5 Levers of Success for the Fine Wine Sector

What if you had access to the world's leading minds of the fine wine world and beyond? What if you could pick their brains during three days of intensive workshops? What scenarios would they draft for tomorrow? What solution would they come up with to answer today's biggest challenges? Well welcome to the Yerini live sessions. I am your host, Paulin Dicare, Executive Director of A Rini Global and in this series, we share some of the most impactful conversations we had during A Rini Live. I will buy annual events bringing together critical thinkers from iconic and forward-thinking fine wine producers to leading academics and business leaders. Come with us as we envision the future of our industry. What does being successful really mean today? And what does it take to be? And more importantly to remain successful in today's economy? In this episode, recorded live on July 3rd, 2025 at the Domain de L'Ombre et Montreis-Ardeni in Burgundy, I sat down with Matthew Julien, CEO of Van der Exception, Steve Smith, Master of Wine, CEO of A O N Z fine wine in New Zealand, and Pierre Montsourr, head of wine at the wine society in the UK. We discussed how the way this C N defines success is key to both their strategies and day-to-day operations and explore five levers of success that they believe will lead their growth in the month to come. Let's dive in. So if you haven't met them yet, if you haven't interact with them yet, let me introduce them very quickly. Matthew Julien, Matthew first of all, thank you for having us. Like Jacques, again, another big thank you. It's been incredible so far. (Applause) Thank you, guys. We'll do a bon brugginion for you later. Right. But I've written my intro a couple of days ago and I have to change it because you are now the CEO of Van der Exception, congratulations. (Applause) So that's an entity that gathered four estates of the Domaine de l'Amrissie, Cheval Blanc, Ykem and Coulgain, Neil, can you wave for us? Because Coulgain is a real star. Yeah. (Applause) And so just for people who don't know, so contrary to other very well-known brands in the White Tennessee portfolio, you're not part of White Tennessee and you're going to explain that, but you're part of L.D.M.H. And why it's interesting within the context of our conversation is the ownership structure is different, the headquarters are different, they're not located at the same place, but more importantly for this conversation, the objectives are different as well. We're going to talk about it later. Then we have Piafnossor, the head of wine for the Wine Society. I shouldn't say that on the record, but it's one of my favorite wine company in the UK. And certainly the one I spend the most money with, because you the world's oldest member own community of wine lovers. So for, you know, it's a cooperative of wine buyers. So when you become a member's own share of the company, and it also means that in the manifesto in the ethos, ethos, sorry, they have to put members value in front of before profits. So find that very interesting as well. And Steve Smith, all the way from New Zealand, and Steve, I love the anecdote about you, but you became a master of wine a couple of decades ago, because no other vertical trelist had done it before, and you didn't want to be reduced to the man on the tractor. So, and indeed you weigh more than a man on the tractor, although you have a. I'd love to be back on my tractor. So if you don't know Steve, you were part of the team that started the success journey at Villamaria in New Zealand, one of the most powerful brands. And you created Kraggy Range. So on a personal level, I can tell you that I'm a good later, but that's a wine that actually changed my life and the way I approach wine. And you are now heading A-O-N-Z fine wines, including notably Pyramid Valley wines, a project that you could go own with Brian. -Shit. -Thank you. The pronunciation. So the title of that panel is called "File Divas of Success", and we actually debated quite a lot what the titles should be. Because first of all, I wanted to say, I wanted the title to be "Five Divas of Gross", or "Five Divas of Economic Gross". And some of the people in the panel was like, "Wait, maybe gross, like economic gross, is actually not our objective." So let's actually focus on success and define what success means for us, which I think is a very interesting question in the wine world today. What does being successful means? I'm going to throw that question to all of you. We have 30 minutes, but you know that, so dynamic, concise answer. Pierre, do you want to start? Oh, my two, you had them. -Okay. -Oh, I'll start. -Okay. -He's only the CEO, so. I've got some notes because I only got asked less than two weeks ago. -Yes, today. It's like two with us. -So, if I wing it a little bit, apologies. But, so I wrote a few things down, how do you define success? I think you define success. It obviously depends on your outcome. And everyone's outcomes can be different. You think of a football team success for a striker is very different to success for a goalkeeper. And at the wine society, as Pauline mentioned, we have a really unusual business model. So, we were founded in 1874. We were founded as a mutual business. That means that we have no external shareholders. We were founded originally by a small group of people that shared the same interest, which was wine. And they decided to club together to be able to import their own wine. And to become part of the wine society, to become a member, it's a one-off fee, pay £40, that's it for life, it gives you access to our range of wines and our service. Success for us is not growth and it's not profit. And, in fact, our financial accounts are made public. And any one of you here who is already a member of the wine society will see and can see those financial accounts. We generally don't make any profit in a year. Any profit we do make we reinvest into services or into our wine, because actually our measure of success is quite simply how happy and how satisfied our members who are our customers are with what we do. And that is all about the range of wines and the services that we offer. And it's a real privilege to work for an organisation like that, because in terms of strategic decisions, but also tactical decisions, we are genuinely, transparently, making every decision based on whether it's going to benefit the majority of our membership. Mateeg. So, sometimes it's difficult for people to believe me when I said that, because of the LVMH background, but for us, is there the profitability, the growth, the market share on the LVMH van exception side is not a KPI. It was actually quite shocking for me when I joined the company five years ago. And I report into the CFO of the group. And the CFO told me the first thing it told me, you know, don't try to multiply by X, the cells or the profitability, because anyway, it won't make a difference. So, it's not the point. The point is to work closely with the head of each estate and together to make those estates really leading inspirational estates in their category. And then, because we like to keep things simple, we always look at three steps, production, distribution and consumption. And so, if I have to define success in production, it's to make the best example of the place. I know, and Manjac, and Neil, and Pieroli Viet, Chateau-Schwablon, or Lorenzo Acherto-Dicham, you don't try to make the best wine in the world. They try to make the best expression of the place of the year. When we look at distribution, it's very simple. We want to make a profitable distribution for our partners. If we want this to be sustainable, if you want to have strong partners that carry our message, that really bring value to the chain, it needs to be profitable for them. That's the quote that I really love, which is wine taste better with margins. Le van New York, on Toulier, Goudemars, and people understand it like, oh, does it mean why you need to be expensive? No, it means that everyone along the supply chain needs to make money in order for them to be motivated to push your wine. And I think it's a really good quote. And finally, we never, never lose sight of the final consumer. Because if a wine isn't drunk, it doesn't exist. It exists somewhere as an asset on a balance sheet, but a wine coming to existence once drunk. And we don't kid ourselves. You know, if our wines are no longer drunk, we will stop making them. Whatever we think of the importance of terroir, or the importance of, you know, if it is not drunk in the end, we will have to stop making them. So that's the measurement. That's the measurement. Steve? OK, great. Thanks for being here, Matthew. It's a really special place to be in your place. So thanks for hosting us. As far away from home as I can get, if you-- [LAUGHTER] Really, when you get to know me, you'll know I'm a storyteller. So I need to tell a story of where I'm from first, because that'll put a context about what success is. So if you went through the middle of the earth, right through the core of the earth, and you came out on the other side, you'd come out from a place where I very close to where I live. So you'd come out in New Zealand. So there is nothing further away from this place than New Zealand. The interesting thing is the island of Zelandia is four times bigger than Western Europe. People think of New Zealand as a small country. The big challenge is 96% of our country is ocean. It's only 4% land. So there's tiny rock on the other side of the ocean. In fact, to get a context on how young we are, we are the last rock to come out of the ocean. So geologically, the youngest country in the world. The last country in the world to be settled by humans, only 900 years ago. And when humans got there, it was a land of rainforests and birds. There's no predators in New Zealand. And 70% of the birds were flightless, because there were no predators in New Zealand. So a remarkable place on the other side of the world. Also from a human perspective, it's sort of interesting to look at two things that I love to tell we were the first country in the world to give woman the vote, which says a lot about our society. And secondly, we had a wonderful academic scientist, Sir Ernest Rutherford, who actually was the first guy to split the atom. Ironic, you know, that we're a nuclear-free country. But he was the first guy to do that. And you did that in a tin shed at the back of a university was then called across to Oxford. And when he spoke to the faculty in Oxford for the first time, he said, he said, my name is Edward Rutherford. I come from New Zealand. We have no money, so we have to think. And so it's been something that sort of sits in our DNA all the way through. So from a one point of view, while grapes have been in New Zealand for a very long time, the modern wine industry is very young. Only 40 years old. The first serving on Blancvine was only planted in Malbrev 50 years ago. So the modern industry is very young. And part of the challenge for us is that the industry over time has become, regarded as home to this amazing, refreshing, relatively affordable, white wine. And for a fine wine producer in New Zealand, that's a positive, but it's also a negative, because we are pigeon-hold as a producer of Soveneon. And there's very few fine wine producers that have made a bit of a global noise. We have one in the room, Nigel Greening, who happens to be English, but loves to be known as a New Zealander now, who's done an incredible job with Felten Road and putting Felten Road on the world stage. And we have a lot to owe Nigel IV, certainly with Peno and Michael Breikovic with Shardonnay. So there's only really two. But for us, our ambitions at Brian and I, when we first got together, we saw this amazing potential in New Zealand to make genuinely cool climate high-end Peno and Mara Jardine. And we saw that as the ultimate opportunity. And for us, it was to put a collection of our states together that we thought could do that. So success for us. I'm going to show you-- I often think success is about the audience that you're talking to. So I'm going to share with you things that I've actually never shared with anyone else before. These are three internal measures of success that we have. So for Hugh Kinch, Nick Pauline and myself on the wine making side along with Brian, who sort of flits from the business side to the wine side, but he drinks more great burgundy that I've ever seen. Anyone drink? He loves it. It's these aha moments when we see a wine in the glass from our own estate. That makes us feel like on that journey, like yes, we have. And there's-- I mean, there's up on the back of my neck now when I talk about that, because when-- and we've seen those wines in the very early years, and that makes us excited. So that's the first step. The second step is an internal one for my team. And it's related to our biggest challenge, which is getting a reputation on the world stage. How do we gain a reputation? So for us, the measure of that success is that when Pierre is doing his high in burgundy, Premier Crue and Grand Crue burgundy list at some stage in the future, that alongside the offer for the great Premier Crue burgundy and Grand Crue burgundy, he's got some pyramid daily. So for us and our business, from a wider point of view, that's a measure of success, and that's what we want to aim for. And then the last one comes Brian's family office who are American through and through. The finance guys, they caused me more, more, more frowns than anything, particularly. Like we've had every single damn challenge you could have with a fledgling wine business. We have three measures for them, which are 100,100. This is going to sound a little crazy. 100 is 100 points. A thousand is a thousand cases sold on release. And 100 is 100 bucks a bottle. So for them, they love those numbers. So I think my only thing with success is think about your audience, and because the measure of that success might be different compared to the audience. Great. So we've defined five levers of success. Yeah, I want to start with you on the first one, because can you touch base on the-- I call that lever, lever one, reshuffling the cards, because I know and spoiler alert, because I've been involved a bit in the thinking process that you've reshuffled the way that you think about fine wine at the wine society. And for you, one of those things that we work together on is how can the wine society, which is by nature inclusive, will deal with fine wine, which is by nature, exclusive, because it's scarce, and that what's makes parts of it value. Can you address that? Yes. It's quite, quite interesting, because it's all great. It's all good being a mutual-- the challenge about being a mutual is that every member, every customer, has technically the same level of rights. And so we have historically-- we have a range of wines. We sell about five and a half thousand different wines in a year, our range. When you look at it in one point in time, it's about 1,700 wines. What I think makes us different to anyone in the UK is that we cover every price point from sort of eight pounds of bottle up to 7,000. So we're neither a fine wine merchant, nor are we a sort of high street chain. But we kind of do both, because our members buy right across the range. And historically, we've basically treated the way that we communicate, talk, present fine wine in exactly the same way as we would an eight pound wine. So a member of the wine society, a new member might join because they want to get hold of an own label wine, something like our society's Portuguese red, which is our top selling red wine. It's 6 pounds 95 of bottle. It's bloody good for the price. They've joined to get hold of that. They will then get exactly the same treatment as another member joining, who's joined to get hold of Russo or Dojac. And we recognize that actually we have to make a fundamental shift. And this was something that-- and non-execboard really struggled with, actually. It was really tough to explain to them that we need to make this shift if we want to service those different members. We split our members. We have eight. They're called not cohort clusters. And they all behave in a slightly different way. And what we have decided to do is we are going to make this distinction between the two. But importantly, everyone has access. It doesn't matter what you buy. Everyone has that same access. The other reason-- and you said, I think you called this lever reshuffling the cards. So reshuffling the cards is actually being quite agile and responding to what's going on in the market or going on within your market. And there were a handful of things that we used to convince our non-execboard because it was research-based. So the younger-- we've got something that internally we call the demographic time bomb. Our membership is quite elevated, the average age. If we weren't to act now within 10 years, about 80% of our membership would be over the age of 75. So we needed to do something. 8-0. Yes. Yeah. We needed to do something to deal with that. Our younger members-- actually, they-- and younger at the YNCIT-- is 35 to 50. They buy higher price points than our older members. So that was one piece of research. The second bit of research is on-premur is over the last five years, the average age of an on-premur buyer. Nat online toniaid yn y circolch fixture. Chynych cyfle gli a ych arwad â gallu παafodd er a grab ramennaad. A n Sept coming y mae lefel bu gennwneud y ñ na gwrsAAd rhoîm i octadol cyfle 'ŵprémir dotain ferd seasonthol. ym ymg yn ymg un ei fod ymg un hwn. Mae'r gynllun yn ymg un wneud i'n ymg un. Mae'r gynllun yn ymg un byd i fy arad ymg. Mae'r gynllun yn ymg un yn ymg un. Mae'r gynllun yn ei ddwynau yn ymg, yn ymg un, yn ymg un. Mae'r gynllun yn ymg un. Mae'r gynllun yn ymg un, Mae'r gynllun yn ymg un, yn ymg un, yn ymg un, yn ymg un, yn ymg un, yn ymg un. Mae'r gynllun yn ymg un, yn ymg un, yn ymg un. Mae'r gynllun yn ymg un, yn ymg un. And if we want to be on the list of the wine society alongside the great producers in Burgundy, then we need to behave like a Burgundy. And so in 24 and 25, we made, with the two brands, Perum Evali and Smith and Sheath made 11 different single-vintage adnets. And all of those wines show a fantastic diversity, not through change of wine making, but from place. In terms of, I think, with creating value, you've got to go back to us, how can you create value for your customer? And we talk about fine wine consumers, but I'd like to suggest that we need to change that name, not because of Nigel and the back who's always challenged with the word of fine wine, but more the word consumer. Because a decision for someone to purchase an expensive bottle of wine with heritage and all of that stuff is not a rational decision, it's an emotional decision. So what we refer to now in our businesses, the idea of the fine wine lover. Because the relationship we want with them is an emotive one more so than a practical one, the practical ones have to work, but it's more emotive. And it's interesting when you use that word, it actually changes the way you think about a whole lot of stuff. So that's something. And we've worked out that for us, it's the fine wine lover that we think is going to be interested in our wines, is going to be somebody that's really interesting what you were saying about who are buying these expensive wines now. We believe it's the generation of 35 to 50. We believe they're going to be a little bit younger. They're not going to have a wine cell, they'll probably have a wine cabinet in their apartment. These people want instant gratification. They don't necessarily want to go through the drama of of salarings, so they want instant gratification straight away. And they want to have, and they will probably have different values than the traditional fine wine lover around how the wine might look, how the wine might taste, where it comes from, how it's grown, the people, the place. And so for us, we think we've got a story that can capture that. And we think those people, while they still love the great traditional fine wines of the world and of this place, if we can provide them a roadmap to that, then I think that's where we stand chance. The challenges, there's currently no roadmap for the new fine wine producer and the new fine wine lover. So if you like, there's no Tinder for that. But actually, when I thought about that, it's like that's an idea, because actually how do you make it easy for the new fine wine lover to find the new fine wine producer? So that's one bit of value. The other thing is you go back to the stories that you sit behind your business. And again, sharing some stuff with you that we don't really share widely. But I'm a very big believer on purpose. I'm very big believer on values and those things drive you around all of the decisions that you make. So our purpose of our business is to share the pleasure, culture and craft of wine. And it's interesting at our table today, we talked about sharing a lot and sort of community. And I think it's a valuable part of our story. And we live by that. The values that we have in our business are around the idea of natural made. So natural is the natural world, natural wine making, us being naturalist people, behaving naturally, but also made as an acronym for the words modern art design escape. And so those things determine the values about how the different brands work together. If we're making wines or we're packaging wines or we're taking the story to the market, those things become really important for us. And there's two things that have happened in the last two or three years that we've seen out of that, those purpose and values that are so really fascinating for people. It's the idea of pleasure. And I think we need to remember that the first thing people want when they put a wine in the glass is this idea of that is delicious. It gives me unbelievable pleasure. Not just weight from the way it tastes, but the experience they've gone through to get to that point. So that's what we've seen happen amongst that demographic. That's becoming more important. But the one that really stands out for us is the idea of escape. And in today's world, we're starting to see when people visit us. If we taste wine with people is the idea it's like taking them to another place. And I think that's what fine wine can do that no other beverage can do. And so for us, so that word escape now is when we're putting up wines together, when we're making our wines, we're putting our assemblages whether they be single-vendored wines or village wines together, the final wine must give you pleasure and it must take you somewhere else because that then gives you an opportunity for that fine wine lover to be emotionally engaged. You're going to have a romantic relationship with them and that will convert for us into success. I've got a little bit on vineyards and stuff to talk about a little bit later. So yeah, I'll definitely have a lot of relationship with the last wine we tasted today at Chaliceau this state for sure. But it's interesting what you're saying about changing the vocabulary because it reminds me like when Disney changed the word customer to people visiting their parks to guests and actually how they changed the way the service. And then you put lovers and then suddenly you put pleasure back as a central value, so I find that fascinating. Which is why I opened the, I welcomed the debate with Nigel and being against fine wine. I can totally understand that. We just use it by the way because there's no other words that we found that actually is good enough, but I know that it's not an ideal word. Pierre, one of the levers of success in the years to come is actually around sustainability as well. And we take that word for granted because when you work around great wine makers, everyone's been talking about sustainability for years and it feels a bit like all news, but I wanted to ask you as a distributor if you could give us a few examples because what the wine society does is really exemplary of how a distributor can encourage long-term vision. Yes, I mean, so you heard my kind of more romantic description of the model of the wine site is true, but you know, essentially we're a retailer. That's what we do. We bring wine in and we sell it via our website. We send out mailings to obviously only to members, but we're a retailer. And I am of a really strong view that as retailers, we have the responsibility. We are the bridge between the supplier, the wine producers, the growers and the customer. And we embarked on a very ambitious sustainability plan. We're in our third year now of that plan. And the purpose that sort of all the vision for it is one, our responsibility, but two, we knew because we travel the world. I have a team of eight buyers who spend probably the more time than any team of buyers out in vineyards. We've known for years. I don't need to tell you, climate change is really an issue and it is reshaping to some extent in some areas more than others, but reshaping wine. And actually, if we wanted a wine site, we celebrated our 150th year last year. If we wanted to be around in another 150 years, we needed to do something about it. We needed to be somehow a catalyst, although a catalyst sounds like it's going to happen quickly. It doesn't happen quickly at all. But what we've done, and to give you some examples, I guess I've written three words down, the examples would be glass, people and soil. And but in many ways, there are the outcomes. And I'll say a few more words about those outcomes, because actually it's the principles or the way that we've gone about it that I think has has meant we've been able to have success and progress. We've always approached it in a very collaborative way. So when we have talked to our wine suppliers about their ethical practices or about what they're doing in vineyards, if we have new requirements, we are not saying today it was like this tomorrow, we're expecting like it to be like that. The other element around collaboration actually is, it's not just collaboration with our suppliers, but it's collaboration with the wider industry. The Sustainable Wine Round Table Group has done an incredible job around glass, got the whole industry to align behind glass, set light weighting at 420 grams for still bottles. And it's really, really making an impact. The other thing, the other principle is take action. You've got to take action. You can't just talk about these things, you'll get found out. One way we took action with glass, I think, and I'm happy to be corrected, but I think in the UK, my team of buyers are the only buyers that have a KPI for glass bottle weights. As well as commercial KPIs, but they have set KPIs and last year we took out 250 tons of glass in our supply chain. And that I almost certainly was helped by KPI of setting for the buyers. The independence is quenewad dda, gw minds a gwiro agkenyashu. 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A research organisation dedicated to the future of fine line. A Reigny Global helps wineries, distributors and retailers to understand how the world is changing and how they create risks to be managed and opportunities to be seized. What risks, what opportunities? I'll be sure to visit our website, a really dot global. Subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on social media so you don't miss any of our reports, events and analysis. Until next time, cheers! [Music]