Stuart Rothwell was in the transport business before joining the wine trade. The Vineyard at Ramsbottom in Lancashire adapted well to lockdown and has emerged from the other side in good shape, despite all the familiar challenges. Nigel Huddleston says hello. The Vineyard opened its door in the Lancashire town of Ramsbottom, a dozen or so miles north of Manchester, on the seventh day of the seventh month in The business is a family affair, run by Stuart with Geraldine and daughter Becky.
We became a delivery service within a few days of the first lockdown happening. We put up the marquee in the street. There are two restaurants either side, tapas and pintxos, both owned by the same guy. We get on well. When shutdown came he was gutted, obviously. We got wind through our MP, who we get on with, that the council had to do anything they could to keep people in business. So Sergio came up with the idea of how we could move outside.
We had to go through a few hoops with Covid rules, risk assessments and the licence. We are both insured by the same local company. Sergio does the food and we do the wine. Overnight we became a hospitality business. There is. We organise the Wine-dering Tour. We take over eight shops and I put a supplier in each: the underwear shop, the hairdresser, the solicitor.
For the Love of Wine does the Italian wines in the art gallery. They all put food on; we do the brochure.
(mh=6j_RBsmncHJPYExO)0.jpg "Whores in La Verrière")
We have a Spanish shop, a French shop … we never have anybody in here. Just go and bother everybody else. Just getting to know them. We had it on the van but we just took the date off. It really started through Raymond Reynolds, who are just lovely to work with, when we went on a trip to Portugal.
