Broadlands Drinks adds Clem Yates MW as consultant winemaker

UK drinks company Broadland Drinks has added winemaker and sourcing consultant Clem Yates MW to the team to drive the development of its new ‘No Ordinary’ range which launched last year.

Yates’ most recent role has been as a consultant, but prior to this she spent seven years at UK drinks distributor and brand owner Off-Piste wine, where she was the sourcing and supply director, working on the company’s popular Most Wanted brand, alongside npd and brand manager Rachel Archer. Between its launch in 2015 and 2019, the brand grew to be worth over £5m (according to Kantar Worldpanel, purchase, 52 w/e 21st April 2019), with year-on-year value up 106% in 2019, compared to the previous year, and adding around £2.4M incremental growth to the category.

Before joining Off-Piste, Yates was a winemaker at Sainsbury’s for three years, working on developing the Sainsbury’s own label range, and a technical manager at Tesco. She studied oenology at the University of Adelaide and a BASc of Chemistry from Exeter University.

Broadland’s owner and CEO Mark Lansley said the No Ordinary brand, which the company wants to build to becomee a leading multi-country wine brand in the UK, was “all about giving consumers a chance to explore unexpected wines from around the world”, and was pleased to be working with an “outstanding, experienced, adventurous winemaker” to help it blend the right wines.

“Our research showed that consumers want to try something different but are looking for reassurance,” he said.

Two of the brand’s wines, a New Zealand Chardonnay and a Moldavian Merlot are already listed in Ocado, but the company wants to add a further three or four wines to the range this year.

Yates said she was delighted to be working with Broadland Drinks and the “No Ordinary” brand. “I look forward to developing a fresh and exciting range of wines that engage with today’s adventurous consumers,” she said.

Broadland Drinks (previously known as Broadlands Winery) made £70.6 million in the 12 months to March 2019 with fruit-flavoured fusions and single serve wines proving a “vital source of income”, its results revealed, boosting sales by 11.6% and pre-tax profits to £2m, compared to £0.3m in 2018.

Last year, the company gained a place in the UK’s top 200 performing companies overseas for the first time after posting an average international growth of over 30% in the last two years. International sales hit 4.6million, a growth of 43.9% in the year to March 2019, taking its international sales to around 6.5% of its total £70 million revenue. Growth was particularly strong in the US, the company said at the time.