How Pol Roger built a thriving agency business in the UK

Following a three-day tour of France’s top wine regions with Pol Roger Portfolio, Patrick Schmitt MW considers the facets to a good agency business in the UK – as well as how to mark 35 years of success.

Founded in 1990 as a subsidiary of Champagne Pol Roger, specifically to represent the brand in the UK, Pol Roger Portfolio was formed following the closure of Dent & Reuss, the previous UK distributor for the Champagne house.

Over the past 35 years it has grown significantly to represent 21 wineries and distilleries in the UK, from Glenfarclas Highland Single Malt to Maison Joseph Drouhin, while of course continuing to manage Champagne Pol Roger, which has developed a seemingly unshakable following among well-heeled British drinkers.

Heading up the UK agency business is James Simpson MW, who joined Pol Roger Portfolio in 1993, but has just celebrated 10 years as MD at the company – and his 60^th birthday – before finding a way to mark the 35^th anniversary since Pol Roger Portfolio was created.

The latter milestone was toasted with a tour of the company’s key French estates, in which 25 Pol Roger Portfolio trade customers were taken to Champagne Pol Roger, then Beaune-based Maison Joseph Drouhin and finally Sancerre’s Domaine Vacheron – another winery represented by the agency business. In all, it was a three-day celebration featuring plenty of first-rate food and of course fine wines – mostly served from large formats.

Speaking to Simpson about piloting Pol Roger Portfolio through good times and tough, he told db that the business has, after much work, proved a survivor in the UK.

“We are one of the few new agency business that are still going,” he says, noting the Maisons Marques et Domaines is another survivor with a similar model to Pol Roger Portfolio, although the former was established a little earlier – it was founded by Champagne Louis Roederer in 1986.

While there are plenty of other UK agency businesses, they are either much older, such as Hatch Mansfield or Mentzendorff, or much larger, for instance, Bibendum, Berkmann, Enotria or Hallgarten.

Looking back to Pol Roger Portfolio’s foundations, at that time, Simpson does admit that the Champagne house was “taking a punt that the UK would be significant again” – referring to the brand’s somewhat niche position in the early 90s compared to the dominant one in the 1900s.

And growing Pol Roger to its strong presence today has not been easy either, with Simpson telling db, “We like to pretend that everything is marvellous, but there have been ups and downs.”

Rediscovering the past to benefit the present

But when it comes to the success of the Champagne brand in the UK, Simpson credits Bill Gunn MW, founding MD of the agency business, as well as the maison’s owners, the Pol Roger and de Billy families, who supported the investments needed. Simpson is also full of praise for the decisions made by Patrice Noyelle, who ran the Epernay-based house from 1998 to 2013.

“Bill had the right ideas, the family started investing in the business, and Patrice came in, and now Pol Roger is one of the serious brands in Champagne,” records Simpson, adding, “We also rediscovered our history over the past 35 years, which has set us apart.”

Such a focus on the past, and Pol Roger’s connections with great British statesman Sir Winston Churchill, have had a huge and positive influence on the image of the Champagne house in the UK and elsewhere.

Simpson points out the importance of branding built on heritage. “Sometimes when big companies get involved with Champagne brands you find that they lose their history,” he says.

Nevertheless, he expresses a certain surprise at the brand character of Pol Roger today. “We have become the most British of Champagne houses, which has helped [sales in the UK], but it is weird, because we are entirely French owned,” he remarks.

The rise of Pol Roger in the UK is not just a result of marketing, however. “The quality of Champagne is also key: we are making better wine than ever, and that has required a huge investment,” he comments, with monies spent over the past 35 years on a new cellar as well as, more recently, a vast €50m facility at the maison’s HQ in the heart of Epernay.

As for the wider agency business, Simpson says the rising strength of the Champagne brand has been a catalyst for development.

“We’ve been a repository of some of great family-owned wine and spirts producers in the world,” he says of Pol Roger Portfolio.

Among the brands that “have revolutionised our business” is one from outside the world of wine: Highland Single Malt producer Glenfarclas, which is a distillery with amazing stocks of mature whisky and a strong following – there’s barely a venue in the UK without a least one bottle behind the bar, according to Simpson.

He also believes that helping the UK agency business has been the luxury “to be selective” in terms of the wineries represented, which tend to be “smallish”, as well as family-owned, with proven and strong sustainability credentials.

And, because the Pol Roger-owning family “has firmly stuck to Champagne, it gives us free rein to find the best in the world,” says Simpson, when it comes to choosing who to represent in the UK.

Having said that, Simpson doesn’t plan on taking on more producers, at the moment at least. “We are not going to have 50 agencies, and will remain at 21, which seems to be a good number, and we say it’s our limit, but you never know what will come out of the woodwork.”

Continuing he says, “It is enough of a portfolio to supply the independent wholesale trade, the smart retailers, some big wholesalers and increasingly hotels, restaurants, and clubs.”

Staying secure but being brave

Meanwhile, the Champagne house itself “doesn’t want to be significantly bigger in the UK,” according to Simpson, who said that the market represents 20% of Pol Roger’s production, and “it is not looking to make more than 2 million bottles per year.”

This is where representing a range of wineries from around the world is of value too. “We needed more wines to keep the business sustainable and give minimum order quantities for independent retailers,” he says, pointing out that the limited volume of Champagne Pol Roger has presented a reason to add drinks from elsewhere.

The strength of the core brand, along with other wineries such as Maison Joseph Drouhin, has, he stresses, “Given us [Pol Roger Portfolio] security, and allowed us to be brave,” referring to the company’s relatively high number of top-end Californian wineries, and now “fine wine from Australia, when the rest of the trade doesn’t seem to be interested” – new agencies include Voyager Estate, Mulline Vintners, Leiper’s Fork Distillery, and, the latest, Mount Mary.

Family ownership makes a difference too, particularly when the market takes a downturn, as has been the case for the past couple of years. “Pol Roger is worrying about the next 30 years, not the next six months,” he says, assuring db there won’t be knee-jerk reactions to current trends.

“We are in no rush to be changing, and we seem to be in a sweet spot of having brands people actually want,” he says of the agency business.

Meanwhile, the Champagne house itself, “is a bizarre brand, we do a bit of everything, and we are 0.5% of the whole of Champagne, we are tiny, but we get more column inches than we deserve,” he says light-heartedly.

Simpson thinks he knows why. “We have lots of stories, which people seem to like, and we’ve still got Churchill, who keeps being reinvented for another generation,” he says, referring to the strong connection between Champagne Pol Roger and the statesman, who loved the house, and was good friends with Odette Pol Roger.

Indeed, this year sees the Champagne house celebrate 80 years since Churchill first met Odette – an encounter that took place at a dinner in the British Ambassador’s Residence in Paris, 1945.

Then there’s the important role of a UK agency business in “adding value” to the wineries it represents.

“We are all about adding margin right the way through,” says Simpson, listing some of the tie-ups and sponsorships the Champagne brand is involved in, which benefits the portfolio business too.

Among these is the Padel Invitational Tournament, which was held at the National Tennis Centre in Roehampton last month. Featuring more than 200 players across both sexes, this association no doubt helps the Champagne brand reach a younger demographic – that is compared to the other racquet sport the fizz has long been involved with: the niche, archaic and fascinating game of Real Tennis.

The benefit of sporting partnerships

Other tie-ups see Pol Roger Portfolio build direct relationships with the trade, including those just starting out in their career, such as the Pol Roger Touch Rugby Tournament for wine merchants, which acts as a fundraiser for The Drinks Trust too.

Simpson encourages his team to take part in a range of industry-related sporting events, such as golf, cricket and running, as part of The Wine Trade Sports Club.

“You can’t just chuck money at the problem,” he says of a challenging UK drinks market, adding that when times are tough, “It’s a good thing if you know who to talk to.”

Simpson adds that “I’m lucky to have played wine trade rugby, golf and padel over the years as well as being a former WSET Chairman and on the MW council – as well as being a Vintner,” when speaking about having a strong network of contacts in the trade, which he says “has got smaller in terms of people, even if the volumes have grown.”

That is volumes over the past 35 years since Pol Roger Portfolio’s foundation, not recent history.

“The wine trade is having one of its toughest 6-12 months ever: we are back to depths of despair of the late 80s and early 90s,” he says.

“Thank god the restaurant trade is not too bad but it’s tough when mark-ups [on wine lists] are what they are – which makes it hard to sell a Village Meursault, although a Rully Blanc is flying out the door.”

More generally, he says, “We are in a better place than where we could be, but there are moments when I wonder, is there still a place for this old-fashioned agency business? But then I think, Pol Roger has never been stronger, and that’s because the old-fashioned marketing we do does work: for instance, we are the Champagne of the Badminton Horse Trials, and it’s pretty hands on, but there are 200,000 people there over the four days, and they see Pol Roger.”

This is coupled with niche events where the Champagne brand is present, be it the Varsity tasting competitions, The Photographers’ Gallery – the UK’s first public gallery devoted solely to photography – or Music in Country Churches (MiCC), which is a charity that organises concerts in rural churches: “a small but glorious thing”, says Simpson.

Simpson’s role does extend to telling his wineries what won’t work as well as what will, and notably is reluctant to import Drouhin’s excellent Beaujolais-Villages, because “there are already too many choices out there”.

He adds, “The wine trade is sometimes guilty of hold too much stock of the wrong stuff,” suggesting that it’s important to be ruthless when the market is challenging.

“You do need to hold stock – the restaurants want it tomorrow – but when times are tougher, you have to be tougher about what you have sitting in LCB,” referring to warehouse operator London City Bond.

And it would be wrong to suggest that everything Pol Roger Portfolio has handled was an unbridled success.

For example, the business no longer represents Crown Estates of Hungary – “because [competitor] Royal Tokaji did such a good job [gaining distribution in the UK]” – and also struggled to increase the volumes sold of Hine Cognac, which Pol Roger Portfolio once represented too.

“We did so much work getting distribution for Hine, the problem was, no-one was drinking it,” records Simpson, stressing that selling Cognac in the UK “is really tough”.

Another winery no longer handled by Pol Roger Portfolio is Domaine Josmeyer, who may produce wonderful wines, but, “Selling Alsace was like pushing water uphill,” he comments.

Due to such experience, Simpson sums up, “Let’s not get caught up in the romance of trying to selling things that are ‘interesting’.”

Aside from the fact that all the wineries represented by Pol Roger Portfolio today “are family-owned, independent and at the top of their game”, there is one further further unifying element according to Simpson: “They are all huge fans of Pol Roger.”

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