This week’s Alexander Wines trade show at Glasgow’s National Piping Centre showcased a wide variety of old favourites and new hopes, with a combination of producer-hosted tables and free-pour areas allowing the healthy turnout of hospitality operators to take their time over their wine sampling.
Amidst the bustle, Alexander Wines sales support & marketing executive Fiona Wright took time to speak to SLTN about the prospects for the year ahead. She started by noting the elephant in the room – the price increases wrought by the change in alcohol duty bandings which came into effect on Feb 1st.
Fiona noted that the new bandings favoured less ‘heavy-hitting’ wines: “I think, with the duty changes, that the lower ABV wines could potentially be a thing this year.
“We had to change all of our pricing, and the hike at higher ABVs may well lead customers to embrace no and low. Even aside from the duty issue, people are more conscious of what they are putting in their bodies,” she noted.
“If they want a day-drinking wine they might consider getting something around that 9.5% mark, a little bit more approachable and easier going, rather than your big heavy-hitting wines.”
But she noted that ‘weirdly enough’ another pertinent trend for 2025 is premiumisation – drinking less, but better.
“We are seeing that, if people are interested in something different, they’ll maybe buy a glass of that, even if it is more expensive. But they’re really going to enjoy that one glass. So there are two ends to that spectrum of moderation and cost to be aware of.”
Wright conceded that Brexit had raised the basic cost of bringing wines in by ‘quite a lot’, so while Alexander Wines still dealt directly with its core producers, for experiments and innovation it was tapping into partnerships with companies like English importer ABS – Awin Barratt Siegel Wine Agencies, six time winner of the IWSC Wine Importer of the Year trophy.
“ABS brings in a load of stuff from everywhere, so we get quite a lot of our new discoveries via them, as we represent all of their wines in Scotland,” she explained.
One innovation on show at the Piping Centre this week was wine in kegs, courtesy of Prosecco experts Terre di Rai.
“That’s real sustainable packaging,” said Fiona. “There are quite a few bars interested in that, because of the ease of service, and reduced wastage.”
Out on the floor, SLTN’s favourites of the day included the Pálpito Garnacha 2022, from Bodegas Franco-Españolas, one of the oldest and most prestigious wineries in the Rioja region.
Made with 100% Garnacha grapes, meticulously hand-selected cluster by cluster, then aged in French oak, export manager Yolanda Martín explained that this bottling was only in the UK for sampling, ahead of any decision to bring it in commercial quantities.
As its name translates, so good it gave us palpitations!
The best white STN encountered was from Marlborough, New Zealand, the 2019 Clos Henri Sauvignon Blanc, being showcased on Alexander Wines ‘Planet Positive Pours’ table by East Coast account manager Donnella Aldrich.
All of Clos Henri’s wines ‘celebrate simplicity’, with low intervention and very few additives, produced using organic and biodynamic practices, and are vegan and vegetarian friendly.
The early hit of the show – in the sense that it was the first bottle emptied – was the successfully unusual Snapper Rock Sauvignon Blanc Rosé, also from Marlborough in NZ.
Anther popular sampler was the cheeky ‘Hey French – you could have made this but you didn’t’ bottling from Pasqua, which blends Garganega, Pinot Blanc and Sauvignon Blanc from select Veronese vineyards to great – and consistent – effect, as enthusiastically promoted by Pasqua’s representative at the show, Will Willis.
But equally popular, although vastly more traditional, was the Bergerac Rouge Cuvee Prestige from Château des Eyssards, whose owner Pascal Cuisset was on hand in Glasgow to explain that sometimes, when there is good steak on the table, the only sensible wine choice is full-bodied, family-made and French.
