Boutinot Ltd. was founded in 1980 by Paul Boutinot. During the 1970s, Paul was frustrated by the quality level of wines available in the UK to sell in his parents’ restaurant, so took matters into his own hands. Once he started importing for them, other restauranteurs wanted his help too, and Boutinot Ltd. was born.
A few years later (1997 to be exact), faced with a rather exorbitant bill for an exhibition stand, we worked out that we could hire a helicopter for half the price. After meeting our customers on one of our friendly producer’s stands, we flew them to Bordeaux where we shared our wines and good conversation. It just so happened that one or two of them were international customers, and they seemed to be interested in what we could offer. It opened our eyes to an unexplored market: Boutinot International!
Since then we have moved on from communicating by fax and navigating roads by paper map. We still get horribly lost sometimes, but we visit our customers more regularly, and continue to travel far and wide as a team.
The team has grown to include colleagues in six countries. Our wines are sold to over 60 customers on 6 continents (Antarctica is proving difficult to crack!) and continuously win awards from all over the world. At all times, our focus is on the customer, ensuring their experience with us is always pleasant and efficient, and making sure our wines continue to over deliver for them and their own customers.
We have our own vineyards. We think it’s important. It means we practice what we preach.
We also work with growers; those we’ve known for decades and those we’ve just met. They share our philosophy and approach to winemaking, striving to keep our selection of wines as relevant, interesting and commercial as possible for our customers, all the while maintaining the absolutely paramount level of quality and value-for-money that we’ve become so well known for.
Every bottle we sell we would be more than happy to take home and drink ourselves, which we do. It helps to have strong arms at Boutinot.
Meet the Team