The Sommelier Wine Awards (SWA) is more than just a blind wine tasting with medals. The very nature of the competition – on-trade-exclusive wines, judged solely by people who buy wine for hospitality venues – means that it’s also a great chance to get a somms’-eye view of what is happening in the on-trade supply chain.
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Indies thrive on diversity – the defining quality that keeps businesses one step ahead of the supermarket next door. Promoting off-grid regions, esoteric varieties and boutique labels, independents have long prided themselves on being the antidote to mass-market uniformity, selling stories as much as wine. Yet in today’s climate – inflation remained stubbornly persistent at 3.8% in July – how sustainable is maintaining this breadth of choice? Is listing a rare variety, grown in a far-flung region, still financially viable? With margins squeezed by duty changes and shoppers under financial strain, the temptation to streamline is hard to resist.
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I recently read that the UK is on the verge of a sake boom. The trade press article reported “a healthy increase in popularity”, with the St James’s wine merchant Berry Bros & Rudd noting “a 1,000% increase in sales between 2023 and 2024” and “heaps of coverage in the press”. Normally sake gets next to no coverage in the press so this was news to me. I thought then that I should check and see if there really is a breakthrough, or if, like previous claims for Riesling or Muscat, the hype outweighs the evidence.
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Walk into any pub or bar in the UK and you’re likely to find at least one decent non-alcoholic beer on offer. It’s great news for those off the booze, but with a range of innovative options now available, from kombucha to adaptogenic spirits and CBD soft drinks, bars relying on beer to satisfy the growing demand for low & no may be missing out.
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Chile needs to eschew its label as a region known for ‘cheap and cheerful’, or strictly ‘value-for-money’ wines.” So ponders Steve Daniel, head of buying at Hallgarten & Novum Wines. The widescale production of table wine in the continent-straddling nation has at times muddied the perception of Chile’s top-end offerings.
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As businesses increasingly embrace elements of AI to enhance their efficiency and performance, the Harpers team invited our trade readership to take a survey to help build a picture of uptake in the drinks world.
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Just a month after going live, a free online hospitality networking platform by a duo of industry veterans has attracted members from more than 100 cities in 40 countries.
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Establishing a lay of the land for our new tariff world order is an unenviable task. For much of the planet the final tariff landscape is yet to take a solid form. For UK wine and spirits producers, however, there appears for now to be a clearer picture of how their drinks will be levied entering the United States.
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As Amber Beverage starts to build Zanin’s portfolio of liqueurs and spirits in the UK, Andrew Catchpole meets the teams to discuss how and why this new partnership has been launched.
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The reverence held by the people of Calabria for their region’s agricultural produce is plain to see as soon as you step foot in the southern Italian region. Dining tables are adorned with spicy peperoncino, the hot chilli peppers grown in the region. These same peppers are used for the region’s well-known sausage spread, ‘nduja, a Calabrian product now found in most British supermarkets.
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A recent report by Zonal and CGA by NIQ Insights has revealed that the average preferred time for dinner bookings now is 6.12pm, which suggests that for every group sampling a set menu at 7.30pm, another is sharing small plates and a mineral water at 5.00pm.
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Surfacing from some of the gloomy news that it is all too often our lot to report, the Harpers team thought it would take a more light-hearted approach to this August summer issue by surveying the likes and dislikes of indie merchants when it comes to their own wine imbibing and buying habits.
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When Bettino Ricasoli discovered in the 1840s that Sangiovese could form the basis of ageworthy Chianti, it might have surprised him to learn that the real breakthrough for Tuscan wine internationally would come thanks to a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc.
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The buzz that’s been growing around Georgian wine has been hard to miss, with this interest stretching back perhaps a decade or more as wine-curious consumers lap up the story of 500-plus indigenous varieties, backed by 8,000 years of winemaking tradition, all from a far-flung European frontier. And for those seeking authenticity and individuality in their glass, images of qvevris – although only used for a small but increasing percentage of wines produced – are the icing on the cake.
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“If someone’s wanting a sexy red under 15 quid, that’s hard to do from one of the big regions.” Those are the words of Henry Butler, owner of Butler’s Wine Cellar in Brighton. Off-trade aficionados like Butler, as well as on-trade value hunters, are beginning to look beyond the traditional big boys of Bordeaux and Burgundy for French wines of quality and value.
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Greek wine is experiencing a revolution. Two decades of relentless graft by ex-punk and one-time Mykonos beach bum Steve Daniel, of Hallgarten & Novum, and specialist Mary Pateras, of Eclectic Wines, are finally paying off. They and a whole host of highly educated Greek trade professionals have worked very hard to firmly cement Greek wine in the UK market – the likes of Yannos Hadjiioannou and Stefanos Kokotos of Maltby & Greek, Harry Georgiou of Amathus and Effi Tsournava, aided by Matthew Horsley at The Wine Society, spring to mind.
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Seasoned veterans of the trade know the phenomenon all too well: there are few tasks more daunting – or more critical – than the delicate management of family succession. With persistent inflation, shrinking margins and declining consumption, the long game of generational transfer has never felt more precarious. Some businesses may even face the uncomfortable reality that their children do not want to take over – or that the numbers simply no longer stack up.
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Don’t judge a book by its cover. But we all do. Even better for the bookworm, you can flick through the book first, read a few paragraphs and check out the reviews on the inside cover. All of this is much harder with a bottle of wine or spirits; you can very rarely sample the product before purchasing, so the extent to which the customer is led by the label design and packaging is significant.
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Agave spirits remain something of a bright spot in an otherwise challenging environment for the wider spirits category, with tequila and mezcal continuing to excite an often younger cohort of drinkers, encouraging experimentation and driving excitement of discovery. And thirst for tequila and mezcal remains on the up, albeit with sales growing more slowly in these economically challenging times. But unlike the gin and rum booms, which appear to have run their course, agave drinks are still engaging, with premium and artisanal options increasingly vying with – and being launched by – the bigger established mass-market brands.
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It seems not a terribly long time ago that the sight of an egg-shaped fermenter, tucked into the ‘experimental’ corner of a winery, dwarfed by oak and stainless steel, was still a relatively novel sight. They were more often spotted, or at least pointed out enthusiastically, at smaller, more artisanal and esoteric operations, despite the modern reintroduction of ‘the egg’ coming from one of wine’s biggest names – the Rhône Valley’s Michel Chapoutier – in 2001.
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