So today I wrote something …
Where is Fredricks in 2025 and importantly What is Fredricks?
Fredricks is the culmination of three ‘generations’ of owners – set up in 2006 by Michelin starred chef Freddie Jones as a semi-retirement project. It was Freddie who put in the imposing, full commercial kitchen you all see when you first walk in. He wanted to allow catering students the chance to work alongside him in a professional environment and the open-plan design was absolutely ahead of its time.
Around the same time, John & Juliette were planting 600 vines in Burston and two wine merchants, HarperWells and Envero experiencewine were starting out – supplying Freddie with a selection of wines and hosting one of our first in store tastings. It was rammed, back then Freddie only had the one deli room. From memory the wine room was a shop selling crystals.
As Freddie’s full time retirement came closer, he told me he was putting it up for sale, and that I should buy it. “A wine shop like yours in Diss would thrive” he told me.
Sceptical of the footfall and in absolute terror of taking on a Michelin kitchen I walked away, but John and Juliette took hold of the reigns and artfully repositioned the offering towards a deli with a difference – We continued to supply Fredricks with wines; initially a small shelf in the back room and later the back wall, and then during lockdown into a full wine shop as John & Juliette stepped aside and sold the business to Lisa and I in 2021.
Juliette’s vines had been left as nature intended over their six year tenure of the Deli, but in 2021 we hatched a plan, harvested the grapes and by chance got Chris Wilson to make our first vintage, and his first harvest at his new urban winery Gutter & Stars in Cambridge.
Borrowing fruit, borrowing tanks, borrowing expertise; nod to Dan Kirby MW student and now GM over a Flint Vineyard – we made a couple of experimental cuvée as we rejuvenated the vineyard. 2023 was a great season, 2024 was the polar-opposite.
BRIT-NAT – A project by another wine buddy, Tim Wildman MW was taking shape when twenty-or-so English producers got together to taste their pet-nat, col fondo and ancestral method wines.
Tim was on a mission to preserve Englands ‘lost vineyards’ most likely planted over the decades by eccentrics for home brew, he now sources this fruit for his own Frolic pet-nat. A couple of email exchanges with Tim and we hosted our first post-lockdown tasting at the Deli, showcasing Frolic alongside our pouch of wine and similarly eccentric bottles.
The Wine Room opened like a bottle of unfiltered pet-nat on a summers day (unpredictable, effervescent and with a disregard for the mundane)
By BRIT-NAT 2 in 2024 Tim got 33 producers to show 53 wines. The UK wine scene is one the most exciting countries producing wine at the moment and our little wine shop has hosted 27 events, entertaining over 700 guests.
Long term customers may have seen this tagline experiencewine used in our social media or to describe our wine tastings. I started this post by asking What is Fredricks?
experiencewine sums our philosophy that has been at our core since 2004. We want you to experience wine, we don’t want to tell you what to taste or how to taste. There are hundreds of tutors offering WSET style courses, prescriptively telling you how to and what to taste.
Not all wine tastes the same for all people and not all people like the same wine – so our tastings are about putting loads of different wine styles in front of you, telling the stories of the people, geography and culture behind the label. We want to share our experience with you. Which is why you are more likely to see a carbonic-rioja than Marlborough sauvignon at our tastings – even though we stock Kevin Judd’s (ex-Cloudy Bay) fantastic Sauvignons and Pinot Noirs.
We continue this ethos into the deli, selling and critically using the products in the kitchen. Sauces and dry goods, made by chefs for chefs, imported by specialist regional wholesalers and Michelin chefs; Mitch Tonk, Richard Bainbridge and Andrew Jones, Iberian specialist Brindisa, cheese from Hamish Johnston, fresh fish from Brown and May, sour dough from Black Dog Deli, single origin coffee sourced and roasted by Steven from Symposium in Norwich.
Our beers come through the Fat Cat, Norwich one of the first brew-pubs in the country and ranked as one of the best pubs in the country.
And of course HarperWells, ranked in the Top50 best independent wine shops for over a decade.
So Where is Fredricks in 2025?
Arguably in a strong position, we have a loyal customer base, and are well established in town, we are in the enviable position of having customers request to join the mailing list without having to canvas for likes and votes online.
However, the High Street is a very different place to when we started in 2006. There were a handful of decent independents wine shops but the high street was dominated by Oddbins, Victoria Wine, Threshers et al. The internet was inaccessible for most, so mail order wine clubs and private client mailing lists served the enthusiast.
Jump forward to 2025 and there are over 1,000 quality independent wine shops (like ours) you can and should support your local one. Couriering nationally available wines up and down the country is not only environmentally irresponsible but economically unviable on a small independent scale.
The independent shop on the 2025 high street, can no longer trade as a market stall, set out its wares and wait for customers to walk in. I wouldn’t drive to an out of town store and fill by boot with 24 bottles of discounted fizz or exclusive-chilean blanc before trying to navigate road closures on my way home. I’d sit on my sofa and in two or three clicks have them delivered it to my kitchen door the next morning – and whilst I’m online, I’ll just do a quick check to make sure they are the cheapest – someone always is.
The above describes a transaction, arriving at your purchase by cookies and algorithms people who like this, also like this.
…and almost as if this was planned. Fredricks in 2025 is the experience, we’re small, we probably won’t have exactly what you saw on that sponsored post, but we’ll definitely have something you weren’t looking for.
Cheers, see you in store, in the courtyard, on socials – check out the events page for all upcoming events.
Next up Friday 11th April, In Store Pour: Imagine yourself in the Pyrenean hills of Carcassonne and experience the wonderful wines of Domaine Gayda.
Our annual outdoor summer event embraces the idea of Ilfestia!
Inspired by our trip to Vin Itago on the volcanic island of Tenerife, and borrowing the name from the Santorini festival, we welcome people to enjoy the courtyard whilst sipping some amazing volcanic wine.
We’ll have more tables and chairs, a bigger ice filled wine station, and Fine Foods.
SAVE THE DATE: Saturday 2nd August.