Friday Read: Charting Armit’s InVivo-backed ambitions

By Andrew Catchpole

Published: 21 March, 2025

The annual Armit Wines portfolio tasting (pictured) aways brings a spot of vinous glamour to the busy London tasting calendar, following on from launch events for new vintages of the likes of 2023 Guidalberto and 2022 Sassicaia at various buzzing London restaurants for the lucky few. And, in addition to such highlights from its top Italian-leaning portfolio, this year the importer launched a new initiative in the form of what was modestly described as a ‘press lunch’, where various senior editors, writers and critics gathered to for a lively debate on how best to engage a younger generation with fine wines.

All in all, it’s an upmarket package and one that lends little obvious reference to the size and ambition of the company’s owner.

That owner happens to be Groupe InVivo, a huge grain business headed up by CEO Thierry Blandinières, which became owner of multi-regional French producer Cordier some 10 years ago when InVivo decided to diversify into wine. And it’s an arm that now turns over some €250 million a year, having bought Dutch bottler Baarsma seven years ago, which then owned Armit, thus bringing the UK merchant into the InVivo portfolio.

Read more: Harpers Webinar – A Seat at the Table

So far so corporate, but rather than dilute the attributes of this classically rooted agency business, Blandinières invited well-known trade figure Brett Fleming to become Armit’s MD, with full backing to develop the business after a few “ups and downs”.

In a rare interview, Blandinières sat down with Harpers and Fleming to discuss the current and ongoing vision for the company.

“Within Baarsma was Armit Wines and it was very interesting for us, because this was very new for us, and our first thought was to sell this company because it was niche, not in our core of businesses,” Blandinières revealed.

“[However], we discovered the huge potential for Armit Wines in London and the UK, but it was important to find the right person, otherwise it would have been difficult for InVivo, from Paris, to run Armit Wines.”

That person was Fleming, who joined in November 2019, just ahead of the pandemic, which he agreed made for an “interesting” opener in the new role.

Blandinières continued: “Armit was a business that was up and down, but thanks to Brett we now have a strong vision for the future of the business and how we want to develop in the UK.”

One of the first moves was to meet the owners of Sassicaia, the jewel in Armit’s crown, and reassure them that InVivo was in this for the long term, but also for reassurance that the Bolgheri estate would – crucially – stay the course.

“As you know, we’ve just had the Sassicaia release and, given the global climate, which is pretty depressed, we’ve had a pretty good campaign,” Fleming added.

“And I think that’s down to the brand equity of [owner] Tenuta San Guido, but also my team. We’ve a great team now and have invested quite heavily in getting the right people, and we’ve been very committed to building the true brand equity, not just of Tenuta San Guido, but of all of our suppliers.”

The Italian suppliers run from Elena Walsh in Alto Adige to Pietradolce in Sicily, by way of the likes of Piedmont’s Giacomo Fenocchio, Davide Fregonese and Bruno Giacosa, plus Tuscany’s Pian dell’Orino and Il Marroneto – to name but a few. These are then complimented by a growing global portfolio ranging from Mendel in Argentina to Astrolabe in New Zealand, by way of big hitting Bordeaux such as Château Latour and Pavie (again to skim the surface).

It is, unquestionably, a great line up of estates, and Fleming says further suppliers will only be added with care, when “the fit is right for both portfolio and producer”, rather than just for the sake of adding another leading estate.

He is also committed to ensuring that the likes of Sassicaia end up with wine lovers and drinkers, not wine speculators, reshaping the sizeable Armit private client base to decrease the number who buy an allocation to then ‘flip’ wine onto the market for financial gain.

Back to the seeming gulf between niche Armit and the mammoth InVivo, with Cordier being around the third biggest producer in France, Blandinières is open about the fact that the former is “good PR” for the latter.

He added: “This is because with wine you can go everywhere in the world, it can be the first step in a good contact with the customer”.

Blandinières, with Fleming as the eyes and ears in the market, also revealed that InVivo is actively supporting ways in ways that Armit can build for the future.

“We are very interested in upscaling this business, building new distribution in the UK, partnering with other distributors to help us develop the business, and of course, doing all of this with Brett,” he said.

“This is a question of momentum, also of timing, we are patient, and we are thinking long term.”

Fleming picked up the thread: “I was very clear with Thierry that for Armit to succeed, my vision of growth needed to be underpinned by the support of my investor, and that is exactly what Thierry has given.

“It’s hard to say exactly what that support will be [looking ahead], because it does depend on opportunities that present themselves in the marketplace, but certainly potential acquisition, growth though additional supply, other producers that might want to join. These are all things that are in the pot – none of them are guaranteed, but equally, none of them are going to be dismissed.”

The heart of what Armit is about, though, will remain the same, insist both Fleming and Blandinières, and that is “to represent iconic producers, or producers that we feel will become iconic”.

One example given is Rockford out of Barossa, in the Armit portfolio says Fleming, “not because I want to champion Australia, but because I want to champion an icon of Australia”.

It also helps to be able to do so when your shareholder, in the words of Blandinières, has “enough money to be patient, even of it not so easy to make money now”.

The big boss from InVivo concluded much along the same lines as the central theme of that aforementioned press lunch forum, which Harpers attended.

“We need to find a new positioning for [fine wine], in order to address new customers, to create a future for wine with younger consumers,” Blandinières concluded.

With InVivo’s backing and Fleming firmly rolling out his vision, a revived and revitalised Armit is now poised to set about achieving that goal.

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