Wine Focus: The next chapter

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In association with:The Publican launches the second phase in its series which offers solutions on how to boost profits from wine."Wine is the nurse...

In association with:

The Publican launches the second phase in its series which offers solutions on how to boost profits from wine.

"Wine is the nurse of all great, creative and imaginative literature," once claimed Henry Arthur Jones, a famous Victorian dramatist. While Henry was a clever sort of chap with whom it would seem extremely churlish to argue, providing a jolly good read is by no means the sole reason that The Publican has decided to launch a new initiative dedicated to further raising the profile of wine in the nation's pubs.

Wine Focus: Offering Solutions, in association with Jacob's Creek and Waverley Wines & Spirits, is the second instalment to an initiative launched last year in conjunction with both of the above. In early 2003, in-depth wine research was carried out among both consumers and licensees and the all-embracing survey revealed, regrettably, that there remained a clear disparity between what the consumer wanted and expected and that which pubs managed to deliver.

A collection of business building features identifying where pubs were failing to meeting Joe Public's grape expectations was published to great acclaim from those in the trade.

While the first series of Wine Focus featured pinpointed areas where the trade's oenophilic skills need a bit of brushing up, Wine Focus: Offering Solutions is designed to provide a more solution-based insight into wine's uncorked potential, over and above that supplied last year.

Having exposed a nation of pub-goers in the throes of a love affair with all things wine last time round, during the next six months Wine Focus: Offering Solutions will endeavour to provide enough top tips, business building advice and industry insight to ensure that the flame is kept alive in what has now become an enduring and devoted marriage.

The monthly features will shed light on how to compile a wine list and getting the right range, improving staff knowledge, improving visibility, matching wine with food and also how to tackle the thorny topic of profit and price.

To tailor the advice for what is becoming an increasingly eclectic pub sector and to help you, the readers, take away as much pertinent information as possible, the features will be written with four different types of outlets in mind. While there will, of course, be some instances of overlap and generalisation it is hoped that this framework can help licensees successfully overcome issues that are relevant to their particular pub.

The four types of outlet are:

1. Wine Bar

A venue where wine is at the forefront of the drinks offering. Customers will be knowledgeable and, ideally, the staff even more so.

Example: All Bar One

2. Community Pub

A local pub for local people, where wine may not necessarily be highly developed but is nevertheless growing.

Example: Ember Inns

3. Food-led Pub

Pubs for whom food forms a major part of the weekly earnings. Although wine is an accompaniment to the dining experience the potential for growth in food-led outlets is still huge and often untapped.

Example: Chef & Brewer

4. YPV / Circuit Bar

City centre pubs where volume and rate-of-sale is high and where, traditionally, wine has played second fiddle to beer and premium packaged spirits.

Example: Yates's, Walkabout

Wine: The state of the nation

While beer struggles to return to its former glory and premium packaged spirits are on a downward turn, wine continues to be the success story of the on-trade.

Significantly, pub wine is gaining ground on a take-home sector which has, traditionally, paved the way with regards to wine market trends.

Much of this can be attributed to wine suppliers and pub companies who have worked tirelessly to shed the clichéd image of wine in pubs by ensuring the basics are done right. While it is still quite possible to be served a poor quality glass of pub wine at the wrong temperature in the wrong glass, it's an experience that is thankfully less common than it once was.

In raising the standards and quality of pub wine, wine suppliers have laid the foundations on which established wine brands can flourish. The on-trade wine market, especially when compared to the beer business, has always been a fragmented one and progress of the brands has been checked in the past by the reluctance of licensees to stock recognised names that consumers can buy at significantly lower prices in the supermarket.

However, the times they are a changing and the big names, in particular those hailing from the New World, are gaining a firm foothold in the on-trade. The recent Publican Brands Report - a list of the 200 top performing brands in the on-trade - was inundated with no fewer than 11 wines of which several were brands that were developed and grown exclusively in the on-trade. Waverley Wines & Spirits, for example, has seen its on-trade Moondarra brand enter the top 50 ahead of both established "pubhold" names and other wines with a strong following in the take-home sector.

No longer the exclusive domain of the New World, branded wines deliver consistency and are capable of reassuring those drinkers with misgivings about wine in pubs.

While brands may not tickle the fancy of every licensee, especially those with loftier grape ambitions, they undoubtedly represent the future for a pub wine market that licensees can ill afford not to take advantage of.

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