Nick Dobson Wines was founded at the end of 2002 by Nick Dobson, whose goal was to create a mail-order business selling wines from the wine regions he loved best of all but couldn't easily find in the UK. The Company started with French wines, and these were supplemented firstly with German, then Swiss, and later the Austrian ranges. Whilst these remain the core of the business, Nick has added small ranges from Italy, Portugal, Hungary, and more recently Israel.
The company, now under new management, continues to specialise in wines from smaller family or cooperative producers, who generally make wines of character and individuality.
Our focus is on:
* terroir-driven wines - reflecting their producer and the specificity of each vineyard and vintage
* heroic winemaking - made by human hand labor in often difficult terrain.
* mountain wines, alpine wines and "vins de pente"
* regional varieties - we list wines made from some of the oldest and newest grape varieties, regional specialities
Despite its relatively short life, Nick Dobson Wines has gained a positive reputation amongst the community of wine journalists and commentators, and is known for having some of the most comprehensive ranges of Beaujolais, Swiss and Austrian wines in the UK.
Swiss born Joelle Nebbe-Mornod grew up near Lausanne Switzerland.
Joelle is a physicist and an engineer and has a Masters in theoretical physics from the ETH Lausanne, but in 1995 she fell into the burgeoning field of the World Wide Web and hasn't left it yet.
Joelle has been involved in pioneering work in Switzerland, France, Germany and the UK. She put some of the first online journals and newspapers online, founded (and later sold) internet agency Chapter Eight, was instrumental in launching many publications online (including wine trade's core reference magazine Harpers), search engines and many things long lost to history. In recent years has been a consultant for online retail across Europe, working with retailers, brands and their suppliers to handle the increasing size and complexity of projects.
Nick Dobson Wines is a change of pace and scale for Joelle - working within a niche, with small producers and direct contact to customers, working at the pace of winemaking and seasons, working with something as real and deeply embedded into social life and culture as wine.
For Joelle, wine, and the culture and land around the wines, are essential and timeless parts of life - this comes in part simply from growing in a wine producing region - and more necessary than ever. Wine connects people around the table, and across the world, connects people to the past and the future, across generations.
Joelle's interests and hobbies, after food and wine, are hiking, photography, books, cinema, computer games and occasionally dabbling in arts and crafts.
Joelle shares her life with husband Robb (who helps with the business at events) and portuguese water dog Pippi Longstocking (whose only interest in wine is that it almost always accompanies a meal)
Nick Dobson is the founder of Nick Dobson Wines, and for 10 years imbued it with his passion for unique wines.
Running his own wine business was a career-change for Nick, who is a graduate of Loughborough University, where he read Electronics, and of Henley Management College, where he gained an MBA. Nick is also a French-speaker. His early working life was spent in the consumer electronics industry, initially in technical roles, but later moving into management, with experience in an International Business Environment (Europe, mainly Switzerland, and India). Nick eventually stood aside from the corporate world & started Nick Dobson Wines as fulfilment of a long-held desire to combine his passion for wine with the independence of running his own business.
Nick was very hands-on, and did everything in the business himself, from researching and visiting growers, selecting and importing the wines, right through to website design and maintenance, taking orders, and managing all the logistics, now based in a bonded warehouse in east London. Nick took great pride in the very high levels of customer service provided.
Nick retired from the business in February 2012, after selling the business to Joelle Nebbe-Mornod.
Sadly Nick died in September 2012 after a short battle with cancer. He is very much missed by many in the wine trade and beyond.
