Coutts Woman

The mistress of wine

If ever anybody needed proof that a woman could survive and thrive in a man’s world, they need look no further than Serena Sutcliffe. The head of Sotheby’s International Wine Department since 1991, Sutcliffe was recently named a Chevalier dans l’Ordre National de la Légion d’Honneur, the first member of the British wine trade to receive the honour.

Sutcliffe is delighted at the news. ‘I took a call from the French embassy. I thought it was a joke at first, but I was over the moon. It is recognition for years of hard work, and I couldn’t be more pleased.’

The honour is also appropriate because a love of French wine precipitated Sutcliffe’s career choice. ‘I was living in France, working as a translator, and spending all my free time in the vineyards. I was passionate about tasting wines and begging growers to let me do odd jobs,’ she recalls.

Despite advice to ‘keep wine as a hobby’ and warnings that ‘it isn’t just sitting back sipping Lafitte’, Sutcliffe became determined to get involved in the industry. The career change involved a huge drop in salary, a move back to London and a position as general dogsbody at a wine-importing firm.

‘I realised that to be taken seriously I needed to do the exams and become a Master of Wine,’ she says. ‘It would give me credibility as my colleagues thought I was a nice girl who wouldn’t stick around. Clients used to ring up and say, in a la di da voice, ‘Could I speak to somebody who knows about wine?’ I used to take a deep gulp and insist that I did know about wine.’

It takes a minimum of five years’ study to become a Master of Wine. Students typically work in the wine industry and embark on a series of lectures, involving both tasting and theory. ‘The pass rate is not high,’ concedes Sutcliffe, ‘but I was lucky. I passed first time round and was only the second woman to become a Master.’

"There were some extraordinary wines made in the 1920s, and some fantastic eighteenth century German wines and Madeiras," Sutcliffe says.

Sutcliffe admits that wine tasting is both subjective and objective. A professional is able to ascertain where the wine was produced, the climate the grapes grew in and their variety from tasting. ‘On a good day you shouldn’t make a mistake,’ she says. ‘But thirty years ago you could look at a glass of white wine, sniff it and know that it was made in a southern hot area.’ Today the variety of international producers, many of whom use grapes initially imported from France, can make it more difficult.

Sutcliffe rejects suggestions that friends may fret about their wine choice when inviting her to dinner. ‘I don’t have friends that scare that easily,’ she laughs. ‘They just get on with it. I love wine.’ But her advice on supermarket wine is to ‘buy the £10 bottle because the tax is the same whether it is £3 or £10, which makes it better value’.

Thirty years after gaining her qualification, Sutcliffe finds ‘wine as fascinating as it ever was. I have never woken up and thought I can’t face another glass. I love that second when it is poured into the glass’. She finds it hard to select her favourite wine, but adds that ‘there were no words to describe a 1921 Romanée Conti’ while a 1945 Mouton Rothschild ‘stops one in their tracks’.

‘There were some extraordinary wines made in the 1920s, and some fantastic eighteenth century German wines and Madeiras,’ Sutcliffe says. She has no qualms drinking these – ‘sooner or later someone has got to pull a cork’ – but concedes that, unlike any other asset auctioned at Sotheby’s, wine is unique because of its consumable nature.

‘The 1982 vintages are now being drunk which means there are fewer around, but that adds to their value,’ she says. ‘But new supplies are often found, for example someone may discover a cellar that had been walled in, or somebody comes in and says ‘my grandfather had this case’ and you find that it is 1945 vintage, still wrapped in its tissue paper. That’s terrific.’