Lessons from a Wine Fair
Have we found THE best wine for Summer?
I’ve been absent for a bit here, but for good reason.
On Sunday just past we hosted 450 people at a sold out Summer Wine Fair, one of our biggest events of the year. With over 35 wines open, guests receive a booklet and a glass on arrival and are sent out to explore whatever they like.
Here is what people loved the most.
Battle of the Rosés.
2 months before the event, I had to settle a staff dispute. We have two rosé, same country, similar regions, same style, same price. Grace was sure we had to show the 2800 Cotes du Provence, It is after all our best selling wine ever! Reece however believed that everyone had tried the 2800 already and it was our duty to intro people to the Oscar Rosé from the Languedoc. Fair point, both of them. So in the end we decided on a show down, we’d include both wines and keep a tally of which people preferred.
I kept an eye on the tally for the first two sessions, and then forgot for the final session. When we went to check the tally at the end it was 89 / 90 in favour of the 2800. Great validation that in many ways, both staff were right.
The Best Sellers (In Order)
Este Branco, Vinho Verde, Portugal, £11.50: I am so glad this wine was so well received. This wine is bottled with a slight spritz, which makes it hard to serve by the glass. It goes flat quickly and loses all its charm once it does. To me, this is all the things a Vinho Verde should be, unbelievably refreshing, lowish alcohol, reasonably priced. It really is THE white wine of the summer.
The Ruse Malbec, Languedoc, France, £12: This wine has been on a journey with us. I selected it for one of the batches of our Wine Club and we put it in a lot of cases. Almost immediately the feedback came in: “I love this, can I order more”, “My new favourite wine”. Within weeks we’ve made space for it in the shop and it’s now creeping up the list to be one of our best sellers there too.
Moscato d’Asti, Piemonte, Italy, £13.00 for 37.5cl: I think this wine was so popular, because no one saw it coming, it blindsided people. Most people would have approached it with trepidation. A lightly sparkling, sweet, low alcohol wine, that tastes like grapes and orange. Whilst there are plenty of Moscato that are awful, this one is exceptional and I honestly think it is one of the best wines for a picnic.
Gamay, The Notes, Languedoc, France, £12.50: For this fair, we had a whole table of chilled reds, I spent a lot of time at this table. Partly to see how people felt about them, partly because Hannah was on this table and I wanted to make sure she was doing ok. This wine is basically adult Ribena, no tannin, pure fruit and insanely drinkable. I can see cases of this being drunk as a barbecue warms up.
Este Rosé, Vinho Verde, Portugal, £11.50: Take all the things that made the Este Branco great, and then turn it pink. Again, this is a wine I’d love to serve by the glass in the Bar, but can’t. So this event was a great opportunity to show both of these wines off. I think one of the reasons this wine made it into the top 5 was that most who bought, bought in cases.
Whilst from the customer perspective the event ran very similarly to the Christmas Wine Fair, the biggest change this time was the organisation. We’d planned the event so well, that half an hour before kick-off we were able to have a team debrief and then let everyone go and grab a coffee. Similarly, we had everything packed up and back in the shop about 1 hour after the event finished.
Whilst the fair was a commercial success on the day, I always tend to think of these events in a long term way. I know that in 3 months time someone will come into the shop asking for “That sweet sparkling wine I had at the Summer Wine Fair” or that someone who attended will enjoy our wine choices so much that they join The Wine Club.
Even though it’s meant to reach highs of 28C today, I’m already thinking about the Christmas Wine Fair.
Cheers
Duncan
P.S if you’re interested, you can register your interest in the Christmas Wine Fair here.