Charles Metcalf
Charles Metcalfe is one of the best-known, most spontaneous and amusing wine critics in Britain. He has been presenting drinks and occasionally food items for 12 years as one of the Richard-and-Judy team on the ITV programme, ‘This Morning’. He has presented a number of wine and food programmes on Granada Breeze (satellite channel) and appeared on BBC and Carlton Food Network. He is co-chairman of the International WINE Challenge, the world’s biggest wine competition, held annually in London, and Associate Editor of WINE Magazine.
Charles is in great demand to talk (never lecture) about wine. His friendly, relaxed style and abundant store of winey anecdotes wins over any audience, and makes the sometimes pompous and intimidating subject of wine easy and fun. He prefers his audiences to have a glass in hand.
You can read Charles regularly in WINE magazine. ‘The Wines of Spain & Portugal’, which he wrote jointly with his wife, Kathryn McWhirter, was published in 1988 and won the 1989 Glenfiddich Drinks Book of the Year Award. Their ‘Sainsbury’s Pocket Food & Wine Guide’, a guide to which wines to drink with which food, was published in October 1995. ‘Wine - how to find the wine you want’, a simple guide to wine written for Tesco, was published in October 1999. He writes a monthly wine article in the Tesco Recipe Magazine. He also acts as a consultant for a number of restaurant wine lists.
Charles Metcalfe started his undistinguished academic career at Eton, and continued it at Christ Church, Oxford. Here, he sang in the Cathedral every day, acted a lot and learned about wine. A month’s hard work at the end just saw him through his degree. He tried to run a wine business for a while with two Oxford friends and drank free for a couple of years, but realised he was no businessman. So he went into the City. After a miserable spell working as an investment analyst for a unit trust group, they let him go to become a singer. Along the way, he held a variety of important posts in various fields (cook, security guard, tourist guide - the usual kind of thing unemployed actors/singers do). Then, little by little, the singing engagements materialised - in Kent Opera, the Singers’ Company, the Monteverdi Choir, work as a soloist round the world from Berlin to Brunei. He appeared as a soloist in concerts and opera throughout the UK and Europe, and sang in televised productions of ‘Orfeo’ by Monteverdi, and ‘La Péricole’ by Offenbach, as well as performing as a guest principal at the English National Opera.
Then wine reared its head again. A lucky chance found him in the Evening Standard wine-tasting team, winning contests in France, Germany and California. The booze bug bit. In 1983, he wrote an article for a trade magazine, Wine and Spirit International. He co-started a new consumer wine magazine (WINE Magazine). Suddenly, Charles Metcalfe was a wine expert!
He still sings in the shower. And you can still hear his versatile voice (speaking, not singing) on audio guides to national and international exhibitions, art galleries and museums. He lives near Brighton with his wife and three children, two cats, four sheep, seven chickens, and two bearded dragons.