Blur bassist Alex James (pictured) couldn’t be happier living in his very big house in the country... unless he’s creating Britpop Brut in a Dorset vineyard, the county of his birth.
Anyone like me, who grew up in the 1980s and 90s, will remember the Britpop rivalry between Blur and Oasis. I was in the Blur camp, although I hasten to add I wasn’t hugely into that style of music. But if someone asked me, I’d say Blur. One of my best friends at the time was ‘in love’ with the lead singer, Damon Alban, although I always preferred Alex James, the floppy-haired bassist from Dorset.
When I find myself, some 20-odd years later, face-to-face with Alex – now a 55-year-old farmer, cheese producer and father of five – I’m feeling a little flushed, and somewhat nervous that my music industry knowledge isn’t up to scratch. I needn’t have worried. Alex is just as happy talking about food as he is music, and we open the conversation reminiscing about retro crisps.
Alex’s journey from rock star to cheesemaker (and more recently a sparkling wine collaborator) may seem anomalous but, as he describes the foodie influences surrounding him growing up in Bournemouth, it starts to make sense.
Alex’s grandfather, John Emrys James, who worked as a chef in a hotel at this seaside resort, first ignited the bassist’s passion for all things food and drink.
‘Granddad was a chef at one of what was about four grand hotels on the South Coast at the time. He ran the kitchen,’ says Alex, who grew up in Boscombe with his mother, father and younger sister, Deborah. ‘By the time I arrived he had his own hotel in Bournemouth, and my first job was working in his kitchen. But before that, my earliest memories all revolve around food. The Cat and Fiddle pub in Christchurch, on the way to the New Forest from Bournemouth, there was a brilliant pick-your-own strawberries outfit near there. That was the best thing in the world to do as a kid – picking and eating ripe strawberries in the sunshine. I think that's probably one of the reasons why I ended up living on a farm. The food of your childhood and the music of your adolescence, it never leaves you. I'm still a sucker for salad cream and bacon crisps.’
For anyone not familiar with Blur’s story – the band formed in 1988 when Alex was 20 years old. Alex had arrived in London after leaving Bournemouth School to study French at Goldsmiths College. It was here that he met his Blur band mates, Graham Coxon (guitarist), Damon Alban (lead vocalist) and Dave Rowntree (drummer) – initially forming a band called Seymour (after Catcher in the Rye author J.D. Salinger's Seymour: An Introduction) before their record company convinced them to change it to Blur. Over the course of the next decade, their studio albums topped the charts in the UK, generating numerous hit singles along the way, including Parklife, Song 2, Boys & Girls, Coffee & TV, Beetlebum and Country House. During that time, Alex also played with other bands including Fat Les - which was responsible for the football anthem Vindaloo - Me Me Me, WigWam and Bad Lieutenant.
Alex stepped away from the limelight in the early noughties, when he moved, quite fittingly, to a very big house in the Cotswolds with his wife, film producer Claire Neate. And – being a long-time lover of cheese – he started a cheesemaking business, Alex James Co.
‘It was at the point when it was all we [Blur] had ever done for 15 years. It always gets to a point with every band when you want to try other things, and a lot of musicians end up living on farms,’ he says of the move to the 200-acre farm in Kingham, Oxfordshire. ‘Claire and I arrived here, and I just loved it instantly. The sense of peace and rest. I guess, after all those years living out of a suitcase touring, I just wanting to put some roots down somewhere, but I didn't know what the hell I was going to do here!’
When local cheesemaker, Roger Crudge, returned to the area, looking for somewhere to start making cheese again, it was a lightbulb moment.
‘It took two years of scratching my head, living on a farm, loving cheese before someone else said, “Can I make some cheese at your house?” And I was like, absolutely. That's a brilliant idea,’ explains Alex, whose award-winning cheeses include a soft blue called Blue Monday, a brie called Glastonbury and goats cheese called Little Wallop.
As well as making cheese on his Cotswolds farm, Alex and Claire made babies, lots of babies, and now have five kids between the ages of 13 and 19 – Artemis, Geronimo, Beatrix, Sable and Galileo. The family regularly spend weekends with ‘Granny’, who still lives by the sea in Bournemouth.
‘The kids are off there this weekend actually,’ he says. ‘They love being by the sea. When I was a kid, we lived on East Cliff and I loved the beach in winter, it was so romantic. Crashing waves and freezing spray, there was nobody there. In winter, on the first Sunday of the month, we would go to Kimmeridge Bay - mum, dad and all their mates - and light a driftwood bonfire on the beach.’
According to Alex, his own kids had very little interest in his music career until Blur’s ‘unexpected’ reunion last year, for which they all tagged along.
‘They all thought I was an idiot until then – they were too young to remember the last time Blur did anything,’ he says referencing the band’s last comeback in 2015. ‘But it was just a wonderful, unexpected magical 12 months that brought the family together.’
The reunion tour is the subject of Alex’s third memoir, Over the Rainbow: Tales from an Unexpected Year, due for release this December. ‘It was great to be reunited with my oldest friends,’ he grins, ‘but it was also totally mental. I needed to sit down and write about it – writing helps, it’s like therapy.’
The 2023 tour, which took in some of the world’s biggest festivals including Coachella, also provided Alex’s kids with inspiration for the family’s own food and music festival, The Big Feastival, held at their Oxfordshire farm each August.
‘I didn't think the kids would want to come on the tour but it's brilliant because they all have a role to play at Big Feastival. So, it was good for them to do a bit of industrial espionage at all these global events,’ Alex adds.
Alex admits that it was happenstance that he ended up partnering a vineyard from the county of his birth. ‘We did a blind tasting of all sorts of sparkling wines, not just from England but from the Champagne region of France too. Furleigh’s came out top, they really knocked it out of the park,’ he says. ‘The fact that the vineyard is just down the road from the Jurassic Coast, and it’s from the county where I grew up made it even better.’
The Britpop Brut is a blend of 40% Chardonnay, 40% Pinot Noir and 20% Pinot Meunier grapes all grown at the Dorset vineyard. This year, Alex added an English sparkling rose - Britpop Rosé - to the mix (this time made with grapes grown nearer his farm in The Cotswolds). As well as a lower alcohol (6% abv) Britpop Elderflower Wine Spritz featuring blossoms gathered from British hedgerows, spring water and champagne yeasts.
‘If you can make a decent English sparkling wine, something that's as good as a French version but British, then you’ve got a huge audience. British people want to buy British,’ he declares. ‘And there's no situation, which wouldn't be improved by a glass of ‘champagne’ – you can have it for breakfast, you can have it at a business meeting, drink it when you're happy, drink it when you're sad. It's completely socially acceptable.’
And Alex should know. In a column he wrote for the Guardian in 2002, about the early years of Blur, he said he spent a million pounds on Champagne in three years.
‘I probably made that up a bit,’ he admits. ‘But a glass of Champagne was a great prop in the 90s and it’s something I’ve always wanted – a sparkling wine with my name on it, more so than I've ever wanted a Brit award with my name on it.’
I think Alex, I would probably have to say the same.
Britpop by Alex James range is available exclusively from laithwaites.co.uk. Over the Rainbow: Tales from an Unexpected Year is published by Penguin on December 5 and can be pre-ordered now.
Meet the writer...
Rebecca Pitcairn is a wine writer and host of The English Wine Diaries podcast, which interviews people from the world of wine (and beyond) about how a love of wine – particularly that made on British soil – has helped shape their lives and careers. To find out more, visit englishwinediaries.co.uk.
