Talking innovation and opening doors with LWC

By Andrew Catchpole

Published: 21 February, 2025

Wine on tap, pet nat, low intervention Torrontes, Picpoul Noir, £100+ Cooperative Champagne, naturally lower alcohol and artily labelled wines, plus a Russian-born oenologist out of Attica in Greece were among the many highlights and innovations on show at a recent tasting in Brighton.

This, though, was no niche, artisanal importer. Rather, it was one of the annual country-wide tasting events laid on by LWC Drinks – a giant in the composite drinks wholesaling world, set to turn over £120 million on wine alone this financial year, counting many serious brands in its portfolio. But size notwithstanding, the day also folded in a live guitarist and some rather tasty chicken and leek pies to underscore the enjoyable vibe.

And that vibe was no mistake. Working closely with LWC’s wine director Shaun Healey, wine buyer Frances Bentley has a clear vision of how the company is shaping the wine offer to help reach out and draw in a more diverse and younger demographic. Perhaps most interesting – and salient for the wider trade – is that Bentley is determined to do this at the more affordable, everyday end of the market, where LWC has a strong foothold.

The self-professed challenge is to shift perception in local pubs and bars, rather than just focus on premium fine dining territory, thus influencing opinion where most normal people find wine on offer and decide whether or not to engage. And in a market where wine is in decline, the success of such a mission from this scale of wholesaler matters in terms of helping shape the future market.

Read more: Kingsland Drinks announces Sarah Baldwin as new MD

Bentley says that “the customer base has changed significantly in the last five years” for LWC, having seen strong growth since the pandemic. She adds that this growth has often come from gaining customers that LWC didn’t previously have access to, but also says these customers “have different wants and concerns”. This, in turn, along with government-imposed change such as abv-pegged duty rises and EPR, have necessarily driven evolution and innovation in the wine portfolio.

“You can talk about what the government has done, but we have to accept the reality we live in, continue to offer really good wines that do the jobs that need to be done, while making sure customers are not exposed in terms of paying too much [for] duty or EPR,” says Bentley.

“As an industry, we are failing to recruit new customers and that should be a concern for everyone, wine is sliding back (apart from rosé), so we need to do new things, we need to innovate in order to engage with new people.”

This is where the aforementioned innovations and more off-piste styles come in. Significantly, however, those natural wines and catchily labelled bottles, the cans and on-tap offerings and lower alcohol styles, while only being a small part of an extensive portfolio, are firmly aimed at the broader market, being accessibly priced. Because, as Bentley describes it, the current trade mantra of pushing the premium in the fine dining firmament or cutting-edge wine bars may deliver gains from existing wine drinking customers, but does little to bring a broader base of customers to wine in the first place.

“Recruiting new people should be the focus of the whole of the wine trade,” stresses Bentley.

Having spent three years in the role, Bentley says that she still has many further tweaks and changes up her sleeve, but the LWC approach already appears to be working. The regional teams of wine development managers have been almost doubled, to 30, to help ensure that accounts can more fully realise sales from wines listed. And this, coupled with the additions to the LWC portfolio, has helped deliver a year-on-year uptick of 15% in terms of turnover generated by wine, which in itself has grown from 13% of LWC’s sales mix to 16% over the last three years.

“Wine is very important to the business, because it’s where you can add real value,” says Bentley. “The price of Smirnoff is the price of Smirnoff, but where we can make an impact, both to ourselves, but also to consumers and to the customers that we have, is by offering them a product that nobody else has, and then they can add value.”

She adds that it’s all too easy to take a defeatist attitude in the face of falling wine consumption, but points out that there are still a lot of people – including young people – that are (or at least can be) excited by wine, but are just not being reached currently by the trade. The trend to natural wines, as the packed natural wine bars of London, Bristol, Manchester and elsewhere testify, is a case in point for Bentley.

“We’re never going to become [natural wine specialist] Caves de Pyrene, but having a range of more approachable natural wines will bring new people in, and then they will be exposed to other wines and they’ll see the wine trade for the big thing that it is,” she reasons. “Why are we often ignoring that portion of the market just because it doesn’t suit us?”.

Bentley’s final point is that she doesn’t see the likes of rival wholesalers such as C&C as the biggest challenge to LWC wine sales, but rather the categories of spirits and beer, which do “a really good job of recruiting people” to their corner.

It’s a smart mantra and one which already appears to be paying dividends for this forward-thinking wholesaler and its wine team.

Printer friendly version