BEN FOGLE

I thought of China in the late Nineties, where I’d once seen people happily pour Coca-Cola into red wine. Geordie said he had seen the same thing once or twice. “There was definitely some of that,” he said. “Adding Coca-Cola to red wine, because it made it from something quite unusual to the palate into something that was sweet and more accessible.”

At a dinner in Shanghai, he remembered one Texan guest saying: “You guys put Coca-Cola in your Petrus.” The man beside him replied: “Yeah, and I gather you put milk in your tea.” “So don’t assume things,” Geordie said. Not everything has to be optimised for purity or connoisseurship. Sometimes the point is simply celebration.

So how does a man with access to some of the finest wines in the world build his own cellar? Not through hoarding. “It’s a rolling cellar,” he said, “which means that you’re always drinking bottles and replacing the stuff that you love.” His grandfather had a simpler way of putting it: “There’s a reason that God put 12 bottles in a case, so you can be drinking it over time.” “Wine evolves in bottle and changes over time,” he said. “There’s a sort of narrative arc that goes with it.” Bordeaux might last 20, 30, 40 or even 100 years; Burgundy tends to be drunk younger.

A bottle opened just because it felt good. A Drake’s coat sold to fund another one in blue. Taste formed slowly through use, conversation, travel and time.

Earlier, Geordie had put it simply: “Customers become friends. Friends become customers.” By the end of the morning, we said goodbye as Geordie handed Lewis a small bag of clothes, ready to begin a new life elsewhere: worn, enjoyed, and wanted again.

Shop below Geordie's pre-owned pieces from the likes of Drake's and Church's.

Photography by Alex Natt. Words by Alfred Tong.

Find out more about Berry Bros. & Rudd on their website.