(Telegraph) - Charles Vallance and David Hopper meet a man who has made his fortune, and a company employing over 1,000 people, from his lifelong passion. Were you to bump into Tony Laithwaite at the post office or at an airport check-in you would probably guess that he is a wine maker; put him in a vineyard and he looks like he belongs there — in the way that French existential philosophers look like they belong in street cafes on the Boulevard Saint-Germain.

The UK’s biggest wine company is eponymously named after Laithwaite and his wife, Barbara. In fact, according to some calculations, they are the biggest wine merchants in the world, excluding supermarket retailers. Trading under his own name and several other subsidiaries, Laithwaite and his wife have built up a company with turnover in excess of £350m annually — which works out at around 50m bottles — with usually at least 2,500 wines in stock, and directly employing more than 1,000 people worldwide.