Top Cuvée doubles natural wine subscription offer with new acquisition

Retailer and restaurant chain Top Cuvée has purchased Lowintervention.com in a bid to grow its customer base and combat the rising “exclusivity” of natural wine, managing director Brodie Meah told db.

The acquisition, which was finalised on 1 August, aligns with Top Cuvée’s goal to “grow the business and sell as much wine as possible,” Meah, Top Cuvée’s managing director, told the drinks business following the announcement.

Meah launched Top Cuvée with former business partner Max Venning in 2019, later expanding into retail and e-commerce with Shop Cuvée.

The sale will double Top Cuvée’s subscriber base, which Meah described as a “big step” for the the company. “We started as a neighbourhood restaurant. We never fathomed that we would be purchasing other businesses when we started. However, now our plan is to grow our business and sell as much wine as possible.”

Top Cuvée has been assisting Lowintervention.com with fulfilling its orders for the last two months as the deal was agreed. “We made the switch so that everything was fulfilled by us since 1 August, and that’s where we feel like we’re actually adding a lot of value.

“Things will change, but they will change for the better because we have a lot more resources when it comes to customer service, and our delivery options are a little bit better. We fulfil everything ourselves in-house. That’s the big plus there.”

Top Cuvée also packages and dispatches the wine in-house, and London deliveries are done by the team, “mainly by bicycle”, Meah said.

“We want to make these types of wines as accessible as possible to as many people as possible. A big part of that for us is about price, so we’re really trying to find affordable natural wines, but then also it is literally about availability. That’s why we’re moving now into wholesale because it gets the wines out there. The more people we can supply, whether that’s direct through our subscription service or through retail partners and working with restaurants, that is our main mission,” he said.

Top Cuvée’s approach to natural wine is not “dogmatic”, Meah stresses, but “Lowintervention’s approach and their attitude towards wine is very similar to ours, so it’s a perfect match. Their customers are going to experience the same great quality and great style of wines that they’re into.”

Meah disapproves of the “exclusivity” of the more mainstream wine world, and fears that natural wine is going in the same direction.

“We want to be the people that make wine accessible to our customers,” he said. “At the end of the day the wine world historically is very exclusive. We actually see the natural wine world heading that way, and from spending time with our customers in the restaurants and in stores, we understand that most people are not as interested in wine as we are. They just want to buy a nice bottle, know it’s going to taste good and that it won’t break the bank. I feel like that is strangely rare.”

Natural and low intervention wines, Meah explained, have an element of rarity “due to the nature of production”, but pricing is making accessibility a real challenge.

“I’m noticing some parallels between the natural wine world and the fine dining high-end wine world, where pricing for certain producers has gone crazy. I don’t want to say that the whole natural wine scene is losing its way, but there’s certainly some of the exclusivity creeping in,” he says. “We’re not cliquey people in our company, so it’s just funny to see the tribes and how that’s panning out.”