Getting to know... The wine importer

17 January 2022 - Justin Sims

As we start 2022 and look back at another particularly tumultuous year for the hospitality industry, I manage to talk to Ned Llewellyn, Alliance Wine’s Off Trade Sales Director, to look back over the past twelve months to find out how the year has been for one of our key wine suppliers, and what we might be able to expect in 2022.

Alliance Wine are a forward-thinking, independently owned importer and distributor of wines from more than 20 countries around the world. Founded in Scotland in 1984, they’ve grown into one of the country’s leading wine suppliers.

After another COVID-hit year, what have been the biggest challenges Alliance has had to overcome?

This question prompts a hesitation, then a laugh that says to me, ‘where do I begin’ and then Ned starts by explaining how their stockholding has been impacted.

“As a multi-channel business, the restrictions had a bigger impact on some of those channels than others, so when one’s shut, another one’s busy and when everything re-opens, suddenly everything’s very busy and the impact that this had on our stockholding and our ability to keep wines in stock has been very challenging.

I think we’ve done very well as a business, from what we’ve heard in the market, but when you consider that it can take up to 16 weeks, at the longest, to ship wine from the other side of the world at the moment, it doesn’t give you the flexibility to act as quickly as you’d like.

We’ve been fortunate that we’re in a good financial position so we’ve stocked up a lot. We’re probably holding twice as much stock as we were in 2019, pre-pandemic. We’ve taken on additional warehousing so we’re doing everything we can to combat the challenges.”

Ned continues, “Whether stockholding is our biggest challenge, I don’t know, but logistics and supply chain are probably the next things on the list, although they all tie in together. There’s a continued shortage of containers, a continued shortage of drivers, continued shortage of dry goods, continued increase in pricing, the list just goes on and I can’t see, realistically, these things going away anytime soon.”

Ned’s quick to point out that the challenges didn’t just stop there. “More important than everything else is staff welfare, how everybody is coping. There are a lot of people who aren’t working in their usual environment. There’ve been large parts of this year where our whole customer services team and most of the finance staff have had to work from home. Looking after all our staff has been a key priority.”

What impact has Brexit specifically had over the past twelve months and do you see this improving?

“A lot of time has been spent dealing with Brexit-related issues, many of which are still rumbling on.

As of the 1st of January, we’re not allowed to sell organic wine into Northern Ireland. In fact, the organic thing is probably one of the most irritating issues. From next year, if the government don’t turn it around, there will be very different Customs legislations to do with importing organic wines from the EU into the UK that will mean they will all have to be signed off by a regulatory board that doesn’t yet recognise most of the organic organisations in Europe!”

“There’s new Customs rules coming into play in January that will mean more delays at UK ports, which will just add to congestion.” Another ironic laugh from Ned when he says, “To conclude your question, no I don’t anticipate this improving anytime soon.”

What have been the highlights for the business, if any, over the past year?

Whilst that all sounds pretty gloomy, there have been some positives to come out of all this as Ned explains, “We’ve probably had one of the best year’s at Alliance Wine ever, certainly in terms of sales. In the six months since re-opening, we grew 40% on 2019 figures as a company. The growth that we’ve put on as a business has been astounding and that’s really come from teamwork. Everybody pulling together to overcome the challenges of Brexit and COVID with a positive mindset.”

He adds, “Definitely worth mentioning that being able to go out and enjoy a glass of wine and food again in a restaurant is something that we’ve all been cherishing and doing as much as we possibly can to support the on-trade.”

Hear, hear!

Have you seen any new trends emerging in terms of categories/styles gaining popularity? If so what are they?

“In terms of styles, well we’d like to think there’s a heightened demand for good-value Grüner Veltliner – led by a project that we undertook with Funkstille. Since launching that, we’ve now seen lots of other people in the market coming out with well-packaged, similarly-priced Grüner Veltliner so we’d like to feel we led the way with that.”

“Affordable orange wine [that can be sold by the glass] is a really strong category. But not only affordable, but approachable as well.” We both agree it’s as important that these are made using the right grape varieties that emphasise fruitiness not funkiness!

“Albariño’s had another amazing year, huge continued growth for Albariño. Unfortunately, though, Albariño pricing next year is going through the roof. But as a result, we expect to see bigger sales in Godello and Verdejo, so Northern Spanish whites in general.”

“There’s one other category if you can call it that, that we’ve seen gaining popularity, and bizarre to say it, but it’s labels. Restaurants are saying to us ‘if the label’s not Instagramable, it’s not coming in’.

It’s all a matter of taste but I think the desirability for modern, clean, bright, interesting, appealing labels is bigger than it’s ever been before and I think it’s really gathered momentum.”

He adds, “As the drinking market moves to a younger generation who might want to drink less and arguably drink a bit better, they also want to drink things that look nice.”

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From a wine perspective, what do you think will be the most important things for on-trade businesses to try and focus on going into another unpredictable start to the New Year?

“I think you know what I’m going to say here but short, flexible lists. The ability to adapt and change quickly no matter who you buy your wine from. I think having a realistic approach and an understanding of the difficulties in getting wine to the UK at the moment will help. Some of the historic staples are getting harder to come by, due to short harvests and increased global demand, or are going up exponentially in price so if you don’t want to lose your price-points, it’ll pay to be more adventurous in your offering.”

Ned also points out, “You don’t necessarily need to change the top and bottom price points of your list, you just need a concise, well staggered, well spread out wine list, offering value for money at each price point. I think if you’ve got that, people will still enjoy drinking wine.”

We touch on sparkling wine too and Ned shares some interesting thoughts here. “I think we will see unprecedented growth of Durello this year. Prosecco pricing is increasing significantly so restaurants will either need to charge more or switch to a good value alternative like Durello.”

Are there any exciting new products coming to the Alliance portfolio that you can share with us?

“We’ve got quite a lot of projects coming to the fore in the New Year. One of which is a new white blend, which is a Terret Picpoul blend, called ‘Pique and Mix’ which we’ll launch in light of this year’s short harvest of Picpoul de Pinet and the subsequent price increase that’s coming.

We’re hopefully launching a new own-label Albariño, subject to sample approval, and we’re also extending the Funkstille range to include a skin contact version and a Riesling too. We just launched the Funkstille Zweigelt a couple of months ago which has really lovely, bright, crunchy red fruit and is a delicious red wine, and that’s been really well received so far so this is going to become a really interesting range for us.”

Ned also mentions that there are some other good value, well-packaged wines coming out of the Veneto in northern Italy, an unfiltered organic Macabeo from Spain as well as some new, good-value Bordeaux’s too so the theme is very much quality-first, followed by fun and interesting packaging to support.

It’s clear that everyone at Alliance has had a real roller-coaster of a year but are facing the many challenges head-on. By working collectively as a team, in spite of the remote-working situation, being diligent and highly adaptable too, they’re now in a strong position to move forward again in 2022. Well done guys!

Alliance Wine differ from the norm by also producing their own award-winning range of wines in countries as diverse as Australia, Chile, France and Spain with a focus on sustainability, lower intervention and integrity towards their grower/partners.

These values are mirrored by the many growers and producers that they represent in the UK and now Alliance are undergoing a major internal sustainability project that will scrutinise every aspect of their business, including often overlooked areas like job satisfaction, in a bid not only to improve the company’s health but to reduce their environmental impact too.