Suitmaker Tom Reimer blamed the company that installed the refrigerated wall
A master tailor ruined his own £1m wine collection after neighbours complained about the noise of the refrigerated “wine wall” at his luxury £8m London flat, a judge has ruled.
Suitmaker and wine connoisseur Tom Reimer – whose past customers include opera legend Luciano Pavarotti – claimed leaky fridges in his flat caused condensation which ruined labels and potentially destroyed the corks of valuable vintages in his 20,000-strong collection of fine French wines.
The multimillionaire tailor blamed the company that installed the refrigerated wall, Croydon-based International Food Services Equipment Ltd, insisting that a 1cm gap between fridge doors had let in air and led to his collection going mouldy.
He sued the company at Central London County Court for £550,000, including the £500,000 reduction in value of his collection and other costs.
But a judge has now thrown out his case and handed him a £110,000 court bill, after finding that he caused the condensation issue himself either by boxing in part of the fridge unit or by repeatedly switching the custom designed wine wall off after his neighbours complained about it causing “noise” and “vibrations” in their adjoining apartment.
Lawyers for the fridge company had submitted that there was “nothing wrong” with the fridges, adding: “The only ‘problem’ with them is that they caused Mr Reimer’s neighbour to complain.”
The company’s barrister, Matthew Winn-Smith, argued that any damage to the wine probably resulted from Mr Reimer himself “turning off the wine fridges because they were too noisy for his residential setting”.
Mr Reimer did so because he was “under considerable pressure” from his landlord and neighbours over noise from the £23,000 wine coolers and their condenser units, claimed the barrister.
The tailor had accepted that the fridges were twice turned off, but the judge found that it was done “significantly more than twice” and that Mr Reimer had acted “unreasonably” in turning off the units without first notifying his suppliers.
“I find that it was unreasonable to just turn them off,” Judge Sarah Ellington said in her ruling at Central London County Court.
“He could have moved the wine into storage while (the units) were being replaced, he could have given notice to International Food Services that he felt he would need to turn the units off.”
The court heard during the trial of the case that master tailor Mr Reimer has built up a 20,000-strong collection of the finest French wines, housed at his homes in London and Hamburg.
But he claimed the value of his collection in London was wrecked due to faults with three custom made chillers making up a refrigerated “wine wall” and installed as part of a refurb of his £8m apartment in The Regent, Marylebone, in 2021.
The cooling system, designed to maintain a temperature of 12 to 13 Celsius, featured glass sliding doors and remote condensers, and was fitted at a cost to Mr Reimer of about £23,000.
A 1cm gap between the doors of the units allowed cool air to escape and warmer air to enter, he said, leading to condensation and mould growth on the labels, and some of the vintages “probably” suffering significant cork damage, massively reducing the value of his 1,500-bottle London collection.
Many of the collection were elite “first growth” clarets from the Bordeaux and Rhone Valley regions, including bottles of 1982 Chateau Mouton Rothschild, which can sell for over £1,000, and 2012 Chateau Petrus Pomerol, which retails over £2,000.
Experts say rare wines are much less valuable on the collectors’ market if their labels are damaged as purchasers are wary of taking a risk on the wine itself being ruined.
But lawyers for the fridges’ installers blamed any damage on Mr Reimer for repeatedly turning off the units when neighbours complained about the vibrating din they caused.
Barrister Mr Winn-Smith told the court that the freeholder of the tailor’s flat had written to him in July 2022, pointing out that his neighbours had complained that they “have experienced unwanted noise and vibration in their flat emanating from your wine fridge and made a formal complaint”.
“The big issue for Mr Reimer was a noise/vibration complaint and the pressure he was coming under from the freehold company to resolve that issue,” the barrister said, adding that engineers had found the fridges to be turned off when they arrived to deal with issues on two occasions.
“There was nothing wrong with the condensers. They worked perfectly well and as intended. The only ‘problem’ with them is that they caused Mr Reimer’s neighbour to complain,” he added.
“The real cause of the damaged wine bottle labels is that the condensers were turned off by Mr Reimer, his agents or some other third party. That they were turned off on at least two observed occasions is an admitted fact…The motivation for turning them off is apparent.”
Giving her ruling, Judge Ellington found that any damage to the wine bottles was probably caused by lack of adequate ventilation due to the condensers of the wine cooling wall being boxed in on the tailor’s orders or by Mr Reimer turning off the fridges due to the noise.
With the cooler units now disposed of, it was impossible to inspect them to form a clear idea about the size of any gap on the doors, said the judge, adding that the available photographic evidence didn’t support Mr Reimer’s case.
“I find as a fact that this was not a 1cm gap by reference to that photograph,” she told the court, also noting the lack of evidence about fluctuations of fridge temperature at the time when the damage was alleged to have been done.
Even with a 1cm gap present, the fridges should have carried on functioning effectively, Judge Ellington ruled.
“Even if I am wrong that there was a gap of 1cm, that would be wholly irrelevant to the operation of the system,” she told the court, also finding that there was no evidence to show that the wine coolers were “not suitable” for commercial grade installation.
Mr Reimer, a scion of a wealthy German family, carved out a highly lucrative career as a top tailor in Hamburg, where in the 1990s his company kitted out Pavarotti with a white silk tailcoat as a contrast to his customary black tails and white tie
As an avid wine collector, he has built a colossal hoard of 20,000 bottles over the years, many of them ultra-prime Bordeaux and Rhone Valley reds and cellared mostly in Germany, but with around 1,500 bottles at his London apartment.
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