Drinks lobby coasts into battle

The Call Time on Duty campaign ramped up its activity against the duty escalator a notch last night with the launch of a new ‘coaster campaign’ to raise public awareness. Before the Budget on 19 March, it plans to release over 300,000 ‘drinks coasters’ into the on-trade to raise public awareness of how much UK consumers pay in duty on wine and spirits – and put pressure on George Osbourne to abolish the“punitive” above inflation hikes.

(And make no mistake, though they may look the same, drinks coasters are definitely NOT the same as beer mats, I was firmly told.)

The event – at a hotel bar in Westminster – brought together the brains behind the campaign: the Wine & Spirits Trade Association, the Scotch Whisky Association, and the Tax Payers’ Alliance; with members of the drinks industry and some notable faces from Westminster. Among them, former Defra minister Caroline Spelman and the SNP member for Moray, Angus Robertson. Whether they were there to lend their support or maybe just for a quick drink and a catch up, remains to be seen; the mood in the room was certainly upbeat. But will the Call Time on Duty Campaign gets what it wants?

The industry seems hopeful. Speaking to The Grocer, Tesco BWS boss Dan Jago called it an “impressive” campaign, and with the three organisations pooling their experience, it was likely to bring some clout. “Tackling it with one voice is very powerful,” he said.

This is certainly what the SWA is hoping for. With the association itself booming and an explosion of distilleries being set up, it says it’s vital to keep the momentum going. Although export may be the Holy Grail, new, smaller malt whisky brands are reliant on the domestic market to establish themselves and bring in income during the early years when stock is laid down to mature. Suppressing the domestic market is likely to have repercussions – and a government’s attitude towards its own produce can be instrumental in attracting lucrative export markets.

The TPA, meanwhile, is confident its experience in helping to get the escalator scrapped on beer last year will stand it in good stead. It also cannily recognises the importance of this Budget being both an election budget – in which voter-pleasing initiatives never go amiss – and coming six months before the Scottish vote on independence. Showing support for Scotland’s national drink – which accounts for 25% of the UK’s food and drink exports and is worth £20bn to the UK economy – may be an added incentive.

“We’re confident of a win - but when it might come into effect and how much it will be, is another matter,” one of its representatives told me.

According to the WSTA, meetings with the economic secretary to the Treasury Nicky Morgan had given it cause to be hopeful – she was “receptive”, if giving little away.

But whether George O is willing to give anything away will be evident in just under three weeks’ time. Until then, there’s time to pour yourself a stiff drink – just don't put it on a beer mat.

This article was first published in the Daily Bread newsletter by The Grocer

 

Morrisons mixes it up

Getting shoppers to create a new wine blend in a single afternoon was always going to be a risky strategy. But according to the Morrisons Cellar wine team, crowdsourcing wine blends enables it to offer a unique proposition to its consumers.

The retailer held a wine-blending masterclass with Australian wine brand Rosemount Estates in Bicester over the weekend, aiming to create a wine that will go on shelf next May.  I went along to see how they got on, and try my hand at being a wine-blender for the afternoon.

Five Morrisons customers were selected to take part in the creation of a new 'shopper's blend' in an online competition which got consumers to describe a great bottle of wine. The aim was not so much to find a new blend - after all wine companies and retailers employ heavyweight oenologists to do this - but to engage consumers and gather valuable insight about wine marketing from shoppers themself.

“What surprised us in the competition was the way in which people described the wine,” Morrisons wine buyer Gemma Cockshott said. “It wasn’t just words describing the taste but all the emotion attached to the experience. And because of the speed of social media, people didn’t tend to deliberate too much or over-think, so you tended to get a more immediate, gut response.”

This, she maintained, gives a far more accurate picture of the language that ultimately appeals to consumers than some of the high-falutin' terms often seen on wine labels.

The couples came from all over the UK and from different walks of life; some had in-depth wine knowledge, one had spend a career in the brewing industry, while others only had only a "I know what I like when I taste it" level of knowledge. But they were refreshingly unpretentious - although we were making a red blend, quite a few admitted to only ever drinking white wine.  
 
“That really did make me work hard,” Rosemount’s chief winemaker Matt Koch admitted later, but he argued it could make for a more accessible, consumer-friendly blend. “We wanted to hear from consumers, to learn what they drank and liked – but we really had no idea what the wine would come out like.”

Following a morrning tasting the core components that would go into our blend - six bottles of red wine identified solely with a number and our own description notes, we had a crash course in blending. We then got to experiment for ourselves, adding different proportions and combinations of our six pure varietals, an excellent way of doing away with any preconceived ideas of ‘accepted’ combinations and making it all about the taste.

It really was a fascainating exercise to see how the wine developed with the different proportions, taking on different characteristics from the various grapes, to become more than the sum of all its arts. I have to admit it was a little frustrating not to know for sure what the varietals were for sure. Finally, when each team had bottled their favourite out of the five or six blends, we submitted it for judgment by Koch and the Morrisons’ team.

And as it turned out, the wines were pretty good - the majority hovering somewhere between a Rioja and a Cote du Rhone in style, noted Morrisons wine sourcing manager Clive Donaldson. There was also an unusual level of similarity between four out of the five blends, which he said was surprising, but made the team more confidence of the style consumers liked.

If the idea was to create an interesting blend co-created and validated by consumer input, it will be fascinating to see how well the finished product goes down with consumers next Spring. 

But although only the competition winners were included in the official 'wine-off,' the judges also sniffed, and swilled the efforts of the remaining, highly competitive hangers-on - the two Rosemount brand managers, four Morrisons buyers, and me. And I have to admit that it was the highlight of my day to beat both Morrisons' wine teams.

An abridged version of this article was first published as a Daily Bread newletter by The Grocer

Cider with MPs

Cider makers and MPs were out in force last night as the All-Party Parliamentary Cider Group held its annual bash on the terrace of the House of Commons.

The mood of the night was largely one of celebration – the summer’s good weather has meant a good harvest and an increase in cider consumption – but there was a definite call to arms. Tory MP Ian Liddell-Grainger, who chairs the group, warned of “dark clouds on the horizon”, in the form of the duty escalator, which he said would put cider beyond the reach of ordinary folk.

“We have to get rid of it or it cider will hit the buffers in the future,” he declared.

Paul Bartlett, C&C Group's marketing director and the chairman of the National Association of Cider Makers (NACM), said it was important to keep up the pressure as the industry was investing heavily in planting orchards to boost production, as well as looking to make progress on the sustainability of the industry.

“There is a great deal of investment on the back of confidence in the industry,” he said. “It’s not through good luck that cider has been the best-performing drinks category – it is a result of an unstinting focus on product quality and the willingness of producers to invest in their businesses.”

Exports, he added, were the next big push – and there was a clear sign from both cider makers and trade representatives that they were gearing up for Anuga. “There are exciting opportunities on the horizon,” Bartlett said, pointing to markets in North America, Scandinavia and Australia. However, this could only happen if the tax regime in the UK remained stable – a critical point for the industry, he said.

However some argue that cider has been given an easy ride compared to other types of booze – and little mention was made of cider’s apparent ‘identify crisis’. The questions often bandied about within the industry as to what constitutes ‘real’ cider – whether fruit ciders count, what defines a British cider – went largely without discussion. Even the representatives from CAMRA seemed silent on this point, despite the real-ale organisation having a long ‘name and shame list’ of products on their website that they do not recognise as ‘real’ cider – many of them made by people in the assembled crowd.

Real or not, cider was also the principle theme on the drinks menu on the night – for those gasping for something other than apples, tap water the only available alternative.

This article was first published in the Daily Bread newsletter by The Grocer

Don't whine about low-alcohol wine

Headlines this morning have been screaming that the government is planning to “water down wine” to put a stop to “middle class drinking”.

According to The Daily Telegraph, Earl Howe, an undersecretary in the Department of Health, wants the EU to change the technical definition of wine from containing a minimum of 8.5% ABV to 4.5% - and is going to continue to lobby the EU to bring lower-alcohol wines back to the discussion table (metaphorically speaking).

As well as prompting the usual ranting about politicians meddling in people’s lives, there has been a fair amount of derision online for the “underwhelming” offering of lower alcohol wine. One commentator to the Daily Mail’s website described 8.5% ABV wine as tasting of “an immature bears [sic] armpit”, while Sunday Telegraph wine columnist Victoria Moore dismissed “artificially created” low alcohol wines as tasting “rubbish”.

As it happened, this morning I was sitting across a table from Thomas Jung, chief winemaker to Australian Vintage, as he discussed his new baby – the 5.5% ABV Miranda Summer Light range, which was unveiled two weeks ago and rolls into Tesco and Morrisons next month.

And there wasn’t a bear in sight.

Low and de-alcoholised wines are not new – Australian Vintage has been making them for more than 20 years, primarily for the Nordic countries – and in recent years, an increasing number of brands have come to market.

However, according to Jung, it is thanks to new techniques and technology that low-alcohol wine can start to hit the taste profile sought by demanding consumers, and deliver a quality proposition.

According to a recent report from Wine Intelligence, the sub-10.5% ABV wine category is growing “in stature” around the world, and Brand Phoenix – which co-owns First Cape Light – says it has the potential to become a 5 million-case category.

This demand is being “significantly” driven by consumers – the category is now worth £42m a year -– but Jung is convinced that we’re only at the beginning of the road towards better quality lower alcohol wine.

“It’s up to us an industry to ensure we put products on shelf that appeal to consumers, that are drinkable, approachable and deliver on quality expectation,” Jung said.

It seems the government agrees.

This article was first published in Daily Bread newsletter by The Grocer