Queen Camilla gives speech at Vintners Hall
The Queen hailed the wine industry as “one of the best there is” during a visit this week to Vintners Hall, the medieval home of the Worshipful Company of Vintners.
Vintners Hall serves as the headquarters for the Vintners’ Company, one of the Twelve Great Livery Companies of the City of London, which has been associated with the wine trade for centuries. This week members of the association welcomed Queen Camilla to its ‘spiritual home’, which was partially rebuilt after the Great Fire of London in 1666.
Speaking at a reception hosted by Master Vintner Richard Wilson on Wednesday, the Queen mentioned her love of wine had been installed during childhood.
“Probably everybody knows my love of wine, it’s in my blood and I was brought up by a father whose passion was wine, without a doubt,” she said. “We drank wine as children, we grew up like the French”, including learning “how to spit properly”.
The Queen, whose late father was wine merchant Major Bruce Shand, was presented with a glass, a 2016 Vintners’ Company Pauillac, and an original 1928 edition of A Book Of Wine, written by her grandfather, Philip Morton Shand.
According to The Independent, her departure from Vintners Hall was marked by five cheers, a company tradition that commemorates a 1363 banquet attended by five kings, including Edward III.
Who are the Vintners?
In medieval England, wool and wine were the two most prominent trades, and by the early 13th century the ‘Mistery of Vintners’ had become a powerful body, dominating the wine trade in London and the rest of the country.
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Since then, according to the Vintners Company, the organisation has “succeeded in forging a new and valuable role for itself in 21st century Britain, while at the same time proudly upholding the traditions that made it great in medieval London.”
A key moment for the group was the granting of a charter in 1973 which allowed the Vintners Company to set up a Wine Standards Board. The UK Government frequently delegated certain responsibilities for enforcing EU wine laws to the Vintners, strengthening the wine body’s ties to politics. However, The Wine Standards Board was absorbed into the Food Standards Agency in 2006, leading the Vintners to focus on its connection with the Wine and Spirit Trade Association (WSTA) instead.
Furthermore, the Vintners were instrumental in establishing and funding the Wine and Spirit Education Trust (WSET) and the Institute of Masters of Wine, while its Vintners Room welcomes students from Plumpton College in East Sussex, the start of many an English winemaker’s journey.
Swan-upping
One of the more curious traditions still observed by the Vintners is its right to own swans, which dates back more than 900 years. Today, swans are a protected species under UK law, with all wild unmarked mute swans in open water in England and Wales technically owned by the British monarch (King Charles III) under a medieval Royal Prerogative. However, the Vintners’ rights in this matter have been exercised for so long – “since time immemorial” – that they have never been challenged.
This historical connection is celebrated every year during the third week of July when the Vintners hold an annual ‘Swan Upping’ to count the birds, check their health and educate people about swan conservation; a far cry from the group’s medieval approach when the beautiful white birds were allocated as a status symbol and eaten at feasts.
The annual Swan Upping proceeds through many of the major locks on the River Thames including Sunbury Lock, Shepperton Lock, Eton Bridge, Marlow Lock and Henley Town where ‘swan markers’ row out in traditional skiffs to count, weigh, measure, and health-check swan families to check the health of the population.
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