Polly Hammond launches wine culture studio
Wine marketing strategist Polly Hammond, founder of agency 5forests, is set to launch Wine Culture Lab, the industry’s first studio dedicated to cultural relevance. Based in London, the lab is designed to help wineries, regions and wine-led experiences become discoverable in modern culture.
Wine Culture Lab will use cultural audits, strategy, research and creator partnerships in a bid to make sure wine show up in the spaces and stories shaping relevance today.
Hammond said: “Wine doesn’t need louder voices. It needs new conversations. We built Wine Culture Lab for the brands that understand relevance isn’t something you buy, it’s something you earn.”
She said the platform will offer cultural visibility audits to measure brand presence, and insight reports to track how wine shows up in culture, as well as strategies and creator collaborations to build brands’ online presence.
To mark its launch, Wine Culture Lab has released a new report offering insight into how Gen Z and younger Millennials experience trust, and what that means for wine.
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Understanding younger audiences
The report, titled Beyond Heritage: A Snapshot of Trust, Culture, and Wine’s Next Generation, revealed traditional trust signals such as awards, prestige cues and legacy press, no longer secure credibility for under-35s.
It also showed that wine discovery now happens on social media feeds rather than wine media for younger audiences.
Hammond said: If we want wine to remain relevant, we have to understand how trust really works for younger audiences.”
The new studio also produces the podcast Culture Commerce Wine, hosted by Hammond. Season One guests include BBC head of brand Charl Bassil, Make Love Not Porn founder Cindy Gallop and Matter of Form CEO Anant Sharma. Each episode explores how wine intersects with culture, consumer behavior, and the business of relevance.
