The 2014 London Wine Fair
Posted on Fri 21st Feb 2014 at 08:54
The 2014 London Wine Fair went back to its roots and back to Olympia this month. With a superb range of the world’s best wines, in addition to master classes and MWs there was plenty to soak up and a great chance for the Signature Wines team to do some serious networking and continue to spread the word on how Stobi is making a real impact on the challenging UK wine market.Signature Wines Business Development Manager, who summarises his account of the day below, attended the 3 day event and took the opportunity to m
Signature Wines Business Development Manager, who summarises his account of the day below, attended the 3 day event and took the opportunity to meet with existing trade customers in addition to new accounts keen to add Stobi to their portfolio. It was as usual a great event to attend. The highlight of the wine fair was being able to take some time out to attend one of the master classes which focussed on the Balkan regions, presented by MW Konstantinos Lazarakis. The master class concluded that for wines to be successful in the UK today they cannot just be good, they have to be excellent! This seemed to reinforce all the great feedback Signature Wines has been getting for the Stobi collection, especially for their indigenous varieties like the Vranec.
I had an opportunity to meet with Ron Booker at the wine Fair (Operations Manager for Wine Rack pictured here) who said the Vranec was a phenomenal wine! They had sold an impressive 160 bottles across stores that day and were especially pleased to see one of their stores; who were usually strong with rose wines, see a big upturn in their red wine sales selling 60 bottles of the Vranec over a weekend. Ron said the wine had made a great impact and was very pleased with the results; it’s a great looking bottle and a quality wine. The event also gave me the opportunity to meet with the Signature Wine experts, including MWs Jo Ahearne, Caroline Gilby and Justin Howard-Sneyd. I was also fortunate to be approached by many independents that after trying Stobi wines were keen to get samples sent. This highlighted for me the remarkable change we have seen over the past 12 months; it is very challenging to bring new wines to the UK market and to now have customers actively seeking out the Stobi brand is hugely gratifying.