It’s been almost three months since we last wrote about the UK’s Government Hospitality Wine Cellar, which frankly isn’t that long given the Freedom of Information Act is involved.
We left you with news that the Information Commissioner’s Office — which acts as an FOI regulator and ombudsman — was continuing its review of our request for information from the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, custodian of the HM Government’s plonk pit.
The ICO had already forced the FCDO to release additional minutes of the Government Wine Committee, which runs the GHWC, which civil servants had redacted citing FOI exemption 35(1)(a) (formulation of development of government policy).
Now, the watchdog turned its focus to three other exemptions the FCDO had relied upon:
— 40(2): Personal data
— 41(1): Information provided in confidence
— 43(2): Commercial interests
Here’s how the remaining battles looked in November:
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The ICO’s judgment landed in our inboxes early last month.
It was a partial victory: the officer in charge of our case ruled that:
— The names of the GWC members are exempt from disclosure on the basis of section 40(2) of FOIA.
— Only some of the further information redacted from the GWC meeting minutes is exempt from disclosure on the basis of section 40(2).
— None of the information which the FCDO redacted from the GWC meeting minutes on the basis of section 43(2) is exempt from disclosure on the basis of this exemption.
They said the FCDO must:
Provide [Alphaville] with copies of the GWC meeting minutes with the information previously withheld on the basis of section 43(2) unredacted. The information identified in the confidential annex which the FCDO withheld on the basis of section 40(2) should also be unredacted and provided to the complainant.
You can read the full judgment here. It’s interesting, if you’re into that kind of thing.
The FCDO, which was given 30 calendar days to reply, replied 28 calendar days later, revealing unto Alphaville new details from some minutes we already had. In total, the response had grown from 27 to 35 pages. Let’s get comparing!
18 March 2014
The first de-redaction stunningly reveals that Farr Vintners — which describes itself on LinkedIn as “Britain’s largest wholesale fine wine merchant” — is one of the companies that Government Hospitality likes to sell its wine to:
Here’s a video from 1992 of Farr’s founders talking to FT wine supremo Jancis Robinson:
The context is interesting though: Farr only got called up because an auction flopped.
What happened? We’ll quickly find out.
22 July 2014
Once again, it’s just the presence of Farr Vintners that was redacted here, with a successful sale to the company coming in clutch for GHWC’s FY13/14 after that Christie’s sale fell through:
18 November 2014
FINALLY, SOME WINE TEA.
TEA ON WINE.
YOU KNOW WHAT WE MEAN:
This is actually big drama!!!!! No seriously, come back.
Château Latour 1961 is some fancy wine. So fancy, in fact, that the villainous chef guy uses it to get the non-rat co-protagonist of Ratatouille drunk, which is about as great an endorsement as a wine can get.
Anyway, we know from previous analysis that a stockpile of Château Latour 1961 is the cornerstone of the GHWC, representing perhaps a tenth of its overall valuation. Quinta do Noval 1931 is also a prestigious port, so having some ullage (volume loss due to evaporation or leaks) is não é bom.
Struggling to sell the former, and having problems with the latter, is not a great thing when your wine cellar is committed to washing its own face.
18 March 2015
In early 2015, the cellar was struggling to sell enough wine. Unredacted minutes show this led them to consider desperate measures, such as selling wine directly to certain London institutions:
More excitingly, there’s an update on the Château Latour 1961 situation — with Farr Vintners grumbling about the reduced shoulder volumes (an ullage issue):
We noted this minute last April (when the FCDO first responded to our information request). Back then, we called it “really quite boring”, but clearly we were wrong: of all the wines to be presenting an issue, the Château Latour 1961 — of which the GHWC has over a hundred bottles — is easily the most economically significant.
11 January 2016
The Sales section starts with some discussion about the Christie’s imbroglio, before things really kick off:
Oof.
There’s also another Château Latour 1961 update, with the Château itself offering a stock exchange exchange of stock:
Odd that it says “further discussion” given there was no previous minuted discussion of this but wtvr.
18 July 2016
More, more, more, Latour:
We’re not sure how much unpacking this needs, but it is absolutely worth reiterating that civil servants had to be forced to release this information.
23 June 2016
Château Latour 1961 appears inevitable…
…but thus, it would appear, ends the saga. Château Latour 1961 doesn’t come up again in the minutes we have.
What’s arguably more interesting is that the FCDO tried to redact the description of certain Bordeaux vintages/varietals as “B-grade”. Whose commercial interests would that violate?
23 May 2018
It’s a bit of a jump to the next redaction. It was a real fight over this one, with two stages of de-redaction:
How should we think about the FCDO’s attempts to use the commercial interest FOI exemption? The ICO thought it was an inappropriate application of the rules, with the Commissioner “not satisfied… that there is a real and significant risk of prejudice occurring” from releasing such information.
Alphaville would suggest there’s another kind of prejudice at work here though: namely, the GHWC’s apparent propensity to engage certain companies without any evidence of a tendering process.
Beyond that, there doesn’t seem to be much need to editorialise further.
OK, maybe one meme:
Further reading:
— The ultimate guide to the UK’s sovereign wine fund