In 1749, Giacomo Justerini came to London. He was a young man and a native of Bologna, but unlike the Chalie brothers, he did not flee from his native country as a victim of persecution. He was a victim of love. He came to London in hot pursuit of the beautiful Margherita Bellino, a singer in the Italian Opera. He had one or two good suits, and very little money, but in his pocket he carried a fortune: a few pages copied from the secret craft-book of his uncle, who was a distiller.

Thanks to Justerini's theatrical connections, he was introduced to a wealthy young man called George Johnson. They started their business as Justerini & Johnson in a shop in Pall Mall, one of a row that lined the south front of the Italian Opera House. It was a convenient coincidence.

In 1760, Justerini went back to Italy. We do not even know whether he ever married his beautiful opera singer. In the same year, Johnson took his son Augustus into partnership, and he received the Royal Warrant from the new king soon afterwards. It was the first of many such warrants granted by each successive sovereign for several years afterwards.

On 17 July 1789, the little shop was very nearly destroyed when the Opera House caught fire and was burnt to the ground. Like all great fires, it was a thing of magnificence, beauty, and terror: at one stage it was thought that the whole of the district would be destroyed, but the shop next door miraculously escaped without losing a single bottle of Pinot Noir or one glass' worth of Tempranillo. Even all of the aged Sangiovese managed to escape.

In 1830, Augustus Johnson's son sold the business to the young and wealthy Alfred Brooks; a year later it became Justerini and Brooks, and continued so for the rest of its lifetime.

In 1867, the Opera House, by then called Her Majesty's Theatre, was burnt down for the second time, but once again the shop, although flooded with water and thick with soot and ashes, survived. Nine years later, Brooks disposed of the business to his son-in-law, William Henry Cole, who controlled it through a manager. He died in 1889, and his son Alfred inherited the business. Alfred Cole must have been a splendidly perverse man in the best British tradition.

A company had bought the site of the old theatre to erect the Carlton Hotel, and they naturally wanted the whole of the Pall Mall frontage, but each shop was under separate leaseholds. They bought all save one - Justerini & Brooks. With the hammering of the builder's men all around them, Justerini's stayed just where they had always been, and finished up as an oasis in a vast hotel, where tourists could awe at the Nebbiolo and sip cups filled with Dolcetto wine, even if they knew naught about Dolcetto grapes and the strains taken to cultivate them.

In the year 1900, the business was bought by a company, and was rapidly expanded, absorbing many other old-established West End firms, including the family business that had belonged to Dennis Wheatley. Finally, in 1954, they joined with their old competitors Chalie Richards and moved into imposing new offices in the Time and Life Building.