The Interview: John Trevena, Owner, Pimlico Cellars Agencies and Vintage Cellars, London

When I was doing accountancy I travelled a lot. I had a deal with my manager that I would do the jobs other people didn't want, because I didn't have a girlfriend at the time and others did, on the understanding my expense accounts wouldn't be scrutinised. I would tell restaurant sommeliers I wanted nice wines, but that it should be put down as two dinners. That's where I got a taste and learnt about wine. You couldn't get away with that now that everything is itemised!

We were forced to do that bit of retail because when we moved to shop-front premises in Pimlico, Westminster City Council wouldn't allow us to be just an office. So we cut the tops off lots of boxes and stuck cut-out cards on them and there we are. And then people started coming in and saying, What have you got?'.

We used to have what I called the Mafia - Maggie Thatcher, Chris Patten, Geoffrey Howe - all that early 1980s' generation of politicians. We used to sell an English wine called Nutbourne Manor, and for official functions they all wanted English wine, so word got round that we supplied it. We would get a call saying, Can you deliver to Number 11, Number 10 Downing Street?' We would deliver it round the back - it was much more relaxed then. We still have a few of them come in.

People come into us because they know they will get a decent bottle. Our average sale in the shop is, I suppose, 7-8. I use it as a window for the agencies we do, but it also gives me a good excuse to buy Bordeaux - we do a primeur campaign for our clients, which we started from the 1982 vintage.

The massive City bonuses don't filter into wine, except for the top dozen Bordeaux wines. There are those who have Chteau de Beaucastel white as their house wine, but there is only so much of that going on. The world we inhabit is the one in which people go to the supermarket and buy a product.

The main thrust is Chile. We didn't jump onto the first horse, because there was a lot of indifferent wine coming out of the country, but we started to build up the agency side about eight years ago, with the Carta Vieja range. We sell that to a lot of regional wholesalers, and we're trying to get the new Grand Riserva range into national distribution at a higher price point than riservas. Riserva, at least in terms of Chile, is completely debased - it means nothing. Every wine you see in the supermarket will say Riserva on it - Tesco has a 2.99 Chardonnay Riserva. Another point of difference is Carta Vieja's organics, a sector that's growing. If we approach the multiples we can do cheap and cheerful, but we are trying to develop the presence of Carta in the on- and off-trades as a higher-quality wine. It is one of the pillars of our turnover.

We've managed to get all of Chile, as well as our South Africa agency, under Stelvin. The market is demanding what I call VCC - vin de consommation courante. If you're doing a function that requires 150 bottles of wine, you've got to employ a person to do that. With screwcap, it takes much less time. We also got our New Zealand agency to change from clear bottles to Burgundy green bottles.

I want to grow Chile more. I also want to grow Spain. Rioja is ubiquitous, but there are interesting new wines and I think there is a new reality in terms of pricing for Spain. Things like Ribera del Duero and Ras Baixas are hard work, but you can slot them in behind Rioja and other products. The thing is to have interesting wines and estates you can bolt onto wholesalers' and customers' orders. If you're selling 25 cases under bond, it's easy to say, Try a case of Albario; try a case of this; try a couple of cases of that.'

We have a number of smaller, regional wholesalers who buy 25 or 50 cases at a time. We do ex-cellars and what we try to do with the under-bond is test the waters. A lot of people buy under bond to start off with, see that their customers like it, then go ex-cellars. But there is the facility to take a range of wines and with people wanting to hold less stock, the under-bond orders of 25 or 50 cases work very well. We don't force people to take a pallet of wine to get the price - 25 cases will do the trick, and you can mix it; you can have as many or as few as you like.

Our business is growing, though the market is a bit soft at the moment. There is an awful lot of wine in Chile, so prices have become quite soft and we have to be nimble on the feet. House prices are high, interest rates are high, so the cost of day-to-day living has increased dramatically over the past couple of years. But I think we'll increase our business because we provide a good service. When we say to somebody, We will not put this into the supermarket', they believe us, which they may not if it was one the bigger corporations.