The Wine Merchant issue 144

THE WINE MERCHANT.

An independent magazine for independent retailers Issue 144, March 2025

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EPR fees mean it’s not just duty adding to wine prices

Suppliers weigh up whether to follow Boutinot and increase prices now, or wait it out and change lists later this year

Wine prices are rising even more steeply than expected thanks to the extra burden of Extended Producer Responsibility – the government scheme intended to make industry contribute more to the costs of recycling packaging.

Boutinot has already added 10p to its

still wines, and 16p to its sparkling wines, to pre-empt the costs it expects to face and to avoid announcing further increases later in the year as the fee structure becomes clearer.

There is widespread concern that EPR has not been properly communicated and that many businesses remain unregistered.

Any company with a turnover of more than £1m needs to sign up.

Other suppliers are weighing up whether to increase prices now or to update their lists later in the year.

Alex Linsley, business development director of Liberty Wines, says: “The nature of EPR means that its impact on

The Wine Merchant’s 2025 survey has found that the median average turnover for independent wine retailers is £545,000, though the spectrum ranges from around £50,000 to £10m-plus, in the case of some of the larger merchants with multiple sites.

Our survey, in partnership with Hatch Mansfield, has recorded a

big increase in the average selling price of a bottle of still wine in the indie sector. It also reveals that almost half of all independents now operate as wine shop/wine bar hybrids.

The coverage of our 12th survey of independents starts on page 15 and concludes in our April edition.

Dog

the month: Martha Noah’s Goat, Hastings

6 comings & GOINGS

Philglas & Swiggot, London’s iconic indie, bids a sad farewell

12 david perry

Fond memories of razor wire, bulletproof glass and cheap lager

14 tried & tested

We tasted a lot of wines this month. Here are eight that stood out

31 bright ideas

How a monthly meeting of business people boosts Kilo Wines

33 the burning question

What’s the most rewarding thing about being an indie merchant?

36 merchant profile

We’re off to West Yorkshire to see what’s behind Ripponden Wines

45 women who make wine

Why it’s still important to celebrate the female faces in our industry

59 make a date

You think April’s a quiet month for tastings? Think again

71 Q&A: ned llewellyn

The Alliance man with tales of Groove Armada and salmon fishing

EPR fees will add more to the cost of the wines indies buy

wine prices is both varied and complicated. It depends on the type/ weight of the wine’s packaging – which may well change over time – and which channel the wine is sold through.

“We don’t want to burden our customers with this complexity so will manage EPR fees like we manage any other cost.

“We have done this in the past and we will continue to do this in the future by offering a single price for a wine that we hold for the duration of a vintage.”

Lee Evans, owner of Condor Wines, says: “EPR requirements are a concern due to the lack of clarity around key details, particularly the associated costs, which will not be confirmed until July.

“While I fully support the overall goal of ensuring importers contribute to packaging waste management and working towards sustainability, the scheme has launched without the full details and that makes it incredibly challenging to properly forecast and make adequate preparation.

“However, we still had to prepare for its implementation and, while forecasting without full information isn’t ideal, we cannot afford to ignore the situation either. So this meant we had to make some assumptions about potential costs.

“Based on the information currently available, we believe we have forecasted

correctly and allowed for the cost sufficiently in 2024-25, so don’t plan to make any further changes to pricing.

“However, if the eventual costs rise significantly more than the already higher than expected levels – glass is currently forecasted at £240 per tonne – then we may need to make an adjustment in the autumn, but otherwise we will make any changes early next year as part of the release of our 2026 price list.”

Matthew Hennings, managing director of Hennings Wine in West Sussex, describes the government’s handling of EPR as “a shambles”. He adds: “At least with duty we all knew what the new costs would be, however imbecilic they are. Sadly no such luck with EPR, where it’s the blind leading the blind.”

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Wine Merchant

Matthew Hennings

How suppliers are coping with duty changes

Jacob Stokes gets a sense of how the early weeks of the multi-tiered system are shaping up

Customer choice at risk

Brett Fleming, Armit Wines

The current UK government has simply not understood the impact that these new duty rates have.

We have taken the decision to absorb the duty rate for February as our new price list comes out in March. We, along with the entire trade, now must adapt our systems to cope with the exact alcohol rates, and this will repeat every time we change a vintage on any single product, adding yet more administrative costs. It will kill selection and choice for customers on wine lists and shelves.

Not to mention that the costs will have to be passed on to the consumer, impacting inflation. One must question the end game here too. Will HMRC actually see revenues increase? If you are taxing people to this extent, there is less disposable income.

Extra resources required

Mark Roberts, Lanchester Wines

We are already feeling the effects, as is the wider UK wine industry.

The greatest challenge at this stage is the uncertainty. Should we focus on lower abv wines? Should grapes be picked earlier? How do we navigate the evolving label regulations? Or do we maintain the vinous nature of wine and trust that consumers will continue to value quality?

We have prioritised working with naturally-lower abv wines to maintain integrity. While duty and abv are key considerations, our focus remains on delivering quality and value.

We are coping because we must. The administrative burden, from manual data uploads to pricing adjustments, has been significant. Like many others in our position, we have had to invest in additional resources to manage these changes, which naturally adds cost to the business.

System open to abuse Costs will vary by vintage

Jessica Hutchinson, Vindependents

From an admin point of view, the changes don’t pose much of a problem as we already have all the abvs for our wines and we have just adapted our systems accordingly. From a consumer point of view, they are going to have to learn to understand why their favourite wine changes price every vintage.

When we do the customs declarations, we often get one abv on the invoice, a different one on the EAD and another one on the label. The abv for the duty declarations is based on what is on the label and bears no relation to what is in the bottle. It is common for smaller producers to buy three years’ worth of labels at a time with the abv already on them.

There are no physical checks on the actual abv of the wine. The temptation for less scrupulous suppliers will be to put a lower abv on the label than what’s in the bottle.

‘Heavier’ wines may go

Matthew Hennings, Hennings Wine

It’s very early days but we have robust systems in place. We updated our operating system with this in mind so have catered for some of the extra admin.

We have decided to digest the extra duty costs until April to allow our wholesale customers time to attend our trade tasting and give us all time to update lists.

Having a bonded warehouse allowed us some control to remove the wines from bond that were most affected by the duty change before February.

I think this will have an impact on range and no question some of the heavier –mainly red – wines will probably need to be thinned out a little. We are not going to have a knee-jerk reaction to this and intend to ensure we still offer our customers a comprehensive range to choose from.

David Archibald, Cachet Wine

Operating our own bonded warehouse means we oversee our own destiny, and whilst the new scheme has added work, we are coping.

This January, prior to the ending of the easement phase, was our busiest on record, with lots of customers stocking up ahead of the rise. The new scheme is certainly adding a lot of administrative pressure and work. There is no doubting that this was a scheme dreamt up by a teetotal politician!

The biggest immediate change post February 1 is on retail prices. Big Aussie and Spanish reds are the worst affected. The 43p duty increase on a 14% Rioja, adds 79p to the shelf price – assuming 35% markup – which is then likely to be rounded up to the nearest pound.

We anticipate even more burden as new vintages arrive with different abvs to the previous one. We plan to pass on changes in duty, up and down, as new vintages arrive. Although our suppliers are on board with avoiding increases wherever possible, we are in the hands of mother nature.

Some prices are lower

Tim French, Halo Wines

On the bright side, wines at 11.5% and 12% abv now come with lower duty than before. We are fortunate in that sense because many of Niepoort’s table wines have low alcohol levels, so their prices have reduced a little.

Also, fortified wines took their hit back in the autumn 2024 budget, so this time around, the increases for those have been minimal. Our growers have been very supportive, with many holding pricing to reduce the impact of the new duty rates.

Pricing ahead of bottling has got trickier. With abv shifting between estimated and final levels, changing prices at the last minute is now part of the game.

Coffee blends with wine at indie

The Bottle of Hastings in East Sussex, which closed last July, has reopened under new ownership.

Hastings Wine & Coffee is now operating from the shop on Queens Road, and owner Darren Tickner is confident that his vision for the business will succeed.

The premises has been a wine shop since 2022 and had changed hands twice before Tickner took over. As the new name suggests, he’s introduced a fresh concept, which he believes will keep people coming through the door.

“The key difference from previous iterations of this business is that I’ve bought coffee into the shop,” he says. “There’s a section that’s devoted to different varieties of coffee beans, different brewing gadgets, and there’ll be filter coffee on rotation from different origins, as well as freshly roasted blends that come down from our roastery.

“We’ll be open for takeaway coffees from 8.30am. People can sit in, so hopefully we’ll attract some coffee-morning groups, and then I’ll sort of flip it over around lunchtime so there’ll be a focus on the wine bar. It still is very much a wine shop and wine bar, but we’re utilising all hours of the day.”

Establishing his coffee roastery, Bean Smitten, a decade ago, Tickner has always seen the similarities between wine and coffee. “I got into speciality coffee when I noticed that some people would start to talk about coffee and describe it in the same way as they would a bottle of wine, in terms of the taste and flavour profiles.

“That got me really curious because, until that point, I thought coffee just tasted like coffee. It’s all about the different origins and methods of farming,” he says.

“I started to want to understand more about wine, because I realised that a lot of the farming practices and methods of winemaking, for example anaerobic

fermentation, were crossing over into the coffee world. It occurred to me that the customers that we have at the coffee roastery probably also like to buy good wine as well as good coffee. So there seems to be a synergy there.”

Philglas & Swiggot 1991-2025

One of the most iconic names in the London’s independent wine retailing scene has disappeared.

Philglas & Swiggot first opened in Northcote Road, Battersea, in 1991 and quickly established itself as a beacon for wine lovers looking for an alternative to the off-licence chains that dominated the specialist market at that time.

Mike and Karen Rogers, its founders, later established branches in Richmond and Marylebone.

The business was bought by Justin Knock MW and Damien Jackman in 2014, who sold it to the Irish group O’Briens four

years later, though Knock retained a role. In recent times the remaining stores in Battersea and Marylebone have struggled to recreate the energy of the earlier incarnations of Philglas & Swiggot, and had lost their point of difference in an increasingly crowded indie market.

O’Brien’s had been pursuing a sale of the business, which had become a drain on its profits thanks to soaring costs, but talks with potential buyers last year came to nothing.

“After more than 30 incredible years, we’ve made the very difficult decision to close Philglas & Swiggot,” a statement said.

“It has been an absolute joy to serve London’s wine lovers – whether in-store, online, or through our private client and en primeur services.

“Sadly, increasingly challenging trading conditions and the additional complexities of Brexit have made it impossible for us to continue.”

The business is scheduled to serve its last customers on March 16.

Darren Tickner of Hastings Wine & Coffee with with previous owner Victoria Wilken

Bacchus

Can non-alcohol canon law

The church will not be embracing low and no alternatives when it comes to the Eucharist. The issue has been raised at the General Synod due to some worshipers having an alcohol intolerance, but church leaders are standing by canon law which states holy communion wine must be fermented grape juice that is “good and wholesome” (that rules out most of the top 20 brands – Ed). The glutenintolerant must continue to suffer bread made from “the best and purest wheat flour”, although low-gluten wafers are apparently acceptable.

No arguing with AI

We asked ChatGPT to give us an assessment of how many indie wine shops there are in the UK. It quoted us a figure of 1,018, which it attributed to The Wine Merchant, and then provided some incisive commentary. “This figure has remained relatively stable over the past year, despite challenges,” it declared. Challenges such as what, exactly? “Such as store closures,” the AI bot explains.

Free gifts and unicorns

We’d hate to be accused of fishing for compliments, which is why the final question in our annual survey of independents is always carefully worded “what could we do to make The Wine Merchant better?” We get some very gratifying answers to the question, which we try not to let foster a spirit of smug complacency here on Denton Island. But also some useful suggestions that are currently being costed. “More free gifts,” says Rob Hoult of Hoults in Huddersfield. “As a child I used to love it when there was a free plastic model of a racing car or a peashooter taped to the front of my Beano.” Iain Smith of Smith’s Wines in Exeter is equally inspired. “I’d quite like my copy to be delivered by He-Man riding a My Little Pony unicorn please,” he writes.

Nickolls & Perks buys web platform

Nickolls & Perks has bought Wine Collector, an online portfolio management platform for wine collectors, traders and investors.

Wine Collector was initially developed by Wine Owners in 2013. Its chief executive Nick Martin says now is the perfect time for the consumer-facing side of the business to find a new home.

“Our business has changed beyond recognition in that time,” explains Martin, “and now pretty much everything that we do is for businesses and not for consumers. Nickolls & Perks sell wine to lots of people, that’s their business, and they’re great at supporting the needs of consumers and wine collectors.”

Will Gardener, managing director at Stourbridge-based Nickolls & Perks, adds: “The majority of our business has always been heavily focused on private clients and servicing their collections and their interest in wines, so there is a symbiosis there. We’ve always offered a broking service, but I think you have to give clients a broader experience – perhaps give them a bit more than just a broking service. Information is the key, along with really good service.”

So how will Wine Collector fit in with Nickolls & Perks’s existing business?

“The platform gives clients a 360-degree view of what they’ve got and what it’s worth, and it’s updated dynamically,” Gardener explains. “It’s a really nice bolton to our business from that perspective. It will stay quite separate, but obviously there will be movement between the two, and certainly there are crossover points. It will improve our customers’ experience with us as a result of improved IT, and potentially there will be a lot of new customers who we can engage with.”

Existing Wine Collector clients will have the continued contact of Josh Hawes, who

has moved over from Wine Owners to join the team at Nickolls & Perks.

“Josh used to work for us – he came here for a while in 2013 before moving to London,” says Gardener. “Josh has been a consistent point of contact for Wine Collector clients, so it will be good to have him here. We’re really not messing about with it too much to start with, apart from changing the branding. The service will continue and we will try to improve on it.”

Developer offers wine opportunity

The owners of speciality coffee shop

H’Artisan are seeking a collaboration with an independent wine merchant.

Nick and Sarah Hart have purchased a former smithy and 17th century inn a few doors down from the shop in Wargrave, Berkshire, which they are refurbishing.

The project is set for completion late this year, and the plans include retail space for a wine merchant who “would like to do private tastings” as well as a couple of retail units earmarked for a butcher and a delicatessen.

Contact info@hartisanfriends.co.uk.

The business is based in Stourbridge

DAVID PERRY

Irregular Thoughts

Memories of razor wire and paying protection money to suburban gangs

Ihave a confession – a claim to shame. Booze Buster: that was me, that was. I did that. There, I’ve admitted it. I think enough time has passed to talk about these things. So I should explain how it happened. I was working for the Parisa Group under Nader Haghighi at the time. The company owned about a dozen or so Wine Cellar shops, a couple of Berkeley Wines and hundreds of Cellar 5 off-licences. I was given the job of marketing manager for Cellar 5. Not the bit I really wanted but there you go.

Over time various other brands were tried out including a full convenience store offering, Right Choice, at one end and the smart Parisa café bar format at the other. The problem, as I saw it, was that the money was all being poured into the smart end and the cash cow was in danger of being starved to death. At board level, the bit that might excite the bank was considered to be the swanky places now creeping into London and not the rough shops with bulletproof glass in northern slums. I’d inherited an ugly baby. If you went to the most dangerous suburb, then looked for the worst arcade of shops, amongst the graffiti and boarded up windows you would find a Cellar 5. They weren’t all so bad but that was our core territory.

A Right Choice shop, in a suburb of Liverpool, was one of the worst. What should have been glass windows were riveted stainless steel sheets. Inside was floor to ceiling bulletproof glass. After a daylight raid through the roof with a stolen jack-hammer, the roof cavity was filled with razor wire. The USP was that no one else would dare to trade anywhere near, so it did quite well – except that local gangs had to be paid protection money to get cash off the premises.

Then the Bargain Booze franchise model emerged. They started making serious inroads into our homelands of Manchester and Liverpool from their Sandbach base. I believe it was at a trade Benevolent dinner that Nader and Bargain Booze’s Allan Whittle came face to face. Allan approached with an olive branch suggesting they should work together against the common enemy of the supermarkets. It was Nader’s

A Booze Buster security guard waits for reinforcements

rebuttal that Bargain Booze was of no consequence that probably spurred Allan on to aggressively take down Cellar 5. Within a short time Bargain Booze had more shops than we did, and they looked better too. One of our area managers also turned traitor which meant they knew exactly which shops to target.

Sitting around the table in the board room we had a brainstorming session. I used to smoke at the time and also enjoyed reading Viz. On the back of a fag packet, I passed the idea of “Buster Booze, He’s Headline News” to the MD of our design agency. And that was that.

Well, it did need a bit more meat on the bones. We commissioned a cartoonist who came up with a pugilistic thug – we knew our demographic! Observing our customers, I also recognised throughout the day they would buy eight cans of lager, one at a time, without the capital resource to invest in eight for £5 in one go. So the USP of the new brand was keen prices without multi-buys. That was a success but also the downfall. Suppliers would offer us the deal based on multi-buys. We could get away with translating that to single prices in a small number of shops but not for the whole estate.

The original 10 shops were a massive success. They went from near closure to doubling their turnover. I firmly believe that the reason wasn’t just the pricing policy, it was also that the shops got a longneeded makeover. The sticky red carpets were replaced with shiny, washable floors. The walls were repainted inside and out and the staff were issued with branded workwear. For the first time in decades the cash cow was given some investment and, in most cases, the staff had a real morale boost. One, though, considered it going downmarket – she had only just returned to work with her faced stitched up after having been slashed by a youth who objected to being asked for ID. Not uncommon in that part of Moss Side.

After the success of the original shops a board-level decision was made to very quickly convert every one of the hundreds of Cellar 5 shops to Booze Buster. That was never the plan and was, in my mind, the beginning of the end. But I was not on the board so I didn’t get a say.

We could no longer convert to single pricing so the offers quickly reverted to multi-buys. In effect what we ended up with was hundreds of Cellar 5 shops with a daft cartoon on the front. But, at least my ugly baby had fresh new clothes.

Bargain Booze won the battle, but not the war. Both companies crashed and burned. Nader died aged (allegedly) just 42. I believe Allan got out at the right time and retired to play golf in Portugal. I still have a grudging respect for him.

COMING DOWN THE LINE

Hot topics that could impact independent wine merchants

By WSTA chief executive Miles Beale

In the most dangerous suburb, in the worst arcade, amongst the boarded-up shops, there you would find a Cellar 5

I had initially wanted to rebrand the estate to “Cellar V”. I always thought that was a fantastic evolution but, although I tried to explain, Nader just didn’t get the pun … or the French, or the Roman numeral. We had an exasperating conversation in a corridor and the idea never got mentioned again. In retrospect, I should have kept my fag packet in my pocket and shouted, “C’est la vie!” in that fateful first meeting. I might have been proud of that.

EPR: the final countdown

This is the last month before Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) fees accrue from April 1 2025. The WSTA has penned a joint drinks trade association letter expressing its concerns and asking Defra to look again at scheme. However, while we continue to seek a delay, it remains essential that companies check if they are obligated for EPR, potentially implicating importers, sales offices or agents. Fees will begin accruing from next month despite our belief that the scheme hasn’t been properly advertised by Defra and many companies are still unregistered. Registered businesses should already be submitting data and should plan for invoices, due in October, and consider how to reduce their fees, in year two of the scheme, when fee modulation begins. For more detail and resources check the WSTA website.

Business rates reforms

The government’s initial stakeholder engagement on business rates reform ends next month. The new system (in effect from the start of financial year 202627), will create two permanently lower multipliers for all retail, hospitality and leisure (RHL) premises with RVs (rateable values) below £500,000. This means one standard multiplier for RHL properties with RVs of £51,000-£500,000, and one for small business RHL properties below £51,000 RV. To fund this, the government will levy a standalone higher multiplier on all properties with an RV of £500,000 or more – meaning a total of five business rates multipliers from April 2026. The exact rates for all multipliers will be announced at autumn budget 2025. Businesses already face a reduction in RHL relief from 75% to 40% at the start of the financial year in April.

Disappointing news on customs

We’ve had a very disappointing update from Customs & Excise who say that their plans to modernise, simplify and digitise their processes will not be delivered. Lack of funds has scuppered some key programmes, and we are working with HMRC to see what can be salvaged.

Find out more at wsta.co.uk

David Perry is the owner of Shaftesbury Wines in Dorset

Bargain Booze is now owned by Bestway

SPECIALISED LOGISTICS

QUIZ TIME

With Flying Füchs

1. Which Portuguese wine region includes the subregions Portalegre, Reguengos and Borba?

2. Which symbol did Ernest and Julio Gallo prevent Chianti Classico producers from using on their labels in the US market, and their younger brother Joseph on his cheese?

3. Which grape thrives best in the Montagne de Reims?

4. What did the German wine region Rheinpfalz change its name to in 1992?

5. Which English wine estate offers visitors a train ride through its vineyards?

HOLY MOLY ! I think we're in business

BARRY BROS & RUBB Burgundy En Primeur 2022

GRAHAM HOLTER

Editorial

Some self-indulgence at Wine Paris, and the prospect of claret made with Manseng Noir

One of the pleasures of Wine Paris is zig-zagging around the halls, gravitating almost randomly towards stands simply because a label or friendly face catches your eye, or because you realise it’s been too long since you tasted a Swiss Fendant or a Jura Vin Jaune. These little pit-stops can feel like an indulgence, a wasteful use of time that could be better spent in the company of current and future clients. I’m sure some of the people pouring their wines for me felt exactly the same way. I couldn’t blame them for shooting glances over my shoulder in search of anyone who might actually be interested in buying their wares.

Invariably, I would ask if they had a UK

importer, and naturally some of them did. It was quite striking how many of them puffed out their cheeks, rocked back on their heels and responded with words to the effect of “c’est très difficile maintenant”. The determined importer and exporter will always find a way. But how depressing to see what was once the world’s greatest marketplace for wines putting up so many barriers in front of those who would love to keep it vibrant and exciting.

Bordeaux at a crossroads

When did you last read a positive headline about Bordeaux? The region seems caught in a doom-spiral of negativity. Output dropped by 14% in 2024, according to

official figures, thanks partly to poor weather, but also because production is having to be scaled back. It’s reported that China, one of Bordeaux’s biggest export customers, is increasingly unimpressed with its entry-level wines and is seeking its thrills in the new world.

The region is aiming to pull out 10% of its vines to counterbalance what CIVB president Allan Sichel has described as an annual overproduction of 40m bottles, but is currently way off hitting this target. Meanwhile the FT derides most of the 2021 vintage as “thin and acidic”.

In our survey of independents this year, Bordeaux doesn’t even make the top 20 countries or regions that merchants find most interesting. It is still just about in the top 10 of the most commercially important regions for indies, but has slipped four places and is comfortably outpaced by Languedoc-Roussillon. Even the city’s football team is languishing in France’s fourth tier, having filed for bankruptcy last summer.

So there are many reasons why Bordeaux seems to have reached a crossroads, and climate change is another of them: conditions are just getting too hot for native varieties. Experiments have been taking place to see what happens when grapes such as Fer Servadou, Duras, Manseng Noir, Vinhão and Arinarnoa are included in the blend.

The experiments are geared towards creating wines which taste like typical Bordeaux, and some of the results appear to be encouraging.

But is this really future-proofing Bordeaux’s wine industry? There’s certainly a strong case for protecting and preserving what is undoubtedly one of the world’s most classic wine styles. But there’s also an argument for freeing up vignerons to properly innovate, tear up the rule book, and perhaps make wines that taste nothing like Bordeaux.

Even Bordeaux’s football team is languishing in France’s fourth tier

TRIED & TESTED

Phelps Creek Cuvée

Alexandrine Pinot Noir 2021

The fruit comes from Columbia Gorge in Oregon; the winemaking expertise is split between owner Bob Morus and Alexandrine Roy, from Domaine Roy in Gevrey-Chambertin. It’s a convincing mash-up of two of Pinot Noir’s most prized terroirs, with deep, savoury complexity and red-berry freshness.

RRP: £55 ABV: 14%

Davy’s (0207 716 3380) davywine.co.uk

Quinta da Romaneira

Dona Clara 2020

Christian Seely’s spectacular Douro estate was renovated in 2004, with many old vines preserved but much of the vineyard uprooted and replaced. This is a successful blend of local varieties from across the quinta, but also Petit Verdot and Syrah, with velvety tannins and rich blackberry notes.

RRP: £32.49 ABV: 15%

Hallgarten & Novum Wines (01582 722 538) hnwines.co.uk

Pedestal Margaret River Cabernet Sauvignon 2022

Larry Cherubino has crafted a dense and delicious Western Australian Cab, brimming with dark fruit and muscular earthy goodness. Our first impression was that we should be wearing a hard hat and hi-vis, but the sweeter and more aromatic flavour elements gradually unfurl, along with a cooling acidity.

RRP: £19.35 ABV: 14.5%

Hatch Mansfield (01344 871800) hatchmansfield.com

Cà dei Frati Brolettino

Lugana 2022

The single-vineyard offering from one of Lugana’s greatest producers. 100% Turbiana, barrel fermented, with seven months in barriques and partial MLF. White peaches, raw sourdough and salted tangerine. Intense citrus fronts an electrifying palate with a biting chalky texture lining the finish. Absolutely world class.

RRP: £35.99 ABV: 13.5%

Liberty Wines (020 7720 5350) libertywines.co.uk

Domäne Wachau Grüner

Veltliner Smaragd Ried

Achleiten 2021

The purity and elegance of all Domäne Wachau wines is on display in this delectable single-vineyard Grüner. The fruit is picked late, with a portion aged in Austrian oak on fine lees for six months. An oilier and more intense expression of the region, with a luxurious feel.

RRP: £40 ABV: 14%

Gonzalez Byass UK (01707 274790) gonzalezbyassuk.com

St Supéry Elu Meritage 2018

Meritage (a Californian Bordeaux blend) is a word that many in the UK wine trade find ugly and preposterous, but here’s a Cabernet-led example that’s the opposite of both those things. From a Rutherford winery using only estate-grown fruit, it has less oak influence than previous vintages, thanks to new concrete fermenters, allowing the plummy, spicy, coffee flavours to sing.

RRP: £85 ABV: 14.5%

Jeroboams (0207 288 8888) jeroboamstrade.co.uk

Centopassi Rocce di Pietra Longa Grillo 2023

A finely chiselled, single-vineyard Grillo loaded with tension. Tight and herbal on the nose with sprigs of thyme, knots of lemon pith and petrichor. The palate is all grapefruit, green almonds and fennel seeds. Precise and vital; pair it with Nocellara olives and salted almonds to your heart’s content.

RRP: £20.50 ABV: 13% Astrum Wine Cellars (020 3328 4620) astrumwinecellars.com

Planeta Eruzione 1614 Nerello Mascalese 2020

A haunting perfume, brimming with Etna character. Scorched violets, raspberries smashed on a slab of hot volcanic rock; smoked wild herbs and spiced cranberries. Deep and dry with conviction and length. One for the Pinot lovers who don’t mind a good whip of chewy Italian tannins.

RRP: £36 ABV: 14% Enotria&Coe (020 8961 4411) enotriacoe.com

The Wine Merchant

SURVEY OF INDEPENDENTS 2025

in association with

Fifteen pages of coverage starts here and continues in our April edition

Indies buckle up for a turbulent year

About a third of merchants saw sales slip in 2024, and about a quarter expect that to be the case in 2025

The optimists outnumber the pessimists in this year’s survey, as they always do. Indies are generally an upbeat and resourceful bunch, even in the face of a stagnant economy and some unfathomable political decisions that will only add to cost pressures in 2025.

That said, pessimism is in greater supply than at any time in the survey’s 12-year history, as the graph below illustrates, with almost a quarter of respondents resigned to falling sales in the coming 12 months.

Almost a third of indies are already in that position, reporting declining revenues in 2025, as the graph opposite reveals, though just over half say that sales were up. With inflation and duty to factor in, an increase in revenue may only have been enough to keep pace with rising outgoings.

This year’s headwinds include duty, NI and business rate increases. Indies will be hoping for no surprises on top of these, in an uncertain economic environment.

“The economy seems stale, and spending has dropped back with a shift down. With the duty rises more of my customers will economise in the supermarkets, which will minimise the chance of growth.”

Bruce Evans, Grape & Grain, Crediton

“I feel there is a trend towards sobriety in the UK, which I am all for. That being said, I also see a trend towards more thoughtful wine choices, whether it be for organic, biodynamic and the like or for better quality wine overall.”

Halle Stephens (pictured right), Vindinista, west London

“I have growth in sales, but it is very much down to organising events and keeping in touch with the industry for support, and developing the range to interest regular guests.”

Les Fry, Vesuvio, Darlington

How optimistic are you about sales growth this year?

“Footfall has been steadily reducing since the heady heights of the pandemic, and there is a strong sense of customers being more wary of spending money, and reverting to buying inexpensive day-to-day wines from the multiples. It has become increasingly difficult for qualityfocused independents to offer very much below the £15 bracket, and almost impossible sub-£10, whilst the multiples, with their buying/shipping power and narrow margins still seem still to thrive in this category. Responses to email offers in the past year or so have been very poor in comparison with the pre-pandemic era, even where the offer has been notably attractive and interesting.”

Toby Webster, The Black Dog Wine Company, Epping, Essex

“We’d like to think that consumer confidence will return to the market, but other factors may well get in the way of growth including duty rises, PAYE increases, fewer domestic tourists, living wage increases and general inflationary pressure on people’s spending power.”

Derek Crookes, Kernowine, Falmouth

“Challenges also represent opportunities, so there is plenty to be proactive about. There are obvious wins that have come up before – more date nights at home, drinking less but better, offering better drink-in value than a pub/bar/restaurant for us hybrids. Above all, we can really show off the USPs of shopping at a wine specialist: the ability to offer customers samples, advice and, therefore, reassurance that their money is well spent when there’s less of it to go around.”

Based on 228 responses

Nat Carpentier, Dalling & Co, Kings Langley, Herts

You can still get the wines you want –if you plan ahead, argue some merchants

How are your sales compared to a year ago?

“It’s all a bit Newtonian at the moment. For every positive action we make to take things forward, the government seems to put something equally negative in the way to drag us backward. But with rising footfall in our stores, albeit with smaller basket totals, there’s good reason to be optimistic.”

Paul Auty, Ake & Humphris, Harrogate

“As wine becomes more expensive our customer base gets smaller, so it will now be a matter of focusing on the (older) people who do come in still and hoping they continue to spend good money on good wine and, of course, good service. I need to tempt younger customers into the shop but they don’t seem to have the time for tastings or shopping. What are they so busy doing, I wonder?”

Based on 215 responses

“Due to the economic pressures because of Brexit and the crazy new duty system, I believe the new government has a huge uphill struggle that will take more than the coming year to resolve. So people will look to make cutbacks on the little luxuries of life, wine being one of them. It’s going to be a tough year!”

David Lawson, Chez Vin, Otley

Charlotte Dean, Wined Up Here, west London

“The coming year does have many challenges for the business as a whole, but we have developed a strong range of products and now have a very experienced team to maximise selling these. The external pressures enacted by the budget will cause a reduction in spend or bottles sold overall. But the premium sector for wine retail, which encompasses high-end service, will still remain.”

John Chapman, The Oxford Wine Company

“Since I started this business 24 years ago I have steered it through several recessions, Brexit and multiple plagues. However, Labour’s first budget, which compounded the Tories’ already punitive policies, will make 2025 one of the most challenging years yet. In a tough retail market it will hurt us directly through a 140% rise in payable business rates as well as a bump in NI. But the biggest issue is that it has tipped the balance for a few of our weaker trade accounts, so cafes/pubs and even two, possibly three, local schools that we supply will close.”

Rupert Pritchett,

Taurus Wines, Surrey

“I foresee a significant proportion of the sales growth coming from price and duty increases. Our focus will be on increasing margin.”

Christopher Sherwood, Bottle Apostle, London

“We’re picking up an underlying trend of optimism amongst a good number of our private customers. We have been selling less entrypoint wine and more higher quality, individual and artisan wines. We are taking on two extra members of staff to bolster our team.”

Christopher Piper, Christopher Piper Wines, Ottery St Mary, Devon

“Whilst we expect sales growth this year. I don’t expect it to be a bumper year with the economic headwinds still carrying through from previous years. I see the potential for some positivity for interest rate cuts, which could potentially lead to slightly better consumer confidence.”

Phil Innes, Loki Wines, Birmingham

“There’s no doubt that it’s going to be a tough year. It will be harder to achieve increased sales over the next 12 months, and even harder to increase profits with the variety of increased costs coming down the line. However, I still think that it’s achievable, but it will take a lot of hard work, need some difficult decisions and some bold moves that maybe push us out of our comfort zone.”

Alex Edwards, York Wines, Sheriff Hutton

“We have been increasing every year for 16 years so it may stop eventually but, happily, no sign of that yet. Still surprises me!”

David Perry, Shaftesbury Wines, Dorset

“In spite of the efforts of successive governments to derail our industry I’m feeling worryingly upbeat. Really can’t understand why.”

Chris Connolly, Connollys, Birmingham

Keeping the doors open

Walk-in trade still accounts for half of sales, while wholesaling edges up

These may be uncertain times for independent retailers. But if we’re looking for reassuring signs of stability, the graph below paints a picture of an industry which seems increasingly sure of where its revenue is coming from. It looks like things could be levelling off a little and there is increasing stability in the way revenue streams break down.

Walk-in trade represents about half of indies’ revenue. Those who have been in business for a while will know this is a long way off what we used to expect (even within the 12-year history of our survey, the figure has hit 70%). But, as we speculated last year, a settled pattern seems to have emerged, and 50% seems a sensible figure on which to base a business plan.

Wholesaling has hit its highest level for six years, at 18.2%, continuing a gentle upward trend that has been evident since

Covid. Many indies remain cautious about exposing themselves to too much risk at a time when the hospitality sector is under intense pressure: wholesaling is a lowmargin business and just one bad debt can be enough to wipe out months of profitable trade. But if the current trend continues, maybe we could eventually return to the 22% figure recorded in 2015.

For some merchants, drink-in sales and online retailing are a more attractive bet, but these channels have failed to grow their share of indie trade for a few years now. We often speculate about ecommerce contributing 10% to independents’ coffers, as it briefly did during Covid, but that possibility seems to be receding.

Ticketed events directly contribute 4.3% of revenue – exactly what we saw in 2024 – but may indirectly boost walk-in, drink-in and online sales too.

How do revenue streams break down?

Graph simplified with not all categories shown

Based on 201 responses

Based on 192 responses

Boring charts can be interesting. Take a look at the graph of average margins at the top of this page: there’s something almost beautiful about the way the way the green, blue and grey X-axes flatline between 2019 and 2025.

It shows, as might be expected, that average margins on retail, online and wholesale sales don’t really move very much over time. The fact that our survey reflects this, year after year, is one of the reasons why we have faith in the numbers that merchants share with us in response to all our questions. If we saw a big fluctuation, we’d be doubting the data.

The second chart paints a more worrying picture. Many indies we speak to have been talking about a reduction in customers’ basket spends for some time. The 2025 survey results back this up, with an annual fall from £53.38 to £52.32 – even though, as we report on the opposite page, average bottle prices have risen quite markedly.

Last year’s survey revealed that average bottle prices in indies had only moved by 8p, a drop in the ocean in the face of soaring inflation, rising costs and a 44p duty increase.

So independents had some catching up to do, and it’s not a big shock to see average prices rising by £1.13 this time, a 7.2% jump on the 2024 survey figure.

Of course, duty and inflation have risen again in the past 12 months. Still wine duty went up by 2.7% in September, and year-end inflation was running at 2.9%. So that eats further into that additional £1.13, meaning it’s unlikely that much, if any, of the extra money going through the tills is ending up in indies’ pockets.

As always, there are other supply-chain inflationary pressures to factor in, too, whether these are driven by short vintages, higher labour and dry goods costs or shipping and import complications. These problems are by no means universal, but it would have been rare in 2024 to find a wine that hadn’t been adversely impacted by at least one of those issues.

The new average bottle price for indies is £16.91. The Office for National Statistics says the average UK price for a bottle of red wine is £7.61 (white is not recorded).

Hold the front page: wine merchants specialise in wine. Though not, according to our figures, quite as much as they did a year ago.

In the 2024 survey, wine accounted for 77% of indies’ turnover, the highest figure we’ve recorded. This time it’s back down to 74%, exactly where it was in 2023. It’s fair to say that, broadly speaking, wine makes up threequarters of sales in the independent trade.

Our pie chart is pretty much identical to the one we published a year ago, with a couple of very subtle exceptions. Spirits hasn’t quite climbed back above the 10% mark, where we tended to see the category until three years ago, but it’s up to 9.4% from 8.3% last time.

Food is the other growth category, up to 6.2% from 5.3% last time: level pegging with beer.

You want an average bottle of wine? That’ll be £16.91, please

Average still wine bottle selling price

Based on 192 responses

How much of your turnover comes from these categories?

Based on 201 responses

Figures have been rounded

Which countries or regions do you find most interesting?

6

7

8

17

Respondents were allowed unlimited choices, all of which were given equal weighting

Can we expect store numbers to increase in 2025?

Italy’s back at the

Some countries fascinate independent merchants with the diversity of their wine offer. Others are huge commercial successes. Italy ticks both boxes, which is why it tops our two league tables this year.

Just over half of indies name Italy as one of the most interesting destinations for wine, and three-quarters say it’s among their three best-selling countries of origin.

The graph has been simplified to combine respondents who describe each of the three scenarios as either “very likely” or “fairly likely”.

We also asked about staff. 6% of respondents say they are very likely to take on additional employees in the coming year, with 24% saying this is fairly likely. 3% say that reducing staff numbers is very likely, and 7% say it is fairly likely.

When we suggested the possibility of diversifying into new areas beyond drinks, 3% say this is very likely, while 6% say it is fairly likely.

Based on 185 responses

Which countries or regions are your biggest sellers?

(2024 in brackets)

Portugal, which led the way in last year’s “most interesting” table, saw a slight slip in its share of the votes this time. But it can console itself by glancing at the table of best-selling countries, where it has climbed two places to seventh with an increased vote share.

As in previous surveys, we’ve divided France into its constituent regions but also allowed respondents to select “most or all regions” of the country or “other regional”.

Admittedly, this system has its flaws, and it could be argued that if we restricted the option just to “France” then both tables would have a different leader.

But our policy does at least allow us to take stock of how French regions are performing, and once again LanguedocRoussillon picks up more votes than any other in terms of its interest to indies, and its commercial contribution.

The Loire and the Rhône are the next two most exciting regions from an indie perspective, but in the commercial table they trail the heavyweights of Bordeaux and Burgundy, which this year are neck and neck for the first time, thanks to a surge in votes for Burgundy (its tally has more than doubled) and a dip for Bordeaux.

Respondents were allowed up to three choices, all of which were given equal weighting

Much of the first chart bears a similarity to last year’s table, with one notable exception. Georgia, which has for several years been picking up a handful of votes, has exploded into this year’s top 10, with almost a quarter of respondents naming it among the countries that they find most interesting. Georgia also makes its debut in the commercial top 20, admittedly with less than 1% of the votes, but importers will be encouraged to see that their efforts are beginning to pay off.

New Zealand, which slipped out of the table of most interesting wine countries in the 2024 survey, is absent again this time after falling short by just two votes (tied with Bulgaria and Lebanon). Champagne

% of respondents

also missed the cut after seeing its voting fall from 12% to 8.3%.

But the Kiwis remain a top 10 player in terms of their commercial value to indies, with a share of the vote that is only very slightly down on last year.

England & Wales combined saw its share of the vote slide in both charts, and producers will be disappointed not to have made more headway in the independent trade after some solid performances in recent years.

Maybe it was inevitable that retailer enthusiasm would calm down after so much excitement and fanfare over the past decade. But the industry will be hoping it hasn’t reached its mature phase just yet.

Vineyards near Etna, Sicily

What makes a good supplier …

We asked our survey respondents what impresses them about their favourite companies

“It’s quite simple really. Be present and proactive. It’s not necessarily about offers and pricing – although these things help. It’s about being in contact, understanding my business and offering me wines that align with what I’m doing. Anna at Hatch Mansfield is a great example of this: regular emails, regular visits at convenient times, and wines for me to taste that are new/ exciting/on offer that she knows I and my customers will enjoy and work well in my business. She works with me to put an order together, is transparent and communicative with delivery times, and basically delivers what she has promised. I have often taken on new suppliers purely because a trusted rep has moved business.”

Gemma Welden, The Jolly Vintner, Tiverton

“Values aligned through head, shoulders, knees and toes. Business people not sales people, so they understand what we do to grow our business and can dovetail in. Customer trips and education are becoming more important for us than generic tastings.”

Douglas Wood, WoodWinters, Bridge of Allan

“It’s all about the best quality at the right price. Most use LCB so delivery is not a factor. A good relationship with the rep is a bonus. Payment terms and minimum order quantities are also a big factor.”

Barnaby Smith, GrapeSmith, Hungerford

“Small order values have become increasingly important for me. Great account managers who never try to be pushy: they understand the needs of my business and support me above and beyond what can be expected. Most importantly they are great people who I enjoy chatting with.”

Sarah Truman, Sarah’s Cellar, Battle, East Sussex

“First up I look for supportive and proactive account managers who truly take the time to understand my business, make the effort to stay in touch, get what will work here and how I operate. The quality of the wines is obviously key – as is a balanced portfolio which offers not just premium wines but great value wines in the pricing sweet spot. Finally, reliability –great customer service, availability of lines, doing what they say they will do – is absolutely critical.”

Al Wighton, Alteus Wines, Crowborough, East Sussex

“The best suppliers are those who offer promotions and support for bespoke promotional activity. We like to host dinners and appreciate suppliers who are proactive in arranging these. When mistakes are made, it is also important and appreciated when these are corrected immediately.”

“If coming to visit, bring samples, new things, old things we overlooked – or cake. The best suppliers know our business and what we can and can’t sell.”

Jefferson Boss, Starmore Boss, Sheffield

Anne Harrison, Wine Down, Douglas

“Honesty and transparency in the wines they stock. Do their values align with our own? Do we trust their wines and are producers truly working ecologically and naturally – or are they just greenwashers?”

Alex Fitton, Pullo, Exeter

“We are looking to reduce the number of suppliers we work with this year. The criteria for us is support in terms of samples for tastings, or whether they come to host tastings themselves. I have to say that a number of my suppliers do really help us with this and make the long trip up despite us being their most northerly outpost. Minimum quantity orders and credit terms are hugely important too.”

Mark Stephenson Grape & Grain, Morpeth

“Cheerful efficiency, good taste, attention to detail and a sense of humour.”

Sam Jary, Black Hand Wine, Penrith

“It’s not much to ask: the wines delivered as ordered – the right wines, in the right quantity, the correct vintage – and an invoice to match the prices agreed at the time of order.”

Simon Taylor, Stone Vine & Sun, Twyford

“An interesting, varied and reasonably extensive list is essential. For small independent merchants such as us, we need to purchase a number of wines from any one supplier to build volume and ensure we are hitting the best purchase prices possible. Willingness to offer local exclusivity within a decent radius is appreciated, and not offering the same wines to larger multiples is essential. A keeness to work with us on promotions is also important. Finally, as we’re very rare trade tasting visitors, it’s very important that suppliers are forthcoming with sample bottles when requested.”

George Unwin, Baythorne Wines, Halstead, Essex

… and what makes a bad one

Are cold-calling reps with no understanding of their prospective customers still a thing? Why, yes they are

“Stock issues, and the perennial lack of information on vintage changes –we generally only find out when the wine arrives, which is really not good enough. Liberty are probably the best at managing this, most are terrible, which in turn makes our service look poor. Suppliers who sell to anyone and don’t care: online discounters working off ridiculous margins are the absolute bane of our life. Selling to The Wine Society and/or multiples but not letting us know is absolutely ridiculous.”

Noel Young, NY Wines, Cambridge

“Arriving unannounced on site expecting meetings. Insisting on minimum orders being hit when they do not have all the stock we ordered.”

Peter Fawcett, Field & Fawcett, York

“I’ve always been somewhat irritated at reps arriving unbidden at the door, though I always try to be polite. A phone call or an email to see if I’m available is all it takes.”

Toby Webster, The Black Dog Wine Company, Epping, Essex

“Cold calling from sales reps with little or no prior research into the types of wines we sell or how our business operates.”

Sarah Helliwell, The Stores in Frome, Somerset

“Not being informed of products that are out of stock when the order is being placed is incredibly frustrating. If I’m told something is missing I’ll order something else to fill the gap. We both lose when there is no communication.”

Nat Carpentier, Dalling & Co, Kings Langley, Herts

“We’ve received chasing emails before the month end and been asked to pay down one invoice before it’s due, so that we can place additional orders.”

Norfolk merchant

“Increased minimum order quantities, no support from the rep. Reps cancelling ticketed events two days before the event.”

North London merchant

“In 2024 there was a clash of dates with three suppliers having tastings on the same day in London. That may sound perfect for those travelling from other parts of the country but realistically my palate would have been battered by the time I got to the third tasting. Hence I had to choose who to drop.”

Nish Patel.

Shenfield Wines, Essex

“It’s the usual: reps that walk in without an appointment who ‘just happened to be in the area’ and then ask for more info about the business. Do your homework on us or bugger off.”

Matt Smith, Quaff Fine Wine, Brighton

“There are a small number of suppliers that just don’t seem to have a handle on prompt and correct invoicing. We pay promptly and properly but it’s sometimes hard to do so without proper paperwork. It wastes more time than many might think.”

Rob Hoult, Hoults, Huddersfield

“Sexist comments, not responding to emails, and not letting us know about vintage changes of wines that we have made efforts to get reviewed and promoted in local and national publications.”

Hertfordshire merchant

“Reps selling the exact same lines to very local wine shops after agreeing not to. Not updating their ordering processes. Sometimes it’s like pot luck when you place an order via email as you have no idea what they have in stock until it arrives.”

Jamie Lymer, Givino, Frome, Somerset

“Wrong wine, wrong vintage, wrong price and Waitrose list it. Other than that, perfect”

Which suppliers do indies most like working with?

Boutinot has extended its lead at the top of this year’s table, winning votes from almost a third of our respondents.

The company has topped the popularity poll ever since the survey began and, as always, it’s Liberty Wines picking up the silver medal. Hatch Mansfield and Alliance Wine – the other familar names in the upper reaches of the chart – exchange places this year, with Hatch edging into third place by a single vote.

Every year we see some new entries in our top 20, but rarely inside the Top 10. That makes Cachet Wines’ joint sixth place all the more remarkable. Part of the House of Townend family, the company has been diligently building up its indie customer base in recent times, and its wines achieved some impressive results in the 2024 Wine Merchant Top 100 competition.

Respondents were allowed up to three choices, all of which were unprompted and given equal weighting

Based on 184 responses

What do indies think about their suppliers?

Based on 189 responses

It’s interesting to note that, for the second year in a row, the number of suppliers nominated by indies has fallen. This year 118 suppliers received votes, down from 130 last year and 147 in 2023. As our chart below shows, satisfaction with suppliers is slightly down on 2024 and 2023 levels – so maybe that explains why the voting is now more concentrated among a select band of businesses.

Supplier satisfaction remains high among indies, even though the 72% approval rating is down on the 77% we recorded last year and the 78% the year before that.

The proportion saying their relationship with reps is good is unchanged at 84%.

The number of indies who think it’s likely their supplier base will increase this year has fallen from 34% to 28%.

It’s probably no big surprise to see indies finding it slightly harder these days to source wines they can sell for below £15. But the figures haven’t moved as much as might have been expected. Just like last year, 37% say it’s problematic to find wines at that level, with 52% saying it’s not too difficult to do, compared to 56% last year.

Could this be wine on tap’s breakthrough year?

The number of indies selling draught wine has trebled over the past five years, and food sales are up too

Last year, only 9% of independents said they offered wine on draught – but 16% said it was “possibly” going to happen in the coming year. Quite a few of those respondents must have decided to push ahead with the idea, because the figure has leapt to 15% this time.

That’s three times the figure that we recorded in the 2020 survey. After years of false dawns – and, frankly, indifference from the majority of the trade – it seems that wine on draught has finally gained a toehold in the independent market.

We always ask about attitudes to Enomatics and similar dispense devices, and this year’s responses are broadly similar to what we’ve come to expect over the years – though the proportion who express negativity towards the concept has risen markedly, from 59% to 70%.

More and more indies are now serving food for consumption on the premises, which is probably no surprise given that around half of them now operate as hybrids (see pages 26-27). Just over a third of independents are now offering some sort of food option, whether that’s a cheese platter or a cooked meal, up from about a quarter in the surveys we conducted at the start of the decade.

Enthusiasm for educational programmes for customers has faded a little in this year’s results. Last year 21% said they offered some sort of wine education, a figure that dips to 18% this time, with the proportion saying such activity was possibly or definitely being planned falling from 33% to 23%.

The proportion of indies who organise an off-site Christmas fair is down very slightly from 32% to 30%. The number of indies expressing negativity about such events has risen from 19% last year to 32%.

What extra services and activities are on the 2025 agenda?

Based on 184 responses

Most indies remain sceptical, but draught wine is now offered by more merchants than ever

Half of indies are now hybrids

On-premise sales are now offered by a record number of merchants. But it’s not a model that works for all

Many observers predicted that, at some point, the majority of independent merchants would be operating as hybrids, with a blend of on and off-trade sales.

That moment has not quite arrived, but we came close in this year’s survey, as the graph below illustrates. Just under half of all indies now sell wine for on-premise consumption, and the data suggests the numbers will increase. About 9% of indies are considering offering drinking-in as an option for the first time, and only about 2% are talking about returning to pure retail.

The proportion of indies who have no interest in the hybrid model remains fairly entrenched. The reasons they give are often practical – perhaps they just don’t have space, or there are licensing complications. For others, it means deviating from their business model into a world of longer hours, staffing aggravation and less focus on the core retail trade.

And yet, for hundreds of independents, being a hybrid is reaping dividends, and in many cases represents the difference between closure and survival.

“We’d struggle to make a living without it,” admits Simon Cocks, of Once Upon a Vine in Horsforth. “We’d survive, but it wouldn’t be viable realistically.”

A south coast merchant who asked to stay anonymous adds: “It’s meant huge amounts of extra work, but I feel if we hadn’t done it, we would have been forced to shut the door.

“Off-sales had been extremely poor for 12 months. Supermarkets have been the main reason. The new model is working well, bringing in lots of new faces.”

Sarah Helliwell, of The Frome Stores, Somerset, says: “Drink-in is a really important part of the business. It only accounts for 20% of revenue but also dramatically helps with retail sales as it offers customers another route into

Do you sell wine for consumption on the premises?

Based on 192 responses

discovering us and tasting the wines which we sell; often customers take away a bottle of the wine they have been drinking. We change the wines by the glass whenever we finish a bottle, allowing customers to try the maximum range from the shelves.”

It’s a point echoed by Greg Andrews, of D Vine Cellars in Clapham.

“Aside from the direct revenue from on-premise sales, it also provides a perfect avenue for consumers to try before they buy,” he says. “The fact that you have eight wines open gives you the opportunity to gauge a customer’s tastes with a small sample. It really helps sales.”

Julie Irvine-Mills, of Vinomondo in Conwy, adds: “A hybrid model gives you the opportunity to influence customers’ purchases towards more obscure wines, and hand-sell wines that really need to be tasted. It allows people to pass through your shop and become familiar with the feel and range on offer on their way to a drink in your on-sales areas.”

Sarah Truman of Sarah’s Cellar in Battle, East Sussex, describes on-premise sales as “a huge growth area over the year”. She adds: “We started at the end of 2023 and it has taken a while for us to find our audience. But now we have a fantastic regular clientele, and a space for events which works. This is expected to grow for us this year.

“There are lots of positives: higher margins, the opportunity to upsell, new customers. But the number of extra hours required is exhausting.”

Some indies who operate as hybrids have some words of caution for others who are considering taking the plunge.

Many indies say on-premise sales also boost retail revenue

Phil Innes, of Loki Wine in Birmingham, is among them. “If you had asked me five years ago, I would have said that the hybrid model was absolutely essential for a wine business,” he says.

“However, with the increase in staff costs due to minimum wage and NI increases, the maths is starting not to make as much sense. I still feel that the hybrid model is worth doing, but the economics of it make it far less profitable.”

Melina Cucchiara, of Moreton Wine Merchants in Gloucestershire, warns: “Expect waste, expect malfunctions and mis-pouring of wines; expect to be open and working longer hours, expect the wage bill to increase. Then revisit your figures and tweak them.”

Some merchants operate a halfway house model, with on-premise drinking confined to specific times or occasions.

For Ake & Humphris in Harrogate, this has taken the form of pop-ups, as Paul Auty explains.

“In 2024 we dipped our toes in hybrid waters and discovered it’s warm,” he reports. “We plan to fully immerse in 2025 – and even swim.”

Duncan Murray of Duncan Murray Wines in Market Harborough scaled back his on-site wine bar concept a few years ago.

“Having our pop-ups definitely helps sell a few more bottles,” he says. “For us it’s a no-brainer.”

Iain Smith of Smith’s Wines in Exeter adds: “Our licence stipulation is that alcohol can be served for consumption on the premises only if accompanied by a substantial plate of food, which suits me.”

For a large swathe of independents, the hybrid model is not an attractive option. As Tariq Mahmood, of Wine Raks in Aberdeen points out: “In Scotland local authorities are not as sympathetic as in England to the hybrid model, and there too many legal hoops to comply with.”

One southern merchant, who has drastically scaled down on-premise drinking after Enomatic machines were damaged, says: “We don’t miss the waste, the hassle of cleaning and maintenance and the longer hours. We really just want to focus on people buying their wines and taking them away.”

Alex Edwards, of York Wines in Sheriff Hutton, explains why she quickly abandoned her hybrid plan. “We offered this option last year, and the first group of customers that came in to drink on site refused to pay corkage and asked for a discount – so I stopped it there and then,” she says.

“They said that it was like them charging for me to drink in their garden.”

A Hampshire merchant admits she is “getting too old for the hybrid model” and “can’t be arsed to work all those evenings”. So, she says, “although it will continue, it’ll be about attracting the weekend day drinkers”.

Rob Hoult, of Hoults in Huddersfield, is happy to stick to what he does best.

“As staff costs continue to grow in a fashion that doesn’t appear to be supported by inflation in selling price, something has to give,” he says. “Either service levels or margin.

“The old-fashioned shopkeeper is suddenly a more attractive proposition. Our incredibly low staff costs, and running costs in general, allow us to be more aggressive and dynamic in our retailing approach. Plus, and much more importantly, it allows us to make a very healthy amount of profit.”

Average corkage fee £9.89

Lowest: £4

Highest: £20

Most popular answer: £10

Based on 82 responses

It’s all a matter of taste

Four in 10 indies attended fewer tastings in 2024; two in 10 went to more

Organisers of trade tastings have found life rather stressful in recent times, with attendances fluctuating quite wildly and many events struggling to attract as many indies as they would like. Our survey explains, at least to some extent, why that should be the case. Merchants are less keen on most types of trade tasting than they were a year ago,

and many say that the costs often outweigh the benefits. But there’s still a rump of support for most types of tasting event, both inside and outside of London.

Last year 19% of respondents said they were positive about the London Wine Fair, a figure that comes in at 20% this time. Wine Paris, a show that many feel will displace Prowein, achieves a 21% rating.

“We are in Devon and cannot afford the time or money for trips to London. We are generally not very interested in trade tastings at all. If we want to try some new wines our suppliers are usually very obliging once a relationship is established.”

Alan Norchi, Orlando’s, Plymouth

“After some disastrously busy portfolio tastings last year I do hope some of the suppliers have learned lessons –although the one I actually complained about doesn’t seem to give a shit about my opinion as I am ‘not their core business’.”

Cat Brandwood, Toscanaccio, Winchester

How enthusiastic are you about various types of trade tastings?

Last year’s figure in brackets. We did not collect data for Prowein, Wine Paris or Vinitaly in 2024

Based on 189 responses

“I enjoy tastings. It is one of the perks of the job. Last year by visiting tastings I met a new supplier who is now one of my biggest in terms of volume and sales. I also managed to meet with reps and winemakers who eventually came to host events for us, which turned out to be very successful. The money made from those dwarfed the costs of travel etc spent to attend. So they’ve been a good investment for us.”

Mark Stephenson, Grape & Grain, Morpeth

“Wine tastings are an important way to help keep up with trends. More importantly it’s a great way to find gems you may never otherwise discover. Trade tastings are time consuming so I’m selective as to which tastings I attend. More and more I’m only attending supplier tastings rather than generic tastings. I don’t need any new suppliers so there’s very little point tasting wines being offered by suppliers we don’t work with.”

Nish Patel, Shenfield Wines, Essex

“I have visited the London Wine Fair religiously for 40 years, normally for two days. It is now a complete waste of time. It has always been at the wrong time of year, but the fact that they now want to charge me to go to a substandard tasting defies belief.”

Francis Peel, Whitebridge Wines, Stone, Staffordshire

“We are fairly comfortable with the diversity of our wine list and producers we have used. New wines come mainly from new agencies that we take on through country visits and the larger global wine fairs.”

Douglas Wood, WoodWinters, Bridge of Allan

“Tastings are the only way to get to see wine from outside your current sphere. Generic tastings and the big fairs are vital for looking at what else is out there and what may be the next big thing for your store.”

John Chapman, Oxford Wine Co

“Multi-supplier tastings are the most useful for us, as the travel is expensive and there is normally a bias to the new arrivals which are the most interesting.”

Bruce Evans, Grape & Grain, Crediton

“Being located in North Yorkshire and at least half an hour from a train station makes attending any tasting event anywhere difficult. Time is another factor as it would normally involve a full day away or even an overnight stay. I therefore probably only attend one or maybe two events a year.”

North Yorkshire merchant

“We are in the Midlands and would prefer something in Birmingham.”

Paul Boatright-Greene, Paul’s of Pershore, Worcestershire

“Trade tastings are useful for us to a point, but it does demand effort and cost on our part. Quite often there are only a few listings to come out of a tasting so it isn’t always the best use of time and money. Supplier visits to our premises and inhouse tastings with all the staff present can be much more productive.”

Jonathan Charles (pictured), Dorset Wine Company, Dorchester

“Train tickets have increased in price so much that if you want to take your team to London, the staff cost for the time is prohibitive compared to the benefit. I have been quite vocal about the fact that suppliers need to get behind the London Wine Fair, as it should be the perfect event for people from outside London to see many wines from multiple suppliers all under one roof.”

Phil Innes, Loki Wine, Birmingham

“More regional tastings are a must in the industry, especially if you’re based far from London as we are. And multiple suppliers outside London in one room is even better. However, you can’t beat the breadth of wine shown at a London tasting, so we do go to some of those despite the distance.”

How many trade tastings did you go to in 2024, versus 2023?

Based on 184 responses

“The cost of attending tastings does mean one has to evaluate whether one will find new wines to take on board. However a benefit is to catch up with producers and get up to date with new and recent vintages.”

Andrew Hill, George Hill, Loughborough

“London tastings are always a bun fight and you need sharp elbows to get to a lot of the wines you are keen to try. I prefer to select 12-24 samples I want to try from a supplier so we can try them in the shop with staff. The London Wine Fair was fairly limited in its offering – except for the Wine Merchant Top 100 – so it is not something we would look to go back to any time soon. The smaller tastings outside of London are worth attending as you can be more focused. Although the last SITT we attended was more like a fish market with everyone hollering to catch your attention!”

Midlands merchant

“For us, the days of spending lots of our time at tastings are long gone. Our time is precious and we need to focus on tastings that are worthwhile for us. A lot of companies seem to think that all they need to do is to put a tasting on, and people will automatically come – but in reality, they need to give us a good reason.”

Derek Crookes, Kernowine, Falmouth

Marc Hough (pictured), Cork of the North, Manchester

Rising Stars

Andy and Vic Trudgill, owners of Gills & Co, are keen to celebrate the “Co” part of their business. As a hybrid shop, bar and restaurant they need people with great hospitality skills and as Vic explains, Patrycja more than fits the bill.

“Pat joined us in September 2023,” says Vic. “Initially she was part-time but very quickly she took on a leading role within the business. She now runs the full front end within our business from a service perspective.

“Pat demonstrates so much passion for the world of wine, especially when she’s talking to customers, whether through recommending a wine, talking about a personal experience or hosting our weekly wine tastings.”

Although Pat joined Gills & Co with a decade of hospitality experience under her belt, she didn’t know much about wine. “My wine knowledge extended to white, red, rosé and sparkling,” she says. “I didn’t really know much beyond that.”

Since passing her WSET Level 2, she’s preparing to sit Level 3, which Vic is confident Pat will “pass with flying colours”. Vic continues: “She is an absolute asset to our team and we’re hoping she grows within our business and beyond. We can’t wait to see where her career goes from here.”

While Pat waits for her next WSET course to start, her knowledge continues to grow naturally. “I have now taken on more responsibilities in doing most of the tastings that we host. We host two tastings at least per week, and they are quite detailed, so I’ll do some solid research. It’s a lot of reading and learning but I love it and it’s such a satisfying part of my job,” she says.

“I absolutely remember the wine that changed my life. It was the Rolly Gassmann Gewürztraminer 2009. It was exciting. The fact that I got to research it, then open the bottle and taste it … it was awesome and I’ll remember that forever.

“When I discovered wine, it was such a new and exciting world, and I’m definitely hooked. My knowledge is still quite basic but I feel that’s a really good place to be because there’s so much out there to discover and so much more to learn.

“At the moment we’ve got a Chinese producer whose

wine sells really well. It’s one of those things that I just love to champion. I like letting customers try something without telling them what it is, then talking with them about what they’ve tasted and seeing that reaction.”

Pat expects to be the “Co” for many years to come as she describes Gills & Co as “the most wholesome and healthy workplace” she’s experienced. “I absolutely love it here,” she says. “We work hard together, but we also enjoy the fruits of our labours together. We’re very close and have a great dynamic. I value it so much.”

Pat wins a bottle of Klein Constantia Perdeblokke Sauvignon Blanc courtesy of Mentzendorff

If you’d like to nominate a Rising Star, email claire@winemerchantmag.com

In a nutshell: Holding a regular business networking event can broaden your own local profile as well as keeping things bustling on an otherwise quiet and more off-peak time of the week.

Tell us more: “I’m part of BNI (Business Networking International) and those guys are always keen to get socials going. I realised there are lots of people who aren’t interested in structured, more formal networking events, so I wanted to create something where people just turn up and have a drink and network but without having to stand up and do 60 seconds or whatever. It’s started to take off. Last summer we had 30-plus people having drinks in the garden and talking business, meeting new people.”

How frequently do you hold them?

“Every third Tuesday of the month we say, just turn up between 6pm to 8pm. There’s going to be people here to mingle with. Bring your partners if you want. Come with family, friends, whatever. But we’re here to talk business and just make some connections. It gives people that opportunity just to socialise or associate with people that perhaps they wouldn’t usually come across. Additionally, it’s helped us with what would have been a quiet Tuesday evening.”

Is it a ticketed event? “No, it’s free. We also provide aperitivo, which regardless of

the networking event is free for everyone between 5pm and 7pm. Food can get wasted in a bar, no matter how good your stock rotation is, so this puts it to good use. A lot of people come straight from work for the networking, so it’s nice to provide some little bites along with the drinks.”

Do you sell many drinks? “Even though we launched as a wine bar, we’ve got three beers and a cider on tap. We’ve got a good spirits range as well as soft drinks. People are keen to come to us for the networking, but quite a lot of the time they are enjoying a glass of wine and we’re obviously encouraging people to try new things.”

Have you witnessed any sweet deals as a

Nick Robinson, Kilo Wines

Loughborough

result of all this networking? “What I’m finding is that if people know about local business, they’re much more inclined to use local business. I joined my networking group in the first place with the hope of driving our corporate gifting and now every time I go, I’ve got half a dozen cases of wine in the car for those guys. They’ve bought into our ethos, and now appreciate the better quality, which has been great.

“Last Christmas we did so much more corporate gifting and I would say probably 60%, 70% of it came through that network in one way or another. The network evenings we run have been more about supporting and giving opportunities for local businesses, but it has worked in our favour at the same time.”

Nick wins a WBC gift box containing some premium drinks and a box of chocolates.

Tell us about a bright idea that’s worked for you and you too could win a prize.

Email claire@winemerchantmag.com

The business community meets on the third Tuesday of each month

Favourite Things

KELLI COXHEAD

The Wine Shop, Winscombe

Favourite wine on my list

My favourite wine to enjoy over the weekend at this time of year is Le Merle Blanc de Château Clarke. I’m a lover of full-textured, layered white wines and this has a delicious balance of fruit and integrated oak with a fab fresh finish. No food required, just a large glass to swirl, and a log burner

Favourite wine and food match Classic Champagne and fish and chips. I’m more than happy with our house Champagne, Jules Feraud, which is predominately Pinot Meunier – plump and fruity.

Favourite wine trip

This has to be a wine trip many years ago with Raymond Reynolds to the Douro Valley. I find the valley just breathtaking, and the work that goes into maintaining the vineyards is phenomenal. I later took a small group there and am often keen to tell people to visit the region.

Favourite wine trade person

Mark Perna from Astrum. We have worked with Mark for nearly as long as we have had the shop. I find he is easy to work with and a constant professional, along with being supportive of the events we host.

Favourite wine shop

I love Grape & Grind in Bristol. Darren is great and they have a fabulous selection of wines.

Confused by wine? Ask an AI assistant

Marks & Spencer has launched a new AI tool to help customers select their wine.

The Wine Finder device, developed in partnership with Preferabli, asks customers a short series of questions about their taste preferences before providing recommendations. It’s now available online for more than 500 stores and via in-store hubs in 20 M&S foodhalls across the UK.

Caroline Thompson-Hill, head of beers, wine and spirits at M&S Food, said: “We know wine can be a difficult category to shop and it’s important that we find new ways to support our customers when shopping our incredible range in store.

“By utilising AI, the Wine Finder tool helps encourage customers to try different regions, grapes and bottles they’ve not considered before.”

The Drinks Business, February 24

Italy toasts rise in wine exports

Despite a general downturn in global wine consumption in 2024, Italian wine exports showed positive growth, primarily driven by sparkling wines, especially Prosecco.

A Nomisma Wine Monitor report highlighted that sparkling wine exports from Italy grew by 4.8% in value across 12 key markets, accounting for over 60% of global wine imports, contrasting with an overall 5.1% decline in the market.

The US (+11%), Australia (+10%), and Canada (+9%) saw notable increases in Italian sparkling wine imports. European Supermarket Magazine, February 26

Mixed news for Spanish vignerons

Spain’s wine exports grew in value last year, but volumes fell, according to research body Observatorio Español del Mercado del Vino.

The value of Spain’s wine exports increased 1.4% to €2.98bn last year, although the rise came as volumes slid 5% to around 1.9 billion litres.

The figures mark “the second best year” for Spain in terms of the value of its wine exports, the OEMV said. The organisation also reported that the best year had been 2022, when the figure hit just over €3bn. Just Drinks, February 25

up but volumes fell

Four names join the MW ranks

Four members of the drinks trade have become Masters of Wine.

The first crop of MWs for 2025 are Jit Hang Jackie Ang (Singapore), Amanda Barnes (Argentina), Sarah Benson (UK) and Kathleen van den Berghe (Belgium).

The MW exam consists of three parts: the theory and practical exams taken at the end of stage two and the research paper submitted at the end of stage three.

The Drinks Business, February 24

Values were

? THE BURNING QUESTION Plumpton scheme aims for excellence

Plumpton College has announced the launch of the National Competency Framework.

The NCF is the result of a collaboration between the Sussex college, the Vintners’ Company and industry professionals.

Endorsed by Wine GB, the framework is designed to define essential competencies and skills crucial for effective employment across key sectors of the UK wine industry. By setting clear standards and pathways for progression, it aims to cater to diverse skill levels, from entry level to advanced principles across vineyard, winery, and cellar door practices, with the goal of promoting excellence and professionalism. Plumpton College, February 25

New Forest winery makes its debut

Beaulieu 58 Winery, located in the New Forest, has launched its debut range of still wines.

The winery was founded by Sandy Booth, who is an expert in sustainable farming and has decades of experience in fruit production. The wines have been made by Swiss winemaker Guillaume Lagger who has been part of the team since 2022. Bournemouth Echo, February 27

QUIZ TIME

Answers to questions on page 26

1. Alentejo

2. A black cockerel

3. Pinot Noir

4. Pfalz

5. Denbies in Dorking, Surrey

What’s

the most

rewarding thing about being a wine merchant?

�It’s so rewarding when I introduce a customer to a varietal they have never heard of and they come back saying they absolutely love it. One of our customers was set on Sauvignon Blanc with every visit to the shop. I asked if she would like to try something different one day and, after talking through her favourite flavours, offered up a gorgeous Vermentino. A week later, she came back and ordered a case. She had found her new favourite and broadened her wine horizons.”

Megan Lindop H Champagne winner H Krafty Fine Drinks, Kirkcaldy, Fife

�For me, it’s not just about selling expensive bottles or a lot of bottles. It’s about sharing my knowledge to help our customers and the team around me discover new wines. Especially when they return and tell you how much they enjoyed it. That is the most rewarding feeling out there.”

Arthur Lai Wine Hub, Exmouth, Devon

�Without a doubt the most rewarding thing for me is making customers happy. We had a lovely couple in last week who were visiting Hungerford from London. They asked for a recommendation as they felt they were stuck in a rut. Out of blue they called on Saturday, having returned home, and said how much they loved the recommendation, and could I send a fresh box of new recommendations to them this week. Fingers crossed I nail it again!”

Barnaby

Smith

GrapeSmith, Hungerford, Berkshire

�Apart from the obvious, which is the thrill of the constant search to find new and exciting wines, I am constantly blown away by the innovation in this industry. I recently took the team to Barcelona Wine Week where we tasted wines from vines grown on the beach in Alicante. The biggest reward I would say is sharing our passion with our customers. I love inviting our winemakers over to talk about their bodegas and the generation after generation of winemaking expertise.”

Jane Dowler Evuna, Knutsford, Cheshire

Champagne Gosset

The oldest wine house in Champagne: Äy 1584

DUNCAN MCLEAN

Northabout

What’s the best wine to drink on a jolting train journey? Let’s ask Postgate

At this time of year, I pore over the lists of existing and potential suppliers. If autumn is the season for stocking up on classics for Christmas, then spring is the time when reinvention seems possible, maybe even obligatory. New producers! New subregions!! New boots and Pinots!!! We carry out a thorough review of all the restaurant lists (can’t go too crazy there) and of our own shelves (shouldn’t go too crazy there, but usually do anyway – hello Uruguayan Marselan).

The paper research is followed by actually trying the darn stuff, at portfolio tastings – this year one in Edinburgh and several in London. That’s in the future, but for the moment, all I have to do is sift through the unfeasibly enthusiastic previews to try and work out what’s really worth sipping between the crowded trestle tables and the over-lipping spittoons.

All of us who write or talk about wine could do well to temper our enthusiasm sometimes. I find a good reminder of this is looking back at wine guides from a few decades ago. They’re an object lesson, not in the ignorance of our forebears, but that what is considered important changes over time.

I was thinking this today as I leafed through An Alphabet of Choosing & Serving

Wine, written by Raymond Postgate, and published in London in 1955. Postgate was one of that remarkable generation who, in the years after WWII, did so much to introduce at least the idea of good food and wine to our berationed country. While Elizabeth David was collecting and sharing authentic French recipes, and Gerald Asher was pioneering the import of such unknown quantities as Cahors and Bandol, Postgate was establishing The Good Food Guide, and publishing hundreds of thousands of words in magazines and books.

Some of his judgements hold up perfectly well. Who could argue with: “hermitage, the best of the Rhône valley wines, of which the reds, in a fine year, rank with a great burgundy. The wines are grown on a terraced slope above Tain, a town south of Lyons, and there is not much of them.” But then we step back in a time machine: “Hermitage is also the name taken by some Australian and Cape red wines, legitimately, since they are the produce of the Hermitage grape.” We’d all baulk at the idea of a Syrah from anywhere else but that terraced slope being called Hermitage. And we’d scratch our heads at the fact that Hermitage was once

considered a varietal as well as a place.

Grape names, in fact, are almost entirely absent from the book, in a way that seems like a bizarre omission of essential information to a 21st century reader: “pouilly, the name of two French white wines, rather similar in taste but widely apart in origin. The first, usually called Pouilly-Fuissé … is one of the best white burgundies. The second, Pouilly-Fumé, or ‘sur Loire’… is not a burgundy at all, though it is bottled in similar bottles.” Postgate was a highly erudite historian and gastronome, yet it seems he didn’t know that one Pouilly was made with Sauvignon Blanc and the other with Chardonnay. And it didn’t seem important to find out.

Other notes are testament to a bygone way of life that sounds rather appealing: “chateauneuf du pape, the most famous of Rhône wines … is almost unaffected by jolting and shaking, and thus is an excellent wine to order in railway dining cars.” His next comment on Châteauneuf will touch a nerve for anyone troubled by the recent increases in duty: “The wines are very strong (the minimum permissible is 12½ % of alcohol).”

There’s a lot about Germany, very little on Spain and Italy, and just a brief lament about Australia: “Australia is the hope and despair of the wine-drinker. The hope because nowhere else in the world is there so large an area in which good wine could be made; the despair, because it is marketed so as to emphasise its worst qualities … fieriness and an iron taste.”

Hmm, glass of 19 Crimes anyone?

Above all, the assumption is that Bordeaux is the touchstone, and is what most serious drinkers will encounter most of the time. Or rather, not Bordeaux but claret: “For decades the best clarets used to be sold to Scotland, but nowadays, as I found out when compiling a gastronomic guide, hotel after hotel offers an identical list of half a dozen dull wines … however, there are places where the tradition lingers and it may yet be revived by less degenerate Scotsmen.” Mr Postgate, I hear you calling my name!

Duncan McLean is proprietor of Kirkness & Gorie, Kirkwall

Washington State and Oregon work well together: there’s not really any overlap in terms of the styles of wines and the geography is so different too. Also we are super confident in the quality of the wines.

We want to keep showing up in the UK. If you want to be recognised as a world-class wine region you have to look outside your own back yard and put your wines alongside the other great wines of the world.

We sell about 5% of our wine in export markets and it’s kind of a labour of love. The UK is probably the most competitive market that I’ve seen and the hardest market to break into.

Oregon Pinot Noir represents a really great alternative, maybe, to the prices that Burgundy has seen in the past decade, through really no fault of their own.

Oregon is one of the best places in the world to grow Pinot Noir right now and we also have a diversity of places to grow it which were previously too cool.

Representatives of wineries from across the USA’s Pacific North West have been on the road in Europe recently.

Following successful tastings in Manchester on February 4 and London on February 6, the next destination was Wine Paris, where the Washington State and Oregon pavilion was a focal point for hundreds of visitors.

The Wine Merchant spoke to a number of the people pouring the wines to get a sense of what they think the regions have to offer.

In association with Washington State Wine Commission and Oregon Wine Board

There are probably 35 Oregon brands represented in the UK. It’s always been one of the most important world markets. Our events until very recently were trade-focused but lately we’ve had more consumer-facing tastings.

When I pour the wines in London I’m pouring at beautiful white-tablecloth restaurants with a sommelier and it’s just a much different experience to New York.

I think people should look beyond Chardonnay and Pinot Noir to the aromatic whites. Our big hits in London were, besides Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, our Gewürztraminer and Riesling.

You will see more Riesling coming out of Oregon. Gewürztraminer is a little more of a specialty and it tends to be focused right where we are.

Oregon will always be Pinot Noir and Chardonnay because it’s the bulk of plantings, that’s what we’ve built the brand around and what we know does well.

But we’re still getting sunny weather right the way to the end of October which mean means I can fully ripen Cabernet Franc, Chenin Blanc and Sauvignon Blanc and we can start to have a conversation about what else works here.

I’m interested in what else can be done and what isn’t being done – and where are there opportunities to expand the Willamette Valley category.

Pinot Gris, Riesling and Gewürztraminer are starting to have a major comeback.

In the Pacific North West as a whole the wines are focused on structure. Generally speaking you have a more ethereal, linear sort of palate versus some hotter climates you might have further south on the west coast. Also we’re driven by small producers – tiny wineries.

Our angle has always been market the geography first. A lot of companies are moving towards ethical farming [Hedges converted to biodynamic in 2008] and once you combine that with pricing it becomes a no-brainer.

What is wine?

It’s a geography, it’s a trademark given to you by planet earth, in its most pure form.

So what set of tools within farming can you use to best extract that sense of place? It would be a hands-off approach.

California dominates the landscape of wine in the United States. Washington State and Oregon offers something different.

In Washington State you get more of the old world style but with new world sunshine. I think being in the UK just gives us a bit of profile and a platform on the world stage.

I think we’re natural bedfellows with Oregon because not only are we in close proximity but the wines that we do are different. We’re natural underdogs, if you will.

Bob Morus, Phelps Creek Vineyards, Hood River Valley, Oregon

Cameron Christie, Elk Cove Vineyards, Willamette Valley, Oregon

Bree Stock MW Limited Addition Wines, Oregon

Kevin Travis, Goose Ridge Vineyards, Washington State

Christophe Hedges, Hedges Family Estate, Washington State

ripponden and start again

Ray Nicholls had worked for Asda for a quarter of a century when he decided to abandon a career in the multiple grocery sector and set up shop as an independent wine merchant in a West Yorkshire village.

Nigel Huddleston asks how that’s working out for him

It’s not unusual for independents to cite distaste for the supermarkets as a core facet of their identity. Depending on who you talk to, multiple grocers can be viewed as an irrelevance, an irritant or an existential threat.

For Ray Nicholls, the relationship is a little more complicated, because until opening the Ripponden Wine Company in West Yorkshire four years ago he managed Asda stores in Keighley, Huddersfield and Manchester and had a spell at its head office in Leeds.

“Everyone thought I was mad to leave my well-paid, secure job of 25 years to start my own business during the pandemic. But here I am,” he says.

Ray’s love affair with wine was a happy accident arising from his early days at Asda.

“They used to offer qualifications through City & Guilds: master butcher, baker, greengrocer and vintner.

“The stores used to get funding to send people on them and there was no one to go on the vintner course, so my boss at the time said ‘you’re going on

this course’. I was a spotty 19-year-old. I just used to drink Stella Artois and Smirnoff Ice at the time, and that was probably about it.”

Ray became fascinated by the subject and became a customer of Huddersfield indie Hoults, increasing his knowledge by attending its tasting events, in the process planting the seed to open his own shop as a later-life retirement project.

That plan actually came to fruition much earlier than expected. “Covid came along and the stars aligned with some buyouts at Asda and some shares I had. I thought if I’m going to do it, now’s the time.”

Ray’s first major step towards opening the store, on the high street in the village that he already called home, came during lockdown, when a friend suggested he start hosting Zoom wine tastings as alternatives to the ubiquitous quiz nights, which he did using wine bought from Hoults.

“Everyone thought I was mad to leave my well-paid, secure job of 25 years”

“I was still working in my full-time job. My lockdown experience was very different to everyone else, because I was running a supermarket. I didn’t have the change or the isolation.

“But I started to do the tastings and they took

off, and I decided there was a good market around here. I gained an understanding of the market and people started to tell me I should open a shop in the village, so that’s what I did.”

The store is in a one-time large pub converted into smaller retail units in 2009, and since first leasing the unit, Ray has bought the freehold of the entire building. The searches for that process revealed a previously hidden cellar that he now plans to convert into an additional space for private events.

Why did you decide on Ripponden as a location rather than one of West Yorkshire’s bigger towns?

We moved here because of work and fell in love with the village and the community feel, so I decided this was where I wanted to open a shop. It’s slap bang in the middle of Leeds and Manchester. Most of the people who live in the village are commuters to those places, so it’s quite an affluent area. A couple of big new housing estates have been built in the past 20 years, so it’s gone from being a very small farming village to a more populated area, but most of the people who live in Ripponden don’t work in Ripponden.

Why did the site appeal?

This had been empty for about two years and when we first opened people thought we were mad. There were only four shops open on the high street and it had gone through this cycle of being rather vibrant with restaurants, pubs and shops to, like many high streets, being all hairdressers and estate agents. I think there were seven hairdressers in the village at one point.

But bit by bit they all drifted off. I kind of had a hunch that if one business could succeed here then others would follow, and that’s what’s happened.

We got really lucky, because at the same time as us the craft beer shop opened [next door] and then a record shop, and a vintage clothing boutique and a gift shop. So now it’s become a real shopping-driven high street rather than a service one.

People travel for things like record shops, so it brings people into the area. It’s a really thriving community now and it’s been great to see it grow over four years.

You have retail experience but of a very different kind of retail. What did you take from your time

“We got really lucky. The craft beer shop opened and then a record shop and a vintage clothing boutique. It’s become a shopping-driven high street”

at Asda that you could apply here?

We probably look very different to a lot of wine merchants. We’re not piles of stock and boxes everywhere. Everything I’ve learned about good retailing I’ve tried to put into here: clear signage, clear pricing [there are large handwritten luggage labels around each bottle with the price dominant] … it’s really easy to find what you want to find. Some wine merchants you go in and it’s clear the only person who knows how to find anything is the owner. That’s not how I’ve been brought up from a retail perspective.

Wine shops can be intimidating places for wine novices and there’s nothing worse than when you pick up a bottle and the first time you see the price is a little sticker on the top. You might be the only person in the shop and you’re in an awkward situation where the wine’s out of your budget but it’s in your hand now. We try and take all that away.

What’s your approach to merchandising?

We go purely by country, whites and reds together, and then it’s almost split by region, but we don’t signpost that. But in Italy, for example, there’s Tuscany along the top and Sicily at the bottom. If you know you know, but if you don’t it doesn’t matter.

What were you aiming for design-wise?

The place is hand built by myself and a cousin who’s a builder. It’s made out of scaffolding and boards that we’ve painted and stained ourselves. I made the counter. We already had the branding from the Zoom tastings. I always knew I wanted it to be a dark colour scheme, kind of industrial but not too rustic. That was just my personal preference and pleased my eye, but it works. We get a lot of compliments about how the place looks.

How’s the shop changed over time?

A lot in four years. The tasting lounge and seating was added and we migrated from being a purely bricks-and-mortar retailer. We started to do food with tasting events which then evolved into a permanent tasting lounge and that’s grown as we’ve gone on. We dabbled with wholesale for a little bit but we don’t do it anymore. It’s too much work for not enough reward. We’ve now settled into a nice model of part bar, part shop.

We call it a tasting lounge rather than a bar, because if we can get a wine in someone’s glass,

they’re more likely to buy a bottle. We see a lot of take-home sales from what we put on the by-theglass list, which changes every month.

We keep the list interesting and different. No one comes into a place like this expecting to find an Argentine Malbec or a Pinot Grigio by the glass. We bought in a wine preservation system, so we’re not worried about opening top-end Champagnes or bottles of claret. We can keep them fizzy, or as they should be, for long enough.

Has the team grown with the shift in format?

There was just me until last November but there are now two people who do the late nights. We originally only opened the tasting lounge until 7 o’clock on a Friday and Saturday, but we now open until 9pm through customer demand. I’ve always been really clear that everything we do will be driven by our customers, not just because I want to do it or think it’s a good idea. But I’ve taken on

“We keep the list interesting and different. No one comes into a place like this expecting Malbec or Pinot Grigio by the glass”

two people to do the later night bit because I never really wanted to run a bar. I’m a retailer – that’s what I love doing. But it’s too good an opportunity not to go ahead with it.

You do Wine by Post on your website, which is a single bottle gift service, but no big by-the-case ecommerce. Why’s that?

We always did Wine by Post as a service from the shop. We found some really great packaging which means we can send individual bottles by Royal Mail and get them there really quickly and safely. We started putting it on the website because we had people emailing asking if we could send a bottle here or there. We only put a very small range on there: if you realise it’s someone’s birthday tomorrow you can click on there and we’ll get it sent off really quickly.

But I never wanted to do faceless retail. I’m bricks and mortar and, although I obviously had a big

Ray ran the shop on his own until last autumn but now has two team members to cover the evening shifts

ecommerce operation in my previous life, it’s not something I want to do. It’s costly, the competition is too fierce, the cost of acquiring customers is too expensive, and the risk of couriers and damages and all that sort of stuff … it was just not the way I wanted to go. And economically it’s probably not the best way to go. I know some people are very successful at it, but unless you’re doing huge volumes … and it takes time to build that.

How did you acquire customers for the bricks and mortar side?

The word of mouth from the Zoom tastings was a big part of it but we also shared the journey online. We put two massive posters on the window for people to find us on Instagram or Facebook. It took us three months from getting the keys to opening and we shared a lot of it. We shared me, because up until that point my name hadn’t been mentioned in any of the social media we’d been doing [for the Zoom tastings], purely because if my employers had found out I had something on the back burner … We shared everything, including pictures of me standing there with paint brushes, and colour charts on the wall.

We built a big swirl of excitement and anticipation in the community about what we were doing. We were still in that time of face masks and hospitality was closed, which helped, because if you were drinking you were doing it at home. People realised you could do something really special at home without paying through the nose. We just got lucky and tapped into that. It was a crazy time, but it worked for us.

How did you go about building the range?

Rob Hoult [at Hoults] was very supportive. We’re far enough away not to be competing with each other. He put us in touch with a couple of suppliers and I got really lucky with a couple of them. Liberty are still my biggest supplier. I literally went to my account manager and said, “if you were opening a shop tomorrow with 150 wines from your portfolio. what would they be?” and he sent me a list and a load of samples. That was probably one of the best times. I was just getting boxes and boxes of wine sent to my house; more than one person could drink, but that was the only way it could be done at that time.

We also used Richmond Wine Agencies and Moreno. It was a similar conversation with all of

The design is “kind of industrial but not too rustic”

“If you’re going to spend £8, £9, £10 on a bottle of wine you’re probably going to buy it in the supermarket or the Co-op down the road”

them and I picked the best from each. As time’s gone on, we’ve broadened the base and work with sone real specialists: Marta Vine do all our Portuguese, Alpine Wines do our Swiss and Austrian stuff, Southern Wine Roads our Greek, and we’ve started working with Eurowines, who do a chunk of our Italian range. Liberty is still probably two-thirds of the range.

Is that because their portfolio really hits the mark or is it loyalty from the support they gave you at the start?

A bit of both really. I think they’ve got by far the most exciting portfolio out there, and I do feel a bit of loyalty towards them. But I also think building relationships with suppliers is really important. They’ll bring a winemaker along for a lot of our tasting events, and if I identify a gap in the range I feel pretty confident I can pick up the phone to one of my account managers and they’ll give me some recommendations.

What do you look for when deciding whether to list something?

We don’t really sell anything below £15. It doesn’t really work for us. When I was in supermarkets the average price for a bottle of wine was about £5.50. That’s probably closer to £8 now. And if you’re going to spend £8, £9, £10 on a bottle of wine you’re probably going to buy it in the supermarket or the Co-op down the road. If you’re looking in an

independent you probably want to spend a little bit more. We do have the odd £10 or £12 bottle but we don’t sell a lot of them. The sweet spot for us is somewhere between £15 and £25. So, one of the things I’m looking for is value for money in the right price bracket. And things that people ask me for, which doesn’t happen so much now as the range has grown, but it was one of the ways we went from 150 wines when we opened to the 500 we have now.

What excites you personally in the wine world?

I’m a firm believer that no one does it like the French, and France probably has the largest amount of space in the shop. I’m a big fan of the Rhône – and Burgundy. But I’m more keen now to try things I haven’t before, whether it’s a grape variety, a region or a style. I can’t get on with natural wine. We don’t do any and we don’t get asked for them. I’ve tried lots of them but they’re just not my style. One thing when I’m picking wines, it doesn’t matter if it’s a tenner or £100, if I wouldn’t drink it, it doesn’t go on the shelf. It’s hard for me to stand here and recommend somebody to drink something that I wouldn’t enjoy myself.

Australian Shiraz is my wine hell. I can tell a bad one from a good one and I have to have them on the shelf, obviously, so I have got some very good ones, but it’s the last thing I would pick on a wine list, that’s for sure.

Do you end up steering customers to your favourites then?

90% of the people who come through the door don’t say “I want a bottle of X”, they say “I’m looking for a bottle of red, can you recommend something?”, so there is a bit of what I steer people towards. But we’ve got a regular customer base now and I know what a lot of them like or don’t like. If people can give two reference points – “I like Australian Shiraz, but I really don’t like Californian Pinot Noir” – I’ll show them something interesting. The by-the-glass list is good in building trust and confidence with the customers.

Why did you turn away from wholesale?

It was challenging. I didn’t enjoy that as much but I didn’t have any negative experiences with people going bust on me or anything like that. When there was only me it was hard to go out knocking on doors and drumming up business, and if you’re not

“Australian Shiraz is my wine hell. It’s the last thing I would pick on a wine list, that’s for sure”

doing it on a large scale, it really is a lot of work for not a lot of money.

Pubs and restaurants are the worst for dropping you an email or a text at 6pm on a Friday saying they need something by tomorrow morning, so you have to build a bit of stock in the cellar in case.

What have been the other big challenges? The cost-of-living crisis?

Year one was good and exceeded my expectations. Year two we grew massively, and last year flattened off a bit but didn’t go into decline. It was never going to be double-digit growth every year so I was happy with that.

It’s the best thing I’ve ever done. My previous job was very intense. It was a 24/7 operation and you never really get a day off. If you’re not there the phone’s ringing or there’s an email, or whatever. This is very much, at 6pm I’ll turn the lights out and go home and turn them on again at 9.30 the next morning. And there’s nothing that’s gone wrong in the meantime. It’s been a really positive experience. I’ve not really hit any major bumps in the road yet.

So, no regrets?

My life is undoubtedly better than it was at Asda. I’ve got more time, less stress, my life is enhanced greatly, but my bank balance isn’t. But that’s the pay-off, I guess. Don’t get me wrong, I make a comfortable living and everything’s fine, and I enjoy life more as a result of doing this. Why did I do this? I wanted a different lifestyle. I wanted to be more involved in the community I live in. Since opening I’ve become a parish councillor, I’ve set up a local business network group, and I’ve met built more friendships with local people in the last four years than I had in the previous 10 that I was living here. And that’s what I wanted.

Clear signage and clear pricing are some of Ripponden’s guiding principles

Matt PattersonGreen

Jackson Estate

Jackson Estate is part of a company called Benton Wine Group. We’re one North Island winery – Pask, in Hawke’s Bay – and then Jackson Estate, in the South, in Marlborough. Between the two companies, we pretty much cover the entire portfolio of Burgundy and Bordeaux varietals.

We’re not trying to make a blended company. We’ve got two similar, but quite different stories of how we ended up as innovators in our regions. Chris Pask looked out of his window one day when he was flying his plane. He saw a triangle of gravel, and thought, I wonder if I should plant grape vines in there. And they became the very first company to plant vines on the Gimblett Gravels.

I can make a grand winemaking plan going into vintage and I guarantee you, on the first day of vintage, the whole thing will be thrown out the window. You become very reliant on what a vineyard manager is telling you on the day of harvest. He might ring up and say, we’ve had quite a heavy dew overnight – I think we should delay two hours and let the dew dry out before we put the pickers in. Because that can affect half a percent of alcohol, not just flavours, and also dilute your sugars.

We own all our vineyards. We like the control of being an estate-grown wine company. We firmly believe that 80% of the quality in the bottle comes from your vineyard. A winemaker’s role really is just to take the rough edges off, and put together a snapshot of what has happened that growing season in the vineyard.

If you last in the game, one of the things that you learn about winemaking is patience and humility. Because you can have the greatest ideas about what you want to do and how to make the wine, but really, you can only change one thing at a time, and you will not see the repercussions of that one decision sometimes for three or four years.

The general public probably has the perception that Sauvignon Blanc should be drunk very close to its year of production, and after that it drops away in quality. But that’s not actually the case if you don’t manipulate your juices very much, and you take some time to build some texture and weight. Lees ageing, either in tank or barrel, also builds that texture, that mid-palate and that complexity.

Sauvignon Blanc, especially from Marlborough, tends to lose a lot of primary character as it ages. I’ve found that if you want to age Sauvignon Blanc, it tends to work best with fruit from blocks that have older vines, that have naturally de-acidified. They’ve moved away from those cut grass, passion fruit, gooseberry flavours and express more lemon, lime and grapefruit characters, with a lot of white stone fruit coming through.

The barrel-fermented Sauvignons that we make used to be entirely from

Matt is celebrating 21 years at the acclaimed Marlborough producer, founded by John Stichbury and now part of Benton Wine Group

Wines imported by Gonzalez Byass UK

10-year-old ex Chardonnay barrels. All French oak, but 10 years old, so completely and utterly neutral. We’ve moved more into barrels that are five to eight years old, and I will also put a small amount of new oak into it, just to give a little bit of lift. Our Sauvignons used to be in barrel for nine months, and now it’s 16 to 18 months.

Wine producers in New Zealand and especially Marlborough are now dealing with vines with a decent amount of age. We’re now looking at wines where the vines have been in the ground for 30 to 40 years, and that’s come with a development of character and complexity, and slightly lower acidity. The wine style has grown up. It’s not predominantly an upfront and brash and fantastically fresh, easy-drinking Sauvignon Blanc anymore.

Green Lip Sauvignon Blanc 2023

RRP £17.50

We had some long growing days, some quite cool nights, which allowed us to retain that vibrant acidity, but it has got some really nice, lush, ripe flavours. We had a couple of rain periods at the end of February, which really brightened those gooseberry and herbal notes, but still that same Green Lip mineral drive.

Shelter Belt Chardonnay 2020

RRP £23

We’ve had vines from the V95 clone now for 30 years, and we focus our entire Chardonnay programme on it. It does well with cooler nights and gives you some really nice, fine-grained elegance and acidity. There’s texture and weight there too; an oystershell, walnuty sort of character in the mid-palate.

Gum Emperor Pinot Noir 2014

RRP £34

A single-vineyard expression, made in a manner that I call low and slow. It’s hand harvested, fermented in very small fermenters, and 100% destemmed because of the power and the weight that comes from the fruit and skins. I get a lot of warm, summery, brambly fruits, and a Marlborough earthiness.

CAT BRANDWOOD

The Long Run

What’s my worst idea for a customer tasting? I can’t believe it’s not butter

“How do you decide what to write about each month?” a wine merchant asked me a while back. Quite simply, the writing finds me.

Sometimes The Wine Merchant will be sitting on a few months’ worth of articles that I have furiously tapped out on my keyboard. I’ll find myself, on a quiet afternoon (plenty of those at the beginning of the year, amirite?) interrupted by a (delete as appropriate) customer/supplier interaction that has annoyed/amused me. Spending a few minutes writing down my thoughts empties my mind and I can get back to thinking up more silly ideas for tastings while putting off the very important job of writing my next business plan. Writing a journal would probably be just as effective, but there would be absolutely no filter on my language if I did and it’s good for me to try and use other adjectives occasionally.

Currently, my stupid tasting idea is courtesy of my book club who read Butter by Asako Yuzuki last year. If you ever want to experience the joy of butter without actually eating it, this is the book for you. I salivated my way through that book: it gave me a renewed appreciation for butter.

The plan is to run a tasting of butters from different countries, which we can then rank, while obviously drinking some suitable wines at the same time. Is it a stupid idea? I’ve probably had worse. Will I actually organise this event? Hard to say. I have a lot of ideas and I tend to start with the more sensible ones for obvious reasons. Although maybe 2025 is the year

of being more bold and having a little fun because frankly, the last eight years or so have been a hard slog and it would be nice to forget for a few moments about the constant kick to the proverbial nuts that is running a wine business. (My personal trainer claims that 2025 is the year of the athlete, but he also told me that this means I have to “eat clean” which does not align with my renewed love of butter.)

While I decide whether I want to put the effort into getting a rice cooker (to make rice to melt the butter on to, naturally) and asking Sourdough Steve to whip me up a batch of his perfect loaves, you’ll be glad to note that I have a rather more sensible selection of tasting events planned – with several wine dinners with fellow local businesses already in the pipeline. So perhaps instead 2025 is the year of the collab (I actually get very angry about this word contraction, much like Mr B’s insistence that he shops in “Sainsbos”).

I’m particularly excited about an event planned this month. At the request of my wine club, they are spending an afternoon tasting and assessing a flight of Rieslings because they want a go at what it means when I tell them I’ve been to a portfolio tasting. They have a real problem: they seem to think I’m some kind of wine god – able to sniff out the best of the best (perhaps I have been complicit in creating this view). In reality, I’ve just filled my shop with the things I like, and after all my years here I guess my customers’ palates have become somewhat aligned with my own. They either like what I like, or they’ve hunted down someone else’s palate.

The plan is to taste butters from different countries, that we rank while drinking wine

I started this particular ramble with one sentence and no notion that this is where it would end up. It turns out my brain really does have its own plans (and I still have a business plan to procrastinate about). But, while doing this, I’ve subconsciously come to the decision that perhaps I should take the plunge and invest in this butter tasting. It’s time to have a bit of fun

Cat Brandwood is the owner of Toscanaccio in Winchester

who WINE make WOMEN

Claire Harries speaks to three independent wine merchants about the female winemakers who inspire them – and why it’s still important to highlight, and celebrate, the role played by women in the wine industry

Kiki Evans

“About 30% of the wines in our range are made by women. We generally try to have a little bit more around key dates in the year, like International Women’s Day, for example, when we’ll probably do some focused tastings.

“A few years ago we made the decision to better signpost those wines by putting a female symbol next to any of the wines which are made by women. We use symbols to denote natural wines and sustainable production and things like that, and using the female symbol gives just that extra bit of information.

“One of the reasons we like to champion women winemakers is because there is still a barrier to access the roles and the education for women, and other minorities,

Colette O’Leary, Henners, England

“I think Colette has a very interesting background which includes falling in love with wine, learning how to make it at Plumpton, and since then working her way up through the industry in the UK. Now she’s the head winemaker at Henners and I think she’s taken their wines to another level. They’ve really got into their rhythm.

“Henners has been our signature English sparkling wine for a long time. It really is one of our favourites. We’ve done some trips out to the Henners vineyard, both with the team and with some customers. It’s a stunning English sparkling wine, so it kind of sells itself, which is great.”

Unwined in Waterloo south London

in some countries.

“Unfortunately there are places where, because it’s essentially a form of agricultural work, winemaking is still deemed as a man’s job, and it’s not uncommon for job ads to state ‘men only’.

"There have obviously been women over the centuries that have carved a niche for themselves, but the attitude would have been ‘you need to prove yourself before you can actually have access to that’.

“If there was parity we wouldn’t have to talk about it. That’s why it’s important to give female winemakers a platform that they might not otherwise have, because they get lost in the noise of the history of male winemakers, as that has always been the norm.”

Hanri Ferreira

Kleine Zalze Stellenbosch

Winemaking on Kleine Zalze’s Stellenbosch estate has taken place, in some form, since 1695. But it wasn’t until 1996 when the modern Kleine Zalze, as it’s recognised today, was born.

We’ve always kept it quite simple with our winemaking philosophy, by starting with the best grapes that we possibly can. We source the best fruit from a wide range of climates, to suit the style we intend to make. In the winery we also keep things simple by doing the basics right to keep our wines healthy – from there the wines go on to speak for themselves. You can only make good wine from good grapes.

With our ongoing vision for elegance and nuance, we have made some changes to our process in the winery. Our concrete egg collection has grown from two vessels in 2022 to eight in 2024. In terms of clay amphorae, we now have an army of 24. Both vessels are used to create more structure in the wines, without the use of oak. Amphorae and concrete eggs do not impart flavour, but the way in which the wine moves within the vessel during fermentation and ageing creates a more subtle depth of flavour and texture, enhancing what is already naturally present in the fruit.

The white wines from our flagship Family Reserve range now all have a proportion of wine made in concrete eggs and clay amphorae. The Family Reserve range is the cream of the crop from that vintage. You could describe it as a barrel selection blend, where for the most part, individual barrels from different parcels of vines are selected and blended. Since we incorporated amphorae and concrete eggs into our regime, these components are all tasted and blended individually and added to the final blend. The goal is to create exceptionally elegant wines that will age incredibly well.

We have also evolved our Shiraz to coincide with these goals, by using different fermentation and ageing techniques. We now use a proportion of whole bunch for more red fruited aromas and add ripe stems into the ferment to highlight more peppery, savoury notes. We have also reduced the length of time in oak and introduced amphorae.

Currently we are seeing higher alcohol in the wines after fermentation due to climate change. We are trying to mitigate this by exploring the use of different yeasts and fermentation techniques, as well as picking slightly earlier without compromising on phenolic ripeness. We are starting to look at sourcing fruit from higher altitude vineyards such as the Ceres plateau and coastal regions like Elim.

Stellenbosch is one of the few places in the country with a true wine culture. Stroll down the streets and you’ll stumble upon a wine bar every few metres. Or take a short drive in any direction and you’ll find wine farms with world-class tasting centres and restaurants. Stellenbosch

Hanri was raised in Paarl. Her passion for the winelands, along with her interest in science, naturally led to her decision to pursue winemaking as a career

Wines imported by Hatch Mansfield

has a wide variety of microclimates, from vineyards 5km from the Atlantic Ocean to vineyards 500m above sea level in the Banhoek Valley. South Africa isn’t just special because of our fantastic climate and scenery – what really sets us apart is the spirit and resilience of the people. There’s always a friendly face and a willingness to make it work, whatever “it” is, that is what South Africa is all about.

The long-term goal for Kleine Zalze is to showcase the quality and diversity of South Africa by building a premium brand with a global presence. But most of all we want to make wines for people to enjoy

Cellar Selection Bush Vines

Chenin Blanc, RRP £14.20

A dry, zesty Chenin Blanc from the Coastal region with a succulent palate of crisp pear and tropical pineapple. Vibrant guava notes jump out of the glass on the finish.

Family Reserve Chardonnay

RRP £29.20

The first vintage ever of Family Reserve Chardonnay was crafted from two different wards and soil types in Stellenbosch, each contributing to the complexity of the wine. Intense and elegant, with a delicate balance of minerality underpinned by subtle nuances of oak.

Vineyard Selection Shiraz

RRP £21.40

This Stellenbosch wine is rich and velvet-textured with hints of blackberry, peppery spice with a long, clean smoky finish.

Stéphanie Sucheyre

Champagne Gardet

I come from a wine family, as my father was a viticulture and oenology consultant at the Auvergne chamber of agriculture, and my grandfather used to produce wine. But not from a wine region, so when I was a kid I just couldn’t imagine that winemaking was a real profession. It was just a lot of joy at harvest time, and the opportunity to share moments with my father in my grandfather’s cellar. But when the time came to choose the sector I wanted to work in, the wine industry quickly became the obvious choice.

I joined Gardet in January 2007 and was immediately impressed by the weight of more than 100 years of tradition – and, at the same time, by the modernity of the equipment.

I don’t spend as much time as I’d like in the vineyards. But I do step up my presence at harvest time, in our Pinot parcels at Chigny-les-Roses, where I have to select the highest quality grapes for the future Rosé de Saignée Millésimé. We only produce it when the harvest is very good, so it’s essential for me to check the health of the grapes from the very beginning of the winemaking process: the harvest.

Brut Tradition

Thanks to a meticulous selection of quality grapes, this wine is emblematic of Champagne Gardet, with the savoir-faire to preserve its style and maintain the mark left by the history of the house.

To be honest, I couldn’t say if I’m better at science or art. I have always thought that it is important to master the basics of science so that you can forget them afterwards. Then you can let your intuition speak for itself. So I would say that both are very useful to me.

We have a very wide range of very different cuvées, but what they all have in common is a very tight dosage (from 0 to a maximum of 8 g/l of sugar) and much longer cellar ageing than required by Champagne regulations: we like to age Gardet cuvées on their lees in vaulted cellars for as long as possible, a minimum of three years for the Tradition Collection, five to nine years for the ExtraBrut Collection, and more than 15 years for the Prestige Collection. These longer ageing periods result in another common characteristic of our cuvées, which is the maturity and complexity on the nose, while on the palate all the freshness is retained for a taut finish. These two aspects are the guiding principles I follow in developing the Gardet range. We also use a special liquor: this is the “Gardet touch”.

The great thing about being an oenologist is that I enjoy all the stages involved in creating a Champagne But my favourite period is from harvest to bottling. I love all the effervescence that comes from the harvest and ends with the dosage. But looking back in the cellar and tasting whether the cuvées have become what we expected is always an exciting moment.

When we make wine, we bring joy but we don’t perform feats So my heroes would be people like Simone Veil, Francine Leca – France’s first female chief cardiac

Brut Reserve Premier Cru

A very elegant cuvée with consistency, creaminess, structure and balance. It is a perfect and classic expression of the dual signatures of the Gardet style: modernity and tradition. It is characterised by a specific ageing of the still wines for a year in oak barrels and by the very long cellar time then given to those bottles.

Stéphanie completed her bachelor’s degree in vine sciences in Burgundy, her DNO in Montpellier and her final year of her master’s in Reims. She then broadened her experience in various estates across France and abroad, before joining Champagne Gardet in 2007 and succeeding the house’s former cellar master in 2008.

Wines imported by Cachet Wine

surgeon – or Virginie Guyot, the first woman to join the Patrouille de France, before becoming its director.

The future of Champagne is full of challenges. If we want to adapt to climate change, we will have to evolve. There are many areas to explore, new grape varieties, new practices, and the rules may change. So I am really enthusiastic about carrying on working in accordance with the times.

Prestige Charles Gardet

Millésime 2008

A blend of exceptional wines, this is a shining example of the house’s traditional know-how. The 2008 particularly expresses itself by the structure and uprightness of its aromas. Gardet is one of the last Champagne houses to release the 2008 vintage for its Prestige cuvée.

Laurence Réal L'Entremetteuse, Chile

“I don’t think Laurence comes from a winemaking family, but she got into wine nonetheless,” says Kiki Evans of Unwined. “She felt a little bit trapped by the French market, so she travelled the world, and finally found her place in Chile and she’s making waves over there with her more naturalstyle wines. Her L’Entremetteuse range is imported by Vinos Latinos – run by Carla Bertellotti, another amazing woman in the wine trade.

L’Entremetteuse Four Skins is an orange wine made from four different grape varieties. The name always gets a giggle and the label is fun with an illustration of the Sex Pistols. We showed that in a tasting last week and it went very well. She makes some pét nats as well, which we’re really keen to list.”

Dona Pilar Plá

El Maestro Sierra, Jerez

“El Maestro Sierra was taken over by Dona Pilar when her husband died quite suddenly, making her one of the first female sherry house producers,” says Kiki. “She’s been followed by her daughter, Maria del Carmen Borrego Plá, and they’ve really paved the way for women in an area that is traditionally male-dominated. They’ve always been icons of ours.

“Everyone who works in wine loves sherry, but it can be a hard sell. El Maestro Sierra Amoroso sells really well for us. It’s a delicious blend of Oloroso and PX. It’s a style traditionally made by the sherry house workers for their wives – it’s meant as a gift for a loved one.

“All their sherries are phenomenal and come with these great stories, including the one behind their labelling depicting a fox hunt to symbolise how they, as an independent producer, are being chased by the big companies.”

Dona Pilar Plá with her daughter, Maria del Carmen Borrego Plá

Susana Balbo

Susana Balbo Winery Argentina

When Susana Balbo was inducted into the Decanter Hall of Fame at the end of last year, it was a rare opportunity for a famously restless and dynamic soul to pause and take stock of a four-decade career.

“It feels like a sense of accomplished tasks, achieved goals and things I had not even dared to dream,” she says. “It was an immense joy and a recognition that I share with my entire team.”

Balbo’s efforts have been instrumental in putting Argentine wine on the world stage, and her “queen of Torrontés” moniker refers to her particular passion for white varieties.

She has maintained an enquiring mind as her career has unfolded, building on the foundations of her university education. The technology she has embraced allows for a more controlled, and less interventionist, approach to fermentation, and so higher-quality wines.

In the vineyard, the science has been no less revolutionary. “Forty-three years ago, we did not study or develop areas as extreme as the ones we are cultivating today. We lacked adequate knowledge of soil composition and local climatology. This knowledge now allows us to plant earliermaturing grape varieties and make the extraordinary wines we see today.”

Thirteen years ago, Balbo unveiled a

vision she called Argentina’s White Wine Revolution. “The consumption of white and red wines in the world is 50% white and 50% red,” she says.

“At that time, Argentina exported 90% red wines and 10% white wines. I was inspired by the idea of delving into this subject and starting to make white wines. My goal was to age them properly, allowing them to develop elegance and complexity, becoming increasingly enjoyable over time.

“Today I am thrilled to see the global trend leaning towards white wine consumption. As a company and winemaking team, we are perfectly positioned to capture consumers’ attention with our own white wine revolution.”

Balbo is one of the most recognisable female winemakers of recent decades. Does she think it’s still appropriate to highlight and celebrate women in the industry – or should gender be irrelevant?

“I feel that women are increasingly finding it easier to show their talent in winemaking,” she says. “However, drawing attention to them is always positive because we are still few compared to the number of men that work in this industry.

“I firmly believe that women have skills and talents that men do not. I would love to see many more women dedicated to this beautiful, rewarding profession that also allows us to build and nurture a family.

“Working hours can be flexible, except during harvest, so we can pursue a professional life alongside a family or personal life, unlike other careers.

“I am convinced that oenology is a wonderful career for women. It is important to continue mentioning this so that more women come into our industry.”

These days, Balbo concentrates most of her efforts of “harvest strategy”, based

Susana was Argentina’s first female winemaker, whose pioneering work in understanding her country’s terroir has elevated expections of what Argentinian wine can achieve. She has also served in Congress and as Wines of Argentina president.

Wines imported by Enotria&Coe

on her long experience of sometimes wild variations in climatic conditions.

“The role of blending and deciding which wines go to each label is a team decision, but I play a very prominent role in that aspect,” she says. “My children now handle almost all the winery’s dayto-day operations. So my role nowadays focuses on specific tasks and, of course, on representing the brands in the markets.

“The UK market holds a special place in my heart because it was the first to buy my wine. I will always feel connected and grateful for the reception my wines received and the recognition I have achieved there.”

Susana Balbo Signature Barrel Fermented Torrontés 2023

This has given me the most satisfaction in life because of the faith I had in this variety, which is ours, Argentina’s, and unique in the world. It continues to surprise me with the best results every day. Perhaps one of the things you could expect in the next chapters of my life are new products based on Torrontés.

Susana Balbo Signature White Blend 2022

I can’t believe it did not occur to me earlier to craft a white grape blend. It is a wonderful, full-bodied, complex wine that showcases Argentina’s enormous potential for such wines. Hopefully, more wineries will follow suit, and Argentina will be recognised as a source of high-quality white wines.

Susana Balbo Signature Rosé 2022

This was actually the brainchild of my son José, who came up with the idea and executed it in the winery. My daughter, Ana, developed the packaging, the beauty, and elegance of that bottle, the label, and the capsule. All I did was to put my name on it, so it is the easiest wine I have ever had in my entire career.

“When we opened the shop [in 2023], our aim was to have 50% of our wine range to be made by women. It’s way more difficult that you’d expect – or perhaps I should say it’s about as difficult as you’d expect it to be.

“Obviously we don’t stock the wine just because it’s made by women, they still have to meet all of our other criteria, but we do try to look for those wines when we’re sourcing. Off the top of my head, there’s probably been one supplier who has made a conscious effort to put those wines in front of us.

“It’s hard to know where to look, especially for us when we’re up in the north and a lot of the tastings are in London and we have to make a worthwhile trip. It would be beneficial if 10 of the big suppliers got together with a focus on their female winemakers. There’s always the worry that it's going to be a bit of a box-ticking exercise and as such, will all those wines be interesting? But if people are trying, then you’ve got to give them the benefit of the doubt.

“For last year’s International Women’s Day, we did a tasting that was about women in wine more generally. We used the wines from Vins et Volailles, the negociant project founded by Fleur Godart. All the wines are designed to spark a conversation about discrimination or inequality. We had six or seven of the wines on the night, and we used them to tell the story of women in wine, through the history of all the different barriers they faced.

“The best example is the Beaujolais that we had, called Witches. So called because women were often excluded from the wine cellar, especially when they were menstruating, because it was thought that they could turn the fermenting grapes.”

Charlotte Fenwick

Victor Indigo November, Gateshead

Katie Jones

Domaine Jones, Languedoc

“I think a lot of people know Katie. She’s a brilliant winemaker who, again, doesn't take the easy route, buying plots of old vines that nobody wants that are really hard to work, and making wonderful wines out of them.

“What I really like about Katie is the way that she interacts with wine drinkers. Before we had the shop, before we were in the industry, I watched all of her vineyard rambles that she did through lockdown. Her Instagram was full of videos of her showing people what it’s like to have a vineyard and the life of a winemaker. It makes wine accessible, and because I didn’t have a background in wine, you sometimes wonder: is there a place for us? Do we belong here? And people like Katie make it feel that wine is for everybody.

“Her Fitou at £19 is one of our best sellers and we’ve just been able to get hold of her Grenache Gris, which we’re very excited about.”

Charlotte (right) with wife Lorrie

Dana Epperson

Migration Winery California

As a third-generation Sonoma native, I grew up immersed in the vineyards, people and traditions that make this region so unique. The connection between the land and the wines it produces has always inspired me, shaping my approach to winemaking and my love for terroir-driven expression.

In 2024, I marked my 20th harvest in Northern California, a milestone that makes me proud of the journey I’ve taken and the lessons I’ve learned. Along the way, I’ve had the privilege of working alongside incredible mentors, seeing first-hand how each vintage has its own personality, and continuing to grow as a winemaker. Sonoma has always been home, and it’s the place that continues to inspire me to craft wines that reflect both the land and the passion I put into every bottle.

We named our winery Migration to speak to the ideas of movement and exploration – and it’s a name we have lived up to. We started our exploration of the great Burgundian varietals in the Anderson Valley in 2001, when we made our inaugural Migration Pinot Noir, but we really solidified our identity in 2008 when we made our debut Russian River Valley Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. From there,

we added single-vineyard wines from some of California’s greatest cool-climate winegrowing sites to the Migration lineup, and in 2014 we acquired our 90-acre Running Creek Vineyard in the Russian River Valley to provide an incredible source of estate fruit. We acquired the adjacent 47-acre El Veredicto Estate Vineyard, which was formerly part of the historic Stanly Ranch, two years later.

We have always been dedicated to coolclimate grapes, most notably Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, and we have developed a style that we believe best expresses the qualities we love in cool-climate wines, specifically lush fruit, bright acidity and impeccably balanced oak. We prize vibrancy and finesse, and the ability of our wines to express the charm and character of where they were grown.

We work with fruit from all along the California coastline, where cooler temperatures, wind, steep hillsides, coastal soils and cool, foggy mornings create a unique growing environment. The soils, in particular, have the biggest impact on the character of the wine. Sandy or rocky soils can drain too quickly and sometimes need extra irrigation, while the heavier clay soils retain water and can make the vines too vigorous, leading to less concentration.

Women definitely have equal opportunities in the California winemaking scene. In fact, we have an equal balance of men and women in head winemaker roles within the Duckhorn Portfolio, and I’m seeing that more across the industry as well. It’s also great to see so many women graduating from viticulture and oenology programmes and getting into the industry.

Dana heads up the winemaking team at Decoy as well as Migration, a cool-climate producer working mainly with Sonoma Coast fruit within the Duckhorn Portfolio, specialising in Burgundian varietals.

Wines imported by Top Selection

My degree is in food science, so I have a very strong scientific and technical background. I also love the artistry of blending. Together, I think the two strike a nice balance. A love of blending can also at times be a weakness. You can literally blend forever in search of perfection. You have to trust your palate, trust the vineyards, trust the wine, and know when to stop blending.

I recognise that wine is subjective. I love having my peers taste the Migration wines and give me their feedback, and I’m open and receptive to all of their commentary.

I don’t believe that you can make wine in a bubble; everyone’s palate brings something valuable to the table.

Migration Sonoma Coast Chardonnay

A blend of our Estate Running Creek Vineyard along with fruit from the Green Valley region. A touch of French oak, with about 30% new barrels, enhances the fruit while adding depth and elegance. The wine balances bright acidity with a supple texture, creating a beautifully refined and harmonious finish.

Migration Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir

We harvest at optimal phenological ripeness, ensuring refined tannins and a beautifully supple texture. The result is a Pinot Noir with a silky, fullbodied finish, complemented by 35% new French oak, which imparts subtle richness, depth and a delicate touch of sweetness on the palate

Decoy Limited Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon

Ridgeline Vineyard, with its rugged terrain, yields concentrated, powerful Cabernet, while Brownell Vineyard produces a more opulent expression. Together, they form the foundation of our blend, which has layers of complexity, warm spice and a touch of sweetness. Beautifully balanced and nuanced.

Verónica Ortega, Bierzo, Spain

“Verónica is based in Bierzo in the north of Spain, and she doesn’t come from a winemaking family – her father was a bullfighter,” says Charlotte Fenwick of Victor Indigo November in Gateshead.

“I don’t think the locals were particularly welcoming to her at first, but she’s really proved herself with her winemaking. We have Quite: it’s 100% Mencia, which I think is a variety she mainly works with, and it’s just a beautiful wine. It’s low intervention, sustainable, and she’s doing things that are interesting and different.”

Vanessa Cherruau Château de Plaisance Loire

“Vanessa was training to be a journalist when she got the wine bug,” says Charlotte. “She studied oenology and worked in a few domaines before she bought Château de Plaisance, which is an incredible spot in Grand Cru sweet Chenin territory.

“She took over in 2019, the day before harvest, and she was eight months pregnant. It would have been very easy under the circumstances to keep everything the same, but that’s just not the kind of person she is. She’s making predominantly dry white wines because she wants them to be accessible. We visited her recently and we were able to try all the wines in the range, which was fantastic because her wines are just extraordinary.

“The vineyards were organic and biodynamic when she took them over and she’s focused on biodiversity and sustainability … you can see that it’s all been well thought out. We’re just really fascinated by her as a woman and as a winemaker, and all the things that she wants to achieve.

“We’ve stocked one of her red wines, Sur la Butte, for a while now and it’s a favourite for staff and customers alike. It just does really well for us.”

Women have always been at the heart of Greek wines

These days, the role of women in the wine industry is highlighted and celebrated because, in most parts of the world, it’s always been a male-dominated business. But Greece might be an honourable exception.

“Women have been playing a role in Greek winemaking from the very beginning,” says Maria Moutsou, owner of specialist importer Southern Wine Roads.

“For one thing women have been involved, more than men, in the harvest, certainly for the past 500 years. I am not sure of any such records during the Byzantine times, but I would assume it was also the case then, as the grape harvest was a standard agricultural chore.”

Looking back to the patriarchal days of antiquity, it’s no surprise that the role of women in the winemaking process has gone unacknowledged. But, as Maria says, religion takes up some of the slack: “The first nectar server – a sommelier of divine wine, in other words – of the Olympus gods was a female divinity: Eve, the goddess of youth.”

She adds: “Fast forward in the late 20th century and we have many Greek women studying oenology, initially at Athens Technical University and later in other schools throughout the country, as well as abroad.

“Today there are as many female oenologists in Greece as there are male and they form the leading workforce in many wineries. Beyond this professional commitment there are also the unsung women heroines, partners and family members of many male winemakers, who fully participate in both the vineyard and winery work.”

She adds: “There are many next-generation women winemakers being coached and professionally prepared in many wineries and ready to take the reins – so I would expect more female faces in the frontline of Greek winemaking in the coming 10 to 15 years.”

> Sant’Or

Sant’Or is an organic family winery at the foot of Mount Skolis, Santamerianiko Mountain.

The unirrigated, biodynamic vineyards cover four hectares and grow the indigenous Peloponnesian varieties Roditis, Agiorgitiko, Mavrodaphne and the unique local white aromatic variety Santameriana – which was revived thanks to the efforts of the winery.

Panagiotis Dimitropoulos is the owner and winemaker, whose wife Dimitra (pictured above) is a key part of the team, along with many other female family members whose hard work ensures each harvest comes in on time.

> Domaine Nerantzi

Domaine Nerantzi is a family-owned estate near the border of Macedonia and Thrace, which founded its winery in 1988 and bottled its first commercial vintage in 1998. Evanthia Mitropoulou, whose father Nerantzi started the business, is a capable young winemaker with degrees in chemistry and oenology.

Only a stone’s throw away from the recently discovered ancient town of Amphipolis, landmark city of the Macedonian kingdom of Alexander the Great, which flourished in the 4th century BC, the vineyard is cultivated following the principles of organic viticulture and the

Maria Moutsou, founder of Greek wine importer Southern Wine Roads, explains how women are an integral part of the country’s winemaking history as well as its future.

Visit southernwineroads.com to find out more about the range

wines are produced with minimal intervention and under organic certification.

Evanthia has been working methodically for the past 20 years to re-plant, manage and expand the 10-hectare vineyard and to revive two local varieties: Asprouda of Serres, and Koniaros. Thanks to the efforts of Evanthia and her father, these varieties are now enshrined in the national grape archive.

Domaine Nerantzi’s other varieties are Malagousia, Assyrtiko and Limnio, plus the international Syrah, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon: all low-yield, bottled within a small number of carefully crafted labels.

A young Evanthia (left) with father and sister

Evanthia in the vineyards

Carole bryon

Lady of the Grapes, central London

Carole Bryon established her restaurant, wine bar and shop, Lady of the Grapes, in 2018. 90% of the 400-strong range is made by female winemakers. Carole is increasing her direct imports so she can grow her wholesale range.

“The wines are also organic or biodynamic, so it’s not easy and, because we have a lot of winemakers and a lot of importers, it makes the stock management a bit more complicated.

“We direct import because when we discover new wines which don’t yet have UK representation, we can support the women who make them. We have lots of good relationships with our producers and

Virginie Maignien La Spanda, Roussillon

we see what they are doing in the vineyard, and sometimes they visit us for tastings.

“It’s never easy to choose your favourite winemakers, but I have highlighted ones from France, Italy and Austria.”

“Virginie is the symbol of adaptation because she started as a winemaker when she was 30. She was co-owner and winemaker at Causse Marine in Gaillac and then, after falling in love with Roussillon, she moved and started her own project, La Spanda.

“She has really had to adapt to Roussillon because it is very challenging and there is almost no rainfall. Luckily her vineyard is at an altitude of 200 metres and her wines have a lot of freshness.

“She has an amazing wine called Ayur. It’s an orange wine, vibrant and spicy with floral notes. It’s very interesting to have this kind of wine from this region. She’s doing something absolutely brilliant.”

Michaela Riedmüller Austria

“Michaela is in Carnuntum in Austria which is very close to the Slovakian border. She comes from several generations of winemakers but she decided to strike out on her own and do something smaller and focus on something a bit more natural.

“She has her own brand called Down to Earth and they are natural, unfiltered wines and are just delicious. I particularly love her Grüner Veltliner, which we retail at £27. She is pretty young and already has so much talent.”

Donatella Cinelli Colombini, Tuscany

“Donatella is famous mainly for her Brunello di Montalcino, but I love the story of her Brunello, Prime Donne, which is made by a team of all-female winemakers.

“Donatella had called the oenology school in Siena to see if any winemakers or cellar hands were available and she was told that everybody had already secured a job for when their studies were over … but ‘oh, wait, there are some women cellar masters, because no one wants them’. She hired eight of them and the Prime Donne project was born.

“At the moment in the restaurant we have Brunello di Montalcino Riserva 1998 and Il Drago e le 8 Colombe 2003.”

soil and well-shaped plants will enable the vine to be less affected by environmental aggressors.

Laure Habasque

Château d’Astros Provence

I’m always amazed by the beauty of Astros: its trees, wildlife, springs and historic buildings. But I also work with a scientific approach to diversification, soil studies, and winemaking. Bringing a scientific vision is essential to revealing the very best of Astros while preserving its magic for generations to come.

Working in the vineyard allows us to follow the evolution of the plant, the formation of the grapes, the impact of the vintage and the precautions to be taken (in organic farming, you must prevent disease – we don’t have curatives). The work in the cellar is also interesting, especially during the harvest: we transform a whole year’s work in the vineyard into a very short period. And the choices we make during harvest have an impact on the style of wine we produce: we put a lot of ourselves into this product. It’s craftsmanship.

As I said, in organic farming we must be ready to intervene as soon as rain threatens, to anticipate. We’re not the most difficult region to farm organically, but we do feel that the climate is changing: years can be very dry in winter, then very wet in spring. Our aim at Astros is to help the plant defend itself against bio-aggressions: we believe that a healthy

Château d'Astros Absolu

The most gastronomic and complex of the trio, this wine has remarkable finesse with an impressive length in the mouth. Perfect paired with more refined dishes, or it stands beautifully on its own. With each round and silky sip, it captures the essence of the estate and the unique Var terroir, before revealing an opulent and spicy finish.

Working at night in the wilderness offers some extraordinary moments: fox cubs playing in the middle of the paths, the ballet of bats that come to eat our insect pests, the sunrise over the pine trees. But it’s also the most stressful time of the year: the slightest breakdown is a source of anxiety. It’s a rhythm we have to get into, for more than a month: we always start at the same time to avoid upsetting our internal clocks too much, and even if we don’t have the time, we’ll be able to get back on schedule.

I am convinced that good wine is first made in the vineyard. We work to bring healthy, concentrated and balanced grapes to the press, then we intervene as little as possible: no SO2 before the end of fermentation, settling according to the time we think necessary (according to the tasting), classic fermentation. The essentials are done in the vineyard!

We must communicate better on the differences between the terroirs of Provence. A rosé from Bandol will not have the same structure as a rosé from the hinterland, the soil sometimes brings more mineral, warmer notes. But we also have a wide choice of grape varieties, different ways of working in the cellar, which bring differences between our Provence rosé wines. We must talk about it and not hesitate to taste often to fully showcase these differences.

What do I love most about my job?

Beyond working with nature and creating a product that can be shared, what is nice

Château d’Astros is set in 600 hectares in the heart of the Var. There Laure and her team craft organic AOP Côtes-de-Provence and IGP Var wines that express the richness and purity of their land

Wines imported by Jascots

is that every day is different, every vintage different ... no routine.

I’d like to successfully adapt our vines to climate change by providing them with the necessary elements to strengthen their natural resilience. This means understanding the soil, water availability, and biodiversity, and working in harmony with these elements to create a more sustainable ecosystem. That is why we are gradually transitioning to biodynamics, an approach that respects the rhythms of nature and enhances the vitality of our vines, ensuring both their health and the quality of our wines for the future.

Amour is a powerful, energetic and intensely aromatic wine: Astros’s signature cuvée. While each vintage brings its own nuances, the wine remains true to its identity, offering a distinctive aromatic depth and a full, sapid palate, culminating in a long, enveloping finish that embodies the estate’s savoir-faire.

Château d'Astros Augustine

The most delicate of the trio with a blend of Grenache and Cinsault bringing crunchy red berry fruit and exotic undertones of pink grapefruit and peach. The palate is softly rounded with an elegant swirl of lime on the finish. A perfect aperitif or for pairing with lighter summery dishes such as courgette gazpacho or seabass carpaccio.

Château d'Astros Amour Rosé

MICHAEL WALKER

The Narrow Corner

Aglianico and the rocky terrain of Campania: a marriage made in heaven

Ihave been to a few weddings outside the UK. The first was in San Francisco, 20 years ago. It was a small affair in a lovely downtown hotel. I remember that an American guest referred to me as a “ne’erdo-well” – which I considered particularly harsh, as I was helping to foot the bill for the festivities.

Many years later, I went to another wedding, in Campania, the reception for which was held in a winery. Here I was merely a guest and my presence was very welcome, for I had helped the Italian couple to discover the venue the previous year.

That was my first visit to the interior of Campania. I was already a big fan of Aglianico and I had asked my Italian friend, Davide, if we could visit the area where the vineyards were located and Taurasi, the grape’s most renowned labelling, was made.

I couldn’t quite believe my eyes as he drove us from the coast into the mountainous interior, where the temperature plunged by about 10 degrees compared to sunny Salerno. I was told later that spring frosts were an issue at the estate, and I was not at all surprised.

When we reached the winery, we found that it was perched above a valley with a dramatic mountain in the background. Vines bearing the white grape Fiano spread down the slope in front of us. Fiano, I learned, was the first of the bigname grapes to be harvested. The owner

observed that it was more aromatic than Greco, the other white Campanian grape with DOCG status, giving wines with a citrus and white fruit character, and was still good 20 years after the harvest. As was the case with the other whites made at the estate, they preferred not to mature the Fiano in oak.

Despite the fact that I was a devotee of red wine, I was very interested to learn about the white grapes of Campania. They all had high acidity, I was informed.

According to my notes, the Greco we tasted was full-bodied and mineral, with a tinge of grapefruit. It was outstanding. (I can’t recall if that was my judgement or the owner’s – perhaps both.) The downsides were that it gave low yields and was hard to grow.

The main draw for me was of course the red wines made from Aglianico. I was told that the harvest for this grape could extend into November, which probably explains why the one Sicilian Aglianico I have tried in the UK was awful. Evidently the grape needs the altitude and continental climate of inland Campania –where vines are planted between 300 and 650 metres above sea level and the diurnal variation can be as much as 18 degrees in the summer – if it is to ripen properly.

I’d already had a lot of Aglianico by that point in my life, and my conclusions were confirmed by the owner of the estate. It was a food wine, he said, owing to its high tannins and searing acidity, with flavours of cherry, strawberry and blueberry. It was also very ageworthy, he continued. He lamented, however, that Taurasi was not an easy sell, owing to a lack of name recognition and the high cost of production, the latter challenge reflecting the terrain and the remoteness of the vineyards. Still, relative to other excellent wines from Italy, I’d say the cost of a bottle of Taurasi really isn’t prohibitive.

To return to my friend’s wedding, the final part of the reception unfolded in the fermentation room. We ate cheese accompanied by the winery’s Taurasi, danced in front of the towering steel fermentation vats, and had Fernet Branca as a digestivo. As we departed, each guest was handed a bottle of Aglianico, which we’d already consumed great quantities of over dinner.

Relative to other excellent wines from Italy, I’d say the cost of a bottle of Taurasi isn’t prohibitively expensive

I briefly flirted with learning Italian after that wedding, but gave up when I kept confusing it with Spanish and French. One thing is for sure, though: I will remember the Italian toast brindisi for the rest of my life.

Michael Walker is part of the team at Vino in Edinburgh

Altitude and continental climate suit Aglianico

Roberson

California Sippin’ Portfolio Tasting

Roberson, one of the UK pioneers of new-wave California wines, will be pouring some of the current stars from its range.

These include Arnot-Roberts, Kutch, Corison, Mayacamas, Mount Eden, Forlorn Hope, Sandhi and Piedrasassi.

To register, scan the barcode in the Supplier Bulletin ad on page 63.

Tuesday, March 25

21-27 Seagrave Road

London SW16 1RP

The New Tejo Tasting

A masterclass with Dirceu Vianna Junior MW, with a self-pour tasting and networking session.

To register, contact emma@eviva.co.uk.

Monday, March 31

Asia House

63 New Cavendish Street

London W1G 7LP

The Definitive Champagne Tasting

The event will be the first generic Champagne trade tasting in London since 2018.

It will bring together around 50 producers and will include houses, cooperatives and growers.

There are two tasting sessions: 10am-

2pm, and 2pm-5pm. Email anny@westbury.co.uk.

Tuesday, April 1

Tate Modern South Room, Blatavnic Building London SE1 9TG

Wines from Spain Annual Tasting

The 36th Wines from Spain annual tastings take place in London and Manchester.

Join producers, importers and winemakers for the opportunity to reexamine classic regions and explore new DOs, styles and varietals.

To register for a place email winesfromspain@otaria.co.uk.

Tuesday, April 1

Illuminate Gallery

Science Museum

London SW7 2DD

Monday, April 28

The Fountain House 14 Albert Square

Manchester M2 5PE

Keeling Andrew Portfolio Tasting

This London tasting is hosted by owners Dan Keeling and Mark Andrew. Producers attending include Jean-Marc Roulot, Ulysse Collin, Mugneret-Gibourg, Benoît Moreau, Camille Thiriet, E&E Vocoret, Belargus, Domaine de Galouchey, Marie-Thérèse Chappaz, Piero Busso, Suertes del Marqués, Muchada-Léclapart, Piero Busso, Koehler- Ruprecht and Thymiopoulos.

Contact info@keelingandrew.co.uk.

Tuesday, April 1

Conway Hall

25 Red Lion Street

London WC1R 4RL

Howard Ripley German Tasting

The event will feature a selection of classic estates as well as up-and-coming producers. Register by emailing emily. jackson@howardripley.com.

Wednesday, April 2

Royal Society of Chemistry Library Burlington House, Piccadilly London W1J 0BA

Big Fortified Tasting

The 2025 BFT brings all types of fortified wines from around the world. To register contact admin@thebft.co.uk.

Wednesday, April 3

Church House Conference Centre

Dean’s Yard London SW1P 3NZ

Spanish treats in store on April 1 and 28

Grand Cercle des Vins de Bordeaux – En Primeurs

The tasting provides the first chance to taste the 2024 vintage.

To register contact pandora.mistry@ businessfrance.fr.

Thursday, April 3

The Dilly 21 Piccadilly

London W1J 0BH

Discover Hungary Tasting

This Manchester event will showcase over 100 wines from more than 20 Hungarian wineries.

There will be charcuterie and cheese from selected food producers to pair with the wines, as well as masterclasses on key regions and styles including Tokaj and Bull’s Blood.

For more information and to register contact mgyenes@btinternet.com.

Thursday, April 10

Legend’s Suite Etihad Stadium

Manchester M11 3FF

Bibendum Cellar

Tasting

This tasting promises wines from some of the world’s most revered vineyards and producers.

The curated selection of 80 wines includes classics as well as some from less familiar regions. There will also be discussions around sustainable practices,

vintage variation and how wines age.

For more information and to register contact events@bibendum-wine.co.uk.

Monday, April 28

Landing Forty-Two 122 Leadenhall Street

London EC3V 4AB

Flint Wines

Portfolio Tasting

Flint will be showing the wares of more than 150 producers, offering some 500 wines to taste across regions ranging from Marlborough to the Maconnais, Sicily to Sonoma.

It will be showcasing some of the newest domaines represented in the UK,

including Steve Matthiasson of California’s Matthiasson Wines, Bordeaux’s Château Marsau and Piedmont’s Penna-Currado, as well as Napa’s Gallica Wine and Grace Family Vineyard and Burgundy’s ArnaudBoue and Thevenard.

Other highlights will include Australia’s Leeuwin Art Series, Sonoma’s Hirsch, the Loire’s François Chidaine, and Robert Moncuit Champagne.

The founders of the French mouthblown crystal producer Sydonios will also be present to show their range of wine glasses and decanters.

Request an invitation to join this tasting by contacting katy@flintwines.com.

Tuesday, April 29

Royal Opera House Bow Street

London WC2E 9DD

Rosemary Cakebread of Gallica Wine – taste some of her latest releases on April 29

Rhône Roots Tasting

Rhône specialist Matt Walls invites 40 winemakers to pour their wines and meet guests at this London tasting.

All 18 crus of the Rhône Valley will be present alongside Côtes-du-Rhône and satellite AOCs Ventoux. A further eight producers will attend from estates that focus on classical Rhône varieties from outside France including Australia, California, Washington and South Africa. Additionally, there will be a number of 40-minute break-out discussions and tastings that combine old world and new world winemakers.

The event will combine wines with UK representation with others looking for importers.

Register by emailing clare@islandmedia.co.uk.

Wednesday, April 30

Lumiere London Underwood 6-14 Underwood Street London N1 7JQ

Deep Down Under Tasting

Deep Down Under returns for a fifth edition, with new importers and wines from some of Australia’s most wellknown producers.

The tasting will feature wines from Graft, Flint, Liberty Wines, Nekter, ABS Wine Agencies, Fells and Thistledown.

This year they are joined by Berkmann Wine Cellars and LC Selections. Contact jenny@graftwine.co.uk.

Wednesday, April 30

Crypt on the Green Clerkenwell Close London EC1R 0EA

Vines growing at Condrieu in the Rhône valley

The Cynic’s Guide to Wine

In this exclusive Wine Merchant mini-series Sunny Hodge, author of The Cynic’s Guide to Wine, extrapolates a single topic from each chapter of his book in the run-up to its release.

The book lays out the scientific connections in wine, from soil to fruit to glass, and onwards to our own sensory perception. It references the latest in soil science, viticulture, microbiology and neuroscience to present wine professionals and experts with a go-to book, ensuring what we say about wine is technically and scientifically correct.

Chapter 1: Roots

I’ve worked for more than two decades in hospitality and forged my way into wine for the same reasons that I began to research and compile this book. Many of us in restaurants and shops learn wine from hand-me-down information, and a lot of what is said may not be correct.

How vines interact with soil is a mystical mess and often skirted in formal wine education. What’s needed is a degree in soil science, and in this book I save you the legwork by highlighting the key root mechanisms most relevant to wine.

Cation exchange is an important concept to get our heads around. From a viticultural perspective, grapevines don’t ask for much and can flourish in some shockingly nutrient-poor soils. A nutrient is simply an ion (an atom or molecule with a net charge) that has some health benefit to living things. Many of these positively charged nutrients in free-flowing soil water magnetically affix themselves to negatively charged minerals and rocks found under the ground.

Cation exchange is the process which enables vine roots to pump out supercharged positive hydrogen ions (created by separating the H in H20

– water) that magnetically bolt onto negatively charged minerals in the soil, displacing the weaker charged nutrients surrounding that mineral in the process, and freeing them up to be taken up by the roots.

This process describes the interaction between rocks in the soil and vine nutrient acquisition. Understanding this process in detail spells the demise of habitually linking the flavour of wine to rocks and minerals in the soil. By getting our heads around the science above, we realise that the vines don’t take up the physical minerals or rocks in the soil, but the varying array of nutrient ions which happen to surround them at the time.

In the first chapter of the book we go into the nitty gritty of how this works on an atomic level, and we begin to unravel the mysteries of how various soils make any difference to the humble grapevine.

For the chance to win a free signed copy, my question to you for next month’s edition is: “What difference to the vine do clay soils make?” Answers via Instagram message to @sunnyhodgewine.

The Cynic’s Guide to Wine is available for pre-purchase online at Waterstones, Amazon, Academie du Vin Library and all good book retailers. Its publication date is March 31.

Pic: Daniel Ogulewicz

roberson wine

21-27 Seagrave Road

London SW6 1RP

020 7381 7870

enrico.marcolungo@robersonwine.com

robersonwinetrade

condor wines

Henge Court Thame OX9 2FX 07508 825 488

orders@condorwines.co.uk www.condorwines.co.uk

Condor_Wines

Condor.Wines

Condor_Wines

Condor Wines

AWIN BARRATT SIEGEL

28 Recreation Ground Road Stamford Lincolnshire PE9 1EW 01780 755810

orders@abs.wine www.abs.wine

@ABSWines

We look forward to seeing you on the ABS Stand, E59 at LWF 2025, where we will be showcasing wines from across our portfolio, from both the Old and the New World. Whether you’re revamping your range, revisiting old favourites or would simply like to say hello, we are happy to welcome you. If you would like to arrange a meeting, please do contact your Account Manager.

New Bank House

1 Brockenhurst Road

Ascot

Berkshire SL5 9DL

01344 871800

info@hatch.co.uk

www.hatchmansfield.com

@hatchmansfield

Introducing three new additions to our Italian portfolio

order@libertywines.co.uk www.libertywines.co.uk @liberty_wines

Founded in 1902 by Giulio Ferrari and owned by the Lunelli family since 1952, Ferrari Trento is Italy’s most awarded sparkling wine. Their meticulous grape selection and state-of-the-art winemaking has seen them named Sparkling Wine Producer of the Year seven times at the Champagne & Sparkling Wine World Championships; the win in 2024 was their fourth in succession. Winemaker Cyril Brun, from Aÿ in Champagne, joined as chef de cave in June 2023, bringing his vast experience and new perspective to Trentodoc Metodo Classico sparkling wines. Based in the foothills of the Dolomites, the winery is today a passionate advocate of mountain winemaking and sustainable viticulture, leading them to gain both Carbon Neutral and Biodiversity Friend certifications.

When the opportunity to acquire the historic Lessona estate La Prevostura came up in 2019, Luca De Marchi of Proprietà Sperino didn’t hesitate. Though close to Sperino, its four hectares of vineyards are less extreme, with lower elevations contributing to warmer, consistent temperatures, and the fragrant wines are distinctive to the denomination.

Torre di Terzolan is based in Valpolicella’s upper Val Squaranto, an area notable for its biodiversity. Roberta Previti took over the estate in the 1990s, revitalising its three hectares of vineyards and 2,000+ olive trees, and is dedicated to preserving its rich history, dating back to the Renaissance, while modernising its farming and winemaking.

mentzendorff

The Woolyard 52 Bermondsey Street

London SE1 3UD

020 7840 3600

info@mentzendorff.co.uk

www.mentzendorff.co.uk

richmond wine agencies

The Links, Popham Close Hanworth TW13 6JE 020 8744 5550

Mark Isham, south & London: mark@richmondwineagencies.com

Julia Langshaw, north of the UK: julia@richmondwineagencies.com

Tim Hawtin, south west & London: tim@richmondwineagencies.com

PerfectforEaster

THE PERFECT PAIRING

4 CRAFT CHOCOLATES | 4 EXCEPTIONAL PORTS

From the makers of Taylor’s and Fonseca Ports, comes the UK release of the Vinte Vinte Chocolate & Port Pairing Pack.

The houses first ever dedicated Portuguese chocolate and Port wine gift pack, which offers expertly curated pairings of deliciously crafted Vinte Vinte chocolate that perfectly harmonise with selected Taylor’s and Fonseca Ports.

RWA is please to announce the launch of our new wines from Famille Bougrier.

Established in 1885, the Bougrier family has managed the winery for six generations. Famile Bougrier represents around 800 hectares of vineyards and is one of the last family-owned companies covering the whole of the Loire Valley area.

But who is the artist? Here's what the family have to say.

“The artist is Jean-Claude, the fourth generation of Famille Bougrier. A passionate man who has imposed his style to go further and further to develop the style of our wines. An intractable stubborn man who was also nicknamed The Teacher, hiding under his cap, a man with a big heart. The artist is also our grandfather who, with his humour, gave fun to our lunches during so many years and gave us his passion for our Loire wines: subtle, lively and tasty ... like him. Hats off to the artist!”

Unit 5, The E Centre

Easthampstead Road

Bracknell RG12 1NF

01753 521336

info@buckingham-schenk.co.uk www.buckingham-schenk.co.uk

@BuckSchenk

@buckinghamschenk

In Vino Weix Weixelbaum is an Austrian family-owned winery based in Strass. The winery has been in the Weixelbaum family for three generations who has been nurturing this 22Ha estate in the Kamptal wine-growing region. Their main focus is on white wine and the success of their award-winning estate lies in its holistic, ecological principles.

walker & Wodehouse

109a Regents Park Road London NW1 8UR

0207 449 1665

orders@walkerwodehousewines.com

www.walkerwodehousewines.com

@WalkerWodehouse

Walker

& Wodehouse

welcomes Quinta da Pedra Alta

Walker & Wodehouse is delighted to welcome Quinta da Pedra Alta to its portfolio. Located in the Cima Corgo region, Quinta da Pedra Alta has a long and illustrious history dating back to 1761 and is the only vineyard in the Douro to have three granite markers (Marcos Pombalinos) on its property.

With an emphasis on showcasing the diversity of its altitudes, grape varieties, and wine styles, the estate demonstrates the full potential of the Douro. There is also a focus on sustainable winemaking, minimising land intervention and promoting biodiversity in the vineyard.

Head winemaker João Pires is at the forefront of a younger generation of winemakers in the region pushing the boundaries of tradition that put the Douro region on the global wine map. Purchased by its current owners and renovated in 2018, the estate fulfils their lifelong dream of owning and running a winery.

For more information, please contact your account manager

Fells

Fells House, Station Road

Kings Langley WD4 8LH

01442 870 900

For more details about these wines and other wines from our awardwinning portfolio from some of the world’s leading wine producing families contact:

info@fells.co.uk www.fells.co.uk

@FellsWine

je_fells

LOUIS LATOUR AGENCIES

12-14 Denman Street

London W1D 7HJ

0207 409 7276

enquiries@louislatour.co.uk www.louislatour.co.uk

@louislatouruk

Simonnet-Febvre

Simonnet-Febvre is a renowned winery located in the Chablis region of Burgundy, France. Established in 1840, it is one of the oldest wine houses in the area, celebrated for its exceptional Chablis and Crémant de Bourgogne.

The winery combines traditional winemaking techniques with modern innovation, producing wines that reflect the unique terroir of Burgundy. Simonnet-Febvre is particularly known for its crisp, mineral-driven Chablis, made from Chardonnay grapes, and its elegant sparkling wines.

Acquired by the Louis Latour family in 2003, the winery continues to uphold its legacy of quality and craftsmanship, offering wines that are both authentic and expressive of their origin.

For more information, please contact sales@louislatour.co.uk or scan the QR code.

delibo wine agencies

The Old Pigsty, Rose Cottage Church Hanborough OX29 8AA 01993 886644

orders@delibo.co.uk www.delibo.co.uk

Some alternatives to celebrate Malbec World Day

Malbec World Day is on 17th April – the date the first agronomy school in Argentina was founded in 1853. We can celebrate with sleek Mendoza Malbec from Don Cristóbal, but how about offering a backstory to your customers with the original dark, brooding Malbec from Cahors? Caroline Cassot is the fifth generation winemaker at the HVE-certified Château La Coustarelle, founded in 1870. Or 400km further to the north in the Loire valley, is the HVE-certified Domaine Jérémy Villemaine, founded in 1825 in the heart of the Touraine appellation, who also craft Côt!

For more information about these alternative Malbecs, please contact orders@delibo. co.uk or your account manager.

vintner systems

The computer system for drinks trade wholesalers and importers 16 Station Road Chesham HP5 1DH

sales@vintner.co.uk www.vintner.co.uk

hallgarten wines

Mulberry House

Parkland Square

750 Capability Green

Luton LU1 3LU

01582 722 538

sales@hnwines.co.uk www.hnwines.co.uk

@hnwines

top selection

23 Cellini Street London SW8 2LF

www.topselection.co.uk info@topselection.co.uk

Contact: Alastair Moss Telephone: 020 3958 0744

@topselectionwines

@topselection

“I relax by getting inside the mind of a rising fish”

Ned Llewellyn, Alliance Wine

Ned joined Alliance Wine in 2011 having already spent 16 years in the wine trade, most recently with Charles Taylor Wines. He joined Alliance’s board in 2021 and serves as the company’s offtrade sales director.

What’s the first wine you remember drinking?

I was lucky enough to grow up as a neighbour to the late David Rutherford OBE, one of the nicest men in the wine trade, and he used to regularly share bottles of Quinta do Noval from his cellar with my dad – I’m not sure too many kids my age would have had the chance to enjoy ‘63 Nacional but it certainly stuck in my mind!

What job would you be doing if you weren’t in the wine trade?

I always wanted to be a property developer, yet somehow my first job after university was at Majestic and it didn’t take long for me to realise my true calling. I’m not sure I’d ever go back now.

How do you relax?

Waist deep in a chalk stream, usually, getting inside the mind of a rising fish and dedicating hours of concentration to trying to catch it, cook it and eat it.

The best book you’ve read recently?

I don’t read anywhere near as much as I should these days, unless it’s something useful about how to build a porch, or generally do whatever botched DIY job I’m attempting next. My wife keeps providing me with books to read but they mostly elevate the top level of my bedside table.

Give us a Netflix recommendation.

I’m a sucker for a crime/spy drama – be it Slow Horses, Black Doves, Day of the Jackal etc, but I was recently recommended a very cheesy American documentary on biodynamic farming called The Biggest Little Farm which makes you want to sell off everything and set up a small regenerative project.

Do you have any sporting loyalties?

I’m an Arsenal fan, but prefer watching rugby to be honest. I mostly watch sport with my youngest son, and we will certainly be submitting our vote to have darts at the next Olympics with Luke Littler leading the charge for Team GB.

Who’s your favourite music artist?

Music has amazing powers to reflect or change my mood so picking a favourite would be too difficult. Seeing Groove Armada play in 2003 was pretty amazing and not a gig I’ll ever forget.

Who is your favourite wine critic?

There are a lot of lovely and interesting things written about wines from a broad range of critics, but on the whole I struggle with the points system and the way it rarely seems a true reflection of someone’s opinion, but more a reflection of putting wines in price/score order with varying levels of exaggeration. Grrr.

What’s your most treasured possession?

Probably our house – more blood, sweat and tears have gone into turning it from an uninhabitable shell to our family home over the last few years, so it probably warrants top spot.

What’s your proudest moment?

Becoming a father for the first time was definitely my proudest moment. Not fainting at the birth of my next child probably comes in a close second.

What’s your biggest regret?

Life is too short to have regrets. I prefer just to do better next time.

Who’s your hero?

I don’t have a single hero per se, but my wife and kids are total heroes in my eyes.

Any hidden talents?

Catching sweets in my mouth that have been launched as high in the air as possible. When I was 19 we made $100 in about half an hour by performing this special talent in Christchurch in front of 50 people in the main square. We took the money before the performance.

What’s your favourite place in the UK?

The Isles of Scilly is as good as it gets.

If we could grant you one wish, what would it be?

Aside from world peace, a cheeky lottery win, and good health and prosperity for my family … I’d love for our industry to be in growth, for wine to be savoured and enjoyed for the beautiful artisanal product it truly is and not to be marred by the mass-market race to the bottom approach that continues to blight the wine trade.