Wine Paris

[laughs] Do you p- do you, do...

Are you at Wine Paris? Do you have a booth there?

We are.

Okay.

Yeah.

And I don't know how she does it, but let's just say we were flying to Paris for Wine Paris.

Air France was like, oh, $13,000 round trip or something for my wife and I, and she did it for like six.

Wow.

If I'm being brutal, I still think there's nowhere near enough of a spotlight.

I still think, you know, those... traditional you know countries that as you say come into europe for wine paris pro wine whatever it is i still think 80 of them don't get outside of london they are the a the m25 is this if this is this seemingly impassable barrier for them and it's because it's it's an interesting one because it's a conversation i've had a few times with a winery import from south africa it's a winery called rascalian whose wines are very much aimed at a you know, a crowd that isn't super au fait with South African wines and a crowd that therefore doesn't expect, you know, doesn't go into drinking South African wine going, well, I expect this.

So it's wines very much aimed at younger drinkers, new drinkers, and, yeah, that offers more than just I'm an entry level South African to get people behind the brand and behind what they're doing.

And his wines were in the UK going back kind of five or six years.

And then his importer went out of business and I brought them back into the UK mid 2024.

And it's one of the things he's talked about with a lot of his friends because he came over It was for the Old Vine Conference at 67 Parmel a couple of years ago and was in Europe also for Wine Paris.

And in fact, he even did, he came over and did sit, the sit tastings with Hammonds.

And it was really interesting chatting to him because I think when we did the sit tastings together, I think there were five or six South African producers in the room.

Or was it next day? Maybe the next day, yeah.

Because I remember I went the morning part to the Wine Paris exhibition.

And then actually since, you know, the president of the Latvian Sommelier Association was there and my friends and trainers as well, they were also in Paris and my wife.

So we decided to book a table in a nice casual restaurant.

You know, the, the, the problem is we're, we're s- we're a tiny industry, but, and we don't have a lot of money to throw around at these things, but we need to.

We need to, like, bite the bullet and just get a shitload of investment in to have big, like, marketing campaigns that we can really afford, like, have more presence at, you know, Wine Paris and Prowine and...

So, and at, and at the moment it's just for, for ourselves who are, it's, well, I guess we're, we produce 35,000 bottles, I guess we're more of, like, a medium-sized producer in the UK now.

You know, we don't have the budget to, to display ourselves.

You know, when you, when you walk down the aisle at the market, and it leads to what you're saying, your gut, y- there's a label after label after label.

And this is one of the things that sh- that even after 35 years, the revelation or the thought I had at Wine Paris, as I'm walking through building seven, you know-

Yeah

... and it's the 7,000th, uh, you know, uh, booth, [laughs] right?

And then I saw him in Paris at the wine show.

Armenia had a great booth called Wine Paris.

And he was pouring his wines.

I went up to him.