Two or three times a year I spend a morning beneath Buckingham Palace with the chairmen of Britain’s two oldest wine merchants, choosing wine for the Queen’s cellar. That’s the sort of thing you do if you are Hew Blair of Justerini & Brooks and Simon Berry of Berry Bros & Rudd. These venerable companies face each other across St James’s Street off Piccadilly, quietly doing their damnedest to prise more money out of the well-heeled and bibulous than the other. For well over two centuries they have done battle in the British marketplace but nowadays their immaculately tailored sales teams are just as likely to be jostling for orders in Hong Kong and Singapore too.
我每年都有那么两三次机会和英国两家历史最悠久葡萄酒公司的掌门人一起，花一个上午的时间到白金汉宫(Buckingham Palace)地下酒窖为女王选酒。两位执掌此事的名家分别是珍宝集团 (Justerini & Brooks)的休•布莱尔(Hew Blair)以及贝瑞兄弟(Berry Bros & Rudd)的西蒙•贝瑞(Simon Berry)。这两间声名显赫的公司在圣詹姆斯街(St James’s Street)隔街相对，与皮卡迪利(Piccadilly)大街近在咫尺，他们暗自开足马力，争相从名商巨贾和嗜酒之人的口袋里攫取更多的利润。在过去的两百多年里他们以英国本土为主战场，而如今建制精良的销售团队可能已经在抢夺香港和新加坡的订单了。