A very special vintage at Clitheroe wine merchants

From the creak of the old floorboards, to the smell of freshly ground coffee and the tinkle of bottles deep in the cellars, the atmosphere in the Clitheroe shop is worth a visit in itself.

We spoke to Philip Byrne, one of three brothers at the helm of the award-winning fine wine merchants.

THERE'S an advert for an exquisite and expensive watch which goes something like: you never really own one, you just look after it for the next generation.

That’s how it must feel to be in charge of Clitheroe wine merchants D Byrne & Co.

Brothers Andrew, Philip and Tim are the fourth generation of the Byrne family to run what is one of East Lancashire’s oldest and most respected companies, with a reputation for sourcing and supplying a vast array of fine wines from all over the world.

“It's far more than a job — it's a way of life,” said Philip Byrne, 52, the brother tasked with looking after the financial side of the business.

“It's very much a traditional thing, like being a fisherman or a farmer. It's part of our bloodline. Once you get involved you have to keep things going to pass to the next generation and there's a responsibility to ensure there are no hiccups along the way.”

D Byrne & Co dates back to 1890 when founder Denis Byrne used to cross the fells by horse and cart supplying groceries, animal feeds and a few wines and spirits to farmers in the area.

Denis had bought a share of the business from a man named Thistlethwaite using the £200 inheritance he had received after the death of his father, a doctor who came to Britain from Ireland.

Within 15 years Denis had bought out Thistlethwaite altogether and the shop was renamed D Byrne & Co.

After Denis died in 1936, the business was passed to his son George, who ran it until 1966. Then it was passed down to his son Michael (Andrew, Philip and Tim's father) and it was Michael who changed the nature of the business and put it on the map as a fine wine merchant.

"My father could see the onset of the supermarkets and realised the business had to change," said Philip.

"He gradually ran that side of things down and in the early '70s the business started specialising in fine wine, and that has gradually built-up over the years."

Andrew, Philip, and Tim come from a family of 14 children, so staffing the shop with part-time helpers was never a problem.

Philip began working at the shop from the age of nine and left school early at 14 to work there full time. He and Andrew worked in partnership with their father for 20 years until he retired in the mid 1990s, and Tim joined the firm.

And the future of D Byrne & Co is in safe hands, with the fifth generation, in the form of Andrew's 23-year-old son Joseph, on board.

"Joseph is a natural," said Philip.

"When he was 13 he entered a malt whisky nosing competition at a whisky festival. He was against visitors from Japan and America — who are quite fanatical about whiskies — but he came in joint first place, alongside his dad. That certainly made quite a few so-called whisky experts wonder what was going on!"

The brothers seldom argue, said Philip.

"Obviously we have our moments, but we each have our own designated areas. We just get on with it really."

Philip runs the financial side, Andrew is a talented window dresser, as well as having a great knowledge of spirits, and Tim is what Philip calls "the flair person" who in an expert on wine.

The shop stocks over 300 Scottish malt whiskies, 30 varieties of vodka, a huge range of port and 150 beers from around the world.

The business is growing all the time — two years ago they launched a website which they sell from, and more recently they took over Clitheroe's only other established wine merchants Whitesides.

"We're competing head-on with the supermarkets and we're showing that we can play them at their own game," said Philip. "We've no fear of the supermarkets at all."

But although the business is firmly in the 21st century, the style of selling has its roots firmly in the Victorian era, and it was a conscious decision not to take the same path as wine merchants such as Oddbins in their sales technique.

"We each have our own set of customers that we've built up over many years who trust our palate and judgement and who keep coming back because they're happy with it.

"We don't stand on ceremony and we don't put any mystique around the selling of wine.

"People will travel if they're getting something different as opposed to what's being offered on the High Street, and that's probably one of the keys to our success nowadays. That and the fact that people do like tradition. People who have been brought up with the shop find it comforting to know it hasn't changed."

D Byrne & Co is often praised for its competitive prices, but how is that viable when it doesn't have the buying power of some of the bigger wine merchants and supermarkets?

"We work on very low margins," said Philip. "We're not as greedy as some.

"And also because we have very low overheads. We've no mod cons (the shop still has its ancient hand-cranked till and nothing much has changed since it was built in 1879) and we own the building outright so that puts us at an advantage.

"We've been brought up in the old business tradition of not spending until you've got it, and we don't live extravagant lives, so that keeps us on an even keel. And it's done along the same lines as farming, we plough everything back into the business, which is probably a lesson to a lot of people now on how to run a business."

With a huge storage area in Shawbridge Street, Clitheroe (the former Whitesides site) they can afford to buy crates of wine to store for a number of years to gather value too.

With awards coming out of their ears (in 1991 and 1993 they won Best Independent Wine Merchant in Britain by the Which? Wine Magazine and for nine consecutive years the same magazine voted them Northern Wine Merchant of the Year) their strategy is clearly working.

As a reviewer from The Observer put it: "If ever there was a wine shop, created by wine lovers for wine lovers, this is it."