Journey’s End teams up with Ingham to launch sustainable ‘punk’ wine brand

By Andrew Catchpole

Published: 01 August, 2022

Wine trade veteran buyer Andrew Ingham is to launch an innovative new range in collaboration with Cape winery Journey’s End this autumn.

Named Interpunkt and featuring graffiti-style labelling on sustainable paperboard bottles, the brand is aimed at breaking down barriers around wine and opening up the conversation with new groups of drinkers.

Ingham, who has formerly featured on the cover of Harpers and has held senior buying and ranging roles in both in the UK and Far East, has long championed making wine accessible to all and stripping out any element of elitism.

“All too often wine brands are talking and selling to one group only: the wine-engaged. They talk in a unique and specific wine language that only a minority understand. Yet the biggest group of wine drinkers are new to wine, occasional wine drinkers or unengaged [and] this is 68% of consumers!"

Ingham told Harpers that key to the project, conceived while he was working for a large group in Hong Kong, was finding a suitably forward looking and innovative producer, with Journey’s End’s MD and co-owner Rollo Gabb ticking all the boxes, including a strong sustainability focus.

The paperboard outers that enclose the Shiraz and Sauvignon Blanc that have spearheaded the range are five time slighter than normal glass, being 100% recyclable and reducing the carbon footprint of each bottle to one sixth of the norm.

Interpunkt is designed to break down barriers by taking into account, at every stage of the design and wine styles inside, what non- or little-invested consumers in wine actually want from a bottle, drawing on extensive research and first-hand experience.

“I’ve seen and sat through every presentation you can imagine, for decades, and they talk all this language that the wine industry talks, and then show a finished product, and I say ‘well, who is that aimed at?’”

“There's a whole heap of customers that just get totally ignored – if you look at what beer and spirits, like premium gins, have done, they’ve taken consumers along for the ride,” he added.

“Now there is a difference, wine already is a crafted premium product, whereas beer and some spirits are definitely a bit more commodity, but wine doesn’t look at the consumer. It doesn’t ask ‘what do you guys want, how can we convince you to drink wine?’”

The official launch of Interpunkt will be at Cape Wine in Cape Town in October, reflecting the South African provenance of all aspects of the winemaking and packaging, with Bibendum already having agreed to represent the range as its UK agent.

Ingham added that talks with UK supermarket groups had already been going “really well”, with an on-trade launch also planned in October.

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