Obituary: Bill Blatch 1948-2025

BY NEAL MARTIN | MARCH 3, 2025

Bill Blatch was a mentor, an entrepreneur, a sage, a purveyor of terrible jokes, a pillar of Bordeaux and the Saint of Sauternes. Above all, he was a mate. 

Bill, and I refer to him by his forename since that was how everyone knew him, invited me for my first en primeur in 1997 at Vintex, the merchant he founded in 1982. He had moved to Bordeaux eight years earlier. I was a nobody who had purchased a few cases of wine. Even though I forewarned that my employers had no interest in primeur, Bill encouraged me to taste samples and expand my meager knowledge. He was a teacher beyond compare. Tasting together, every bottle was chaperoned by his insights, not just the Grand Cru Classés but minnows that sold for pittance. They were all as important as each other. 

Every subsequent primeur, I would meet with Bill. The knowledge that he passed on was invaluable, his experience incomparable. He knew estates inside out, not just proprietors but the endless cast of behind-the-scenes vineyard managers and cellar-masters that he befriended over a career that spanned 50 years. On many an occasion, he nonchalantly reeled off an anecdote that compelled me to put down my glass and listen (some more unpublishable than others). His understanding came from walking vineyards and spending hours in wineries discussing minutiae, diligently written onto sheets of A4 then filed for future reference. He was pencilled in to author the Bordeaux version of Inside Burgundy. It would have been the bible. However, as Bill confessed several times, he spread the reams of paper across his desk and felt overwhelmed to the point where he couldn’t write that crucial first sentence. “I’m too much of a stickler for detail,” he told me once. “I can’t edit anything out.” I offered to ghost write. All he had to do was sit there and speak, but it was always tomorrow. 

After I joined The Wine Advocate in 2006, Robert Parker asked me to take over reviewing Sauternes. Parker himself owes a lot to Bill Blatch. Bill’s annual primeur reports and understanding of the season came from his detailed vintage summaries, which in later years were a vital resource for the next generation of writers, including myself. In 2021, when I began to research The Complete Bordeaux Vintage Guide, Bill sent me all his original typewritten reports. “Don’t lose them,” he said. “I might use them one day for my own book.” The reports remain on my desk and I’ll keep them safe.