This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
News
Jewell: ‘Let’s stop being so snobbish’
The UK trade needs to reconsider its attitude towards the lower alcohol wine sector, believes Laura Jewell MW, Tesco’s wine category product development manager.
Speaking to the drinks business about the performance of this category, which has seen a flurry of new product launches in the last couple of years, Jewell acknowledged that it remains a problematic but important area.
“I don’t think the trade is looking at lower alcohol in the right way,” she argued. “We all have a range of lower alcohol and no alcohol wines because we should and we will continue to do so, but what we’re finding it is they’re appealing to a very different consumer base.”
Rather than aligning these lower alcohol offerings directly with the rest of the wine category, Jewell suggested closer parallels with “fruity” products such as Lambrini, flavoured ciders or the “amazing” Rosé Pamplemousse flavoured wines now widely available in France.
“Yes, there’s a customer out there who needs a lower alcohol option for whatever reason,” she told db, “but to me the excitement is in the flavours and that’s what I’m working on.”
Although Jewell would not confirm exactly what form Tesco’s own solution would take, she added: “We probably won’t do own label, but we’ll try a few things and see what works.”
Expanding further on this flavour factor, Jewell suggested that lower alcohol wines’ on-shelf positioning next to other wines rather than their fellow fruit-driven products represented a further barrier to commercial success. “At some stage we will have a ‘fruity’ section in our store,” she confirmed.
Once the wines are in a better position to fly off the shelves, Jewell also enthused about ideas such as encouraging people to enjoy their wine over ice – an initiative Champagne house Moët & Chandon is about to push in the UK this summer with its Ice Impérial. “Let’s stop being snobbish,” concluded Jewell.
A full interview with Laura Jewell will appear in March’s issue of the drinks business.
Agreed – let’s not be snobbish about it, but let’s also stop pretending that it’s wine.
Quite agree with Tessa. However this doesn’t only apply to low-alcohol wines, it pretty much applies across the whole spectrum, up to premium, where arguably there is a ‘clear & present’ reason why. Below this wine needs to be made much more accessible and much less intimidating, by encouraging greater knowledge and awareness, helping consumers to make considered, not price-driven choices!
Of course there is a wide and multi-tiered spectrum of wine in terms of price and quality and equally sometimes the two tiers don’t align, but enabling consumers to understand a bit more will help move the whole market on whilst also persuading consumers, in line with current health trends, to drink less, but better.
Also interesting that Tessa is proposing wine over ice and equally chilled reds, this again returns to the whole aspect of helping consumers to be more wine aware and for the trade not to take to ‘snobbish’ a view.
www.getwinewise.info