellington boots. that’s the last time i played cricket.” (25:12)
“i just said, ‘all right, chief, calm down.’ and he goes, ‘don’t call me chief, it’s chief constable.’”
https://wineindustrydigest.com/
https://www.workersofengland.co.uk/news/english-wine-at-a-crossroads-too-much-of-a-good-thing-pt-1
https://www.vineyardmagazine.co.uk/news/get-involved-to-inspire-future-industry-talent/
https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2026/04/france-to-uproot-28000-hectares-of-vines/
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