GRANT ASHTON'S HOME FOR FINE WINE CAPSTONE

FINDING A HOME FOR WINE FINE

In our regular feature for the Mayfair Times, Charly Massey, Partner at Wingman, Charly spoke with Grant Ashton the founder and CEO of the iconic Mayfair private members’ club for wine lovers 67 Pall Mall. Within five years the club is already established as the haven for oenophiles in the heart of St James’s. The team regularly win Best Sommelier in London awards and, with over 26,000 bottles of wine from 42 countries and 1000 wines by-the-glass, the club is considered to have one of the best wine lists in the world.

CM: So Grant, how have the five years been since first opening 67 Pall Mall?

Grant: Well firstly it’s been a truly amazing experience and we have already exceeded any of my expectations about having a thriving membership and creating the finest setting to enjoy wine in London (and in my totally biased opinion, the world!). But of course, it’s a bit like the proverbial swan, what you can see is calm and seeming effortless, but underneath you are paddling like mad to make it all work. But I am very proud and terribly humbled by what has been created. It really has taken on a life of its own now due to our highly passionate staff, Members and importantly, the fine wine industry embracing it.

CM: Let’s go back to what we call the cornerstone phase of a career. Growing up and some of the defining moments in the getting you to where you are today… tell us more about your early years…

Grant: I grew up in a family full of musicians. My father, Bill Ashton OBE founded the National Youth Jazz Orchestra (NYJO). My brother and I would help out as sound engineers for the 30-piece band. We would bunk off school in order to be on the road with the orchestra. My brother went on to head up the technical side of Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club. I remember though as a teenager coming to the conclusion it was hard to make money in music or the arts. We had all these really talented musicians coming to stay and sleep on our floor as they couldn’t make ends meet from their chosen career. I decided to avoid University concluding I was better off getting three years’ experience at work. At school we had an investment club that played mock investing. My stock picks won overall. It encouraged me to go into finance. I wrote letters to 100 banks, received 97 rejections, 3 interviews and from that one job. I remember starting in July 1985 aged 18, within two years I was running a trading desk. I learned that just cracking on and doing creates luck…I wasn’t afraid to ask to create opportunities and felt I had a good nose for investment opportunities.

CM: We move onto your keystone phase, we consider this the phase you make your mark, the time where you make a dent in the world, create and achieve success.

Grant: I spent 30 years as a London City Trader. I ran trading floors for the likes of UBS and Barclays Capital becoming your classic hedge fund manager that owned far too much claret. My experience of hospitality was purely on the demand side i.e. me entertaining brokers and enjoying top restaurants in the City and Canary Wharf. But I do remember throughout that time becoming more and more frustrated at the mark up on wine when going out. I didn’t really truly get into wine until the age of 38. A close friend recommended investing in Margaux ‘04… we did well out of it and I thought it was fun trading wine as well as enjoying consuming it!

CM: So onto our focus, the Capstone phase. We like to look at what someone does after they’ve made their money and fulfilled many ambitions already in life. What did you do next?

Grant: I had had a decent career in finance and decided to take a year out. It was in that time the idea of firstly a Marylebone wine bar, then restaurant, then Club came up with friends. The more I talked to others, the more the idea and momentum just grew and grew. The project never looked back, the next thing I knew I was in an Edwin Lutyens-designed building on Pall Mall and my instant gut feel was it was the perfect place for the Club. The rest was the new phase in my life.

CM: 67 has a reputation in Mayfair for being the non-fussy, un-pretentious, gentle social club, was that a style that you wanted?

Grant: Well I was really lucky from the start to convince nearly 100 investors to raise the initial capital (cornerstone experiences coming in to use we note). The founding members set the tone, then we quickly had an enviable members list even before the doors opened. The club just attracted a certain type of person. The fact we store members’ own wines in our cellar, the relaxed but buzzy atmosphere, the location in between two Royal Parks, the way the staff interact, it’s all part of the conviviality created. #

CM: How has 2020 been so far for you?

Grant: Back to the swan analogy! We started the year very excited to progress our second 67 Pall Mall venue… the 27th floor of Shaw Centre, Singapore. The pandemic hasn’t changed our plan to open in early 2021. In London I have been immensely proud of how we responded to the pandemic. We quickly pivoted to online events and masterclasses and the response from both members and some of the most prestigious wineries and winemakers was quite unbelievable… We cracked the format, being able to deliver world-class wines to accompany live masterclasses throughout lockdown. We held over 400 online events streamed around the world. We sent well over 50,000 sample-size bottles to members across Europe. Winemakers were approaching us, keen to speak to the new audiences we had opened up. We now have a bank of digital content that is truly unique in wine. So, whilst of course we closed the London Club for a few months, we’ve been able to find other ways to bring people together through their love of wine. Its shaped how we think about the future… multi-channel. Not just our physical Club and space, we are investing very heavily into digital. Our recording studio opposite our Club will be complete in Autumn this year. We are super excited about the potential of this new offering, a new string to our bow. We hope to be at the forefront of the digital revolution in the wine industry just as we were as a Club for wine hospitality.

CM: Listening to you talk, you are certainly not sitting back content with just the St James’s Club offering…

Grant: By either luck or judgement we’ve stumbled upon unique formats in London in terms of the Club and our digital offering so it makes even more sense for us to look to replicate, export and scale 67 Pall Mall. The process of expanding to Singapore has helped reinforce some of the key values of the Club and the parts that we want to become part of our signature style if we expand to even more cities. Our menu in Singapore will be 75% based on London’s, we will be cooking on Josper Grills, we will provide a mixture of bookable and non-bookable spaces, sharing tables and of course, a naughty corner. Both London and Singapore Clubs are in iconic venues that have been vacant for some time that we respect and transform. Singapore will be slightly bigger though… we’ll have seven-metre-high ceilings, a wine tower and a whisky waterfall…

CM: Why do people undertake Capstones?

Grant: It’s been fun talking with you about others that have their own passion projects in wine- we started to name the likes of Sir John Hegarty, Robert Maltus, Robert Eden, Xavier and Nicole Rolet, our Mayfair neighbour Evgeny Chichvarkin with Hedonism Wines…We had Francis Ford Coppola host a webinar for our Members about his Capstone: Inglenook in Napa Valley during lockdown. It was fantastic. Wine means so many different things to different people, my favourite explanation mentioned in our Member masterclass was by Richard Balfour-Lynn about his British Hush Heath Wine Estate: “Our business plan was so simple, if we didn’t sell any of our wine we knew we could always drink it ourselves”.

CM: We see the theme now- finding homes for fine wine… First it was finding a home for your collection, then it was creating a new home for fine wine in London, next Singapore and then lastly enjoying fine wine in member’s homes via virtual events…

Grant: Agree… I see it simply as problem solving- firstly the egregious price of wine in restaurants in major cities was so highly marked up people weren’t being priced out of trying and experiencing top wines. Secondly collectors, like myself, collecting too much, so 67 enables Members to sell their wine to the Club and find it a new home. I would like to think that moving to new cities and revolutionising wine tasting at home is again something that many more people will enjoy, and hopefully the wine industry as a whole will benefit from….if so, then my Wine Capstone, for me personally, is a success.

More details about 67 Pall Mall can be found here: https://www.67pallmall.com/

To contact Charly email cmassey@wingmanthinks.com

TO READ MORE ABOUT:

67 PALL MALL’S DIGITAL EXPANSION CLICK HERE

MICHAEL BAUM’S VIVANT CAPSTONE CLICK HERE

TO READ ABOUT THE FUTURE TECHNOLOGY IN WINE CLICK HERE

TO READ ABOUT ENGLISH WINE AND CAUTIONARY CAPSTONE TALES CLICK HERE