26 minute read
the smiling grape
Matt Ellis, St Neots, January 2022
Advertisement
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
Matt 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.
In addition to a great wine range, over the years the Smiling Grape approach has involved wine karaoke, film nights, 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 flat-pack furniture “recovery” case. There are in-store tasting notes that recommend wines to drink with everything from fast food to popular TV shows to items of 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
James Bond drinking wine.
“We want to make people smile through wine,” says Matt. “We’re selling happiness. That’s what wine and booze is. “We started off as a classic fine wine merchant, the first there had ever been in the town.”
Having opened on St Neots’s main drag, the business moved a few yards to a site adjacent to the car park of the local Waitrose in 2012.
“It’s twice the size and half the cost and we’ve got parking outside,” Matt adds. “We realised after about four years the footfall had really dropped and we needed to cut costs.
“Wholesale was a big part of the business then and we needed more storage. Lorries couldn’t turn up outside where we were. We had a warehouse outside town, but it was very inconvenient constantly going backwards and forwards to get stock.”
Since the pandemic hit, Smiling Grape has ditched its wholesale custom and ramped up an online revenue stream called Low Cost Beer, selling short-dated or out-of-date stock, that launched as an experiment in 2019.
Matt started the Smiling Grape business with mum Denise and dad Robert, who’s now retired. Denise keeps her hand in, helping in the packing department for online orders.
“She’s not too keen to be at home watching cricket,” notes Matt.
Looking back, was the change of location a good piece of business?
The best thing about the shop is we’ve got Waitrose outside. It’s great because there’s nobody there who can give advice on wine. Somebody told us they went in there and asked someone about the organic wines they sell and they didn’t know anything about them, and they suggested they come over here. They’re constantly sending people over if they have no idea
what they’re talking about. We find a lot of customers now come in here and select their wines and then go over there and buy their food.
How important are the off-beat tasting notes as a sales tool?
We match up anything you can imagine: things like doner kebabs or celebrities, like the Mr T of wine. We also match with music, like hard rock and heavy metal, and things from everyday life like angling and wines to thanking your neighbour for watering the plants, or shows like Downton Abbey and Midsomer Murders.
We always do a Strictly match. There are people who come in just to read the labels and don’t buy any wine. We keep it fun. There’s one here for Michelle Williams; she was in that dreadful film with Tom Hardy; something to do with giant teeth – Venom!
You go into some wine shops and get told about barrel toast levels and what the winemaker does to the wine, but people don’t care about that. They just want to have a bit of fun looking at the shelves and some of them need a bit of help.
How did it start?
The whole concept was to keep matching wine with everyday life, whereas if you go into the supermarket there are walls and walls of wine and no one has any idea what’s going on.
Continues page 30
Pick a wine to accompany Midsomer Murders
From page 29
If they want, customers can take the tasting notes away with them, so we’re constantly printing new ones out. They’re very good for dinner parties; you can line up all the wines with funny tasting notes. It’s a good icebreaker. We used to sell earplugs with a Cheryl Cole wine, but I’m not sure where that’s gone.
You’ve also got one for the best seller. We just pass that one around different wines in the shop to help them move.
It’s not necessarily the best seller?
No.
Just the one you’d like to be the best seller.
That’s it.
What’s your overall approach to merchandising?
We used to have sections for things like Lovely Jubbly and OMG but now we’ve decided to keep it quite traditional, but we have added in the pictures of famous people drinking. We did have a Donald Trump picture but we took it down because it made people quite angry. He doesn’t drink anyway, so that was probably quite a good move.
I think a lot of people were coming in and couldn’t work out where wines were, so it was easier to keep it simple. When we started in the old shop we merchandised by taste and that really confused people. If they were looking for an Italian white, for example, it took forever to try to find it.
Where do your wines come from, in the main?
Les Caves de Pyrene have been really good. I think their wines fit with our quirky way of buying. Some of the natural wines we show at tastings are so wacky and people love that.
We do quite a lot with Jeroboams Trade. We’ve done bits and pieces with Myliko who are quite good.
We like to have a good cull of suppliers. We like to see how well they’re performing in terms of supporting us and get rid of the ones who come and see us every three years and tell us about wines we could have been selling years ago.
If we don’t get any support and nobody comes to see us there’s no point in buying from them.
Probably our biggest supplier now is UK Wine in Derby, who deal in bankrupt stock, overstocks and bin ends. That’s really how our business has changed since lockdown, nicely ticking over – then from March 2020 it went completely bonkers and we haven’t stopped. We were doing a couple of orders a week when we launched it and we’re doing 50 to 100 now.
All this stuff is available because a lot of breweries don’t want to keep beer past its best-before date, so they’re throwing it away. They’ve either made too much or they’re not very good at selling. We thought we could save it and become the beer rescuers and get some good margin, anything up to 100% – and the beer’s perfectly fine to drink.
One of the best deals we had was in February 2021 for kegs from cancelled Oktoberfest parties in 2020. We were pouring it non-stop for orders all over the country.
which is completely different from how we started.
We also go to auctions and buy some cracking stuff. We picked up a whole lot of spirits from a Chinese restaurant in London that went under. We rebottled them in 5cl miniatures and made a lucky dip basket. We pick up some really good stuff and the margins are fantastic.
The trouble with auctions is you’ve got to sit there for hours and make sure you don’t get carried away when it comes to bidding.
Tell us more about the beer side of things.
Low-cost craft beer is about 60% of our business now. We started it as an experiment, built a website and it was
We’re now dealing directly with breweries who contact us and we get some amazing beers. We’ve got a beer from Brew York which is £5 [at normal retail price] and we do it for £1.50. We’ve become a kind of a Poundshop for beer.
Why did you decide not to return to wholesale after lockdown?
Before lockdown it was probably about 50% of our business. Then all the restaurants closed down and, because we were making so much better margin through the website, we decided to tell everyone that we had been supplying to look for a new supplier when they reopened.
We’ve found we’re making the same
Ellis has culled the wine range from 700 to around 160. “It’s much better for cash flow”
amount in sales as were doing in wholesale but with a much bigger margin.
And wine retail ... ?
It’s still a big seller but it’s taken more of a back seat. We cut down the size of the shop to make more storage and packing space.
We used to have 700 wines when the shop was much bigger but now we’ve now cut it down to a maximum of 160. It’s much better for cash flow and it means we can swap things in and out more often and always have something new.
I think when you’ve got 600 to 1,000 wines it does get a bit confusing and overwhelming for people. This is nice and compact and means there’s always something new when people come back in.
What earns a place on the shelves?
It’s still always to do with quality. They have to be carefully tasted before we sell anything and if there’s a funny story behind it, that always helps when you’re doing tastings.
Before lockdown, outside tastings were quite a big part of the business. We used to do loads of charity tastings in London. It will come back but we’re doing nothing of that sort at the moment. We can’t fit events in the shop now but we do have plans for tastings in the store room. It’s quite a good space for tastings if we can get the right layout.
I think we’re going to start doing the movies again. We’ll match the wines with the movie and stop the film at a certain point to talk about the wines. That was very successful before. We’ve still got a cinema screen.
Where did the wine travel angle come from?
We came up with the idea for Smiling Grape Adventure Tours in 2018. We wanted to do something a bit different with wine tourism, so the first trip we did was a wine tasting in the Chernobyl exclusion zone.
The idea was to take people round Chernobyl – you’re only allowed 10 minutes in front of the reactor before the
Continues page 32
The wine club has around 50 members
Well we’re an award-winning company, so I guess as an award-winning company we must have an award-winning wine club. It’s quite popular. We have about 50 people in it. It’s just a conventional club, where we supply wines every month.
Outside of the club, probably our biggest sellers are the online bargain wine cases, which are £60 for 12 bottles.
We picked up a lot of new customers from supermarkets during lockdown and we’ve kept about half of those. They keep coming back for more.
It’s amazing how we’ve gone from selling lots of fine wines to our biggest sales now being bin ends. We always like to say we want to try something new, and cheap wine and cheap beer took off, so while it’s working we might as well stick with it.
Are there any other ideas left up your sleeve?
We do a farmers’ market for the beers. It works really well and was very successful last year. We’re looking possibly to do a franchise to take that up and down the country.
The latest idea is to have like a Wetherspoon’s model for a wine bar, beer bar and beer shop which we’ll call the Best Before Bar. We’ve been offered so many out-of-date kegs from wholesalers, so we could do some cracking deals on pints.
Would that be here in St Neots?
It’s a bit saturated in St Neots; there are 32 pubs, loads of bistros and bars that have kind of overtaken the town. We’re looking for somewhere locally but not in the town. However, it’s the biggest growing town in Cambridgeshire. They’re building something like 3,000 homes up the road. There’s a lot of growth here and opportunities to open new things. St Neots could be a good place to start. It would mean bringing in somebody with bar experience. I’ve no idea what to do.
From page 31
alarms start going off and you have to get out. In the evening we did a wine tasting with the locals in a hotel – Ukrainian wines and some wacky ones. That was quite interesting. We took eight people on that.
We organise the tours and the accommodation but we can’t organise flights because we don’t have a licence, so they have to organise that themselves. We’ve since done quite a few trips to Moldova, which has amazing ex-Soviet wineries where things haven’t changed much since those times.
We’re taking a group to Moldova again in February and we’re doing a tour to Georgia in April. We’ve got 10 wineries lined up, so it will be quite busy.
Then in 2018 we took people on a world pub crawl: eight countries, four continents and 25,000 miles. We did London, Brussels, Prague, Dubai, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Australia, Hawaii, Los Angeles, New York and London.
This was a world record?
No, that’s something different. I hold the [official Guinness world] record for the most pubs visited in 24 hours by an individual, which was last year, starting in Cambridge and finishing in St Neots.
Most of the time it was soft drinks; under Guinness World Records rules you have to be a responsible drinker. I spent a week doing interviews with the press in the US, Australia, India, Turkey.
You advertise your wine club as awardwinning.
THE WINEMAKER FILES // Gordon Russell
Esk Valley
Gordon has been Esk Valley’s head winemaker since 1993, three years after joining the Villa Maria-owned business in Hawke’s Bay. Now acclaimed as one of New Zealand’s best winemakers, Gordon is on a constant quest to explore different varieties and to express new possibilities from this now-famous terroir.
Sir George Fistonich purchased the historic Glenvale site at Bay View in the north of Hawke’s Bay in 1986 and
renamed it Esk Valley. The first vintage on site was 1989 and mine as winemaker was 1993. Esk Valley has benefited immensely from the ownership of a larger company, having access to resources beyond its size. Esk Valley has in turn been allowed to run independently with its own unique wine styles, winemaking techniques and loyal customers.
When I think back to the earliest of
our wines back in the 1990s, I see a naivety and a more formulaic approach to winemaking. With each of my 30-plus vintages another piece has been added to the puzzle, and the wines have become more expressive, now relying solely on a better understanding of the vineyards and their inherent personality. Better picking times, wild yeast, longer lees ageing and less new oak all contribute to the better textures and complexities in the wines.
Initially concrete fermenters were
all we had. The old winery at Bay View housed 23 open topped, 5-tonne concrete vats dating back to the 1930s, set into the earth with no temperature control. The artisanal nature of making wines in these old vats, employing a gentle but thorough tannin extraction, also began to shape a more holistic approach to winemaking. The understanding that we could make premium wine without refrigeration, relying instead on the cool earth surrounding the vats, was very satisfying.
Albariño, Gamay and Chenin Blanc are
the new additions to our portfolio and each offers another page in the Esk valley story. All three of these varieties are from the same block, the Two Terraces Vineyard at Mangatahi. This inland site on an old gravel river terrace exemplifies the search for cooler Hawke’s Bay sites, ideal for earlier ripening varieties such as these. With its warm days and cool night time temperatures, this vineyard seems more akin to Marlborough than traditional sub regions such as the Gimblett Gravels.
New Zealand has been very fortunate to enjoy global success with Sauvignon
Blanc. The right grape at the right time. This is both a blessing and a challenge for our other varietal wines, irrespective of their quality. Across New Zealand’s wine regions, a wide variety of climates and soil types can be found. Many of the other regions can be matched with specific varieties, making world-class quality wines: nowhere more so than the Bordeaux-inspired reds and Syrah from the Gimblett Gravels here in Hawke’s Bay. It’s just a matter of telling the story.
There are always things on the horizon
that will keep me interested. Once in your blood, it’s hard to let it go. Each vintage offers new opportunities and I feel my 30-plus Hawke’s Bay vintages allow me to make some assured decisions. Current areas of interest include replanting blocks which have been uprooted due to disease, organics, and producing light reds of complexity.
Esk Valley wines are imported into the UK by Hatch Mansfield 01344 871800 www.hatchmansfield.com
Hawke's Bay Sauvignon Blanc 2021
RRP: £14.15
Pre-2008, Esk Valley was a 100% Hawke's Bay brand, including Sauvignon Blanc sourced from cooler inland sites. This release is a return to our roots. An elegant wine, its texture enriched by a significant portion of barrel fermentation in seasoned oak. Ideal with a wide array of dishes, especially seafood.
Artisanal Chardonnay 2020
RRP: £19.40
A blend of two premium Hawke's Bay vineyards, barrel fermented with wild yeast and given extensive lees ageing. With only 10% new oak, it showcases the excellent 2020 vintage and the quality of the sites in which the grapes are grown. A mix of classic peachy Hawke's Bay fruit and a complex mealy note from the lees.
River Gravels 2019
RRP: £26.80
Formerly our Winemakers Reserve label, representing the finest we can do from the Gimblett Gravels. Old vines, hand-picked fruit, fermentation in concrete with wild yeast and aged in French oak, this is the latest edition of one of New Zealand’s most premium wine offerings. A classic and famed Hawke's Bay wine.
Strength in depth
Fells believes that its New Zealand lineup offers independents a real taste of the diversity on show in the country’s modern winemaking scene.
Last month, Master Sommelier Stefan Neumann guided a group of indies through an online tasting of seven stars of the Fells line-up. It’s fair to say that the group were impressed by what they discovered
As a proud Austrian, Stefan flies the flag for his native Grüner Veltliner, but has been won over by antipodean interpretations of the style.
Seifried Grüner Veltliner 2021
(Nelson, RRP £16.49) impressed our tasters with its freshness and vibrancy. For Camilla Wood of The Somerset Wine Company, it is a “lovely” wine with “a surprising richness, weight and mouth feel, and some crisp green apple notes”.
The Seifried family are originally from Austria, which may help explain their adeptness with the variety, which they grow in stony vineyards 15km from the coast in Nelson, in the northern part of South Island. “Nelson is small compared to Marlborough and a super boutique area,” Stefan said.
“The 2021 vintage has produced a very approachable style of wine,” he added. “It has the Grüner characteristics, with slightly floral notes, and for a wine of this age quite a few layers and a lot of complexity. “Whenever I pick up a Grüner I always think about a vegetal component, more like white asparagus than green asparagus. Here it’s more like the white part of a radish. There are quite a few layers there and it certainly has a softer and rounder mouthfeel and is maybe less linear than some Grüners from Austria, which I think is great because it makes it more approachable.”
Next up was Nautilus Albariño
2021 (Marlborough, RRP
£21.99). “Personally I think Albariño is quite well suited to Marlborough,” said Stefan. “There is good draining soil and relatively good water retention. Albariño needs to be a bit stressed and if you get the right clonal material, these are wonderful, lovely wines.”
Matt Monk of Whalley Wine Shop detected a tang of sea spray, as did Hannah Wilkins of Vineyards, who enjoyed the saline notes.
“This is just the perfect wine for sea food,” agreed Stefan. “There’s a certain saltiness and an iodine component that you always get with it. Also a citrus side, initially.”
Cold maceration but warmer fermentation temperatures gives this Albariño its richness and generosity, Stefan said, also identifying a quince characteristic in the mix. “I think a wine like this is a wonderful crowd pleaser, in the best possible way.”
For John Kernaghan of Liquorice Wines, Te
Mata Elston Chardonnay 2019 (Hawke’s
Bay, RRP £31.99) was the “winner” of the tasting.
“It’s nice to see a good balance of oak as opposed to the modern trend towards pure minerality,” he said.
He was not alone in his praise: several tasters were wowed by the wine, with Hannah Wilkins of Vineyards enjoying its “silky, elegant mouth feel” and delicious butter notes. “I could drink it all afternoon,” she added.
Stefan said: “I think the entire Te Mata range is rather impressive. We all look for alternatives to our beloved Burgundy these days and we all look for different things to discover and with Te Mata you’re in safe hands.”
The fruit comes from the oldest estate vineyards on the hills above the winery, so there is complete control over picking times. “That really contributes to finding the perfect ripeness,” Stefan explained.
“The very smart use of oak as a supportive rather than a dominating element … that is what strikes me more than anything else. There’s a bit of bottle maturity, which I think is great, and really makes a difference to this wine.
“Let it sit a bit in the glass, maybe with
© Khun Ta / stockadobe.com
Sam Neill of Two Paddocks in Central Otago: a proud farmer as well as an actor
some fish and chips. Wines like this are great on their own and even better with food.”
Actor Sam Neill initially set up Two Paddocks as a passion project to make wines for his friends. His genuine love of the land is apparent to anyone who watches his social media videos.
Two Paddocks Picnic Riesling 2019
(Central Otago, RRP £19.99) is an organic wine from vines on ungrafted rootstock. “For me he hits the nail on the head here with the name Picnic because that’s exactly what it is,” said Stefan. “Initially you get the white peach and apricot character, sweet lemon, a sweet orange tang. A little bit of residual sugar [10-12g/l] really makes it so enjoyable. I think it’s super harmonious.
“It’s a very classic Riesling. It’s not trying too hard and it’s a very sappy fresh vibrant style of wine.
“I would struggle in a blind tasting to put this into New Zealand.”
Tasters agreed that the sweetness gave the wine an extra lift. “Two Paddocks Riesling was simply a delight to taste,” said John Kernaghan. “That would work as an aperitif-style wine or fusion food winner every day. A definite re-list!”
The red line-up started with Nautilus
Southern Valleys Pinot Noir 2017
(Marlborough, RRP £24.99).
The wine comes from “the cool part of Marlborough”, Stefan said, and is made with Burgundy clones and sees a combination of new and old seasoned oak.
“It’s good to have four solid years of ageing before you have this in your glass,” he added.
“There’s a little bit of whole bunch, which really gives you that aromatic lift with age. It’s slightly vegetal and there’s a bit of spice. It’s quite savoury but with enough fruit to make it interesting.
“What I like about it is it’s not trying to be Burgundy, it’s trying to be Marlborough. There’s initial fruit and an earthy element there which makes it so easy to pair with many things, and the acidity is present – but not too much.
“It’s a lot of wine for not that much money. Try to find any 2017 Burgundies in that price range. Good luck!”
John Kernaghan agreed the pricing compared well to regions like Sonoma or Central Otago, as well as Burgundy.
Camilla Wood “loved” the wine, highlighting its cherry fruit, spice and farmyard characters. “A good weight and lots of layers,” she added. “So good.”
Continues overleaf
New Zealand is gaining a reputation for its Cabernet Franc and Seifried Aotea
Cabernet Franc 2019 (Nelson, RRP
£22.99) helps justify the enthusiasm.
“The vineyard is 10km away from the sea so there’s a little bit of coastal influence there,” said Stefan. “It’s another wine that takes you on a journey. There’s a spice element there which is rather lovely, and a black and blue fruit component, and it’s sort of playing with you. “It’s one of those wines that greatly rewards patience, but also greatly rewards you if you drink it now. “Initially when I pick this up, I would say it’s a little bit like Sangiovese – there’s a dark cherry component there – and a certain warmth and roundness to it. A slightly riper style.
“Also a slight mint component; bay leaf.”
Some of the tasters said they prefer this more generous style to some of the classic Cab Francs of the old world. “It’s surprisingly floral,” said Camilla Wood. “Roses, violets … it’s less vegetal than the Loire Cabernet Franc. It’s a more versatile style.”
Sara Saunby of Salut Wines said: “I love this grape and this is lovely. Perfect with a winter bean stew and some crusty bread.”
Te Mata Estate Merlot/Cabernets 2019
(Hawke’s Bay, RRP £19.99) is a blend of 44% Merlot 36% Cabernet Sauvignon 20% Cabernet Franc, all estate-grown.
The producer has been growing vines here since the 1890s and exemplifies what can be achieved in Hawke’s Bay with Bordeaux varieties. Wines are often very long-lived.
“Such an inviting nose, such a complex palate,” said Hannah Wilkins. “There are so many layers, you just don’t know where to start.”
Hermann, Heidi and Chris Seifried among their Nelson vines
Dramatic scenery at Te Mata in Hawke’s Bay
A mixture of new and old seasoned oak adds to the complexity, and contributes a subtle layer of sweet spice. “With Merlot you get that approachability and softness,” said Stefan, “and with Cabernet, and in particular Cab Franc, you get a slight minty, eucalyptus character which gives it a wonderful warm lift.”
He added: “This is one of those wines that I really want to see age.”
Feature produced in association with Fells
To find out more about the complete range of New Zealand wines,visit www.fells.co.uk or email info@fells.co.uk 01442 870 900
Premium, diverse, sustainable – and profitable
Sign up for the New Zealand Winegrowers independent retailer promotion and you could win £1,000 in Kiwi wines from any supplier of your choice
Merchants in the UK have better access to the full breadth of New Zealand’s wine offer than retailers in any other export market.
That’s the belief of Chris Stroud, UK market manager for New Zealand Winegrowers, as he unveils this year’s promotional campaign for independents.
Merchants are invited to run an imaginative two-week campaign, any time between the beginning of April and the end of June, which showcases the premium, diverse and sustainable attributes of New Zealand wines.
Three merchants who are judged to have run the most interesting and effective promotions will receive £1,000 to spend on New Zealand wines with suppliers of their choice.
As was the case last year, consumers are also involved. In a separate competition, 10 customers will win £100 vouchers redeemable against New Zealand wines from their nominated independent.
Stroud is keen to give indies freedom to explore all corners of the New Zealand wine industry when they put their promotions together.
“They need to include at least six New Zealand wines,” he says. “Ideally we’d like three different varieties or regions represented. Typically they would have a Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc and a Pinot Noir from somewhere; maybe a Hawke’s Bay Merlot or Syrah, or a Riesling.
“Perhaps look at something like Canterbury Pinot Noir, or Nelson Riesling. Or maybe indies would like to major on the organic and biodynamic wines that are becoming more and more important. “There are no hard and fast rules, as long as the promotion shows innovation and diversity.”
Last year’s winners were Reserve Wines, Colchester Wine Company and Campbells of Leyburn, who managed to organise effective promotions despite the challenges of Covid restrictions. “Hopefully this year indies can do more in-store tastings and education as well as digital stuff,” says Stroud. “We’re looking for really creative ways of engaging people with New Zealand wine. “We’d be looking for them to get support from their suppliers and we will help too.
“We’ve got POS, posters, shelf barkers, bottle collars and education material.
“We’ve got a lot of info on our website. We’ve got two or three-minute video clips of many of the regions and specific varietal guides that people can take information from, and a general booklet on New Zealand wine that we can send people to help get them started.”
He adds: “We’d like to encourage more independents to work with their trade customers too, as well as focusing on their own customers.
“The UK has one of the most diverse ranges of New Zealand wine available. You can pretty much get something from each area of the country in the UK. So we’re looking forward to seeing what the independent trade will do this spring to really inspire their customers to make new discoveries.”
To find out more and to register your interest, please contact Chris Stroud at chris.stroud@nzwine.com
www.nzwine.com
