As Harpers goes to press the rumours circling at Westminster suggest the Chancellor is planning to delay this year's Budget beyond the customary mid-March period, writes Jeremy Beadles, chief executive of the Wine and Spirit Trade Association.
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It is rare in business that you get the chance to go head-to-head, eyeball-to-eyeball, as it were, with your competitors. That is, unless you happen to be going along to an industry awards event.
Read more...Creating brand concepts, turning them into reality, and then launching them can be a perilous journey. I know this only full well from my own experience with my own brand WOKKA - fusion vodka. It took almost four years before we managed to achieve meaningful sales traction in our key markets.
2009 brings with it some of the greatest challenges the wine industry has ever faced. Recession, duty rises, sterling's continued fall against most currencies, proposed legislative plans, fewer routes to market, smaller ranges, redundancies ... the list goes on.
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You can, as many a sales manager will tell you, read what you like into a set of sales figures. One man's catastrophic sales performance is another's record performance.
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People haven't started queuing up outside shops and off-licences just yet for the latest eye-grabbing deal, but all those behind the daily burst of drinks promotions must wish they would.
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The worst kind of bad news usually comes like a lightning bolt from the blue. A shock to the system that takes some time to get your head around.
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Since last week, we have held two tastings and the topic of conversation at both has been what impact will the current economic climate have on the wine industry.
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Mary Lawson's lecture was both inspirational and sobering. Inspirational because she is as brilliant a public speaker as she is a writer and sobering because despite her obvious talent, it took her twelve years to get "Crow Lake", her first novel, published.
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In the pre-budget report announced to the House of Commons on Monday 24th November, the Chancellor reduced the rate of VAT from 17.5% to 15% with effect from 1st December 2008. This should be good news for those in the wine trade. However, at the same time, he increased the rate of duty on a bottle of wine from £1.46 to £1.57 per bottle, an increase of 11p.
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I'm absolutely the first to condemn anyone jumping the Christmas gun in late November but this really is a nugget. If you want a sweet spot to glug a mulled wine over the coming weeks look no further than Covent Garden Piazza. In particular at one of their alfresco gig evenings.
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The world needs more bastard wine writers. By that I don't mean "more wine writers ... the bastards", but "more bastards who are wine writers". My God that feels good. For years I've wanted to associate the words "wine writer" and "bastard" this closely. Hoping to induce some kind of Pavlovian response among our trade.
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I hear Tesco's turn has come again to turn the screw on their wine suppliers: improved terms have allegedly been required and deadlines set for compliance.
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It's not often in journalism that you get to make the news as well as report on it, but I am happy to confirm, in print, what many in the trade may have already deduced on the notorious drinks grapevine that Harpers has been bought by William Reed Business Media.
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As I write this, the wine bar across the street is doing a Beaujolais Nouveau Day breakfast, complete with red, white and blue bunting and a blackboard shouting Le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivée! Despite a steady decline in popularity since its heyday in the '70s and '80s, the Beaujolais breakfast is a wine world idiosyncrasy that refuses to die, blithely rooted in a time when blackberries were fruit and latte was Italian for milk.
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Botrytis Masterclass on Friday in Soho - tasted a 1959 Steinberger Riesling TBA. OMG, a reverential hush descended on the room and cruised home later on a cloud of euphoria with still the taste of caramelised quince in my mouth.
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One of the advantages of being back at university is that I am mixing with a much more varied bunch of people than I ever did in the Wine Trade. And that includes people who do not have a clue about the realities of business, something which is alternatively refreshing and exasperating.
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So not to be defeated by the wide valley that seemed to separate my Lebanese family's taste in wine from our experience of the UK market, we decided to take visiting family members to Vinopolis. As some of our wine is now shortly to be part of the tasting tables, we were keen to show them the environment that our wine would soon be displayed in.
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So sick, am I, of exaggerated financial downturn phrases that I shall be going for a liberal peppering here in the hope that everyone else tires to the point of revolution. Maybe then we can talk ourselves into a boom!
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Best chat up line heard in 4 gruelling days doing a stint at The World Travel Market, pushing wines of Argentina to the travel trade. Can't accuse moi of not pulling her weight.
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