Edinburgh-based subscription wine club Wine52 claims to be a cut above the competition, describing itself as the UK’s largest wine discovery club and offering its members wines from new, emerging regions and countries. Helen Arnold catches up with head wine buyer, Thomas Sanetra, and talks to him about how a business that started out in craft beer – with Beer52 – has taken the same concept into wine to great success.
Earlier this year Pol Roger Portfolio announced the addition of the fabulous wines of famed Barolo producer Luciano Sandrone to its range of fine wines for the UK trade. Built on the success of the eponymous Champagne brand, Pol Roger Portfolio continues to include some of the most celebrated names in wines and spirits. Earlier in the spring The Buyer’s Mike Turner sat down with Pol Roger Portfolio’s James Simpson MW, to discuss the recent additions and future opportunities for this premium drinks’ agency. This was followed a couple of weeks later with a visit to Barolo to meet Barbara Sandrone to discuss their hopes for this exciting new partnership.
With canned wine sales in the UK now close to £15m and an estimated global value of over £160m it is quietly moving from a niche to mainstay of the overall UK wine market, particularly as its sustainability credentials tick so many boxes for businesses looking to hit their environmental and carbon net zero targets. Any growing sector, though, needs pillar brands and businesses to set the standards and show the way forward for smaller players to follow. Which is what the Canned Wine Co now believes it is in a position to do, particularly with last week’s acquisition of The Copper Crew canned wine brand. The Buyer talks to Ben Franks, co-founder and wine buyer for Canned Wine Co about why it decided to buy a rival brand and what he sees as the future for the overall canned wine market.
“In the current climate The Drinks Trust’s work has become increasingly vital and we believe supporting its work is crucial.” That’s the reason why Alliance Wine has pulled together a team from across the business who are willing to put the trainers on, and the miles in, to run the Edinburgh Marathon next month and help raise money for the drinks industry’s charity. Here’s how you can help them make their efforts worthwhile.
It can be hard to describe what potential breakthrough new technology does when it has not existed before. But here goes. Welcome to the Wine & Food Matcher, a new white label software solution for the wine industry that claims it can do three things at once; help consumers choose best matching wines to their food, at home or in restaurants; give restaurants the chance to raise revenues and cut staff costs; and allow distributors and importers to see their on-trade customers wine inventory. Sounds too good to be true? Wineally founder, Ole Nielsen, explains how it works.
As the wine industry’s great and good prepare to descend on Dusseldorf for ProWein ‘23, the team from Lanchester Group, its subsidiaries Lanchester Wines and Greencroft Bottling, will be putting the finishing touches to a rebranding, to be exclusively unveiled at the show. Revealed across the group’s biggest ever stand, the new messaging will have the sustainability message front and centre – as you might expect from a business that champions itself as a restless pioneer of renewable energy. David Kermode caught up with Andrew Porton, managing director of Lanchester Wines’ Wine Division ahead of ProWein, to find out what to expect.
Richard Dennis has the kind of CV you wonder where he has managed to pack all his experiences into such a short period of time. A career that has seen him work on both sides of the trading fence – at Sainsbury’s and as a supplier and importer. He is now part of the Watermill Wines team that is working closely with major multiples and operators to source wines that can work primarily for their own label and exclusive ranges, as he explains to Richard Siddle.
South Africa might physically be on other side of the world from the UK, but its spirit is very much alive thanks to the efforts and support of key importers, suppliers, retailers and restaurants that have taken the country to their hearts. Perhaps none more so than Seckford Agencies that has arguably one of the most impressive premium South African ranges built up over the last 20 plus years. Here its sales director, David Cartwright, shares his personal as well as business reasons for wanting South Africa to do well in the UK wine market, and crucially looks at the huge untapped opportunities there are for its producers and brands to gain more market share and sales above £10 as he shares the highlights from a talk given to Vinpro and the South African wine industry in Cape Town last month.
With so much competition amongst the wine importers that already exist, it’s quite a big step to launch a new business into such a crowded market place. But since Alex Green and Matthew Johnson started up Beyond Wines in the middle of Covid-19 they have not looked back with a business model that operates as a smaller, arguably more flexible alternative to the UK’s biggest distributors. It’s all based on striking strategic partnerships with key producers around the world. Here Alex Green explains how it is working with Overhex to source great value wines – and potentially breakthrough brands – from South Africa.
After the trials of Covid 19 and the continuing fallout from Brexit, wine buyers might have hoped for a calmer, quieter 2022. But Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine soon dashed those hopes, combining with post-pandemic inflationary pressures and global shortages to deliver another challenging year. So how did Lanchester Wines’ buying director, Lesley Cook, navigate the storm? And, what does she see heading her way in 2023? She tells David Kermode how she managed to steer a course through it all.
GS Wines is committed to finding exciting, different wines from across Italy to share with its growing network of trade and private customers. As it prepares for its Italian Wine Trade Tasting on October 25 and 26, its co-founder Gordon Stuteley shares his love for blended wines from Italy and why he thinks they are the gift that keep on giving. There will be an opportunity to see the GS Wines portfolio for yourself in London later this month.
It’s a busy and significant time at Enotria&Coe as it celebrated its 50th anniversary earlier this month and looks back on its achievements over half a century, as well as assessing how it is going to meet the challenges and opportunities of today and tomorrow. Part of that strategy is centred around taking its premium wine offer, and the services it can provide around it for busy sommeliers and on-trade buyers, to the next level. Which is why it’s a good time to catch up with John Graves, its new head of wine development, to get his take on a business he has re-joined and how he and his team are fully focused on making that strategy happen.
Today’s The Bunch annual press tasting stands out for two important reasons. Firstly, it is an opportunity to taste premium wines from all over the world from seven of the UK’s most leading importers. But, secondly, these are suppliers who are united by their commitment to ethically source and supply the independent sector with quality wines encapsulated in a fiercely proud code of practice that ensures best practice trading standards and customer service. Here’s what The Bunch means to some of those who run it: Corney & Barrow’s Rebecca Palmer (chair), Private Cellar’s Laura Taylor, Tanners’s Robert Boutflower and Yapp’s Tom Ashworth.
Ahead of ABS Wine Agencies portfolio tasting on September 7, The Buyer takes a behind the scenes look at how the ‘Kickstarter’ programme, launched by the California Wine Institute to introduce Californian producers to potentially the right UK importers, has resulted in ABS taking on the Hanna Winery in Russian River Valley, Sonoma County, part of Terlato Wines, whose wines will be available to taste at the London tasting alongside the rest of its growing worldwide portfolio.
Strip away their wine ranges and what really differentiates one wine distributor over another is the level of support, advice and training they can provide their customers. That is where the power of supplier and customer relationships can really come to the fore. This is very much the role of Camilla Armour, wine education trainer at Corney & Barrow, who works with restaurants, bars, hotels and pubs across the country in giving their staff the skills and confidence they need to sell wine in their venues. Here she explains to Helen Arnold how she decided to follow a career in wine training and what difference it can make to an operators’ overall performance.
It’s a busy time for trade tastings and Davy’s Wine Merchants has certainly gone the extra mile in what it has planned for its special New World wine event on September 7 that it is hosting at its head office in Greenwich, London. James Davy, chairman and the fifth generation of the Davy family to run the business, says the team has worked hard to give buyers a fully immersive tasting that will use food pairings and bespoke music matches to heighten their tasting experience of wines from all its New World wine producers.
The key challenge – and opportunity – for any leading wine importer and agency business is to ensure the range of producers it is working with are relevant for the needs and demands of their customers. It’s why Louis Latour Agencies has been able to build its impressive portfolio of producers from around the world. Here managing director, Will Oatley, gives an update on the company’s performance and why he is so pleased to welcome two premium Provence producers – Chateau des Demoiselles and Chateau Sainte-Roseline – to its growing stable.
Most wine businesses came out of lockdown looking and acting very differently to when they went into the pandemic. But not many can look back on such a transformative performance as Armit Wines. In the year to September 30 2021, and in the height of the pandemic, it saw turnover increase 7% increase to £22 million, a swing in net profit of £2m taking the business into the black to just over £1.3m and gross profits up 25.4% from 22.7%. But what were the key decisions made by managing director, Brett Fleming, and his management team that made the difference? To help us unravel the numbers and take us behind the scenes at Armit Wines we talk to head of sales Fraser Currie.
It was a big step in 2014 for Jon Lister to swap sides and move from being one of the most respected bar figures in the country, with a pile of awards to show for it, and take on a new role at Speciality Brands, and look to work with bartenders rather than be one. But, as he explains to Richard Siddle, he could not be happier in a specially created position as head of creativity and drinks which gives him the freedom to really bring Speciality Brands’ highly respected portfolio of premium brands alive in the right bars and outlets across the country.
Paul Schaafsma likes being in the wine limelight. But in his new role as head of Benchmark Drinks he has had to get used to sharing the centre stage with a roll call of major international stars that know far more about how to get our attention. Here, in this extensive interview with Richard Siddle, he shares what it has been like setting up a new wine business from scratch and how he has made celebrity wine brands not only highly fashionable, but enormously successful with Kylie Minogue hitting number one again, this time for her rosé wine brand which is part of a range that has sold over 5 million bottles in just two years. He also takes on some of the major issues facing the wine industry, how wine suppliers need to start finding better solutions for the customers they work with and why being relevant to an ever changing and demanding consumer is what drives him and his team every day.
