Inside the Wine Society’s new fine wine policy
In July, the Wine Society announced a new fine wine strategy to make fine wine “a central pillar of its long-term plans”. db caught up with CEO Steve Finlan to see what this will entail.
Speaking at the roll-out of its inaugural Fine Wine Spotlight in July, director of wine Pierre Mansour said although The Wine Society would stay “true to [its] mission of offering exceptional value and making fine wine accessible to everyone”, it would now have a “greater focus on enriching the fine wine experience in our uniquely Wine Society way
And with the appointment last month of former Jeroboams specialist Alex Turnbull to head up the changes, starting in January, the team is now “on the threshold” according to Finlan, having been working on expanding its fine wine presence since the end of 2022.
This started with first release – before moving into selling wines in bond, a strategy that had been “wildly successful”.
The move largely changes the emphasis and the focus of its buyers to actively seek out fine wine parcels that they had previously “sort of kind of stumbled across”, Finlan admitted, building on these as duty paid parcels to members, a move that had “whetted our appetite”, he said.
“It’s a big decision for us, and the wine team, because for a long time the Wine Society has said, ‘wine is wine; members are members – here you go’. But what we’re seeing now is that increasingly members are looking to buy less but better and with that, they’re breaching price points they haven’t necessarily done before. So we need to improve both the range of what we offer, and particularly the services that underpins fine wine as well,” he said.
It is this service and range that Turnbull will spearhead when he joins the team after Christmas.
So what is up next?
The new services will include an “inbound and outbound” fine wine advice service that members can sign up for free of charge “because it’s really important that every member has an opportunity to participate in everything that we do”, Finland noted.
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“I wouldn’t describe it in any way like a private client, because in many ways, that’s not who we are,” he explains. “We encourage our members to buy the likes of Drouhin, but we recognize that members in this space need probably a little bit more help and advice. Equally, they need notification of when ones that they’re interested in come on sale. So we’ll be building that capability through next year.”
Also launching is a member buy-back service, in which the Wine Society will buy back stock from its members at cost. “This isn’t a commercial operation,” he explains, but a value added service, which will enable members to align the focus of their cellar to reflect their current taste more accurately.
Does this mean the Wine Society moving into a new sphere?
The new fine wine policy is one of “enrichment”, Finland explains, which will see a change of emphasis within the buying team, rather than representing a “huge investment” into “a different bracket”. I stead Finland sees it as future-proofing and investing to bring more members in.
Currently the average age of Wine Society members is 61 and although not worried by that, Finland admits that “we don’t want it to age anymore”. There are promising signs that it isn’t though, with new members recruited in the year to date having an average age of 52, while the fastest growing segment is members aged under 35. “We’ve got to keep refreshing the membership,” he said, pointing out that as a mutual cooperation, the Wine Society has the freedom to do this.
“We’re not under pressure to grow, one of the great things is that people aren’t breathing down our necks” he said “We are big enough already to be a sustainable business, and we want to make sure that the members who join us are genuinely wine lovers who are interested in going on a wine journey with us.”
And currently this journey involves around £20million of stock that is still ageing, awaiting release to the members – and no signs in slowing that down.
“We will do more buying older vintages to release to our members,” Finlan said.
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In my younger days much of the fine wines were sourced from Avery’s of Bristol. The major problem today is that the style of wines have compleatly changed and are much more ready to be drunk young.
Burgundy wine houses have all but disappeared and buying direct from growers is not that simple.
The answer might well be to revert to a well established and sound negociant to act for you, as in the passed!