Imported Wine Business
The heavy duty then levied by the British government on French, Portuguese and Spanish wines was prohibitive of a sale among the English middle classes, and especially lower middle classes, whose usual alcoholic beverage was accordingly beer. Henry Gilbey was of opinion that these classes would gladly drink wine if they could get it at a moderate price, and by his advice Walter and Alfred determined to push the sales of colonial, and particularly of Cape, wines, on which the duty was comparatively light. Backed by capital obtained through Henry Gilbey, they accordingly opened in 1857 a small retail business in a basement in Oxford Street, London.
Read more about this topic: Walter Gilbey
Famous quotes containing the words imported, wine and/or business:
“If the jests that you crack have an orthodox smack,
You may get a bland smile from these sages;
But should it, by chance, be imported from France,
Half-a-crown is stopped out of your wages!”
—Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836–1911)
“Even now she does the snake-hips with a hiss,
Slops the bad wine across her shantung, talks
Of pregnancy, guitars and bridgework, walks
In parks or alleys, comes haply on the verge
Of happiness, haply hysterics. Is.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)
“We are in danger ... of making our cities places where business goes on but where life, in its real sense, is lost.”
—Hubert H. Humphrey (1911–1978)