Due South

For Frescobaldi, one global region in particular is ripe for the picking – thanks in a large part to a recent trade deal. On 6 December 2024, the European Union reached an agreement with four members of Mercosur, the South American trade bloc: Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Brazil. One of the features of the agreement is the removal of the high tariffs in place for EU products coming into these countries, including still wine (27% tariff) and sparkling wine (between 20% and 35%). Given the potential difficulties that lie in store for European wine in the US market, this trade deal could provide a vital alternative avenue. “Brazil is a huge market; we really couldn’t get there, but now with this Mercosur agreement, we can,” says Frescobaldi, noting the South American country’s high proportion of people of Italian descent (estimated at around 15% of the total population). As of 2022, Chilean wine made up the lion’s share of Brazil’s wine imports – around 40% of the total value, whereas Italian wine only constituted 8%, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC).

“Look at the king of Italian exports, Prosecco: why isn’t it big in South America yet? There is a huge opportunity, and I hope Europe doesn’t change what it has decided to do,” Frescobaldi says, “and there is an opportunity for South Americans to sell more products, like quinoa, to us.”

Riding the wave

From a commercial standpoint, Prosecco is still the standout success of Italian wine. Despite its production zone only making up around 6% of the total vineyard area of Italy, sales of Prosecco constitute more than one-fifth (22%) of the total export value of Italian wine. While Prosecco remains the goose that laid the golden egg for Italian wine, Frescobaldi sees opportunities for the country’s other sparkling wines, but warns that not every region or producer aspiring to emulate the success of the Glera-based, tankmethod fizz has what it takes: “Everyone is trying to surf the wave of demand for sparkling, but some of them are going to fall from their surfboard – there are naturally some varieties which are better suited for producing sparkling wines than others,” he argues. Despite this caution, 2024 was something of a blockbuster year for bollicine. For the first time, Italy produced in excess of one billion bottles of sparkling wine, an 8% increase on 2023’s production, with a quarter of this (251 million bottles) popped opened in foreign markets around the Christmas and New Year period, a 9% increase on the previous year ’s level, according to data from the UIV-Ismea Wine Observatory. This also goes against the general EU trend, with 2024’s production of sparkling wine across all member states 8% below 2023’s level.

Internationally, Italian sparkling wine also leapfrogged Italian still wines last year, with 528m bottles of fizz exported, compared to 524m bottles of still red and rosé, and 460m bottles of white wine. “At the end of the day,” argues Frescobaldi, “the consumers are our most severe judges – some of them will like what they have drunk, and others will not. So, in the next 24-36 months, some of the new sparkling wines will fade away, and others will become strong. That being said, this is an amazing opportunity to capture a younger crowd, that are often somewhat intimidated by the complexity of a red wine from Italy.” What is also notable is the drinks to which young consumers are adding fizz. The UIV-Ismea Wine Observatory suggests that spritzes are hugely popular, estimating that a staggering 2.8bn cocktails made using Italian sparkling wine (especially Prosecco) were consumed around the world last year. One question that has caused sleepless nights for many in the industry is whether crackdowns on alcohol in the name of health will harm the wine sector. Frescobaldi advocates for the view that wine should keep its place on the table. “Some years ago, everyone was against red meat, then chicken, then milk – a cappuccino was considered deadly for you – and now it’s alcohol,” he says. “We have to be careful and avoid being excessive, but if we don’t have those social moments with wine, life can become very boring.” Worries that health authorities might try to hit the drinks sector are not ungrounded – Ireland is due to introduce warnings about links between excessive alcohol consumption and disease on bottle labels in 2026, and the US Surgeon General recently proposed adding cancer warnings to wine packaging. In the face of such an onslaught, Frescobaldi remains a staunch defender of Mediterranean-style moderation, pointing out: “Given how long life expectancy is in Italy [82.2 years, according to the World Health Organization (WHO)], maybe it’s actually a good diet – what we are eating and drinking, our style of life, is far better than it has ever been.” It’s an attitude which brings to mind the Tuscan saying: “A tavola non s’invecchia” – “at the table, one does not grow old”.

Lamberto Frescobaldi at a glance

Lamberto Frescobaldi is the 30th generation to work at Marchesi de’ Frescobaldi, the Tuscan wine powerhouse which counts estates including Montalcino’s Tenuta Castelgiocondo and Super Tuscan producer Ornellaia in its portfolio. He joined the family business in 1989, becoming its president in 2013. In 2022, he was elected as president of the Unione Italiana Vini (UIV), Italy’s national association for wine since 1895, which today brings together more than 800 member companies, which are responsible for more than 50% of Italian wine production and 85% of export turnover.

For someone who never intended to work in the wine industry, let alone hospitality, Grant Ashton has done a pretty good job of succeeding in both. Next year will mark 10 years since the former hedge fund manager opened 67 Pall Mall in St James’s, London, and started on a path to becoming a global wine mogul. Although he scoffs at the suggestion, it’s not without merit. The London club remains a Mecca for wine lovers, with 6,000 wines on its list (800 by the glass), and the ‘67 Pall Mall’ brand is now global. The team opened a high-altitude venue in the Swiss Alps resort of Verbier in 2021, a 15,000sq ft club in Singapore’s Orchard Road in 2022, and an en primeur club in Hong Kong in 2024 where “you swing a cat and hit all four walls”, with more venues in the pipeline. The company buys an enormous number of wines every year, and is the world’s biggest user of Coravin, says Ashton. But he’s the first to say that building a wine business on this scale was never the plan. “If I’d understood how much time, effort and money it was going to take, I’d never have done it, absolutely zero chance,” he admits. “If I had turned to my wife and said: ‘By the way, darling, I’m going to give up a fabulously well-paid career to earn less and I’ll also be spending more time away from home’ – ridiculous. But it’s such great fun.” Back in 2010, Ashton had visions of opening a wine bar in Marylebone, where he and a few like-minded friends could enjoy wines from their own collections, without paying the usual mark-ups, but they couldn’t find a venue.

GRAND OLD BUILDING

Instead, a very grand, very old building became available in St James’s – a Grade II Listed former bank, designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens in 1929. Did Ashton spot a gap in the market for a private members wine club and pounce? Not exactly. Even then, he had ideas of opening a winecentric restaurant, but a planning application was turned down by the local authority, which wasn’t keen on having any more restaurants or bars in St James’s. It did, however, approve of a club – and 67 Pall Mall opened in December 2015. “This was an accident, to a degree,” Ashton says. “We thought a few hundred people might care about a wine club. We now have 4,000 members in London, 3,500 in Singapore, a few hundred in Hong Kong and just under 800 in Verbier, which only has 4,500 residents.” Membership fees are crucial to the model of 67 Pall Mall, bringing in an additional income stream that allows Ashton to offer wines at prices far lower than is possible in a restaurant. “I buy a bottle of wine for x, I add a small margin, and as long as I keep marking my book to the right price and keep my margins wafer-thin, subsidised by my membership fee, I don’t care [what the price is],” he explains. In London, his “very modest” fees run to £2,500 a year for an individual membership (£3,000 for joint), plus a £1,750 joining fee. Ashton also offers under-30s reduced membership fees (£1,250 a year), allows them to pay monthly and waives the joining fee. “We want those young people, and the average age of our members is actually going down,” he adds.

Clearly he depends upon a healthy supply of deep-pocketed, wine-loving clients. But Ashton is too professional to let slip any of the big names that grace his members’ list, or the blockbuster bottles he might have shared with them (save for a Cheval Blanc 1947 with “dear old” Tom Harrow, aka The Wine Chap). Needless to say, some of Pall Mall’s members are almost as high-profile as its wines, and they run the gamut from trade regulars and corporate heads to politicians, celebrities and, perhaps, a prince or two. “Fine wine is often a marker of a life well-lived, and some very interesting people love fine wine,” is as much as he’ll say. “The beauty of a club is that nobody tends to approach other people in an unwanted way. If you’re a fancy film star or politician, no-one is going to start berating them or saying how much they love their last movie. I’ve sat next to some quite serious people in London restaurants. I witnessed the break-up of one celebrity couple, and that was the end of that in the Press the next day. But nobody went up to them, because London is very cool. London will sit there and go: ‘You crack on...’”

But, despite its exclusive veneer, 67 Pall Mall is not elitist, Ashton insists. “Everyone says: ‘You must be a club for billionaires and millionaires.’ We really aren’t. We’re about people who love wine. Now, a whole bunch of richer people can afford to pay my membership fees and buy wine at the price it is right now. But we’ve got members that are like my kids, 20-somethings. They’ve not got a lot of money, but they love wine.” Four venues are now operational worldwide, but Ashton is far from finished with building his empire. Sites in Burgundy and Bordeaux are due to open in the next two years: 67 Pall Mall Bordeaux will spread across four floors and feature an 8.2-metre tall wine tower and a rooftop terrace, while 67 Pall Mall Beaune will be located inside a historic townhouse built in the 1780s, 200 metres from the Hospices de Beaune. Meanwhile, 67 Pall Mall Melbourne will open in 2025, occupying the top three floors of a 15-storey building that was once the headquarters of a bank. At 21,500sq ft, it will be the group’s biggest venue and already has 600 members eagerly anticipating its opening. What’s driven this global expansion? Profitability, of course, but also space, which they simply “ran out of” in London. But Ashton is a shrewd businessman and knows how to make the best of a fluctuating global market. He’s already set his sights on Bangkok, where import tariffs have been slashed from 54% of the declared value to 0% indefinitely, and excise tax dropped from 10% to 5%. Shanghai is another prospective city, where he “did 22,000 steps” scoping out suitable locations. “I don’t get out of the back of a taxi and say: ‘Yeah, this is nice.’ I pound the streets in the same way as I’ve done in Mumbai, Hong Kong and a million different cities. That’s kind of how I do it.”

Ashton can list a dozen more cities that he’s sussing out, including Taiwan, Seoul, Sydney and Jakarta, as well as some that he’s keeping under wraps. But there is an altruistic intent also. The aim isn’t to “make squillions”, he says, but to support local wine regions and help producers find more routes to market. As for the wider industry, Ashton is critical of wine’s global distribution model, which he says “everyone knows is broken”, bogged down by “layers and layers of people and intermediaries”, and bemoans its pricing model, with too many wines priced “off what they were last year, or when they last sold”, despite multiple global shocks to the economy. He hastens to add that he has no solution. But, for those navigating the cut-throat hospitality sector, Ashton does have some painfully honest and simple advice, which is to maintain cash flow, and lots of it. Most of Ashton’s venues have needed £10mto £20m-worth of investment, so having access to cash via private sources and shareholders has been paramount. Not a bank, he adds, which “won’t lend you money unless they know you don’t need it”. But Ashton’s connections in the financial world have clearly been an advantage in this regard. “I’d love to think I could have done this at 20 or 25, but I didn't know anyone, and who was going to trust some finance guy at the age of 30 to lend me millions?” he says. Today, Ashton has 225 investors backing the London club, 106 in Singapore, 80 at both Beaune and Bordeaux, while Melbourne is on track to reach 200. “Somebody once said to me: ‘Don’t go bust running a profitable business,’ because there’s a difference between being profitable, and having enough cash to sustain what you’re doing and get you through,”he explains. This was especially true during the Covid-19 pandemic, when 67 Pall Mall was able to retain staff on full pay. “That’s where a lot of hospitality gets it wrong,” Ashton says. “You can be doing amazing things, but you can’t eat a Michelin star. You can’t pay the staff on great reviews. You need access to cash that allows you to survive, to get through it.” He adds: “The key to any hospitality business is to either be incredibly profitable or just have amazing cash flow.” Luckily for Ashton, he’s been able to achieve both – and there’s nothing accidental about that.

Grant Ashton at a glance

Grant Ashton spent 30 years running trading floors in London’s financial district before pivoting to the wine industry. He began his financial career at Samuel Montagu & Co, also working for UBS, Salomon Brothers and Barclays, where he was head of European credit trading at Barclays Capital. He later became CEO of Infinity Capital Markets and a partner in a hedge fund at Omni Partners LLP, before leaving to focus on 67 Pall Mall (named after the building’s address but which also tallies with his birth year, 1967), which opened in St James’s in 2015. The members-only club has since opened spots in Verbier and Singapore, and will open a new site in Melbourne next year. Ashton lives in Singapore, and continues his search for future clubs worldwide.

She has learned through the years to grow slowly, only admitting new members who are well-organised. At any one time she “always has several enquiries on my desk,” she reports, “and we are looking at two or three who may be serious possibilities. To qualify, first the wines need to be great and, second, there needs to be a large city nearby.” A native of Bordeaux, Leparmentier graduated in 1986 from Bordeaux Montaigne University in Pessac with a master ’s degree in languages. She began immediately working in the Economic Ministry, with an emphasis on advising Bordeaux firms, and spent one year based in Zurich before joining the Bordeaux Chamber of Commerce and Industry in 1997. She has worked there ever since. Married, with two daughters in their early 30s, Leparmentier says her love outside work is music. She sings alto in the well-regarded Groupe Vocal Arpège de Bordeaux choir – “mainly classical music, Baroque and Renaissance”, she says – and for a time headed the group. “When I travel as a tourist, it usually has to do with a musical event,” she says, before adding, “but hopefully there is a winery to visit nearby.”

Tourism awards

From its inception, GWC has helped to connect cities and the wine trade with business services and education, as well as delving into issues such as sustainability, but it has been its annual wine tourism awards – both regional and global – that have driven tourism. Not only are winery initiatives and accomplishments rewarded, but wineries in other regions will often adapt or copy ideas from other regions for themselves – a kind of proving ground for best practice. Categories include: accommodation; architecture & landscape; arts & culture; innovative experiences; sustainable experiences; restaurants; and services.

Sweeping views: Hawke’s Bay became a Great Wine Capital last year Both well-known and lesser-known wineries have become successful entries. The 2024 global winners, for example, include Alkina Wine Estate in the Barossa Valley; La Casa Cosme Palacio in Laguardia, Rioja; Château Giscours in Margaux; Benguela Cove in the Cape Winelands; Steins Traube in Rheinhessen; Bodega Alpamanta in Mendoza; and Casas del Bosque Winery in Chile’s Casablanca Valley. As Leparmentier has noted, a region that wants to develop tourism must first have great wine and, generally, affordable quality wines as well, and a dining scene to go with them. “Food is a big thing,” she says, “because today’s tourist expects to be able to have gastronomical experiences as well as great wine.” Many visitors now expect to enjoy food at wineries, if not at the restaurants and cafes that many now offer, then at least in the form of wine and food pairings in the tasting rooms. While comfortable lodging is important, it is less crucial to success, Leparmentier says. “With the younger generation, they often expect to have experiences, even in the tasting rooms, and they tend to be very cosmopolitan.” In addition to San Francisco and Napa Valley, she cites other major wine tourism successes. “Here in Bordeaux, there was very little tourism 25 years ago, and 10 years ago it was still developing. Today, it is a major business,” she says. “Porto is also doing very well, partly because the city of Oporto made a lot of financial investment. And Mendoza is even starting to become overbooked, partly because Argentines are now visiting the city from as far away as Buenos Aires, which they used not to do.”

Going nowhere: Leparmentier isn’t ready for retirement any time soon Leparmentier explains that, when the deadly Covid-19 pandemic interrupted international commerce, “we had two years when travelling was almost not possible, so many wine regions and wineries had to reinvent tourism. In Europe, including here in Bordeaux, few local people traditionally visited local wineries. They just bought bottles at wine shops. “In Napa Valley, there had been a tradition of catering to local and nearby residents to visit their wineries,” she says. “During Covid, we learned to do that in Bordeaux. People began taking their weekends to drive to local wineries.” GWC helped to popularise in Bordeaux and elsewhere such American innovations in tourism as recruiting for wine clubs during visits and staging weddings and engagement parties amid the grandeur of vines and stately buildings.

Economic bonanza

In fact, the success of wine tourism has sparked criticism that tourism itself has become a problem in some regions in spite of its economic bonanza. However, Leparmentier believes that the problems are often generalised and overstated. “There are traffic problems in Napa Valley because it’s between mountains with one major highway,” she says, “but we don’t have that problem in Bordeaux, where everything is spread out. And people tend to not like cruise ships,” she adds, before noting that their visits have helped to revitalise downtown Bordeaux and the area around the Cité du Vin visitor attraction. Where does wine tourism go next? “We see our next opportunity in expanding the wine tourism season. It used to be that it was from June to September [in the Northern Hemisphere],” Leparmentier says. “Now it has been extended further, even to 10 months. What wineries are learning to do is to find new year-round experiences for visitors based on the season.” Additionally, she says, Bordeaux is now extending its tourism reach to an expanded Nouveau Aquitaine region, noting that increasing tourism to the nearby Cognac region may have some difficulties as many distilleries don’t have tasting rooms. One thing that isn’t expected to change any time soon is the leadership of GWC. “People ask me when I’m going to retire,” Leparmentier says. “But I love my job – and I’m not through yet!”

She wasn’t alone. Even by 1996, when Viña Carmen bottled its first Carmenere, marketing the wine as the ‘lost variety of Bordeaux’, it had to be bottled under the Grande Vidure identity, since the variety was not registered with the Ministry of Agriculture, nor approved by law. It wasn’t until 1997, three years after Boursiquot’s visit, that Carmenere was included in the list of wine producing varieties with DO status. Among winemakers, the decision to embrace Carmenere was a contentious one, with some Chilean producers continuing to bottle their wines as Merlot well into the early 2000s. Chile’s love/hate relationship with its flagship variety is one Cumsille has experienced on a personal level; her own relationship with Carmenere has been fraught. Though she’s always understood it to be “emblematic” of Chile, and especially for Viña Carmen, she admits: “For many years I didn’t like it”. Carmenere, she argues, is difficult to get right, and Chile’s winemakers have often made wines from the variety which are either too green or too ripe. It’s only in the last five to 10 years, Cumsille says, that the grape variety has been able to shine. “We have learned how to make a good Carmenere,” she says, and Chile is today producing wines which she says are “very exciting”. However, she says somewhat brazenly: “If you asked me that 10 years ago, I would have told you no.” In 2023 Carmenere represented just 8.9% of national plantings, making it the fifth most planted variety in Chile. Cabernet Sauvignon is the most planted grape in the country, with more than 37,000 ha of vines. The Maipo Valley has become synonymous with the grape, and Cabernet Sauvignon-based wines are a major protagonist in Chile’s international success story. Cumsille says that having a good reputation for multiple grape varieties is important for Chile’s reputation. “Without a doubt, it enriches our portfolio and strengthens Chile’s identity as a versatile and dynamic wineproducing country,” she says. Even so, Boursiquot’s discovery of Carmenere in 1994 was a turning point for Chilean viticulture, and a valuable one. In the decades since, Chile has flourished to become the heartland of a variety which, before 1994, had not been knowingly vinified for more than 100 years. Chile currently boasts the highest area of Carmenere plantings in the world, and the grape continues to be identified as its flagship variety.

GREATER UNDERSTANDING

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the event which shaped modern Chilean winemaking. Looking back, Cumsille appreciates how far the nation’s relationship with the grape has come. “Over the past 30 years, we have developed a deep understanding of the Carmenere variety, recognising its specific demands regarding terroir conditions to reach its full potential,” Cumsille says. The Apalta Valley has emerged as one of the most prominent regions for Carmenere, thanks to its granitic soils and warm climate. Nestled among hills and influenced by the nearby sea, Apalta is home to treasured old vineyards which produce some of the best Carmenere wines in the world. “We are now creating wines with their own character and identity – elements that have become embedded in the DNA of Chilean wine,” Cumsille says. Her own contentious relationship with the grape has evolved. “It’s always a challenge,” she admits, but I like a challenge. When something is difficult, I like it.” Viña Carmen’s treatment of Carmenere has changed too. The winery began producing its Gran Reserva wine in 1996, and today has evolved to include a Delanz Carmenere Apalta in its portfolio. Additionally, since the 15th anniversary of the Carmenere rediscovery, Carmen has released a commemorative wine made from the variety every five years. Boursiquot returns to Chile in November to celebrate the 30-year anniversary of his discovery, and Viña Carmen plans to launch a new Carmenere wine to mark the occasion. Cumsille vows that the winery is still committed to the variety. After all, it's a grape “which continues to be a fundamental pillar in our history and in our future”.

In the run-up to the Bristol Wine Fair, Campbell used her fashion PR nous to ensure that Deinhard appeared in shop windows across the city. “No-one else was doing anything like that,” she recalls. Clearly impressed, Hasslacher persuaded this woman with then minimal wine knowledge to handle PR not only for his own brand, but also those he imported, which included Taylor’s Port. “In those days, the wine trade was not terribly keen to talk to the consumer; that was the retailer’s job,” remarks Campbell. “If they wanted to talk to them, they had to use the Press, which tended to mean the Circle of Wine Writers.” Having come up with her own, rather broader, press list, Campbell then set about persuading producers to embrace the novel concept of a press trip. With no template in place, Campbell once again created her own. “I remember explaining that people need to get a feel for the place, to have dinner, to go for a swim,” she muses. “You have to make them fun and through that you build relationships and they’ll get the spirit of the vineyard.”

Portugal’s Quinta do Noval has been one of Campbell’s clients for 28 years One early learning curve was the importance of Campbell herself being present on these trips, especially the earliest ones, in order to deploy skilful diplomacy when clients voiced opinions that might not come across so well beyond the intimate confines of the dinner table. Likewise, at times her job has involved persuading producers what not to show journalists, although she must be one of the few people who can conjure up genuine enthusiasm for a bottling line. “I’m always fascinated by the romance of it,” she admits. “All the work that went into getting to that point, where the bottles are going and who’s going to drink them.”

Strategy staple

These days, many producers run a highly professional hospitality arm for all corners of the trade, and often consumers too. The press trip may be a staple of their communications strategy, but it has inevitably evolved in line with the space and budget pressures now imposed on newspaper wine columns themselves. “Nowadays, time is so precious that people won’t necessarily spent four days visiting one vineyard,” observes Campbell. Another major change, perhaps the biggest, is the rise of digital communication. As a regular judge for The Drinks Business Awards, Campbell has seen at first hand “how much emphasis PR firms put on social media”. Unafraid to swim against the tide, she argues: “I’m still not so sure it’s a good idea. You’re not just after numbers; it’s about relevance.” That’s not to say these online platforms aren’t a useful component of her PR toolbox. “The key to it is choosing the right people to work with; people who are talking to an audience that is interested.” It’s clear that Campbell sets far higher store by real-life relationships. It was these, rather than any large budget, that enabled her to secure Quinta do Noval as the main base for series three of The Wine Show. The sight of three Hollywood stars relaxing on your terrace with a glass of your own dry white wine, then treading your grapes with real gusto, must surely be worth more than an expensive advertising campaign or flurry of Facebook ‘likes’. It wasn’t all plain sailing, though: just try putting up 26 crew members in the middle of harvest. A few brief dalliances with larger PR firms confirmed to Campbell that this route was unsuited to her approach and personality. “I don’t knock big corporate PR companies because they do a certain job, but it’s not for me,” she remarks. “Unless you’re a very big brand with a budget to spend, you need a very entrepreneurial take on PR, someone who knows the journalists and has those relationships.” Creativity has always been key. “Even if you’re given a socking great trade and press tasting to run, you’ve got to make it fun,” insists Campbell. A prime, personal example of this left-field yet highly effective approach was the rather surreal experience of interviewing Chariots of Fire director David Puttnam at Royal residence Clarence House on the unlikely subject of cork oak forest preservation. Another of Campbell’s great supporters was Christopher Fielden, who recruited her services in the 1980s for PR assistance on Spanish brand Marqués de Cáceres. It’s fair to say that not many wine trade events before or since have seen three generations of the Spanish Royal Family descend on Claridges.

Campbell with her lurcher, Maisie Fielden and Campbell also introduced California wine brand Sutter Home, taking a stand at Vinexpo. Apart from the Bordeaux trade show’s infamous heat, Campbell remembers with amusement “the sight of all these Frenchmen coming to see what a Californian wine was doing there. They’d have a taste, say: ‘Pas mal,’ then come back with their winemaker”. The 1980s were also fledgling days for dynamic UK retailer Majestic. Meetings for this particular client would see Campbell perch on cases of wine alongside Majestic’s Esme Johnstone and Giles Clarke in their Battersea branch. “They got into buying special parcels and the tasting idea,” she notes. “It was all very new at the time." Majestic wasn’t the only company to shake up the UK’s wine retail landscape during this era. “Supermarkets were not really selling wine when I started,” observes Campbell. Together with the rise of retailers who import direct and a now urgent desire from all corners of the trade to communicate with their customers via such a proliferation of channels and writers, today’s wine world would have been unimaginable when Campbell joined it in the 1970s. What’s more, it’s a world she has played a quiet but vital role in shaping. “There’s a lot of mystery about wine, and it’s been good to see how that’s been broken down,” remarks Campbell. “Doors have been opened.” In fact, with so much noise and fragmentation, the major challenge for wine PR professionals these days is to find a way to cut through. Crucial too is the recognition that today’s winning formula may not be so effective tomorrow. “You’ve always got to be prepared to learn,” insists Campbell, “even if, these days, it’s possibly from someone the same age as my grandchildren. Be open to new ideas.” It certainly doesn’t take much digging below the surface of exciting developments in the UK wine scene to unearth Campbell’s expert touch. She was involved in the 1999 creation of Wine Relief, a spin-off from charitable fundraiser Comic Relief, which ran successfully for many years. The nascent English wine industry has also benefitted from her expertise – most notably, the respected Hampshire producer Exton Park. “It’s never felt like a job,” sums up Campbell. “If you’re going to do it well, you have to feel like you’re an important part of the team. It’s not just about the budget – it’s ‘us’, not ‘them’.” Only now, as she completes a steady handover of these clients to Madeleine Waters of The Co Company – a former protégée now firmly established in her own right – does Campbell break one of her cast-iron rules of good PR. Finally, if reluctantly, she has allowed herself to become the story.  

Despite the widely reported travails of the big four Cognacs in the US, where Hennessy’s bid to buy market share through discounting has caused real pain for its rivals, Fantacchiotti doesn’t sound unduly worried. He believes there is a natural correction going on after a period of “excessive pricing and de-stocking”, and adds: “We also say – it’s better to enter the category at the bottom, because you can grow it again.” The Courvoisier deal includes impressive aged stocks, which will give Campari scope to develop VSOP-and-above Cognacs in China. At present, EU brandy (including Cognac) is facing an anti-dumping probe by the the country’s authorities, possibly in retaliation for last year’s EU inquiry into Chinese subsidies for electric cars. So far, Courvoisier is not huge in the region; but interestingly, in January analysts at Citibank cited the company’s “limited exposure to an increasingly uncertain China” as one reason to buy shares in Campari. Yet that is set to change if Fantacchiotti has his way.

Pass it on: Fantacchiotti (left) with predecessor Bob Kunze-Concewitz As of last year (FY23), Asia Pacific accounted for only 8% of the group’s business, and half of that was in Australia. As the new CEO, Fantacchiotti announced that he wanted to grow this to 15%–20% of the total within five to 10 years. When I quote this back to him, he sounds a little reticent about specific targets; however, he does believe there are huge opportunities for his brands in Asia, particularly in India and China. “One of the things we need to get there is for the rest of the group to stop growing at double digits,” he says. “Obviously, that’s a joke, but in the last three years we doubled the business in Asia, and by doing so we moved from 7%–8%.” When Fantacchiotti joined Campari as MD, Asia-Pacific, in 2020, its sole in-market company was in Australia. “Now we have six, in all the places where we believe we can compete effectively,” he says, listing the firm’s new outposts in South Korea, Japan, China, India and New Zealand. Having laid the foundations, he says: “We now have the ability to execute our marketing model, which is: a love for the experiential, liquid on lips and digital activations. Obviously, it’s totally different if you can do it through your own people, rather than distributors. And we already have places in Asia where our brown spirits – Glen Grant and Wild Turkey – and Aperol are doing really well.” As to whether the region has an aperitif market yet – aside from Australia –Fantacchiotti seems unfazed and says: “Is there an aperitif market in the US? I don’t know. What I do know is that Aperol is a drink whose taste profile people love. It’s refreshing, it’s sessionable, it’s thirst-quenching and it’s the Italian summer in a glass. When people see someone holding a glass of Aperol Spritz, they immediately say: ‘Oh, I also want that,’ and you can see what we call ‘the orange spill’ happening.”

This most contagious of drinks can spread fast, fuelled by billions of shared images on social media. Naturally, its success has not gone unnoticed by rivals. “Others are trying to tap into the spritz market with drinks like the limoncello spritz, but we don’t think this is at the expense of Aperol,” Fantacchiotti says. Instead, it has helped the great mother brand of the business: Campari itself. “Initially we didn’t push Campari as a spritz; it was mostly as a Negroni or in a classic cocktail like a Boulevardier or MiTo (Milano-Torino),” he explains. “But the spritz is growing, and it’s now 25% of Campari’s volumes in Italy.” Those of us who have been enjoying Campari-andsoda for years are clearly on trend. “And we’ve just realised we have a beautiful non-alcoholic spritz, which is Crodino,” Fantacchiotti declares, as if emerging from the cobwebs of Campari’s back-bar. With its pocket-sized triangular red bottle, Crodino has been an Italian staple since 1964, but only reached the UK three years ago. “Now, we’re starting to invest in it,” he says. “We’re going to launch more prominently in the UK. We have a new format, a new formula and a bigger bottle.”

Future acquisitions

Campari, the brand, is second to Aperol representing 11% of the group’s net sales, followed by Wild Turkey Bourbon and Espolòn Tequila, both on 8% as of FY23. As for future acquisitions, might there be room for more whisky? The portfolio has a solitary single malt Scotch in Glen Grant, and nothing from Ireland or Japan. “Everything that can help us in the US and Asia, and is premium, we look at,” Fantacchiotti replies. “But I need to say that Glen Grant in Asia is doing phenomenally well off a small base.” Having enjoyed 35.7% organic sales growth in last year’s results, Espolòn Tequila is now a “global priority brand”. Fantacchiotti accepts that the category remains heavily dependent on the US and Mexico, but says: “What we believe is that everything that’s really big in the US will at some point come to the rest of the world. We see that Tequila is starting to come, both in Asia and Europe off a small base. “If there’s a brand that’s the perfect entry-point into premium Tequila,” he continues, “with that perfect combination of equity and price point, with a great liquid and a very easy proposition for consumers to understand, it’s Espolòn.” To stand out from all the margarita brands, it has embraced the paloma cocktail with its ‘Espaloma’. “We call it spritz-like, thirst-quenching and sessionable,” Fantacchiotti says – in what is a neat summation of Campari at its best.  

 

Continuing the religious comparison, May describes running a pub as a “proper calling, like being a priest”, and suggests that many of these businesses fail because the owners do not realise what’s involved: “It’s incredibly hard work, and the hours are anti-social.” He adds: “Pubs have to modernise, and the ones that move with the times survive. I don’t think the pub will disappear – there will be a continuing cull, but it won’t go altogether.”

Not a connoisseur

Although May is a self-professed beer drinker in pubs and a white wine drinker at home, it is actually his gin brand, James Gin, that has brought us together. “I like gin,” he reassures me. “I’m not a connoisseur, but I love a gin and tonic and drink a lot of them while on The Grand Tour trips.” Much of the gin he drinks on these international sojourns, he “steals” from co-presenter Richard Hammond. But it’s one thing to be an “enthusiast” about drinks – it’s another to set up a drinks business of your own. The root of May’s interest in being a gin brand owner, and not just a drinker, can be traced back more than a decade. “A lot of it goes back to when I did the wine show with Oz Clarke years ago. We did a British series, Oz and James Drink to Britain, in 2009, and went to Plymouth Gin and played at making a basic gin, and I thought it was really good fun – a lot of it tasted absolutely terrible, but occasionally out of the four or five we made, we got one that made us think ‘that’s not bad’.”

Gin venture

It was in 2021, during a gap between The Grand Tour specials, that May teamed up with Hugh Anderson of Downton Distillery in Wiltshire to make some gin to serve at The Royal Oak. Downton Distillery produced 1,000 litres of gin, or around 1,430 bottles – too much to sell entirely through The Royal Oak, so May turned to social media. “We thought it would be a good laugh and made a YouTube video about it, and it sold out within a few days, so we made some more and kept going,” he says. “There wasn’t really a plan.” The flavours in the James Gin range are certainly unusual – American mustard, petrichor (the smell of rainfall on hot earth) and the original, Asian parsnip. “The Asian parsnip idea was because I thought parsnips are very British, and everyone in Britain likes Asian food and spices, so I thought we would combine the two, almost like a parsnip curry side dish,” May says. “We fiddled around with it and did quite extensive tasting sessions, and I thought it was very interesting. A lot of gins just taste of lemon to me really – there’s not that much depth.”

Exotic botanicals: James Gin flavours include American mustard and Asian parsnip The follow-up flavours have also proved successes, often selling out within a day of each new batch’s release. Given the nature of ingredients used as botanicals – from beetroot to mustard seeds – you might assume that May, who hosts his own cookery show, Oh Cook!, for Amazon Prime and wrote a cookbook of the same name, would be excited about the gastronomic potential of the gins. However, he says that these are not spirits designed for food pairings: “We started making a video on it, but we decided it was bollocks, so we gave up. I don’t really drink gin with food.”

Small and honest

Despite the clear demand for his product, May does not harbour world-conquering ambitions for James Gin. “If Diageo turned up and said ‘here’s £10 million for the brand’, which is bugger-all in the drinks business, I’d be tempted, but I quite like the fact that it’s small and honest, and just a hobby,” he explains. Continuing his savvy use of social media, in May 2024 he established a YouTube channel, James May’s Planet Gin, dedicated to the brand. But some of his gin experiments turned out to be non-starters. “We’ve revisited it several times, so it’s fairly safe to say that it just doesn’t work,” May says of one idea, a gin flavour called Gasoline Dreams. “It was supposed to smell like freshly-pumped unleaded petrol, which has a slightly rotten mango quality to it. I thought we could make a gin that smells like it, so that everyone who is anti-electric car could say they had a petrol gin. “But the fact is that all the things that make petrol smell like petrol are lethally poisonous, and there are no real substitutes in the natural world. We added some Riesling concentrate, but it didn’t really work. We got to the point where it was a bit petrolly on the nose, but it was stale petrol, and it just wasn’t good enough – it didn’t have the nice, smooth, fruity quality.”

Branching out

May is also cautious about branching out into other spirits beyond gin. “We talked about it, because rum was becoming very trendy when we started, and we considered making a Scottish neutral spirit, so whisky before it becomes whisky, and we were going to call it ‘swisky’, but we decided that would push us beyond the point of a novelty enterprise,” he explains. “We didn’t think this through because we weren’t expecting it to turn into a business.”The fact that he had called the business ‘James Gin’ also meant “we would have had to call any subsequent products in the range ‘James Gin Whisky’ or ‘James Gin Vodka’ – and that would be very confusing.” As for breaking into the low and no alcohol category, May is sceptical of nonalcoholic gins, suggesting that they taste more like “cordial”, and comparing them to “a non-cheese cheese board”. “I’ve said it before that alcohol is God’s apology for making us self-aware, and if you take that away, there’s really no point in having a drink – you might as well have a cup of tea.”

 

Strength to strength

Bruce Jack Wines was born in 2018 after Jack had already steered the winemaking ship for top brands, including Kumala on behalf of Constellation Brands South Africa, which became Accolade following the acquisition of an 80% share in the company by Australian equity group Champ in 2011. Now with four wine ranges hitting all price points, including Bruce Jack Lifestyle, Bruce Jack Reserve, Bruce Jack Heritage and The Drift Estate, not to mention a newly-opened rooftop bar called Jack@Skye in one of Cape Town’s hottest locations, the business is going from strength to strength. The elegant Drift Estate Ghost in the Machine Cabernet Franc (£17.99) recently bagged a Master medal in this year’s Global Cabernet Franc Masters competition, for its concentrated bramble, Christmas pudding and raspberry fruit flavours. A few years ago, Jack also established a presence in South America, with the first Bruce Jack Chile wines blended and bottled in 2019. The idea was to offer “an alternative origin for markets that are perhaps not so appreciative of South African wine”, he says. “Why fight to get into a market like China when the Chilean government has made a plan to negotiate better import tariffs?" he asks. Jack also admits he was tempted by the promise of making high-quality wine at what he calls “remarkably low cost”. “Chile is the only country in the world where you can make entry-level Pinot,” he says. “It’s essential to have even bud break and ripening with Pinot, and there is a very small window of opportunity for that to happen. If the grapes are overripe, you end up with wines that are soupy or jammy. If the grapes are underripe, the wines can be a bit green and stalky.” Does he prefer Bruce Jack’s South African or Chilean Pinot Noir? “I prefer the gross profits of my Chilean Pinot,” he says with a glint in his eye. Explaining his love for South African staple Pinotage (a crossing of Cinsault and Pinot Noir), Jack draws an unlikely parallel with Burgundy: “We love red Burgundy because one in 20 bottles will change your life, while most are pretty underwhelming,” he says. “It’s that one sublime bottle that keeps you searching through the disappointing sips. Pinotage is the same thing from that perspective. When it’s great, Pinotage can change your life.” He believes that the future of South African wine lies in producers making more complex wines at higher prices. Take Bruce Jack Wines’ There Are Still Mysteries Pinot Noir, for example, which retails in the UK via Hedonism for £68. It takes a certain mettle to place your wines in this price tier, but more producers are beginning to find that self-belief. The South African wine boat, says Jack, “is being rowed more and more by South Africans. We’re taking our industry into our own hands”. He highlights the fact that DGB, one of South Africa’s largest independent wine producers, has now set up offices in Europe and the US, as evidence of this.

Dingo dollar

Having worked as group winemaker for Australian wine giant Accolade, focusing on the Hardy’s brand from 2016 to 2018, Jack is well-placed to offer a perspective on the persistent whispers surrounding a possible merger between Accolade and Australian Vintage. “I would also be doing everything possible to save Hardy’s, because that’s the main asset to sell,” he says. “The brand commands shelf space in key markets, and that’s where the value lies. It has survived people who have not necessarily been committed to the wine industry, and it’s still firing because it’s such a great, strong brand that, despite having had different owners with different agendas over the years, it’s still a force to be reckoned with.” The drinks world is eager to watch the saga play out because “people love to see a car-crash”, he says wryly. “For many people there’s nothing better than a captain of industry losing it all. But if [a possible merger] brings solidity and stability to growers in Australia, which I believe it will do, then it has to be a good thing. I’m very fond of Australia; I made my first vintages there, and I also love that it has 24-hour electricity!” When we speak, Jack has just concluded what he describes as “a very cool deal” which will see an increase in production at the Black Oystercatcher winery in Elim, and enable “arguably the best Sauvignon Blanc producer in South Africa” to start exporting for the first time. He is also busy arranging for a handful of exciting new varieties to be imported into South Africa, including “the beguiling and mysterious Antão Vaz from Alentejo”. Not one to put his feet up, Jack has additionally partnered with the US arm of Rioja’s Bodegas Manzanos on “an ambitious import and distribution business”. Despite this full-throttle agenda, Jack insists that wealth isn’t what drives him. “Not being focused on becoming a billionaire is a big relief,” he says. “I pity the people who are. We have such a short life, and waking up alive every morning is pretty exciting.”

“When I began, we had no education programmes, and now we have over 50, including training,” Reiff says. “We had only three marketing programmes a year, and now we have more than 100. I’m proud of the depth and breadth of what we have to offer.” Today, NVV’s agenda is wide-reaching – community social programmes that address education, healthcare and diversity needs, broadened sustainability practices, protection of the Napa Valley brand, the expansion of international markets, leadership training, as well as one item that addresses the region’s very survival – wildfire abatement.

Celebration: Napa Valley Vintners members mark the harvest As with recently fire-plagued wine regions in France, Australia, Spain, and elsewhere, the valley’s trial by fire was witnessed internationally on TV and social media, causing many observers to question whether the narrow valley surrounded by mountain forests could successfully adapt to survive future fire disasters. Reiff is confident it can. “We’re deeply involved through our fire-protection and mitigation committee,” Reiff says, highlighting two areas – removing as much flammable underbrush as possible, and by taking the lead in fire-detection- and response technology. “We paid for rapid-detection devices throughout the county,” she says, and NVV has also lobbied for federal funding. Recently, it met with major insurers to maintain affordable ongoing coverage for the community.

FUNDRAISING ACTIVITIES

The fires also helped force NVV to reengineer its fundraising activities after Meadowood, the popular venue for its Auction Napa Valley, was destroyed. Almost without missing a beat, the vintners established a new event, Collective Napa Valley, which features a barrel auction, dinners and educational programmes. The US$225m that NVV has raised over the years has funded ongoing programmes for farm-workers. “We’ve been instrumental in the success of OLE Health, which provides discounted or even free healthcare whether or not the person is a US citizen,” Reiff says, “and have provided it with more than US$60m in funding.” That includes US$17m for a new facility in 2022. On the business side, Reiff has focused on two areas – brand protection, and establishing a higher profile in the international arena. “We want to continue to make the Napa Valley name mean something,” she says, “so we are both on the offence and the defence.” Domestically that has meant going to the country’s highest court to protect the Napa Valley name from those who have attempted to steal it or weaken its requirements for labelling. “Internationally, in 2005 we co-founded the Wine Origins Alliance, which now has 33 [regional appellation] members to help protect each other ’s names,” Reiff says. “For Napa Valley to be credible, we have to work hard in the US to phase out historical usage of other regions’ names.” Recently, NVV successfully negotiated an agreement with Vietnam for Napa brand protection in that market. Even though Napa Valley’s production is small, and a high percentage of its wines are sold directly to consumers at the winery or online, Reiff is adamant that a strong international presence is critical. “We need to work to maintain access to all sales channels,” she says. “As an example, in the past two years we’ve been working to get our members represented on La Place de Bordeaux. We’ve met with négociants and courtiers in Bordeaux and hosted them here in Napa.”

Mist chances: Napa’s climate makes organic farming easier than in many regions Reiff also notes that the NVV has international marketing programmes in Canada, the UK, Hong Kong, and Japan. While winegrowers internationally have in recent years invested time and money into group and individual sustainability measures, Napa Valley has long implemented programmes that other regions are only now contemplating. Warm weather and a lack of moisture has made organic farming easier than in most temperate climates, and in 1968 the valley’s environmental pioneers implemented the first agricultural preserve in the US, which today protects more than 12,950 hectares of farmland from development and urban sprawl. Fortunately, there are some issues that are major concerns for other glamorous wine regions that Reiff says don’t concern her – rampant tourism, a dearth of entry-level wines, and the need to increase production. “So far, I don’t see over-tourism as a concern,” she says, even though three million people visit Napa annually. This is, in part, because wineries are restricted in the kinds of hospitality they can offer visitors. Additionally, in recent years, many wineries have established individual or joint tasting rooms in Napa city and other towns, allowing visitors who want to taste but not necessarily visit to stay in one place. Burgundy has famously worried about not having enough lower-priced entry-level wines to maintain its fan base, but Reiff believes there already exist many great-value Napa Valley expressions in the US$30-to-US$40 range. Left unsaid is that limited production helps dim worries about having excess capacity at the top. That brings up the issue of growth, or the lack of it. Unlike in the equities markets, where corporate sales growth is often prized more highly than the quality of earnings, Napa Valley doesn’t face those investor pressures. “Our physical room for growth is pretty limited,” Reiff says. “Fortunately we have some of the strictest environmental rules of any wine region in the world.” That limits the temptation to produce on marginal land or environmentally endangered hillsides.

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

However, one issue that has captured Reiff’s attention is fostering a diverse development plan that will continue Napa Valley’s story well into the mid-century. “Leadership is one of our core values,” she says, and, unlike many trade organisations around the world, NVV membership regularly works hand in hand with Reiff’s staff of 20 people. “Two years ago, we started a leadership programme to help develop the next generation of leaders, who will shape the future of Napa Valley,” Reiff says, “and we are presently in our third cohort.” The text of a letter she wrote to NVV’s members about launching the scheme reads in part: “This is a unique, tailormade initiative in the world of wine, designed for driven professionals with a desire to grow and contribute to the greater wine community. The nine-month programme will include in-person sessions, inspirational speakers, thoughtful conversation, educational assignments and group projects.” That attitude is another thing that sets Reiff apart from many successful business leaders who, like her, also run first-class organisations. In their cocoon of success, and perhaps with a degree of hubris, they often forget that the best leaders ensure the future success of the organisation by readying the next generation. But, as Napa Valley winegrowers have known for more than 25 years, Linda Reiff has been no ordinary leader.

Rock stars: bottles of Champagne maturing in the cellar Five years ago Palmer had no presence in Japan but, thanks to good distribution, and the market’s belated post-Covid bounce-back, Vervier is bullish about the prospects here. “Now we are moving forward into the next level,” he says. “It has taken more time to recover, but now it’s dynamic again.” One quality shared by all of these markets is the high degree of competition in the Champagne market. How does a relatively low-profile brand like Palmer stand out from the crowd? Vervier starts with his own role. “Not a lot of Champagne companies have their CEO totally involved in the winemaking process,” he says. “It shows that this company is focused on the elaboration of great wines.” Then there is the Palmer vineyard footprint, largely concentrated around the grands and premiers crus of the Montagne de Reims (supplemented by fruit from the Côte de Sézanne, the Côte des Bar, and the Marne Valley). “The impact of the Montagne de Reims is so strong,” explains Vervier. “The wines are really the expression of the Pinot Noir of the north face of the Montagne de Reims and the Chardonnay coming from the east face of the Montagne de Reims.” For a region that focuses so strongly on the Côte des Blancs as a source of fine Chardonnay, this is a clear distinction, with quality crus such as Trépail and Villers-Marmery offering elegance and purity in Palmer ’s Blanc de Blancs, alongside a smaller proportion (about 15%) of fruit-forward Sézanne wines. “The style is really Montagne de Reims-oriented,” says Vervier. “That’s a great, great asset. It’s a point of difference. It makes the Blanc de Blancs of Palmer naturally stand out from the crowd. It’s a real plus for a small brand like us, having this for the wine. We can do a vertical of Blanc de Blancs at 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years old.”

A VALUABLE LESSON

The ultimate expression of Palmer ’s Montagne de Reims signature is Grands Terroirs, a top-end vintage wine launched in 2019 with 2003, which taught Vervier and his colleagues a valuable lesson. “When we were ready to launch, the wine was totally closed,” he recalls. “It was a complete surprise. So we waited.” Three years later, the wine finally came around.

A waiting game: patience paid off for the 2015 Grands Terroirs “We’re currently on the 2015 vintage, but I don’t know what will be the next,” Vervier admits. “We bottled 2018 in vintage, 2019 in vintage, and 2020 in vintage – but I don’t know yet which or how many of them will receive the Grands Terroirs label. We might be pretty sure it’s good, but how good? Is it exceptional or just very good? We have to wait a minimum of five to six years to make the decision.” Another Palmer signature is sustainability. More than 90% of the company’s vineyards are already certified HVE3 (high environmental value) and VDC (Viticulture Durable en Champagne), and the rest should follow by the 2024 harvest (“Each last point will be difficult to achieve because it’s very tiny plots,” observes Vervier). That process has taken close to a decade to complete, but three to four years ago, the company broadened its sustainability policies, moving beyond the vineyard to a more holistic philosophy encompassing every aspect of production, the people, and the way the business is run. “I like the global approach of this,” says Vervier. “It’s about the environment, the people, how you handle everything in your company to stay sustainable. It means thinking about how you can still exist in 10 years from now and trying to be in good health. But the end result is never achieved – it’s an ongoing process.” Earlier this year, Palmer achieved double ISO 14001 certification and a CSR Commitment label, assessed by certification body AFNOR, and in June it became one of the first Champagne producers to gain the status of a “mission-driven company” – effectively a legal and corporate commitment to pursuing social and environmental objectives. “When you change your status in this way, it’s not for fun that we do that,” says Vervier. “It’s an obligation, it’s in the heart of the company, and it will go over to the people who will manage the company in the future. It’s not for fun or for business or for marketing, it’s what we think.”

INCREASING COSTS

Sustainability comes in many forms: environmental, social – and of course commercial. As Champagne faces ever-increasing costs for everything from grapes to bottles to energy to packaging, nobody is immune to these pressures. “The price of the grapes is finally the same for all the producers,” says Vervier. “I would even say a little bit worse for us because we have more than 50% in production in premiers and grands crus. “We have to face that, and we definitely have to increase the final price for the consumer. In 2023, the grape price will continue to increase, and we just hope that the consumer will be OK to pay for his or her bottle of Champagne with this price rise. “But we are lucky because we have the grapes, we have room to grow, and we have to just think how to do it in the proper way. It’s about quality of production, quality of business relationships, quality of distribution – that’s so important in terms of the future and the consistency of the brand.”

Describing his book, Jesudason makes it clear that “it’s not about food or drink. It’s about Asians reclaiming spaces and making them anti-racist ones". He explains: “The places that really flick the switch for me are those places where you might look at the exterior and go: ‘Oh my God, what kind of pub is this?’ And then you go inside and your subconscious prejudices are completely inverted, because it’s really diverse, and there are lots of different people there, and it has a real community feel to it.” A common factor in desi pubs is, of course, the Asian food served to their clientele, but he reiterates how this is not the primary discovery people will uncover. “The food is great. But, for me, it’s not about the food, it never has been. I don’t review the food. Just the raw DNA. I’m more interested in social cohesion.” The idea behind the desi pub was to change the default of “the white custodian” and, in doing so, Jesudason reveals that, after a while, people “realise that these aren’t brown spaces at all, they are spaces for everyone”. The issue of inclusion within a pub setting is something Jesudason believes is taken for granted by many white patrons. “The thing is, white people don’t ever really feel like they are tourists,” he says. For these reasons, among others, he feels passionately about helping to shine a light on anti-racist spaces. To amplify how well-knitted these pubs are within communities, Jesudason beckons over Gladstone Arms managing director Gaurav Khanna to talk through the Sikh meaning of sevadar. As Jesudason says: “For some pubs, the desis came in and made it a community space. Because many of them were previously train drivers, factory staff or would work in car parks, they worked really hard to save money to get the pub, and they really wanted to be a publican because it fits in with being a Sikh.” The term sevadar, he explains, means selfless service and helping others, “and running pubs is one way of doing this”. In fact, sevadar fits the profile of “what we think a good landlord is”, Jesudason adds. Gaurav Khanna explains that a similar term 'sewa' is also "all about offering and giving". Frequently, desi pubs in the Midlands will give away food to homeless people, which fits in with this understanding. Jesudason describes one desi pub in Bradford that has a church inside, and holds a Christian service every other week, despite the proprietor being Hindu. “They rent it out,” he says. “They also do things like curry and carols at Christmas. For them it is a community thing, and the community comes first.” For The Gladstone Arms, community has also made good business sense. Speaking about the impact Jesudason’s writing has had on the pub and its popularity, Khanna admits that “the Desi Pubs book has definitely led to a big boost in business here. Different kinds of people are now visiting the pub. It has 100% had an impact on our clientele. Then, also because of the book, Time Out came in here too, which gave us a bit more visibility. The book has created more awareness around our pub – and all desi pubs. We like to converse here and talk to people about life experiences. That’s what being a public house is. More people are now coming in just for the chats. In this place, we celebrate each and every different type of person. We celebrate life.” Speaking to Jesudason in a space where so many people feel warmly welcomed and accepted makes you feel like the UK has made some progress. However, as Jesudason says, it is not the case everywhere, unfortunately, and there is still work to be done to move things forwards so that the term ‘public house’ can go back to meaning just that: a place where everyone feels at home. This shines a light on the fact that inclusivity and diversity are not the same thing. The pub industry needs to get better at reflecting diversity, but that alone is not the path to inclusion – and cannot in isolation help to encourage antiracist attitudes. Jesudason argues that “box-ticking and diversity for diversity’s sake is really damaging. Because what happens is, if you get employed in a job for not being who you are, but what you are, then you feel really insecure. Especially if you are only being employed because of the colour of your skin.” Instead, he says, what the industry needs to do is ”read more books, or watch TV that has greater diversity”, because identifying as BAME doesn’t mean you’re “asking people to go and listen to African jazz or sitar music”. He picks out Star Trek as a good example. “It’s probably the most inclusive programme you could ever watch that has been created by a white person. I suppose someone might say: ‘I don't like sci-fi’ but, fundamentally, it’s about how to get along with others. After watching Deep Space Nine, Jesudason advises starting to think about how to engage the community, “because there’s no point in saying: ‘Ok, we’re going to employ a black person in our pub.’ You need to find a way of reaching more black people, or Asian people or women or gay people in order to get them to apply for the job.” Why should pubs and drinks companies fight for that inclusion? “Because it means more markets and products. If you do it properly and truthfully, then more people might buy different beers, that’s why,” he says. Nothing will mend the racial trauma that Jesudason has experienced but, over time, as people become more educated about how to better celebrate our differences, the needle should start to move in the right direction. There are many ways that people from different cultures and backgrounds can help to broaden their perspective. And, if they do, there is more chance of the drinks industry moving forwards with an understanding of safety, inclusion and appreciation for all. “My kids will have a much better life than I had,” says Jesudason. “Because a life marred by racism is a life marred by anger. It’s a big deal to find a pub that is accepting, and where you can celebrate being yourself.”

Feathered symbol

Named after a baby swan, the feathered symbol of Swansea where the Cygnet distillery is based, the number 22 refers both to the number of botanicals included in the gin and to the age at which Jenkins signed what was then the biggest recording deal in classical music history. Her first recording contract in 2002 netted her £1m for a six-album tie-in with Universal. “I come to everything I do with a certain level of expectation, so with Cygnet 22 I knew I wanted to create a benchmark gin,” she says. “If you think about Don Julio 1942 Tequila, it’s miles away from the kind of Tequila that you might drink on a girls’ night out in Nice.” Is she trying to create the Don Julio 1942 of gins? “We want to be sold anywhere that embodies class, quality and elegance. That’s where I feel we sit as a brand,” Jenkins says. One might also add to that list anywhere that is quintessentially British. In its five months since launch, Cygnet 22 has already secured UK listings at John Lewis, Waitrose, Master of Malt and Harvey Nichols, with a suggested retail price of £47.50. On-trade stockists include Chiltern Firehouse, The Maine Mayfair, Searcy’s and The Portrait Restaurant at the National Portrait Gallery. “To be in places like that, which represent much-loved British brands, is a major achievement,” Jenkins says. “Great things are made in Wales and I naturally fly the flag for Welsh products.”

If she could see Cygnet 22 behind the bar of any venue in the world, where would it be? “We held part of our wedding at The Rosewood Hotel in London, so that’s a special place for Andrew and I. To walk into a place which has such a personal connection for you and to see Cygnet 22 on the back bar, it’s an exciting moment.” Jenkins adds that it would also be a dream to see her gin served on the rooftop bar of the five-star Marina Bay Sands Hotel in Singapore. “We’ve just been talking about the plans for Cygnet 22 in Asia. I’ve been performing in Japan for 20 years, so I’d also love to see it in the Japanese market,” she says. Does she think that a Welsh gin could be a tough sell in the Asian market? “No I don’t,” Jenkins says resolutely. “In my experience, Asia loves luxury and I think the quality of Cygnet will speak for itself.” While the Welsh connection is important to the singer, she doesn’t think it will “necessarily be a factor” in the consumer buying decision process. As well as launching Cygnet 22 in Asia, there are plans to roll it out across the US in 2024. “We’re just making sure we have the correct strategy in place,” Jenkins says carefully. “The aim is to work through the places where I have the most presence from travelling or touring.” Speaking of the US, her husband Andrew Levitas, known for directing critically-acclaimed films such as Lullaby, starring Amy Adams, and the Johnny-Depp-led Minamata, is a born-and-bred New Yorker, which will no doubt help open doors for Cygnet 22 in the Big Apple. What has it been like working together on the gin? “It’s actually been brilliant,” says Jenkins. “There are definitely moments when we might disagree on something, but the thing with Andrew is that he’s a sculptor, a painter, a film-maker, a writer, a professor at New York University… so his mind is very open to different ways of doing things. He’s also a really good motivator on the team in terms of bringing people together.” Jenkins says that the pair dedicate “a huge amount of time” to developing Cygnet and confides that she was taken aback by just how important the gin brand would become to them. “To be honest, we didn’t realise how passionately we’d feel about it. That’s been one of the most surprising things,” she says. The upshot is that the couple see Cygnet 22 as a long-term investment, and Jenkins hints at future product line expansion in the near future. “There will be an addition to the range within the next 12 months,” she says. This sense of longevity is reflected in everything from the recipes to the bottle design. On the latter, Jenkins worked closely with Eric Villency of Villency Design Group, whose back catalogue includes designing the frame for the original Peloton bike, as well as the interiors for luxury hospitality venues including the W Hotels and The Plaza.

Something beautiful

Describing the gin’s packaging with its swan-like, elegant bottle neck, Jenkins says: “I wanted to make something beautiful that would have a second or even a third life. Eric [Villency] is just brilliant and together we worked on creating something that would live on after you’ve enjoyed the last sip, whether as a single-stem flower vase or an oil-and-vinegar carafe. Upcycling was at the core of our design process.” Choosing to forgo a bottle label in favour of printing directly onto the glass was another big call. “Even the ink is organic, so when you put the bottle into hot water it will wash off easily,” says Jenkins. With green goals in mind, the team decided to opt for a lightweight bottle that weighs up to 50% less than the average spirits bottle, meaning less energy and raw materials are required in production and transportation. Rather unusually for a celebrity product, discretion was a must. “The minimal branding was deliberate,” says Jenkins. “It’s not about having an ego. It’s important that, with or without me, these products stand up on their own.” The accomplished singer, actress and charity ambassador has found a new home in the drinks world and hopes that Cygnet 22 will “bring people a moment of joy”. It helps that the distillery is located so close to her mum’s house. “She might be popping in regularly for quality control,” Jenkins laughs.

Katherine Jenkins at a glance

At 22, Jenkins signed a six-album deal with Universal worth £1 million, at the time the most lucrative contract for a classical artist. In 2020 radio station Classic FM announced Jenkins to be the best-selling classical artist of the century, beating the likes of Luciano Pavarotti. That same year, she made her film debut alongside Johnny Depp in Minamata and has also performed in the West End, in the likes of Carousel with the English National Opera. Jenkins has sung for the Royal Family many times, including at the late Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee. Following the death of HM The Queen, Jenkins was asked to sing the first recording of God Save the King. She was awarded an OBE in 2014 for her services to music and charity, and is a global patron of The Wilderness Foundation, as well as being a long-time ambassador for charity Macmillan Cancer Support and a trustee of the British Forces Foundation.

Brothers in arms: Sukhinder (right) and Rajbir Singh co-founded The Whisky Exchange

The Whisky Exchange, Covent Garden Another marker in the sand came when Suntory approached TWE seeking a collaboration that might help Japanese whisky to make a splash in the UK. Singh stirred up interest by including Yamazaki 12 Year Old miniatures with select orders to showcase the whisky to top customers. Keen to expand outside the online realm, in 2006 Singh opened his first bricks-and-mortar shop at Vinopolis in London Bridge, which hosted tastings and masterclassses to push whisky education; a goal that eventually led to the founding of The Whisky Show. Launching with a punchy ticket price of £90, his idea of offering attendees the chance to taste rare, high-end drams turned out to be a winning formula, leading to the launch of a successful sister show in Edinburgh. Over a 22-year period, Singh and his brother became the golden boys of the whisky scene in the UK, growing their business to more than 230 employees, winning every industry gong going, and launching or acquiring successful spinoffs including spirits wholesaler Speciality Drinks, importer and distributor Speciality Brands, auction site Whisky.Auction, online magazine Scotchwhisky.com and consumer event London Cocktail Week – in addition to opening thriving shops in Covent Garden, Fitzrovia and, most recently, London Bridge, taking the retail arm back to where it started. Having been adamant that he would never sell up, in 2021 Singh was presented with “an offer I couldn’t refuse” from Pernod Ricard to acquire The Whisky Exchange website, its three shops and its sister businesses, save for Speciality Brands, which remains under his control. While difficult to let go of, the sale has freed him up to focus on his distillery projects. In addition to Portintruan, he and Rajbir own Tormore distillery on Speyside, which they acquired from Pernod Ricard in June 2022, giving them instant access to Speyside stock while they get their Islay venture off the ground. Tormore is headed up by ex-Macallan whisky maker Polly Logan, who has been busy tasting through thousands of casks with a view to launching a single malt under the Tormore name next year. Already known as an independent bottler under the Elixir Distillers brand, Singh is excited to give Tormore a new lease of life. “We’ve been assessing our inventory over the last year to better understand the quality, age profiles and different cask finishes of what we’ve got,” he says.

Elixir Distillers’ Elements of Islay

ENGLISH WHISKY

While Singh’s focus remains firmly fixed on Scotch, he isn’t ruling out the possibility of making English whisky in the future, and believes Scotch producers can’t afford to rest on their laurels, given the emergence of ambitious new distilleries everywhere from France and Sweden to Tasmania and Taiwan. Though he’s excited about the potential of English whisky, he feels distillers aren’t doing enough to capitalise on their current freedom from restrictive regulations in order to stand out from Scotch. “England and Scotland share a similar climate, so it’s very easy to make good whisky in the UK. The question is: should England be making whisky in the same way as Scotland or have a point of difference?” he asks. “There is no definition for English whisky right now – English whisky is literally Scotch. England is lucky as it operates outside of the strict rules governing Scotch, so distillers have more flexibility to do things differently. I don’t think anyone is really capitalising on that yet.” Experimenting with different cereals is a good place to start. “England is like the US in that you can use pretty much any cereal you can think of, from rye and corn to millet and oats,” says Singh. “English distillers should be using mixed mash bills to create unique expressions that stand out from Scotch. Mixing malt and rye works really well.” He also thinks English distilleries should borrow from Irish whiskey’s playbook and create the English equivalent of pot still whisky from a blend of malted and unmalted barley. The category is certainly one to watch. According to The English Whisky Guild, which was founded in 2022 to promote best practice within the industry, the volume of spirit produced by English distilleries is forecast to have grown by 189% between 2019 and 2024, with 50,000 maturing casks set to be in situ by the end of 2024, worth a total of £1 billion. While it will take time for English whisky to really flourish internationally, Singh has noticed a few leading labels popping up on back bars across the UK. “I have a lot of respect for the likes of the Cotswolds Distillery, Lakes Distillery, Spirit of Yorkshire, White Peak and The English Whisky Company, which are starting to develop a loyal local following,” he says, although he admits that it will be a while before we see English whisky making a splash on the secondary market. “First releases from distilleries are always superhot and collectable, but it’s still early days,” he says. “Bimber has done quite well on the secondary market, but is in the press for all the wrong reasons at the moment [following the arrest of its founder]. Its Spirit of the Underground series was genius, but it’s quite a packaging-led brand and you wonder how many people are actually opening these bottles and want to drink them.” As for the health of the Scotch market during these turbulent times, Singh doesn’t seem to be worried, considering the continued global thirst for top-end expressions. “Whisky has performed better than wine on the secondary market recently because there’s not so much of it to go round. There are just over 100 Scotch distilleries, and only a couple of dozen serious players,” he says. “The industry didn’t foresee what the future demand would be, and the current shortage of aged single malts has really helped the category. You can’t just turn on the tap – it takes time to produce these liquids.”

Not only is Bates the first female CEO of WineGB, she may also be the first chief exec to eschew advanced WSET qualifications in favour of strategy. She guiltily confesses that she gets excited by “management consultancy” and makes no bones about the fact that she has more to learn about wine. “Yes, I’ve got the glorious job at WineGB, but I have more than 500 bosses [producer members], and they all know much more about wine than I do,” Bates tells the drinks business. For many reasons, intricate wine knowledge was not the “first item on the list” for WineGB when recruiting the perfect candidate for the job. Instead, “understanding the political landscape” was paramount. “First and foremost on the list of priorities is influencing government,” Bates says. And, having spent a vast chunk of her career hosting roundtables and events “and really martialling evidence” to lobby government on policy, as well as having run for parliament herself in 2010, she is well-equipped to make sure English wine stays top of the agenda. According to Bates, there is “a huge amount of goodwill” at Westminster for English and Welsh wine. “The door is very much open to walk through, probably more so than in any other capacity I’ve worked in,” she says. However, rather than debating the merits of reintroducing pint-sized bottles of Champagne and sparkling wine (more on that later), she wants to solve real, tangible issues that impact “a wider percentage of our members”. Take broadband access, for example. No, really, take it. It’s terrible. “Many of our members are based in various different parts of a rural, agricultural economy,” Bates says. “And the number of times that our members’ internet crashes while they’re on a call is ludicrous.” She admits that she doesn’t yet know whether broadband access is “a number three problem on the list, or a number 30 problem”, but she intends to find out.

  Back to those pints of Champagne. In January, Bates issued a statement championing the government’s decision to permit the return of this imperial measure, a favourite of former Prime Minister Winston Churchill. She affirmed that WineGB welcomed “the chance to be able to harmonise still and sparkling bottle sizes” and asserted that the pint measure would allow “greater choice for UK producers within the domestic market”. Speaking to db, Bates stresses that the word doing the heavy lifting in that sentence is ‘choice’. “I don’t know of any English producers that are about to push the button on a pint-sized bottle, and it’s unclear how much of a market there would be for it. I suspect there might be some consumers out there who would love to celebrate at some point with a pint of sparkling wine. And, equally, there will be some producers who want to cater to them,” she says diplomatically. In fact, Bates is more concerned with the potential hurdles that could come with recycling pint-sized bottles. “If we do go ahead, we need to make sure that producers, and therefore consumers, aren’t being penalised, because costs will have to be reclaimed within a system,” she says, referring to the additional costs that might come with recycling a non-standard-sized glass bottle; extra fees which will inevitably end up being passed on to the consumer via a higher recommended retail price for that bottle. Whether or not consumers want to buy a pint of English sparkling is one matter, whether they are prepared to pay a premium for it is quite another.

The numbers game

Bates’ ability to plug into the numbers was WineGB’s second key consideration when searching for a new leader – it needed someone who could wrangle a budget. She intends to streamline funds at the trade body, starting with membership fees. “WineGB needs to provide the right services at the right price for its members, so that ultimately people feel they are paying for something useful,” she says. At present, Bates explains, there are “about 27 different ways of being a member”, with fees starting “at a couple of hundred pounds and going all the way up to five digits”, determined by the size of the producer, both in volume terms (how many annual bottles made) and hectarage planted. “The question is whether [the differing membership] is fair and appropriate,” she says meaningfully. She’s right to tighten the nuts and bolts ahead of what could prove to be the most transformational chapter yet for the English wine industry. At the time of her appointment, Bates pointed out that the English and Welsh wine sector “will soon face the challenges that come with its success”. So how does she plan to meet these challenges? Bates highlights the ‘s-curve’ of any growing market, which she says is made up of three stages. First comes the ‘pioneer ’ stage. In terms of English wine, this was “when we were growing an awful lot of German grapes”, she says. “You could say that it was anything up to [the establishment of] Nyetimber,” Bates adds, after which point the English wine industry entered its second phase –‘expansion’. “We’ve been going through this stage for some years,” Bates explains. As we hurtle through 2024, the English wine trade is moving into the last phase of the curve — “maturity”. This is loosely defined as a period in which “regulation becomes a more pressing concern, as do issues relating to reputation and protection”, Bates explains. It makes sense, then, that WineGB would pluck a leader from The Portman Group, whose very raison d’être is to safeguard industry standards. If one were to draw a Venn diagram between the two roles, the biggest crossover Bates has found so far relates to the conversation around creating a PDO for English wine. The discussion is all about “anticipating the need to define the quality of an English wine product”, she says. “My time at The Portman Group focused on what info a consumer takes away from looking at a bottle, or a can, or whatever. The idea of a PDO is actually quite close to this. Will consumers understand the phrase ‘PDO’ on a back label? And are we able to imbue a PDO with the right meaning and criteria that will stand the test of time? I don’t think UK consumers understand the term yet, but it’s critical that we get it right.”

Wine tourism

As well as supporting WineGB members from a marketing standpoint, Bates is keen to look at another area undergoing astronomical growth in the UK – wine tourism. She reveals that a free training programme for producers on the subject of wine tourism will launch “very soon”, in association with Visit England, based on a an earlier successful initiative implemented by Wine Australia. “The English wine industry has a huge advantage, having watched what the likes of Australia and New Zealand – and by that I mean markets that have matured in the last 20 or 30 years – have done, and looking and learning from their mistakes,” she says. “It means we should be able to run down the path to success an awful lot faster." Another vital concern is who, exactly, will be running those miles? According to WineGB’s latest industry report, there are currently around 2,300 employees working in English and Welsh wine. “By 2040 we anticipate this will be more like 30,000, which is a huge leap,” Bates says. “Who are these employees? Where are they going to come from?” It’s one of the reasons Bates is so keen to nurture WineGB’s relationship with Plumpton College, one of the key providers of wine education in the UK. “A big question we need to ask ourselves is ‘what do we need from education in order to mature the English wine market?’” she says. As for what English winemakers will be producing by the year 2040, the latest WineGB report shows that Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier currently account for around 70% of total plantings, with hybrid varieties making up 10%. “Our latest insights show that production is currently around two-thirds sparkling to one-third still wines,” Bates says, with still wine expected to increase further. She is especially excited by the future potential for still English Pinot Noir. “Because of the way Pinot Noir grows in this country, it has a different depth that transcends some of the more traditional Pinots from around the world,” Bates explains. When asked how likely it is that we might one day see an English Pinot Noir alongside global expressions of that noble variety on La Place de Bordeaux, Bates says with a twinkle in her eye: “Wouldn’t that be fantastic…?” Read db's interview with ex-WineGB boss Simon Thorpe here, where he discusses English wine being much more than "a one-trick pony" and the difficulty of buying land to plant vines in England.

Meanwhile, Spain’s producers are braced for the prospect that such extremes of drought and heat will become a more regular challenge, and one that demands long-term solutions if viticulture is to remain commercially viable. When you consider that the vine is already one of very few plants able to thrive in conditions where wheat, tomatoes and other staple crops would certainly fail, it’s a challenge that has vital implications for livelihoods in these affected regions. “The winemakers and farmers are taking steps,” confirms González. Irrigation systems are one aspect under review, with growers trying to irrigate more efficiently; however, he suggests that they’re certainly not a panacea. “They can help to compensate for the lack of rain, but it’s still hard for vines to cope with the higher temperatures,” explains González. It is just as vital, he says, to look at “adapting the vineyard labour to the conservation of humidity”. On top of this comes the issue of varying irrigation rights across different Spanish regions, with some producers unable to access this option at all. “One alternative approach to irrigation is not to plough the soil in order to avoid breaking it up and causing more evaporation,” suggests González. “We have done trials in the past, but in this drought they have not been helping much. We need to do something bigger.”  

(Image: Drought conditions: Catalunya, home to Jaume Serra, saw little rain in 2023) In González’s view, salvation lies not so much in soil management as in decisions about which grape varieties to plant in the most affected regions. “The best solution is to plant the more local, drought-resistant grape varieties,” he argues. For González, there are two prime candidates for promotion. “Varieties like Monastrell or Tinto de Toro [Tempranillo] would be the most interesting to explore,” he says. “They can do well at higher temperatures and in drought.” However, while in 2022 the country’s Ministry for Agriculture, Fisheries and Nutrition announced that Tempranillo had leapfrogged Airén to become Spain’s most widely planted grape of all, by contrast Monastrell (aka Mourvèdre) is a variety on the decline. Some 28,443ha of Monastrell have been lost in Spain since 2000. Perhaps that needs to change. Although producers can – funds permitting – play an active role in making this transition to more suitable grape varieties, González stresses that they need greater support from the government and from regional bodies. “The DO must help on this front by allowing this cultivation to happen faster,” he argues. “In some areas you cannot change what’s planted as quickly.”

Stepping up support

One other area where González feels the state could make a positive impact is in stepping up support for research into hybrid grape varieties, developed to cope well in hot, dry conditions. The potential benefits of success in this field don’t just relate to yield, but will help to ensure that Spanish producers don’t lose out to countries that are currently better-placed to meet the growing demand for lower alcohol wines. “Some farmers are suggesting these hybrids would help them get lower-ABV wines,” observes González, who admits that “alcohol has been getting quite high”, despite all the modern winery techniques that he has at his disposal.’ Meanwhile, J García Carrión is using its considerable scale to forge ahead with independent research projects. Artificial Intelligence (AI) may be a newly hot topic for many, but the company has been running a project using AI in its Ribera del Duero vineyards for the last five years. “It’s given us a chance to measure the climate, to optimise all our systems, to improve aspects of our cultivation such as irrigation,” outlines González. “We’re starting to see good results.” In particular, he highlights the way “these algorithms and the weather forecasts carried out every year give us a chance to recommend best practices on the land”. Based on the intelligence gathered already, J García Carrión is already looking at how it can be applied to some of the regions most affected by climate change. “We’re trying to use the results of these studies in areas like Jumilla and Valdepeñas, where they can play a preventative role,” reports González. While the company clearly still sees its southern outposts as commercially viable – indeed commercially vital – arms of the business, it’s hardly surprising that much of the recent expansion focus has been on more northerly regions. Can expansion of vineyard areas in the north help to compensate for the challenges further south? “We do not expect Spain to become a smaller player in terms of wine production,” he says. “Viticulture is part of our way of life, and wine grapes will always be one of the priority crops in Spain. It is true, though, that growth in the wine regions located in the north of the peninsula will become more important as these are typically less affected by climate change.” In particular, González highlights “places like Castilla y León and Galicia, where production as a whole is growing, but we ourselves are also growing in these areas”. Within Castilla y León, the DOs of Ribera de Duero and Rueda have seen a notable investment in new vineyard planting by the J García Carrión group. Spain is not alone in facing the sort of challenges that vintages like 2023 have brought. Wineries of every shape and size all have their parts to play in finding sustainable solutions. However, as if the burden of responsibility for such a large proportion of his country’s grape harvest were not enough to bear, figureheads like Toni González are now front and centre to come up with crucial answers.

Our social habits are changing, she says. “We want to be able to laugh and we want to be able to feel like it’s quality time, and that’s across all generations.” Having choices when it comes to drinking feeds directly into this. Online searches involving the word ‘mocktail’ are up 42%, according to research by Club Soda in collaboration with global market research business The Mix, suggesting that consumers are looking for ways to drink less without sacrificing experience. According to IWSR figures, no- and low-alcohol sales in the world’s 10 leading markets surpassed US$11bn in 2022, with volumes poised to grow at a CAGR of +7% between 2022 and 2026. As a relatively new player in what is a huge global industry, no and low is yet to fully find its feet in the alcohol sector. Framing itself as an ‘alternative’ to drinking inherently drives a wedge between the category and its alcoholic adversaries, but Willoughby is not one to shy away from conflict. “I would personally love to be a threat to everybody,” she says. “It’s quite a fun place to be.”

Club Soda’s location on Drury Lane faces directly onto the Greene King pub in which Willoughby had her last alcoholic drink 11 years ago. “It’s very funny that we’ve ended up here,” she says, but all these years later she is unfazed by the pub’s presence. “I think they could improve their alcohol-free range. I tell Greene King that quite a lot,” she shrugs. But Willoughby is not motivated by conflict for conflict’s sake. Ultimately, the business is viable thanks to a shift in consumer behaviour. Non-alcoholic beer, wine and spirits made US$395m in US off-premise sales over the 52 weeks to 20 August 2022, up by one-fifth, according to the NielsenIQ Scan Off Premise Channels. Tee-totallers are only a small part of the story. Regular alcohol drinkers who are curious about the category, and looking to moderate, make up the majority of no- and lowalcohol sales. According to the IWSR Global No-and Low-Alcohol Strategic Study 2022, 82% of no and low buyers also regularly consume alcohol, typically alternating between non-alcoholic, lower-ABV and full-strength drinks during the same occasion. “Low’s time is yet to come,” Willoughby predicts. The low-alcohol offering in Club Soda remains a very small percentage, but the company’s founder is still keen to be part of the conversation around a category she believes is yet to have its time in the sun. “We have a small shelf of low-alcohol products, because we’re committed to the fact that mindful drinking is about what you drink when you are drinking just as much as when you’re not,” she says. “It’s the beginning of that part of the discussion, and there will be a time where we’ll see lower-ABV spirits and lower-ABV cocktails on menus, as well as more table beers around.”

What poses a challenge to the success of low-alcohol products is the “binary” attitude we have to drinking. “The consumer is either drinking or not drinking. Working out ABV is hard for bartenders, let alone the consumer.” Despite the challenges posed by no and low, brands are being urged to keep up with this burgeoning trend. “Either the alcohol industry needs to learn to adapt and realise that they’re very good at making, marketing and distributing drinks of all kinds, or they decide that their future is only in alcohol,” Willoughby says with some confidence. “Either of those may be possible, but the consumer is demanding something different.” The former politician’s goal is clear: “All I want is that, wherever alcohol is sold, there should be alcohol-free options that are just as good.” What is more, she’s willing to do almost anything to achieve this. “I’m happy to put myself out of business in the long run,” she laughs, putting her head in her hands. “My goal isn’t to create a chain of alcohol-free bars. In fact, it’s far from it. My aim is to have hundreds and hundreds of bars that have good alcohol-free options, so that everybody feels welcome in every single venue.” Club Soda is looking to expand into other UK cities, starting in Manchester in early 2024, following an investment round taking place now, with sights set on Birmingham, Bristol and Cardiff in due course. Willoughby is keen to work with local brands and expand the ‘mindful drinking’ movement, but commercial success is low on the list of her priorities. “I cannot tell you how much you can get done when it doesn’t matter who takes the credit, and when you bring people to collaborate together to make it all happen,” she says. “It’s a stupid way to run a business,” she acknowledges – in that giving advice to other retailers competing for sales tends to limit your own. “It’s why I’m poor,” she shrugs, smiling – evidence yet again of the heights Willoughby will go to in order to achieve her mission – “but that’s okay.”

Labbé explains that “because it was a big challenge and still is, every time that we’re bottling a new vintage of Casa Real, it’s a lot of pressure”. But, he insists that pressure can also be a good thing because it keeps you on your toes, adding that “a great wine needs someone who cares enough to get things right.” According to Labbé, environment and terroir play big roles in Santa Rita’s future, but he observes that the winery “has a perfect combination” from a climatic point of view, being planted at the foothills of the Andes ranges having an advantageous impact on the wine. “These are wines that have the mountain as the soul of the wine, so that influence from the Andes ranges and the proximity to the Maipo River is also a key factor,” says Labbé. He refers to how Casa Real is “a wine that is grown over gravelly soils [that has] a number of rounded stones, and very good drainage. It is around four kilometres from the base of the Maipo river, meaning it gets the gravelly part of the soil. But because it’s not a very new terroir you do get some clay components, especially down in the lower part of the soil.” How would he describe Casa Real? “It is a wine that has a lot of elegance and finesse, but also structure. It has a super Cabernet base but with all the red fruit and all the cherry. “It is very juicy and has delicate tannins, which feel soft and gentle, but still carry a lot of power, showing that they can age very well. It is a wine that shows its real character when it ages. It has some cedar notes and tobacco, but still maintains that kind of a solid, structured backbone.” According to Labbé, “the objective was always for Santa Rita to make one of the top wines of the world”. He has “tried to keep that message” through his work but his main challenge and focus right now is the establishment of Santa Rita’s newest ultra-premium vineyards. He explains: “We’re planting a lot of new vineyards for the Casa Real project, and also for other ones in Alto Jahuel. We have planted the vast majority of our vineyards there. My main objective has been to make sure that those vineyards are well established. In terms of the future of Casa Real, Labbé says that he and his team have “been working with the massal selections, and replanting some of the vineyards”, which are over 50 years old, and where the core of Casa Real originates. “It is 20 hectares, which amounts to two blocks. We have further subdivided those into around 25 parcels.” The plans may be to expand, but this will happen gradually, says Labbé, and in a controlled way so that quality remains paramount. “I want us to get to 120 acres (48.5ha),” says Labbé. “We are going to grow six times. The main role, as I see it, is, how do I replicate that consistency of quality but growing on a bigger surface?” Labbé maintains that the task is not insurmountable because there is great promise in the future bottlings that will be released by Santa Rita. The vintages that have blended in grapes from some of the new vines are already proving to be outstanding in their own right. “Already, I’m blown away by the quality I have seen since 2021, for example. Santa Rita started planting those vineyards in 2009. Then, in 2015, the first crop of those vineyards was for 2020. But in 2021, I started noticing, especially in blind tastings, that there was something great from the new vineyards. That makes me very happy,” he beams. This good fortune is something that Labbé calls the ‘cascade effect’ or rather a ripple or a wave that can be caught if you are able to notice exactly when to paddle. Labbé says it is a way of recognising how something small, but brilliant, can have a big impact on many other things. That is when you realise just how in tune Labbé is with the finer details. How he diligently watches and waits until the time is just right, waiting for that perfect peeling tide. In his role, “the little things” are the blessings he does not overlook. Instead, he notices how every detail plays a part in contributing towards a bigger story. He explains: “There may still be some other adjustments that we’ll do in the future when it comes to winemaking.” But he believes that little differences executed with precision are as important as making a big splash, because, over time, those minute tweaks contribute to overall quality. As he assesses: “Everything that happens with Casa Real has a cascade effect, and benefits everything else that goes through Santa Rita in general.”

According to Bridge, The Fladgate Partnership saw no significant impact on Port sales following either the death of Queen Elizabeth II, nor the coronation of King Charles III. However, Taylor’s did release an 80-year-old Very Very Old Tawny Port (VVOP) for the Queen’s platinum jubilee in 2022, with Bridge saying: “It was important to mark the occasion with a proper sort of bottling.” That “proper sort” was drawn from some of the oldest and rarest Ports maturing in Taylor’s cellars, hidden gems that had been ageing gracefully since before the Second World War. Only 2,000 bottles of the Jubilee VVOP were produced, carrying a price tag of £350 each, though a second release in September 2022 saw a further 3,000 bottles of Taylor’s VVOP descend upon fine wine merchants, retailing for £750. It was a considerable leap into the newly minted Very Very Old Port category, permitted by the Instituto dos Vinhos do Douro e Porto last year. But while the heritage of the brands under Bridge’s wing has undoubtedly been a key factor in their success, he is equally keen to attract a new, younger generation of Port drinkers to the category via his trademarked Portonic (dry white Port and tonic in a can). According to Bridge, launching Portonic during Covid was “a challenge”, and has “required extra work to keep it going”. However, in one particular market switching distributor was key to unlocking the product’s potential, with the company now on track to sell half a million cans in Brazil, “such is the power of the Heineken distribution model”, says Bridge. Lessons have been learned concerning the best way to bring an RTD to market. “We’ve discovered that it can be more appropriate to use a local distributor rather than the typical fine wine distribution channel,” he says. The idea behind Portonic is that convenience is king, with the can offering “a perfect serve every time.” A slew of marketing activations during the past 12 months have seen the product placed in the hands of young, beautiful things during fashion weeks in Milan, Lisbon, and London, while revellers at Primavera Sound in Madrid and Barcelona danced all night to the likes of Dua Lipa and Gorillaz, Portonic firmly in hand thanks to a partnership with the festival. Mention the looming 44% increase in the cost of duty in the UK, however, and dancing is the last thing on Bridge’s mind. Due to come into force on 1 August, Bridge says: “We’re going to see the government effectively push through a record-breaking increase on Port duty, which is likely to result in bottles retailing for around £2.30 more than their current price. Ultimately, a bottle of Taylor’s LBV, instead of being a £15 product, will now be a £20 product.” Whether this is likely to alienate those young consumers he is hoping to win over remains to be seen, especially at a time when the cost-of-living crisis already has its hooks firmly into Millennial and Gen Z disposable incomes.

Bridge and his wife, Natasha, at the Tower of London On the topic of younger crowds, I ask Bridge whether he is aware of the so-called ‘Taylor Port Challenge’ that has blown up on TikTok, and he bristles at its mention. The TikTok trend, which sees videos of young Americans thoroughly incapacitated after drinking copious amounts of Port, unaware of its higher ABV compared with table wine, has gone viral on the social media channel. While Taylor Port is not affiliated with Fladgate’s Taylor’s Port – the former is an entirely separate brand and product based in New York – it must be frustrating to have the integrity of your own brand called into question by consumers who aren’t always aware of the difference. “The problem we have,” says Bridge, “is that the American brand registered its trademark in the US in 1922. By the time we got there in 1924 to register our own trademark we were too late. We cannot control what the American brand, or American consumers do. Taylor Port is a very different proposition to our product. We own the trademark everywhere else in the world.” As for the social media trend itself, Bridge concedes: “It’s the modern world, there’s not much we can do about it. Social media crosses borders and there is no regulatory environment in which we can contest it.”

Moving on from the US to Asia, and Bridge’s tone brightens considerably. “Clearly, a lot of the Asian markets are very strong right now. We’ll see a lot of change in those markets over the next year, especially in the context of the geopolitical changes happening there. I strongly believe that Asia is a very important market for fine wine. Wealth creation in Asia continues to be robust so there are lots of consumers there that want to buy fine wine,” he says. “We’re seeing strong growth in South Korea, and in Taiwan. We have recently increased our visibility in the Philippines, and when I was in Singapore recently I was incredibly pleased to see how buoyant the market was there. People were very much out and spending again.” The turning point for Fladgate’s business in Asia, says Bridge, will come in October, the gateway to the holiday season, starting with the Mid-Autumn festival, and leading up to Christmas. He does, however, note that a large chunk of Fladgate’s Port sales in both the travel retail arena and luxury Asia hotels and restaurants “disappeared during lockdown”, adding “it will take a bit more time for those sectors to recover.”

Green air conditioning

The long-term sustainability of the business is never far from Bridge’s mind, whether that’s working to reduce bottle weight – “we’ve already lightweighted the Croft bottle to reduce our carbon footprint, and are in the process of lightweighting the Taylor’s bottle” – or pioneering green air conditioning in Fladgate’s hotels. When The Bearsley is operational, it will be “the first carbon-neutral hotel in Portugal”, Bridge tells db. This impressive feat will be achieved through implementing DC (direct current) rather than AC (automated current) air cooling functionality throughout the hotel, a move that Bridge estimates will slash the hotel’s electricity use by 40%. “If you think of what your phone uses, that is DC energy,” he says. “You plug the phone into a charger for it to become AC. When you feel the device heat up, that heat is actually a loss of energy. So in a hotel context you can add a small transformer to convert the AC to DC, which generates a loss of heat, and means you don’t need to use a lot of energy to remove the warmth from a building.” It’s not only electricity that keeps Fladgate’s brands running, with the wellbeing of its people fundamental to the business. “We have a large workforce, which is increasingly diverse,” Bridge says. “In the city we provide a lot of accommodation for younger employees. We house 151 staff members, all within walking distance of the World of Wine, and subsidise nutritious food in the canteens. We make sure our team gets 50% of their daily calorific content via our canteens; salads and fruits are heavily subsidised to encourage a healthy, nutritious diet.” How long has the company been doing this? “Forever, really. As a business leader I can set policy and strategy but I can’t do the work on the ground. I need people to feel we are looking after their needs. We’re a family business, and families have values.” With db’s 21st birthday in mind, can Bridge recall how the 2002 vintage was for Port? “We didn’t declare it,” recalls Bridge. “It was a slightly more austere year than the 2003, which was a bit more forward and fruit-driven. In 2002 we had purchased Croft, and invested in putting back the traditional lagares (granite treading tanks) at Quinta da Roêda in the Douro Valley, which marked an important return to foot-treading for us.” 2002 has also been described as an excellent year for those who picked their grapes before the rains; less so for those who didn’t, something that may also prove true of Portugal’s latest harvest, which Bridge says “should be bountiful, as we’ve had a lot of rain this year”.

“We will produce a report at the end of the show – the first report of its kind – looking at the opportunities and challenges of bottle reuse rather than recycling,” Tovey tells db. At the time of writing, her team has only just been given the go-ahead after tirelessly mapping out the minutiae of how they will facilitate the reuse of around 30,000 bottles. “It has taken a huge team, and a lot of planning, right down to details such as the right receptacles for used bottles to go into at the show,” says Tovey. “Formerly, it didn’t matter if bottles got smashed because they were going to be broken down and turned into sand during the recycling process anyway. But you can’t have broken bottles for reuse so we’ve had to approach the process in a completely different way.” There will also be a comprehensive cork-collection programme at the event.   It’s a sign of the times, Tovey says, when exhibitors at the fair are “more passionate about what they bottle in, rather than what’s in the bottle”. She says the number of exhibitors interested in showing off their green packaging, often more so than the product itself, has “increased tenfold”, which Tovey believes “speaks volumes” about the seismic shift towards sustainable design. “The people who have been talking to me the most this year have all been in the field of sustainable packaging. The stuff that’s finding me is all centred around that topic. And the people that are passionate about this area are quite a force to be reckoned with. They want to be heard,” she says. While Tovey welcomes thoughts and ideas from those producers who are already involved with green issues, she says that she would equally like to hear more from those companies that perhaps aren’t so green-minded, or at least aren’t yet. “I’d like to be able to get their messages and priorities across too, but I’m not hearing it so loudly,” she says. It’s a shame, Tovey feels, that some of the more “old-school” vintners don’t seem to recognise the fair as “a platform to be seen as a proactive, engaged member of the industry”. And while she won’t be drawn on who, or to which category such producers might belong, one thing is abundantly clear: Tovey keenly wants LWF to be a mouthpiece for all.

A WIN FOR THE PLANET

Of course, it’s slim coincidence that there is a surge in brands suddenly extolling the virtues of packaging their wines in paper bottles when the cost of glass has rocketed and the material has become famously hard to get hold of. But for Tovey, the motive is less important than the result. “We know that people don’t always act entirely altruistically, but if the end result is the same then it’s still a win for the planet,” she says. That said, even the most caustic cynic cannot fail to spot that the innovations belonging to this year’s fair extend well beyond paper bottles. With LWF striving to be the most “intelligent” trade fair in the world, its organisers drew from the lessons they learned from staging the fair as a digital-only event in 2021. “It’s not just about bringing together more than 10,000 people but about how you can connect with them, and how they can connect with each other,” says Tovey. “We learned that there are enormous opportunities to be had from harnessing online events both before and after LWF.” For this reason, ahead of this year’s fair, event organisers will open up a ‘Digital Dashboard’, through which guests can organise their diaries. “People will be able to exchange information and conversations in the lead-up to the event,” says Tovey. “And if they input their objectives for visiting the show, the algorithm will match them up with the best people to help enrich their experience. It’s a bit like a dating app. The dashboard will provide a list of suggested matches and guests can either ask to set up a meeting on site with those matches at the physical fair, or schedule a video meeting for whenever suits. This might be between a buyer and a wine producer or between a certain association and a visitor who is looking to join that association. It’s pretty smart.” As ever, English wineries will be the beating heart of the fair, with more represented than ever this year. At the time of writing, 11 English wine brands have signed up to exhibit their still and sparkling wines. Like many in the trade, Tovey is still reeling at the news that WineGB’s CEO, Simon Thorpe, has stepped down after just three years in the role to join importer Thornton Hunt as its managing director. “I was quite surprised, and sad. Simon is a lovely chap, and has been a delight to interact with. He’s clearly a very committed, intelligent and genuinely nice person, and I wish him well,” says Tovey, who remains on standby to discover who will step into Thorpe’s shoes. “It’s entirely critical who that person is,” she insists. “Clearly, with the rapid growth of English wine we need to see a direct correlation when it comes to its marketing and brand development. We have a unique opportunity to produce some of the best wines in the world and present them to global markets. Whoever is the very best at doing that should be the new head of WineGB.” When db interviewed Thorpe last year, he spoke about the existing framework for carving up English wine into Protected Designation of Origins (PDOs), and whether these would ultimately turn out to be a help or a hindrance to the industry. “I’d hate to sit so far on the fence that it’s up my bottom but I can see it from both sides,” says Tovey. “Any kind of fixed parameters are going to stem creativity in English wine, but the benefit lies in being able to stress the idea of typicity and build a brand for these regional, distinctive wines. “That said, I’ve never had to be a winemaker working within those limited parameters, and something about it doesn’t feel entirely British. But overall, I would say I am more for PDOs than I am against.” With the stratospheric growth of English wine in recent years, Tovey believes the sector can help open doors for other categories in the UK drinks trade. “ If you asked anyone five or 10 years ago to talk about British drinks, all you heard was the word ‘gin’ on repeat. But after the feverish buying up of land and vineyards in the UK, one of the biggest things we can smile about is the rise in British wine production,” she says. “I do think the English wine industry has a responsibility to lead, and to advance the conversation about UK drinks as a whole.” The looming issue of wine tourism in the UK is another hot topic. With visiting a British pub top of the list for many international visitors, how can we get them to check out an English winery? “I think more strategic partnerships between English wineries and either pubs or restaurants could be a really good step forward,” says Tovey. “There has to be a role there to play for WineGB in terms of encouraging wineries to get their products to a partner pub or pubs where people can discover their wines. Perhaps from there people will be inspired to branch out and visit the wineries.” It’s back to that shop window again. And there is no better window dresser than the woman behind the London Wine Fair.  

Capper also highlights how it isn’t just about the carbon footprint, but being conscious of water waste too. She says: “Climate change puts the UK in a good place to grow crops, and we should be growing more here and importing less from water-stressed countries.” The geographic origins of the hops used in brewing is important because the bitter resins and essential oils inside the hop cone depend on the environmental conditions they were influenced by during their growth. Hops in general have male and female plants, but the part of the plant used in brewing beer – the cone – is from the female. Male plants simply produce pollen, but no flowers or cones. Much like grape varieties, New World hop styles grown in the sunshine are bolder and brighter, with heaps of grapefruit citrus and tropical notes. In Europe, or rather the Old World, and in Great Britain, hops tend to lend more subdued flavours and aromas, but what they lack in fluorescence, they make up for in complexity. In Great Britain, male hop plants are grown alongside female ones. In many of the breeding programmes, the males are not ‘killed’ but used as parents to develop new female varieties, as well as provide disease resistance in their female hop plant progeny. But can brewers get out of the habit of thinking that they need to always use American hops to garner attention, especially varieties such as Citra, Mosaic, and Galaxy? Or even NZ hops that pack pine and spicy resinous esters into each brew. Let’s hope so. According to recent figures from the Society of Independent Brewers (SIBA) there are 1,824 active brewers in the UK. Plus, the BHA says there are at least 32 commercially-available varieties of British hops. But in terms of newness, now there are British varieties that are bred from New World parents, lending something from their naturally borrowed genealogy to their offspring. Hop plants are perennial, and grow back from the rootstock each year, usually in spring when their shoots emerge. They then begin to grow and climb rapidly on a string framework that is usually supported by a more permanent pole system or wirework. Different hop varieties climb differently, so for ease, some are strung in different patterns to make them easier to harvest, but the diversity illustrates how far things have come from only thinking of one style when it comes to British hops. As Capper describes: “Challenger is beautiful in a bitter; Goldings in an English pale ale; Phoenix in a porter or stout; Jester in an amber ale; Olicana in a New World pale ale; Harlequin in IPAs.” She points out that the “new varieties of British Hops, like Jester, Olicana, and Harlequin, have amazing flavours – tropical fruits, citrus, passionfruit, mango, peach and pineapple”. These are flavours for which British hops have not previously been known. They are ideal to switch into recipes in place of New World hops for “punchy IPA’s, citrusy beers and pale ales with impact,” says Capper. But as Capper reiterates, it isn’t just the possibilities of the new hop varieties that consumers need to become excited about, but a genuine sense of virtue they will feel about what they can do for their local businesses. “Hop growers are faced with high wage costs (up by 15%-20% in a year) and super inflation in fuel costs (up 100%-200%), fertiliser (up 400%) and crop protection (up 15%), “ says Capper. “Brewers are also facing huge energy cost increases, as well as packaging and wage cost increases and we are all faced with logistics price rises. Super inflation is hard to mitigate against, and while growers can look at efficiencies and crossquote everything, they do this anyway. What is important is that everyone is paid a fair price for what they are producing.” "She reveals that, essentially, these past few years have been some of the hardest ever because “Covid struck the industry very hard, and brewers and merchants reneged on contracts”. This meant that “growers have lost significant money three years in a row, and now need contract certainty and prices that reflect the cost of production”. Added to this, “the hop-growing industry has reduced by over 10%, and it is likely to reduce further as growers choose to stop hop farming because the risks are too great". If all British brewers investigated British hops, and began adapting their brewing recipes to introduce more beers using the progressive new varieties that share more pronounced New World properties, would there be enough available? Capper insists: “There will be more than enough to go round. Hop growers need brewers to forecast and provide three- to five-year contracts. Growers can then grow to these contracts, and deliver what is required.” She implores: “Buy British. It’s not just the financial cost of the hops but also the cost to the planet" and adds that brewers, retailers, venue owners, and even the end consumer should start to look for the newest styles, and note who is making this forward step already. And she suggests we all look out for “Jester, Olicana and Harlequin and the numerous experimental varieties that British hop growers are growing for brewers”, especially if we become interested in beers that are going to have an “impact”. Are there any downsides? It doesn’t sound like it. Perhaps this is the next trend for beer, she observes. “As long as these hops deliver in the beers being brewed they will be here for the future.”

 

THREE PILLARS

With the 50th anniversary of Marlborough grape plantings just around the corner, the moment seemed ripe for a wider refresh of ‘brand New Zealand’. After carrying out extensive market research, New Zealand Winemakers revealed its new tagline – Altogether Unique – in January, in a bid to determine how the world will see its producers for the next 50 years or more. “The idea was to go beyond our commonly used differentiators, and develop a narrative around how the New Zealand wine brand should make you feel,” says Gregan. “The likes of Chile and Argentina were all saying the same thing – “Our wines are premium, they’re sustainable” and so on. We needed to drill down to a deeper level to define what sets New Zealand wine apart from our rivals.” The organisation’s three new pillars of ‘purity, care, and innovation’ were born from the feedback winemakers receive about their products. “The purity refers to our unblemished sunlight, unpolluted environment and fresh, clear water,” says Gregan. “Care denotes the fact that our producers are cultivating grapes sustainably and with a connection to the land. Innovation is a nod to the sense of adventure that underpins our industry.” While no harm can come from strengthening consumer perception of New Zealand wine, in truth it seldom needs it. Wineries worldwide are already intent on mimicking the country’s success, which comes with its own set of complications. Gregan, who adheres to the adage that “imitation is the finest form of flattery”, has nonetheless had to “strongly oppose” numerous trademark registrations for products because they are “blatantly ripping off New Zealand”. “We’ve seen a lot of products from other countries that look like or use words associated with New Zealand wine,” he explains, before flagging one French wine that goes by the name Kiwi Cuvée and a “major US retailer” that features the traditional Maori greeting ‘kia ora’ on its Sauvignon bottle as examples. In the case of the latter, “It’s a Sauvignon Blanc, but not from anywhere near New Zealand,” Gregan says archly.

Despite the lingering threat of identity fraud the only thing that has managed to dent sales of New Zealand wines during the past decade was the worryingly short harvest that the country’s winemakers experienced in 2021. Is this behind them now or are producers still experiencing the fallout? “To a large extent we’re out the other side but producers had to make really tough decisions about who and what they supplied,” says Gregan. “Half the problem was that the short harvest was so unexpected, especially in the context of the huge surplus of demand we were seeing at the time. What it has done is got people thinking about resilience. People had to rebuild stocks and relationships, and some are still doing so.” While 2022 was effectively a year of recovery, the 2023 harvest looks to be shaping up nicely. “The first grapes have been harvested, and we’re expecting to finish picking in late April or early May,” says Gregan. “All indications so far are for a normal-sized crop. We’re certainly not expecting a 2021 situation. But we should have more definitive figures at the start of June.” Looking ahead to the remainder of this year, protecting the reputation of New Zealand wine both on a global and local scale is top of his agenda. On the world stage, Gregan is looking forward to the country hosting the next Cool Climate Wine Symposium in January 2026. “New Zealand Society for Viticulture and Oenology is working through the programme now and how it’s going to work,” says Gregan. “All eyes will be on our country, with viticulturalists, winemakers and researchers coming to New Zealand, so it’s a great opportunity for us to showcase what we’ve been working on to an interested and passionate community.”

LOCAL SUPPORT

And what about closer to home? With wine and wine tourism playing such a key role in New Zealand’s fortunes, Gregan is keen for producers to maintain their social currency in local communities. Writing for Rural News Group earlier this year, he said: “We need to ensure that our sector retains its social licence to operate. In other words – we need to ensure that our producers are valued by their local communities as an asset worth keeping and protecting.” One thing producers can do to keep this social currency alive as New Zealand wine enters its next chapter is to listen to any concerns. “Vineyards are noisy places. They have tractors going at all hours of the day, helicopters for frost control, wind machines, bird bangers (a noise device that scares birds away from vines), and we absolutely need to do all this if we’re going to produce the quality that our markets demand, but we also need our communities to continue to allow us to do that,” Gregan says. “Wineries must stick by the rules, and if they get a complaint, then act on it fast. We’re in a privileged position so we have to be cleaner than clean,” he adds. “People are proud of our wine industry and we want to make sure that pride is there for many years to come.”

Gradually Marimar Estate was able to expand, and with it the volume of Pinot Noir. Today this variety accounts for eight of the 19ha at the original Don Miguel Vineyard in Russian River Valley, and all 8ha planted so far at the estate’s Doña Margarita Vineyard in Freestone Valley, just seven miles from the cooling Pacific Ocean. This significant share of volume is accompanied by prestige: it is the Cristina Pinot Noir that sits at the pinnacle of the estate’s portfolio. This variety may be big business in Sonoma today, but it’s clear Torres has reached a personal saturation point. “Now I would not plant Pinot Noir,” she remarks, looking back to another piece of brotherly advice that she not only design the winery in the style of a Catalan farmhouse, but strengthen the link to her roots by planting Spanish grapes. The first attempt was Cava mainstay Parellada, “but it wasn’t very good,” concedes Torres. After persevering for 10 years she pulled it out, a fate also destined for the estate’s Syrah experiment. “It is very good, but it’s not really what we get inspiration from,” she explains. Undeterred, in 2004 Torres planted Albariño, but that wasn’t exactly plain sailing either. “Galicia is cold and humid so I planted it in our coldest vineyard, but guess what? After three years it still didn’t ripen,” she reminisces. “Cold and wet in Spain is not the same – it’s much colder here.”  

Marimar Estate It’s not just the climatic differences between Spain and Sonoma that have forced a learning curve. The latter's soils are generally much younger, with a marked volcanic component. “They’re very vigorous and fertile,” explains Torres, noting the need for high-density planting and summer pruning not just once, as might be the case in Spain, but three or even four times a year. After replanting her Albariño in the slightly warmer Don Miguel Vineyard, Torres eventually achieved a first successful harvest in 2010. Tempranillo joined the portfolio in 2013, then, in 2020, came a small amount of Godello, which occupies a single acre here. While these Spanish novelties are a popular cellar-door purchase, they are also starting to venture further afield. November 2022 saw Marimar Estate’s Tempranillo join the Albariño already in the UK, with Godello due to land in time for summer 2023. How easily have these Spanish interlopers broken into Sonoma’s tightly focused wine scene? After all, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay together today account for almost half the total region’s vineyard area, and an even bigger share of its reputation. “The Tempranillo is very good,” insists Torres, “but it’s not as easy to sell as the Albariño and Godello.” Drawing a parallel with the style of Tempranillo found in Rioja Alta or higher parts of Ribera del Duero, she observes: “It’s a tannic wine. You have to age it and here people typically want younger wines.” This factor also presents challenges for building critical acclaim. “Most of the press are tasting 2019s right now, but our 2019 Tempranillo is not ready,” acknowledges Torres.

That obstacle might be daunting for another producer, but back in the 1970s and early ’80s Torres was busy building distribution for her family’s Spanish wines at a time when there were almost no US critics at all. “In those days wine was not a big thing,” she notes. “Very few cities had wine critics, but they always had a food critic, so I would get the wines in through them instead.” It helped that in the early days of this adventure, Torres was herself married to an American wine and restaurant critic, who encouraged her to embrace home cooking in a way that had not been possible back in Spain. “It was not a ladylike thing to do,” she smiles. “I had to make friends with the family cook, and then wait until my parents went out on a trip.” Suddenly, here she was in the kitchen with US culinary icon Julia Child coming for dinner. “Can you imagine! I made a paella and gazpacho for her, and a dessert, which she was not impressed with.” This wider gastronomic passion, indeed considerable expertise – Torres has published several books about Spanish and Catalan cuisine – played a formative role in the sort of wines she wanted to make. “I like balance, not fruit bombs,” she explains, “wines that are yummy, that go well with food, not the wines that impress critics.” With this outlook shaping her decisions, it should come as little surprise that Torres’ next project – a firm signal that retirement is not on the cards – is likely to involve a Spanish grape that has recently started to boast a particularly enthusiastic following among sommeliers. “I want to plant Mencía; it’s so good,” she smiles.

RARE SPANISH VARIETIES

Marimar Estate is also supporting the Torres family’s long-term drive to preserve and promote far rarer Spanish varieties. Moneu, Pirene, and Gonfaus are hardly household names, but are all being given an opportunity to shine in this scenic enclave of Northern California. The challenging hot, dry 2022 harvest meant these “ancestral” grapes were rather sidelined as the team focused all their attention on more commercially significant parts of the crop, but the plan is eventually to select one to join the portfolio. So, as the Torres baton is prepared to once again pass down to the next generation, there’s no sign of any dip in the energetic momentum that has kept this estate ahead of the crowd. Looking back on the 40-year unfolding of this race, Torres paints a picture that is very much marathon rather than sprint. “I always think you do things one step at a time,” she remarks. “You put one foot forward and keep going. If it doesn’t work, take a step backwards but don’t give up. The one thing you can’t tell me is ‘you can’t do that.’” It seems unlikely that she’d be surprised – or even disappointed – if her advice to Marimar Estate’s new general manager meets with precisely the same spirit.

Each winery team must also be finely attuned to the specificities of their property’s surroundings. At Château La Lagune, for instance, 40 hectares of protected wetlands circle the vineyards, which Frey says are “extremely important for the water cycle”. Contrastingly, at Paul Jaboulet Aîné there is abundant forest, which is essential for promoting biodiversity. Of course, there are similarities, too, between the estates. Frey says she has witnessed more frequent episodes of frost and hail in all regions in the past few years, but the fact that in the Rhône Valley the vineyard is dispersed, rather than from a single block like at La Lagune, means that damage there from these particular climatic extremes is limited. It’s the risk of drought that concerns her most. “Even though 2021 was a rather rainy vintage, drought is now an established and proven trend. This is perhaps our biggest challenge: to ensure that the water resources are adequate for the vine to function properly until harvest. Only the soil can play this reservoir role,” she says. Frey staunchly maintains that maturity must come from the plant and not from the mechanical effects of heat, for example. “A soil that has a good amount of humus inside it is capable of retaining water like a sponge and releasing it when necessary. For this, biodynamic viticulture helps us a lot.” On the topic of drought, one might reasonably imagine that the very stony soils of the hilly Hermitage vineyard, with its fully southern exposure, may become too dry or too hot to produce fine wine before long. “Think again. It is not by accident that these are considered great terroirs,” says Frey triumphantly. “It is all in the soil, which allows the vine to sink its roots very deep into the ground, to wrap itself around the pebbles, thus increasing its surface exchanges, to find water in limestone concretions formed under the stones by bacteria, or in deep clays.” Conversely, in cooler, wetter vintages such as 2021, the impressive capacity of the stony soil on the hillsides of La Chapelle to drain so well was crucial. “The white wines in particular were able to take advantage of this to develop excellent balance and intense aromatics,” says Frey.

The barrel room at Château La Lagune It’s clear that Frey trusts deeply in the natural resilience of the soils, and it is for this reason that she deliberately tries to be as hands-off as possible. “During periods of drought and heat we leave the vines alone, so as not to stress them even more. The key is the organic-matter resource. By limiting the working of the soil, we avoid a rapid mineralisation,” she says. “The addition of biodynamic compost and the grinding (broyage) of the vine shoots makes it possible to restore organic matter. We sow green fertilisers in the autumn, and lay them down in the spring using the Mexican method of the faca roller (to encourage their composting). The aim is to preserve soil quality while at the same time nourishing it.”Frey sees great potential in the use of organic-indicator plants for helping growers to understand what the soil needs and when. “That is just one of a number of new techniques we are starting to use,” she reveals. “We are also trimming less, and leaving more foliage around grape bunches to maintain shade. We use certain preparations, such as silica, after the harvest, which help to reinforce the vines’ natural reserves to help them regenerate through the winter. It’s all about the small details; together they make a difference.” In short: “Viticulture must be an accompaniment to nature, and not a struggle against it”. Yet, at the same time, Frey concedes that “each year we need a fair dose of good fortune if we are not to lose our harvest.”  

SMALLER GRAPES

Frey has noticed the grapes on her estates now tend to be smaller with thicker skins. “Accordingly, we have greatly reduced the extraction we seek, with less frequent and gentler pumping over and pigeage. Almost all of our extraction is now achieved simply through natural maceration. This gives a fabulous texture to the wine,” she says. Following detailed research and development, Frey is confident that organic and biodynamic wines taste different from one other. “We have carried out extensive comparative trial tests in the vineyard, then vinified the trials separately until bottling. This has allowed us, over a sustained period of time, to regularly blind taste the different modalities. The results are clear. We have a consistent and strong preference for biodynamic wines. They are purer, more luminous, more radiant, and fresher,”she says. Looking to the next 10 years, Frey suspects her greatest anxieties will be about climate change. But she remains confident that she will find a solution, as she has done so many times before. “Nature is full of resources and so are we.”

Caroline Frey at a glance

After graduating from Bordeaux University, Frey took the helm of her family-owned Bordeaux estate Château La Lagune in 2004. When her family bought Paul Jaboulet Aîné in the Rhône Valley, in 2006, and Château Corton in Burgundy, in 2014, Frey was tasked with making wine on all three estates, a task she took on with relish, initiating organic and biodynamic practices to encourage healthier soils. She also manages a private vineyard in Valais, Switzerland. In 2017, Frey received the Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Mérite, awarded for her work in agriculture, viticulture and the environment, as well as the protection of birds in her wine estates. In 2021, Frey won The Amorim Biodiversity Award at The Drinks Business Green Awards 2021 for her team’s work at Paul Jaboulet Aîné, and in the 2022 iteration of the same awards, she was commended for her work in benefiting the richness of species at Château La Lagune.

To that end, the packaging of the 0% fizz is as premium as her pink Prosecco, as is the level of detail, from the signed cork and pale pink cage to the silver neck foil, so nothing is taken away from the ritual of the sparkling wine experience. Making a splash in the fast-growing ‘nolo’ category is a savvy move. According to a 2022 IWSR study, the sector has a global retail sales value of just under US$10 billion (£8.3bn), and is forecast to have a volume compound annual growth rate of 7% between 2021 and 2026. Growth in the UK looks set to be larger, at 30% over the same period. In tandem with the explosion of the category has been a shift in consumers’ drinking habits, with mental health now the number-one driver for cutting back on booze. Interestingly, the ‘nolo’ category is seeing the biggest growth from drinkers seeking to reduce their alcohol intake by occasionally going alcohol-free – the IWSR study found that 82% of people who have tried ‘nolo’ products drink alcohol. With Millennials and Gen Z consumers prioritising their health and wellbeing, Minogue believes the stigma around not drinking has lifted. “So many of us are leaning into self-care now. I don’t think there’s a stigma around not drinking anymore, and it’s important that people who aren’t drinking have a good option where they don’t feel like they’ve got the kids’ drink at the end of the table.” Having expanded the brand’s footprint around the globe, from Barbados to Belgium, this summer Kylie took her wines stateside through a partnership with Southern Wines & Spirits, launching the range at the Carlyle Hotel in New York with a performance at legendary live music venue, Café Carlyle. Not one to rest on her laurels, the singer has her sights firmly fixed on the future, and would love to add a Champagne to the range to complement her still French rosés. “A pink Champagne would be amazing, obviously. It’s the longest conversation Paul and I have had. We’re exploring our options right now, as it all comes down to finding the right partner,” she says.

With the world having opened up again, Kylie has been busy making up for lost time, paying visits to her partner estates, including Howard Park and De Bortoli in Australia, and Zonin in northern Italy, which produces her pink Prosecco. “It’s been great to meet the makers behind the wines and be shown their latest toys and gadgets. The more I learn about wine the more I realise there is to learn. It’s been pretty daunting at times, but I’ve been welcomed by the industry with open arms. I don’t know how long I’ll say I’m a beginner in wine, but it will be a while,” she says. “I’m reading Andrew Jefford’s new book, where he describes wine so wonderfully, and the fact that there are so many aspects to it, from history, humanity and science to nature. It’s the mystical part of wine that I’ll always be trying to grasp, but perhaps you never do, which is what makes it so fascinating.” With celebrity wines – and particularly celebrity rosé – enjoying its moment in the sun, Minogue, who is putting the finishing touches on a new “feelgood” music album, admits there is some friendly rivalry between her and fellow singers Gary Barlow and Jon Bon Jovi for the most popular celebrity pink. Have the three of them got together to compare notes? “Not yet, but I wouldn’t mind a trip to the Hamptons,” Kylie jokes. “Jon can sing and I’ll do the harmonies.”

Kylie uncorked

Pascual believes that “all wines from Ribera del Duero fit into the category of fine wines, or quality wines”. But what position does he see the region’s wines occupying in the wider landscape of Spanish fine wine? “There are many great wines in Spain; the winemaking tradition of our country is our calling card, but we are not competitors. Each DO seeks its own place and presents itself differently to the consumer, who knows how to differentiate between them,” he insists. However, there can be little question that established wineries from other Spanish regions are starting to move into Ribera, establishing their own operations there, and looking to benefit from the typicity of its terroir. One such outfit is Rioja’s Bodegas Riojanas, which this year launched its Alacer range of wines made from grapes grown in the Ribera municipalities of Sta. Cruz de la Salceda and Vadocondes, in plots at more than 900m altitude. Riojanas readily admits it bows to the expertise of local winemakers to produce this wine, as the area is uncharted territory for the neighbouring winery. “Ribera del Duero has its own characteristics that determine the personality of its wines,” explains Pascual, who seems nonplussed about the arrival of outsiders. “Our climate is very particular, extreme and intense, giving way to powerful fine wines, bursting with flavour. The way we make our wines, the management of the ageing, and the hands of our professionals create inimitable wines, which are the complete expression of the soils in which they were born.”

Ribera del Duero sits on a mesa, or high mountain plain, with altitudes of between 701m and 1,097m above sea level. Because of this, Tempranillo grapes from Ribera tend to have thicker skins, and more intense, concentrated flavours, than their counterparts in nearby Rioja, for example. Ribera wines are largely based around Tempranillo (called Tinto Fino or Tinta del Pais locally), with around 23,000 hectares of the DO’s total 24,000 hectares planted with the variety. A wine must contain a 75% minimum of Tempranillo to be part of the DO. It’s for these reasons, and more, that the region has become synonymous with powerful reds, but one of the most intriguing changes to take place under Pascual’s leadership was the incorporation in 2019 of the white Albillo Mayor grape variety under the DO banner, a decision he says is paying off, as evidenced by the “excellent quality potential” it is showing in the 2022 harvest. Pascual calls Albillo Mayor “a very special native variety that’s difficult to work with, but with a huge potential that we have only just begun to discover. There is real enthusiasm around this grape, and the white wines being made from it are complex, and with very limited production. We will surely see a growth in our whites, but it will be slow and measured, because we are not striving for quantity, but looking to preserve a variety that is part of our local heritage.” Ribera del Duero saw an early harvest this year, which began on 30 August. “It was interrupted by some rain, but overall, it progressed well,” says Pascual. “After a very hot, dry summer, which caused a delay in the ripening cycle, the September rains were a blessing. The grapes picked are healthy, of high quality and will certainly lead to great wines, with potential for laying down.”

FIGHTING SPIRIT

The fighting spirit in Ribera del Duero is what sets it apart from other Spanish winemaking regions. “We are very clear that we cannot change our way of being; of making and understanding wine. That’s what makes us special and authentic,” says Pascual. This trademark tenacity is helping Ribera winemakers weather a different storm; the geopolitical situation sparked by the war in Ukraine, triggering a spike in energy prices, shipping delays, and difficulties in getting hold of raw materials. In comparison with some other leading figures in the trade, Pascual seems sanguine about what might lie ahead. “Of course, we are no strangers to what is happening in the world, and our main concern as human beings is the social stability and wellbeing of the population. From there, the rest can be overcome,” he says resolutely. “In Ribera del Duero, we already live with an extreme climate that makes things very challenging, so we are used to overcoming obstacles. We will face the different scenarios of this crisis with courage and without ever losing the desire to move forward. But it is clear that we are not in a good time. The situation is worrying and it will affect us.” Nor can climate change rain on Pascual’s parade, though that’s not to say the DO isn’t taking strict measures to protect against it. Safeguarding the region’s old vines, which are at risk from increasingly violent weather patterns, has become a top priority. “Our older vineyards have been assigned enormous value, and we consider these to be great treasures,” says Pascual. “Our growers and winemakers are very attentive to the consequences of climate change, and we try to avoid these old vineyards wherever possible when it comes to any new plantings, focusing on higher altitudes or terroirs in which the effect of increasingly extreme weather patterns is less acutely felt.”

Everyone is willing to pull together and do whatever it takes to ensure the survival of these invaluable assets, a steely outlook that is nothing new for the DO’s tightknit community.

“Ribera del Duero was born as a project of the people, who together with the authorities, managed to convert a rural region historically linked to vines and vineyards, into a quality brand,” says Pasqual proudly. “The DO was born in 1982, after an overwhelming amount of work to give value to the grapes, the vineyard and the winemaking tradition. In those early years, there were only a dozen wineries, a number that leapt to 100 within a decade. Ribera del Duero soon received support from the Spanish hospitality sector, and, consequently, from consumers the world over.” Indeed, the on-trade has been an unwavering supporter of the DO’s wines, with Pascual calling it “our greatest ally”. The sector, he believes, “values and recognises what we have to offer, and therefore our wines have a prominent presence on the menus of restaurants and hotels all over the world”. So having blown out 40 candles on the cake this year, what are the DO’s plans for the next 40 years? “Our main objective is to continue growing in foreign markets. To present our work, our identity and what we do to consumers around the world,” says Pascual. He also highlights that the DO is “living through a revolution of our rosés, or claretes as they are traditionally called here. We are seeing wines with different colour ranges, different ageing times, even claret reservas. In essence, they are a creative expression, and the consumer is very much enjoying this new face of Ribera del Duero.”

She warns: “We need urgent relief on energy rates. Without it, businesses will fail. So everything else that we have been trying to do in keeping these businesses alive during the pandemic – in finding a pathway through to recovery and into sustainable growth – none of that will matter if the energy bill hikes sink those businesses.” McClarkin hints that while the government needs to tackle rates and VAT, it must also “keep beer duty low”. Her proudest moments involve the support that has been won for the sector so far. At a crucial time for beer and pubs, “maintaining that drumbeat and media attention” has been fundamental. “Throughout the crisis, we got more than £8 billion together in support for the sector, which recognised the role we play,” McClarkin says, pinpointing how significant that has been for the longevity of the industry. However, as the nation gradually reemerged after the series of lockdowns, to news of a war in Ukraine and soaring energy costs, its resilience was further rocked last month by the news that Queen Elizabeth II had died, leaving Britain in a state of emotional volatility. It needs its pubs now more than ever. “Along with the nation and the world, we were deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II,” says McClarkin, pointing out that “her reign and duty to the country has been extraordinary, and on behalf of our members, we have passed on condolences to the Royal Family”. McClarkin also says the association will be working with the nation’s pubs and brewers to pay its respects in communities across the country. There is, she reveals, “no such thing as a normal day” at the BBPA. When parliament is in session, there is regular engagement with politicians, following up with all government officials in the background, and preparing submissions. “Whether they’ve asked for consultations or not, we will keep putting them through,” she says. At the moment, she is very busy, she says, saying her job interconnects so many livelihoods that the organisation needs to keep listening to stay ahead and raise issues of pub and brewery businesses of all sizes. “The BBPA is a really broad church. We’ve got big players, we’ve got small players, we’ve got people with thousands of pubs. We’ve got people with a handful of pubs. So we represent the full size and scale of the industry. And it’s our job to be worrying about how we can create the best regulatory environment for their businesses to survive so that they can get on with running them,” she explains. McClarkin says publicans and brewers need more recognition for what they offer local communities, that their businesses are much bigger than beer and more about hope. “We’re doing all we can from our side of the industry, but we need the government to recognise the role that beer and pubs play, not only economically, but socially in those communities, and that pubs and brewers are key economic and social infrastructure assets which need to be maintained for society and communities. Without pubs we would all be poorer.” McClarkin describes how the hardships breweries face are not going away, and the industry needs to be protected. She reveals how “hundreds of thousands of people have been calling for support and recognition for the pub, but it is really difficult for our brewers right now because their costs have gone through the roof. The prices of raw materials are going up, and the reality is that it’s a very complex situation.” Pubs have, historically, supported the nation’s tourism industry too. Losing any of them is a huge loss for all. “I know that one of the top 10 things that people want to do when they come to the UK is go to a great British pub, and have a British beer,” she says, identifying how that element of Britishness is as revered and admired as it is quaint and historical.

The BBPA’s biggest wins of the past year

• Gaining additional support for the sector throughout the pandemic totalling over £8.2bn. • Launching its EDI Charter and setting BBPA members on the road to net zero. • Gaining recognition for beer as a low-volume alcohol drink of moderation, and Alcohol Duty reform that supports Britain’s pubs and brewers. • The BBPA has become very agile as a team while managing the industry through one of the biggest crises it has ever faced, all while managing to lead and champion innovation and diversity in the sector, as well as sustainability and digital transformation. • During McClarkin’s period of leadership, the BBPA has also increased its membership.

Despite all of its history, one of the best advancements has been recognising the beer and pub sector actively changing perceptions of women within the industry, and to this end McClarkin has played an essential role in moving things forwards. “When you look at the makeup of our workforce in pubs it’s 54% women, so it’s really about trying to break the perception,” she says. “Lots of people love beer, not just men. It appeals to a multitude of people across the board.” In terms of representing minorities, the BBPA is committed to “looking forwards and being inclusive by investing in diversity and representing all people. This means making sure that we truly reflect that inside our businesses, as well as within our venues,” she adds.“The pub is the ultimate melting pot of everyone in society, and that’s why it’s so special.” Another change since McClarkin took over as CEO has been the burst in growth from the no- and low-alcohol beer category. With the calibre of options growing in quality all the time, “the potential of that market is now vast,” she says. But rather than viewing it as a threat to the industry, she insists there is headroom for no and low to grow alongside other beer offerings in pubs. “We are looking to the future, and the competency of brewers who can now brew the tastiest non-alcoholic beers. The quality has gone up,” she admits, adding: “Some of them really stand up, and they’re refreshing drinks. I’m proud that we have that innovation in our sector because it is extremely difficult to brew beer with no alcohol and with the level of taste that our consumers expect, so I’m really excited about the future. I hope that we see more in venues soon, because giving people these new options is great.” In terms of other plans, McClarkin reveals that there are “many other things that we want to achieve at the BBPA” and hints that it is “modernising” and “innovating” as well as “looking at electronic data interchange and sustainability and how we can green our industry even more than we already have done”. She believes that one constant will be the incredible relationship that marries beer and pubs. She observes: “The beer and pub industry go together like hand in glove. They’re symbiotic. You can’t have a pub without beer, or it just isn’t a pub,” she adds: “It’s a unique relationship”.

“Being part of the agriculture world provides that special link with the land we are in, and people, of course, are a big part of this,” she says. “SRE has always had a unique and specific focus on family. We don’t see our workers as single units, but as part of something bigger.” Up until the 1960s, SRE had more than 60 families living inside its winery in Alto Jahuel, nestled in the foothills of the Andes. The main wine estate included houses, a maternity ward, a school, and even a theatre. “Some of our current colleagues were born here, and continue to be part of our family, so we appreciate and value this as part of our style as a company,” says Carretero. To this end, Carretero has been instrumental in developing what she calls SRE’s ‘Territorial Valorization’ programme. Essentially, it’s about fostering a sense of pride in the area in which children live, in the hope of inspiring the next generation of winemakers, rather than losing them to office jobs in big cities far from the land they grew up on. The premise is to get kids fired up about how they can get involved in the wine industry, whether that’s through working in the vineyards or welcoming visitors via hospitality and oenotourism, an area in which SRE is blazing a trail. The wine group recently achieved “outstanding”status in wine tourism, as part of its Chilean Wine Sustainability Code certification.

Park life: the lush Centenario Park on Viña Santa Rita’s Buin estate “Territorial valorization is the process of assigning value to the identity of a region, and to the cultural, historical and natural aspects of that place, as well as to any economic activity that is special to that area, such as winemaking,” says Carretero. “I firmly believe that what we don’t know about we don’t value. And what we don’t value we don’t take care of. It’s why we designed this programme to educate children about their own territory; to create a sense of pride in it.” For the past 10 years SRE has worked with neighbouring schools to incorporate aspects of wine culture into their curriculums. Workshops, facilitated by SRE, take place in the classroom, and local students are also invited to take part in the harvest at the winery. “It’s one of my favourite moments of the year,” says Carretero. “The students visit the vineyard to harvest and crush grapes to obtain the must, which is then bottled. You can’t imagine the happiness of that moment, when they are working as team, smashing the grapes with their feet. At the end they do a presentation for their school showing all the different things they have learned.” One of the many meaningful goals Carretero wanted to achieve with the project was for children to have the chance to put themselves in the shoes of their parents, many of whom have worked with SRE for decades. “The kids start to become aware of the value of winemaking, and they begin to realise the importance of their region – the Maipo Valley – which is visited by around 160,000 tourists per year.” Inside the classroom, SRE’s team tirelessly helps teachers convey the history of winemaking, from the earliest references, dating back to Georgia in 5,000 BC, all the way through to modern-day winemaking in Maipo. “The students even study winemaking in language, looking at texts and poetry related to wine,” says Carretero. “It’s been challenging to adapt our concepts in an easy and fun way to connect with our young audience.” Rather touchingly, whether or not students decide to enter the world of wine professionally or not, SRE is there to help and advise them on their next steps in terms of career path. “For the past seven years, we have delivered more than 90 scholarships to our people, worth around CLP$160 million (£150,000),” Carretero explains. “Also, with the aim of supporting the children of our colleagues, we subscribed in 2018 to the Fundación por una Carrera (Foundation for a Career), which helps students to evaluate their skills when choosing undergraduate studies, and guide them in the wide range of benefits they can apply for.” Of course, there is little use engaging with communities if the neighbourhoods in question are unreceptive to the ideas being proffered. At SRE, community feeling is meticulously measured and monitored so the sustainability team can gauge the impact their work is having. “We really believe that we must have the data and numbers to track the performance of every initiative we are working on,” says Carretero. “These have turned up some quite interesting results.” In 2017, the wine group instigated a Social Impact Measurement Study to look into how its educational programmes were perceived in the Alto Jahuel area. What Carretero learned was that while Territorial Valorization generated a high sense of belonging and attachment among students to the Maipo Valley in the short term, by the time they had reached the second grade in high school, this had declined. So SRE leapt into action, adding a second phase to its school initiative, which it hopes will keep students engaged. “It was implemented as a 2.0 version, putting our focus on entrepreneurial skills, and preparing students to decide what to study in the future,” says Carretero, who is pleased with how the programme is progressing.

  However, she is a firm believer that not all learning takes place in the classroom. In 2011, SRE established a series of live classical music concerts, which are free for local pupils and members of the public to attend. Called the Seasons Concert Cycle, these events see internationally acclaimed artists and orchestras perform in the winery’s atmospheric surroundings, including in its beautiful chapel, which boasts stunning acoustics. In June, SRE received 300 students from schools in Maipo to listen to Spanish musician Jordi Savall perform with orchestra Le Concert des Nations, which plays with period instruments. The next Seasons concert is due to take place at the end of September. “We could do the concerts only for a private audience but why not share this moment?” asks Carretero. Aside from education, Carretero is just as passionate about supporting the wellbeing of SRE employees. The firm has a medical centre at its main estate, which provides free care to employees and their families in areas such as pediatrics, gynaecology, nutrition, dentistry, psychology, and general first aid. “It’s an important contribution to the family budget,” says Carretero. “We also have a welfare fund, where we reimburse any medical expenses that are not covered by the public or private health systems.” SRE, which encompasses the Carmen, Sur Andino, and Doña Paula brands, spans such a wide arc of regions in Chile that assessing the needs of individual communities can be challenging. It’s why Carretero has invited a figurehead from each area to communicate its needs to the company so that the wine group can offer better support, she says. However, with brands jostling for sustainable credentials, and consumers increasingly aware of greenwashing, does Carretero think fatigue is setting in for the word ‘sustainability’? Do we need a new term to take us into the future? “I’m absolutely in favour of continuing to use the term,” she says. “It was defined by the scientific community in 1987 when the Brundtland Convention defined sustainability as something that satisfies the needs of present generations without compromising the needs of future ones. Sustainability is the convergence of being environmentally friendly, economically viable, and socially equitable. You have to have all three or you will vanish.” She does, however, recognise a need to be clearer around the language used. “I do think we need to educate the consumer that being ‘green’ is not necessarily the same as being sustainable. Organic and biodynamic only cover one part of the environmental chapter, but organisations may not be taking care of the social aspect,”she says. “I strongly believe that companies can make a positive impact on communities. Sustainability is a direction, not a destination, and any contribution towards this counts.”

The challenge, as he sees it, is that the English wine industry is still in its relative infancy, and is therefore an unknown entity to many UK communities. “Local planning departments don’t necessarily have the experience of what opening a winery in their area will involve, or the understanding of why a community might benefit from having a winery on its doorstep,” Thorpe says. Of course, some of the more mature English winemaking regions are more forthright when it comes to instigating change. In June, for instance, came the announcement that Sussex Sparkling Wine had been awarded PDO status, which recognises the craftmanship and quality of wines made in the county. However, only wines that are entirely grown and vinified in Sussex qualify for this classification, and for this reason not all Sussex producers will benefit from it. Those who buy in contract grapes from outside the county to make up their blends are likely to find themselves left out in the cold. Thorpe admits he did not anticipate what came next, which was disgruntled producers from other English counties dismissing the Sussex PDO as little more than a “PR exercise”. It was probably, says the CEO, a classic case of sour grapes. Thorpe is keen to play it down, stressing that the few negative comments blown up in the press were “not really a true reflection of things”, and that the PDO is “certainly not a divisive initiative. One of the key things that typifies the English and Welsh wine industry is how collaborative it is.” That being said, he does have some sympathy with producers over the matter of whether the quality of terroir on one side of the Sussex border differs markedly to that on the other. “It doesn’t, so there is some validity to the commentary,” Thorpe concedes. “The boundaries are more political than geographical, and it’s impossible to denote one specific terroir to the whole of Sussex. It’s probably still too early to be able to establish specific regional identity as we don’t yet have the history to determine what grapes in one particular area will do from year to year.” He is faintly amused at the suggestion that the PDO is "nothing" but a marketing tool: “Well, a large element of it is a marketing tool. It’s there as a shortcut for the consumer to be able to understand more about the wines they are buying and drinking. And it did create noise, so it all helps to raise awareness of the industry.” It’s worth noting that the Sussex PDO was not a WineGB initiative, nor does WineGB necessarily support the rolling out of individual PDOs for each county. “You don’t need a PDO system to be able to talk about the great characteristics of an area. I’m not sure you need to establish a PDO to tell those stories,” Thorpe says.

DETAILED REVIEW

In a statement issued at the time of the Sussex ruling, Thorpe assured producers that WineGB was “committed to ensuring there is an appropriate GI structure for all” in the English and Welsh wine community. He also revealed that the trade body was carrying out a detailed review of existing regulations, and was on the cusp of sharing a missive detailing its results. According to Thorpe, the findings “will allow all producers to have their say.” When we speak in late June, the ink is drying on the paper, which Thorpe is aiming to release in July. He treads a cautious line when it comes to imposing regulations in the wine world: “We don’t want to put something in place that inhibits innovation, and puts boxes around winemakers in terms of what people from this or that county must do. We don’t want to fall into a trap of replicating what’s happened in some parts of the Old World. Let’s enjoy the journey of being able to see which regions are exploring what.” He pinpoints Crouch Valley in Essex as being a “really interesting area, with a distinctiveness to its wines” but acknowledges that the vintage is as big a factor as any in how wines around the country perform. “There is so much vintage variation, and temperatures are rising across the whole country. The more easterly the vineyard, the warmer and drier it tends to be. Further west is more challenging, but there are exceptions to every rule.” Indeed, it was a Cornish sparkling wine – Camel Valley Pinot Noir Rosé brut – that was served to world leaders at the G7 summit that was held in the county in June 2021.

WORK TO BE DONE

Photo courtesy: Chapel Down Vineyard Arguably, the most important factor in the regional groupings debate is whether or not consumers have reached a level of engagement where they care which county their English wine comes from, an area in which Thorpe says there is “still a large piece of work to be done.” According to the CEO, “people are more frequently walking into a pub or restaurant and saying ‘Have you got any English wine?’". He continues: "The sales growth demonstrates that it’s happening. But as English wines command a premium price due to their often limited production, it’s going to be easier for some venues to be able to supply them than others. As venues get used to having more English wine in their repertoire then consumer interest will grow in terms of different producers and where they are based.” While two thirds of English and Welsh wine sales today are sparkling, diversity is starting to creep in. “This industry is not a one-trick pony,” Thorpe says. “We are capable of much more than making traditional-method sparkling wine.” He nods to English rosé as performing especially well, but there are now around 66 varieties planted in England and Wales, including Pinot Gris, Chenin Blanc, and even Pinotage, that South African grape used to far balmier climes. As temperatures around the world continue to change, these varieties will become more viable. Just as integral to the evolution of the industry is the level of government backing it receives. One of Thorpe’s key missions when he took the reins at WineGB a little over 18 months ago, was furthering the industry’s relationship with Westminster. If reports are to be believed that more than half of wines served at official UK government events are now English or Welsh, then it would suggest this is going rather well. “There is a really active wine-policy team within the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), which is the department most closely involved in what we do,” he says. “But the reality is that post-Brexit they’re doing a whole load of stuff they’ve never had to do before. What used to be a simple shipment of vines from a nursery in Europe to the UK has become an increased process since leaving the EU. It’s my job to explain what the delays mean.” In terms of tangible changes to policy, Thorpe namechecks Defra’s recent agricultural-grant scheme, launched this year, as being a strong step forward. “This scheme now includes viticulture, which is the fastest-growing agricultural sector in England. It means vineyards can apply for quite substantial grants,” he explains.

SUSTAINABILITY SCHEME

It remains to be seen whether such funding will lead to a rise in the number of wineries signing up to WineGB’s sustainability scheme. Launched in 2019, the initiative currently has 83 members, with 40% of the area under vine in England and Wales falling under the Sustainable Wines of GB umbrella. But the auditing process is lengthy and expensive, meaning only a small number of wines on today’s shelves actually carry the SWGB hallmark stamp. “The real watershed for the programme will be seeing more bottles with stamps,” says Thorpe, who is looking into how to make it fairer and more attractive for smaller producers to join the scheme. As for future plans, he is keen to address labour shortages so that “we can get the best viticulturalists into our country”. But he stresses: “You don’t switch that kind of thing on overnight. We need to make sure we’re not running before we can walk.” Sound advice, too, perhaps, for the mighty Gunners?