Louis Latour Agencies

Celebrating our 30th Anniversary

02 July 2020

On the 1st July 1990 Louis Latour Agencies (then known as Louis Latour Ltd) opened the doors for the first time and began selling Louis Latour wines in the UK. Five people were there on that first day and it’s perhaps testament to the company that two of them, James Lewis and Richard Nunn, are still with us. Like today, trading conditions were not easy, with the Gulf War about to erupt and recession just around the corner but then, as we do today, we focused on working diligently to provide good things to drink and a personal service to our customers.

A company is made by the people working in it and our supplier partners so over the next couple of days we will be sharing some memories from the last 30 years. We hope you’ll join us over on Instagram and Facebook if you are not already connected with us and join in with our celebrations. You will find us @louislatouruk on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

Louis Latour Agencies was founded against the backdrop of many global events wiith lasting importance. Richard Nunn reflects on what was going on in the world as he and his colleagues started to build Louis Latour Agencies.

• The 1st July was also the date of the reunification of East and West Germany.
• The Berlin Wall, which had been opened at the end of 1989, was slowly taken down.
• Gorbachev became the first executive president of the Soviet Union.
• In the same month that Louis Latour Agencies opened, Iraq massed troops on the border with Kuwait and, on August 2^nd, a month after we opened, the First Gulf War started.
• After 27 years in prison, Nelson Mandela walked free.
• After 11 years as Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher resigned.
• In sport, Navratilova won her ninth Wimbledon and Stefan Edberg beat Boris Becker.  Gooch scored 333 against India and Germany won the World Cup beating Argentina on penalties.
• Under the Channel engineers from the UK and France broke through from either side thereby forming the first land connection between Britain and Europe in roughly 8,000 years.
• In the Louis Latour office, in Bow Lane in the City, there were no computers (maybe one) but there was a fax machine.  James had his trusty typewriter.  If you wanted a mobile phone, you could buy a Motorola MicroTAC, but it would have cost $3,000 and would have given you 90 minutes talk time.  Sales people were issued with a green BT card to use in phone boxes.
• We only sold the wines of Louis Latour.
• If you travelled to France, the currency was still the French Franc
• In November 1990, Tim Berners-Lee created the first web server.  Unlike today, when I can look up facts from 1990 on Wikipedia, there was no internet.

The picture accompanying the article was taken at last year’s London Wine Fair when we dressed in red to support the work of The Drinks Trust (then The Benevolent). The group includes people from Louis Latour Agencies and representatives from Simonnet-Febvre, Vidal-Fleury, Wakefield and Viu Manen