MERCHANT PROFILE
Matt Ellis, St Neots, January 2022
‘We’re selling happiness. That’s what wine is’ Matt Ellis has always found a reason to smile about his job, even when it involves leading a wine tasting trip to Chernobyl. Nigel Huddleston pays a visit to his Smiling Grape store in St Neots
M
att Ellis’s nickname has been Smiler for as long as he can remember. “I used to get
into terrible trouble at school,” he says.
For the past 13 years, however, he’s been
channelling his sense of mischief and a flair for disruption into The Smiling Grape, the wine merchant with a happy face in the
Cambridgeshire town of St Neots.
flat-pack furniture “recovery” case. There
has involved wine karaoke, film nights,
food to popular TV shows to items of
In addition to a great wine range, over
the years the Smiling Grape approach
record-breaking pub crawls, wine trips to countries of the former Soviet Union and
mixed cases with unconventional free gifts, such as a screwdriver which came with a
THE WINE MERCHANT february 2022 28
are in-store tasting notes that recommend wines to drink with everything from fast
underwear sold in Victoria’s Secret. Some bottles have tags for wine horoscopes.
The décor includes pictures of Barack
Obama, the queen and Daniel Craig as
