Recent years have seen the fall of the house of Unwins, along with a string of other high street off licences. Now it’s time to support the indie ones we have left, says Joseph Piercy

There was a time when every high street parade of shops contained at least one off-licence or wine merchants. I can remember as a child in the 1970s returning bottles to our local off-licence (attached to the side of a pub) and receiving money in return – a transaction which seemed wholly remarkable as I couldn’t fathom what use anyone could possibly have for empty glass bottles of R Whites Lemonade and milk stout.

As a teenager the company I kept were always on the look-out for an off-licence with a proprietor willing to turn a blind eye to the legal age for purchasing alcohol. One such establishment, situated in Brighton, was legendary in this respect. The owner was a pale-faced anxious man with puffy bloodshot eyes and a lachrymose temperament who seemed to have the weight of the world upon his hunched shoulders. He lived above the shop with his overbearing mother who would regularly holler obscenities down the stairway at the back behind the counter but was never seen in the flesh. His shop was a treasure trove of unusual drinks not sold in other off-licences, from Polish Krupnik (honey vodka) to barley wine and various bottles designed to get you as drunk as possible, as quickly as possible, such as Thunderbird and Mad Dog 20/20. When we purchased the latter he would always crack the same pithy joke: “You have to be over 18 to buy that but under 21 to drink it – I take it you’re under 21.” I was quite clearly barely 15.

Businesses come and go at withering speed in Brighton but this off-licence remained a fixture, maintaining a cult following, not just with underage drinkers but discerning drinks enthusiasts. It was one of the first in the town to sell craft beers and maintained an eclectic collection of curious spirits and strange liqueurs from around the world.

I first noticed that it was shuttered during lockdown – which was odd as off-licences were on the essential retailers list, but I’d hoped it was because the owner’s potty-mouthed invisible mother was on the vulnerable people list. Sadly the shutter never came up again and this Brighton institution was gone – although how it survived so long was miraculous in a way, as traditional off-licenses and wine merchants have long been in decline, including all of the big chains.

A quarter of a century ago there were several retail chain off-licences and wine merchants most notably, Unwins, Threshers and Oddbins, and their demise follows a startlingly similar pattern and timeline. Unwins was a family-run business, begun in 1843 by entrepreneur George Unwin who opened a small wine shop in Bromley, Kent. The Unwin family remained in charge of the company until 2005 when Unwins went in to receivership, shutting 380 shops with the loss of 1,700 jobs. The main reason for Unwins demise was that their shops were geographically concentrated around London, Kent and Sussex. The opening of the Channel Tunnel in 1994 and cut-price ferries to France ushered in the era of the Booze Cruise, which provided Unwins’ target market with access to French wine plus brand beers and spirits for a fraction of the usual retail price.

Threshers was originally the retail wine wing of Whitbread but had merged with Allied Domecq (owners of Victoria Wines) to form retail booze giant First Quench Retailing in 1998. The merger brought together several drinks retailers including Bottoms Up, Wine Rack, Drinks Cabin and Haddows in Scotland. First Quench acquired 200 former Unwins shops for a song, giving them a 14% share of the take-home drinks market, second only to Tesco’s 15% share. Within four years however the bottom had completely fallen out of the retail booze market and Threshers, partly through mismanagement, partly through aggressive pricing from supermarkets but mostly through corporate greed of the various private equity firms involved, fell foul of the Global Economic Crisis of 2008 and went the same way as Unwins.

Oddbins was always the hipsters choice of wine merchant. Formed in the 1960s by Indian businessman Ahmed Pochee to sell “oddments” of wine to Soho restaurants, wine bars and clubs, by the early 1980s it had been acquired by US drinks giant Seagram. It was at this point that the marketing director Gordon Kerr employed artist Ralph Steadman to work on their publicity and produce illustrations for their quarterly wine brochure. Steadman continued to produce illustrations for Oddbins for the next decade and terrific they are too,  firmly cementing Oddbins’ reputation for innovation both in the products they sold and how they were marketed. Oddbins, who in fairness were always a corked bottle of claret away from going under, with vast sums owed to HM Revenue and Customs, lasted longer than their competitors – crashing first in 2011 before relaunching after a buyout, then finally shutting up shop in December 2023.

Which brings me neatly to an appeal to Idler readers to support their local wine store/off-licence when stocking up on booze this Christmas. I recently visited a fantastic independent wine merchants in Hove named 9Vines. The owner is an old friend of mine, Tina Rose, who has swapped the heady world of corporate espionage investigation to indulge her passion for wine. To entice customers into her shop, Tina has converted half of it into a wine bar/tap house and in the short time I spent there, it quickly became apparent that this is more than a wine shop, but a hub for the local community who have seen several nearby pubs close.  9Vines runs monthly wine tastings, provides delicious cheese and charcuterie board accompaniments and invites great local artisan food trucks to cater at weekends, where the shop suddenly doubles as a hip street food emporium. In terms of stock, Tina’s focus is on quality and unearthing unusual wines and spirits that you won’t find at your local supermarket but her advice is refreshingly pragmatic, unpretentious and very much mindful of her customer’s tastes.

I’m a little spoiled living in Brighton, where there are several great independent spirits and wine shops. Most places aren’t so fortunate. But if you’re planning on buying a Christmas present for a relative who likes a drink or two, try to support your local independent off-licence, as they really are an endangered species.

9Vines is at 7 Woodland Parade, Hove BN3 6DR (website: 9vines.wine). A selection of Ralph Steadman’s Oddbins illustrations can be found at ralphsteadman.com/collection/wine/ 

This article appears in Idler #106.

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