He’s a grape bloke!

Martyn Meets... Phil Garrett and his life of business, wine, beer and bikes

A CONNOISSEUR of fine wine is not someone you would expect to find in Oldham. but Fitton Hill can lay claim one of the country’s foremost experts.

Not only that: Phil Garrett, a proper Oldham lad, talks like the rest of us, enjoys a beer and even loves motorbikes. There isn’t a connection I can make, he just likes bikes — and has ridden Royal Enfields, a legendary British marque once manufactured in Redditch, that town of a thousand roundabouts in Worcestershire, in some outrageous places.

Like Nepal and Tibet and to the Everest base camp.

And guess what? The expedition of Oldham lads who made the last trek on the highest official roads in the world each carried a backpack of hand-picked selected fine wines which they sampled on the roof of the planet. That’s the way to do it! Who says Oldhamers don’t do anything exciting?

The guys who made the last trek, Phil, obviously, Charles Brierley, Norman Beverley, Alan Rothwell and Steve Hill, all share a love of well, if not so much fine wines then certainly alcohol.

And they all enjoy a spirit of adventure: the very trait that took a teenage Phil away from the comfort zone of his family home in Fitton Hill to the winefields of France in the mid 1970s.

A teenager of the 1960s he may have been, but for Phil it was not so much Strawberry Fields Forever, more wineries stretching for mile after mile.

Phil, having left school — his father was a teacher and that may have accounted for him attending both Greenhill and Hulme — and taken some innocuous jobs in retail, took off with his pal Steve Whitehead to join the grape-picking harvest in Bordeaux.

Obviously it was seasonal work and they would follow the sun down through France and once picked grapes in Switzerland.

They preferred to hump the grapes, in 40 kilo baskets, to the end of the grape runs and into the tractors rather than cut the bunches from the wine.

Which seemed like hard work to me, but Phil had a rather obvious explanation. “Each cutter was given two litres of wine at the end of the working day, the carriers got three litres...”

Nuff said, I suppose.

But I remained perplexed as to how and why Phil had fallen in love with wine?

“I can’t really explain it,” he mused as we spoke in the cellar of his latest outlet, a vault in the Globe building in Uppermill run by his fascinating son Julian.

“These days it’s the norm to have wine in the house, to enjoy a glass or two with a meal of after work. But there wasn’t much alcohol in my parents’ house when I was growing up, even though my parents were professional people.

“So I don’t really know how I came to have such a fascination with wine. Apart from the fact I used to like drinking it!”

Having that love affair with the grape, and developing the relationship to such a degree, is all to the benefit of wine aficionados in Oldham who have enjoyed the huge benefits of his knowledge these past 29 years.

That’s right, Wino’s has been open in Oldham for nearly three decades, an anniversary he will celebrate in 2013 when there is half a chance, I suspect, that he may begin to take more of a back seat in the business and assume a scholarly, donnish role while offering, as ever, his extensive expertise and sought-after opinion.

The business came about after Phil, who now lives in Royton, and Steve, who now lives in France, growing his own fine-wine grapes, became the pioneers, the forerunners dare I suggest, of what has become known at the “booze run”.

The pair hired a van, drove to the wineries of France and returned with 50 cases of hand-picked chateaux-bottled classics. Which they promptly sold — all legal and above board, duty paid at the port of entry — to off-licences in and around Oldham. “People were able to sample wines that they wouldn’t otherwise have had access to, wines that weren’t stocked by the high street chains and supermarkets, and they became popular.”

So popular in fact that the enterprising pair hired an even larger van and imported even more wine and started supplying hotels and restaurants. And because they were going for longer, Phil threw the kids, Julian and his sister Ruth, into the back of windowless, airless van and took them off with him!

Oh happy days as Julian recalled with rolling eyes...

One of their first customers was Ray Hicks, at The Three Crowns, Scouthead, and raconteur Ray remains a client to this day.

The next obvious step was premises, so Phil found himself walking around Oldham with one of the council’s surveyors. They came across the old Weights and Measures offices in Ascroft Street.

“I offered him £5 a week rent, he accepted and the deal was done.”

And so Wino's opened in 1983 and remains to this day the font of all wine knowledge in Oldham. The town-centre business is now situated in George Street and is just about holding its own.

The roadworks, demographic changes, outside influences have taken their toll and though people still enjoy rummaging through the seemingly endless shelves, nooks and crannies of the quirky little shop, times are a changin...

The problem is that most of the passing is trade is either too young to drink or of a religious persuasion that prohibits alcohol consumption.

Phil has been on his own for a while now, hence the recruitment of his son Julian to the business. Business partner Steve fell in love with Delphine, a French girl who spent a month on work experience in Oldham and the pair now run their own winery, with their sons in the Dordogne.

Phil, naturally, and his family have spent many a happy holiday in the winelands.

And, of course, Wino’s stocks copious quantities of the Pommard label, which can genuinely lay claim to an Oldham heritage. Who would have thought it — a fine French wine with an Oldham influence?

To this day Phil stocks the first wine he ever sold — a Cuvee Jean-Paul, now retailing at £4.75 which, considering it initially sold for £1.95, 29 years ago, represents real value for money.

For this is the beauty, the uniqueness of Wino’s.

Phil knows his stuff, no question and it’s not confined to wine — he has a magnificent selection of malt whiskies.

That he clearly loves his calling was evident when he broke off from our conversation to chat amiably with a customer who was seeking a particular wine.

I listened in fascinated silence while he gently displayed his knowledge of the products on his shelves and the customer went away well happy, I can tell you.

Will he soon will be handing over to Julian, and maybe archaeologist daughter Ruth?

“We’ll see . . . I do think I am beginning to wind down now and Julian is ready to move the business forward again. He has ideas to maintain our retail presence and continue to grow the wholesale side of the business.”

And there is a hint of a wine bar, too, if the right premises can be found.

Julian is a fascination in himself. Having gained a degree at Manchester Metropolitan University, he is a qualified journalist, tree surgeon and teacher — his last post was in Yokohama, Japan. He has a vast well of information about wines and the fruit beers that decorate the shelves these days and is thus well-qualified to take over the family business.

There’s even chocolate beer, which I didn’t volunteer to taste, thank you very much.

He too, enjoys a beer or three in the local hostelries and Phil can ride off into the Tibetan sunset on his Royal Enfield safe in the knowledge that Wino’s is in good hands.