Vineyards moves to bigger premises
Café purchase was too good to miss
Vineyards has moved to a much larger
Matthew Iles is planning to open
premises just a short walk away from
Bouchon, a bar next door to Quercus
the original shop in Sherborne, Dorset.
Wines, his shop in Westerham, at the end of October.
Owners Hannah and Sadie Wilkins are
“People are always asking if they can
thrilled that they will be able to have a
dedicated tasting room, extra storage space
have a glass of wine outside on a sunny day
shiny new space,” says Sadie. “We will be
glass,” explains Iles.
and I’ve never been able to because I’m
and an extended wine range.
not licensed at the shop to do wines by the
“It’s a great time to be moving into a
When the lease came up on the licensed
introducing at least 250 more wines on the
café right next door, he says it was too
shelves so the portfolio is increasing.
“We are really proud to say that quite
a few of the local restaurants, pubs and
hotels have our wines so we are building
up our wholesale again and we’ve recently taken on some lovely accounts including
Mat Follas, a MasterChef winner who has opened a restaurant in Sherborne.” The pair have taken on a large
commercial unit in Old Yarn Mills and
they had a lot to do before opening the first weekend of October. Previously
an auto shop, it was a no-frills space.
“We’re embracing the industrial feel of it,
otherwise we’d be totally overwhelmed by the space,” explains Sadie.
“We’re having a steel mezzanine being
made to our spec, and that will be the
wine lounge upstairs. It means we can do in-house tastings really comfortably in a
dedicated space away from the shop floor. “We all know that people are more
adventurous by the glass than by the bottle and we had a taste of how nice it was
having a drink in menu prior to Covid. Now we are opening in
a better space for that.”
To show
customers just how
easy they
will be to
A mezzanine wine lounge will be installed
find, Sadie posted a social media video of
herself walking their dog Hugo from their old shop to the new location.
“Even though it’s not on the high street,”
she says of the new shop, “this little area
is a destination, a nice little buzzy quarter of town and our neighbours have really
good an opportunity to turn down. “It’s a
beautiful frontage and it has the same view of the green and it’s twice the size of my
shop. I’ll be able to pick up where I left off with tastings. People seem willing to do
that sort of thing again and now I’ll have a dedicated space for them.”
Iles says he will keep the same look
and feel as the shop with darkish colours,
paved the way. There’s an eclectic mix of businesses here. There’s a vintage
furniture and antiques place, a micro-
brewery and a Gamespod. It used to be
more of an industrial estate but now it’s
somewhere that people come to socialise.” Vineyards is long established in
Sherborne and well known for being
cheerleaders of not just the community
but its fellow independent traders. Hannah and Sadie have treated the relocation as an extension of that.
“In a town of this size you get that
sublime window into how good community can be,” says Sadie. “We’ve just had to have some emergency tradespeople who we
just happen to count as friends of ours. In Sherborne you’re a stone’s throw away
from a talented friend and even the love
that’s going into building this new place is a community project.”
THE WINE MERCHANT october 2021 6
wooden floors and marble tables –
“nothing that hasn’t been done before,” he says. “It’s quite classic and simple.”
During shop hours, customers will be
able to buy a bottle and take it next door to drink in the bar for a corkage fee. Or they can choose from the by-the-glass list.
“The wine list will focus on slightly more
quirky European wines from France, Italy and Spain in particular,” Iles says. “There
will be other things as well that I don’t do
in the shop because it’s much easier to do
small parcels, even odd bottles, by Coravin
