Oddbins
Looking for the Right Bottle of WIne, Oddbin's is the place
"No other chain supports so consistently the notion that wines are individual entities... without Oddbins, there would simply be no large-scale retailer offering so much eclecticism and so much quality."
Richard Ehrlich, Independent, January 2002
History
In '63 entrepreneur Ahmed Pochee starts up a small business delivering bin-ends and oddments of wine to the restaurants and clubs of London's West End. Later, Neil Armstrong lands on the moon and a horse wins the Grand National...
In the Seventies Oddbins, snapped up by new owners Dennis Ing and Nick Baile, introduces Britain to the wines of Portugal and the South of France. The company expands into Scotland, the West Country and the North West with wooden floors and wacky blackboards.
The Sex Pistols rock Bill Grundy's world and a beauty queen says she wants to end poverty and see world peace...
In the Eighties, Oddbins, now owned by Seagram and sporting 100 stores, becomes the first company to bring Australian wine and Ralph Steadman onto the UK high street. Oddbins is awarded Wine Merchant of the Year at the International Wine Challenge for the first time in 1988, the first of 12 such awards. The Berlin Wall comes down and some of the songs on Eurovision aren't any good...
In the Nineties, Oddbins holds its first consumer Wine Fair in London. It's such a success we decide to hold two each year, with one in London and one in Edinburgh. Shops open in Calais and Dublin and '98 sees the first Oddbins Wine Fair in Ireland. Mandela is freed and Bill Gates makes a bob or two...
Into the 21st Century, and we start the new millennium as we mean to continue by winning the Wine Merchant of the Year again in 2000 and 2001.
We celebrate by launching Oddbins.com and continue our trend-setting agenda by rediscovering Greek wine. January 2002 brings great excitement as Oddbins comes under the ownership of Castel Frères, one of France’s biggest and best wine producing companies. Vive la différence!
