Gerard Basset MS, MW, OBE served as President of the Court. The Buyer called him one of the most respected, influential and clearly loved wine figures in the world.
The Court remembers him on its website through The Times obituary, a tribute from The Buyer, and its own news. What follows is drawn from those pages alone.
01From Saint-Étienne to Chewton Glen
Gerard Basset was born in Saint-Étienne in 1957. After leaving school he trained as a chef, but while working at a Michelin-starred restaurant in France he realised he disliked the job. He had arrived in Liverpool in 1977, as a 20-year-old, to watch his home team, Saint-Étienne.
He moved to England and found work as a kitchen porter, then as a waiter. By 1988 he was a sommelier at Chewton Glen, a country house hotel in Hampshire, where he met his future wife, Nina Basset. The Court’s news records that he became a Master Sommelier in 1989.
02Hotels, study and competition
In the 1990s he set up Hotel du Vin, with its first hotel in Winchester. In 2007 he and his wife set up TerraVina, a hotel and restaurant in the New Forest. He left the wine buying there to his sommelier team, giving them guidelines and a framework. In his words: “We want our sommeliers to sell wine that people can afford so that they want to come back.”
He kept studying throughout. Over four decades he became the only person to hold the Master of Wine alongside the Master Sommelier, an MBA in wine business and an MSc from the International Organisation of Vine and Wine. Of completing the set, he said: “I have achieved my career Grand Slam.”
