Banking on wine merchants

Wine merchant Tanners tells Andrew Burnyeat how suppliers can help pubs

and bars to maximise their wine sales.

Many wine wholesalers who have traditionally focused only on restaurants and hotels are chasing a slice of the pub market as the quality of the offer improves.

Adrian Patterson, associate director of trade sales at wine merchant Tanners, says he's spotted several key indicators that pubs are catching up with other sectors.

"The 125ml serve seems to be a thing of the past," he says. "It was a poor serve size for the consumer, which offered little by way of margin to the operator."

A lose-lose situation, you might say.

Patterson is pleased to see the rise of 175ml and 250ml sizes, and increasing sales of wine by the glass.

"If you sell more wine by the glass, you can help more people find the wine they want for different occasions. Not everyone has wine with food, after all. But food does build wine sales and that's the main reason pubs are taking wine more seriously," he adds.

Tanners conducts tutored tastings and gourmet evenings in pubs. These are an excellent way to promote your outlet as a wine pub, as well as building up some interest in certain types of wine - be it from a particular country or region, or made from a particular varietal, or by a specialist wine producer. Developing any such area of interest could prove to be the core of your future wine offer.

But a good gourmet evening has another great advantage - it makes life easier for the customer.

"One of the biggest hassles when you go out is deciding what to drink," says Patterson. "But if you're off to a gourmet evening, you know in advance that the choices are all made for you. You just sit back, relax and enjoy."

Learning curve for staff

Tanners, like many other wine merchants, offers staff training, too. This is an important area, yet it's often overlooked. Part of the reason may be initial staff resistance to wine.

Patterson says that many bar staff are too young to have tried a variety of wines, which could be a stumbling block to them selling wine to customers. "The first hurdle is simply getting staff to voice an opinion about a wine, even if it's to spit it out and say 'yuck!'," points out Patterson.

"If you arrange a tasting with your supplier and explain you're doing it so that the staff can exchange a few words about wine with the customers while learning something new for themselves, you're halfway there," he adds.

"It's about pouring a few glasses for the staff and asking them for their honest opinion. Then you can start to go into the differences between Chardonnay and Pinot Gris, or whatever," he says.

SHEPHERD NEAME REAPS BENEFITS OF OWN-LABEL wine BRANDS

Just because a label doesn't look familiar to a customer, it doesn't mean it's an inferior product. That's the message Shepherd Neame is getting across to its estate with the range it offers through Todd's, the wine supplier it owns.

Sourcing the very best grapes and

hand-picking producers it wants to work with to make its wines across the globe, is something Sheps takes very seriously.

Following his visit to Chile last September, Michael Prior, general manager of Todd's, has selected a grower to collaborate with on a new own-label brand. The wine will add to a range that includes products from Italy, Australia and New Zealand.

The range of own-label brands takes advantage of the opportunity presented to pubs by the deep-discounting and cheapening of wine's image by supermarkets, because they can access brands that can't be bought anywhere else.

But there's more to it than that: the other side of the coin is value at the quality end

of the market.

While the supermarkets are concentrating on wines below £5, pubs can offer quality wines at around the £15 mark.

Prior says: "We can combine the quality and value offered by independent producers such as Jackson Estates in Marlborough [in New Zealand], to give our customers something that might normally retail at

£22, for £15."

A Runnymede Sauvignon sells typically at £14.50. A similar Chilean or Australian wine might cost £10.95. "We know we can sell at the £11 range. The challenge is moving the consumer up to the £15 levels of top-quality, yet affordable wine," says Prior.

"Pubs can't get away with selling indifferent wine these days," he adds.

Proof that Shepherd Neame pubs, at least, might not be, lies in the sales figures of its own-label range.

Boonaburra, from Australia, has shifted 18,000 9-litre cases, or 216,000 bottles. That makes it a £2.7m brand in its own right. Prior is especially pleased because his initial target was just 10,000 cases.

Mezzora, an Italian wine made to New World standards, sells 16,000 9-litre cases a year. It's part of the Todd's strategy to keep to regions popular with consumers.

Australia remains popular and is still growing, despite a slowing rate of growth. And, like the rest of the market, Todd's sales show that Italian Pinot Grigot has almost superseded Chardonnay in the white wine varietal popularity stakes.

Says Prior: "Wine can build up the pub's offer and help to create an image of quality - as long as it's done properly."