Wine Fusion looks to make its mark with creative premium wine bottled in the UK

By Richard Siddle

Published: 06 June, 2014

New agency, Wine Fusion, hopes to capitalise on 75 years of wine experience to bring creative, premium brands from around the world that can be bottled in the UK.

Formed by a team of former Orbital Wine executives, Chris Smith, Alistair Morrell, Andrew Porton and Alistair Morrell, with CVs covering Asda, Oddbins, Champagne Lanson and Yalumba, Wine Fusion is slowly building up a portfolio of its own brands and agency brands.

It sees itself as a "hybrid" wine agency which can source high quality, innovative, premium brands through its network of winemaker contracts around the world, said managing director, Chris Smith.

But crucially it looks, where possible, to bring in even premium wines of up to £20 a bottle in the UK to help maximise costs and efficiencies, with up to 90% of its current range bottled in the UK. "That way we also have more control over the wine," said Andrew Porton, who heads up marketing for the group.

"There is no problem with quality if you are using ISO tanks," stressed Smith. "A lot of the state of the art bottling facilities in the world are now in the UK."

Alistair Morrell, sales director, added: "By bottling here we know that what comes here is exactly what we want."

One of its key focus areas will be to target what it sees as the under represented £7 to £10 Australian wine market. It was, for example, working with its new Australian partner, Hesketh Wines, to show their wines at this week's London Wine Fair. Jonathan Hesketh, founder of Hesketh Wines, is to head up Wine Fusion's operations in Australia.

He told Harpers.co.uk: "I look at the Australian wine category here and see a lot of the same things that were here 10 years ago. We need to keep the category fresh and alive."

He added: "The trade often bases everything on what has happened in the past. It can be a real barrier to what the consumer might actually want."

In particular, added Morrell, it wants to focus more on publicising Australia and its lifestyle and its food and wine offer. "It is a very different place to where it was even five years ago."

Other key development areas for Wine Fusion include California, South African and key regions of France like Bordeaux.

Morrell likened the Wine Fusion strategy as "working between the cracks" to find the right producers around the world that can make the wines the market is looking for. "The bottle of wine is only part of the overall consumer engagement piece."
It has signed up creative agency, Popcorn, to create more "left field" PR opportunities.

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