Jascots to step up presence outside London

By Lisa Riley

Published: 06 April, 2021

Jascots Wine has, together with its new owners Freixenet Copestick, revealed plans to expands its footprint outside its London heartland.

Currently accounting for around 10% of Jascots’ business, managing partner Miles MacInnes told Harpers the company expected to “make some ground” outside the capital next calendar year.

Echoing this, Freixenet Copestick MD Robin Copestick added: “Obviously we need to see how the situation develops once lockdown is over, but we do have plans to make Jascots expand outside of London. To deal with the premium on-trade establishments, outside of London, as well as London, that would be one of our aims.”

Pre-Covid, Freixenet Copestick’s off-trade/on-trade split was around 90/10, a split Copestick said he would like to change to 70/30 in volume. “The national split is 80/20, so I think that would be a great achievement,” he said.

Copestick and MacInnes however agreed that the first priority was to support Jascots’ existing customers as the country emerges from lockdown and to “bed down the business”.

Freixenet Copestick announced it had acquired the assets and business of Jascots from the administrators in December last year, a mere couple of weeks after Jascots appointed Matthew Wild and Matthew Haw as joint administrators of the business on 30 November, as reported by Harpers.

As part of the purchase, all current Jascots employees have transferred to a new business trading as Jascots Wine Limited.

Since the acquisition Jascots has been busy getting its ducks in a row in time for the reopening of the on-trade, including bringing some new suppliers onboard such as Schloss Johannisberg, which forms part of Freixenet Copestick’s premium portfolio.

Both Copestick and MacInnes however stressed that there will be “no pressure on Jascots”, both insisting it will choose its suppliers.

“We’re not telling them,’ said Copestick. “There may be a few others that they choose to stock, but it’s totally their decision. We’re not going to force them into buying anything. There are also some ‘third party producers’ [not part of the group] that I think could add value to the Jascots range, but that’s not my decision.”

Other wineries added to Jascot’s portfolio this year include Campania producer Mastroberardino and Chile’s Garage Wine Co, which Freixenet Copestick added to its stable last week, taking over from previous UK distributor Bibendum.

See the April issue of Harpers out now for the full profile piece on Jascots.