This week’s Hallgarten & Novum Wines annual tasting saw 1500 visitors walk through the doors of Old Billingsgate. Lucy Britner sat down with managing director Andrew Bewes to talk about how the company has changed and what the trade can expect next

Standing on the upstairs balcony, there is an undeniable buzz down on the Hallgarten & Novum Wines tasting floor. The company, which is part of Coterie Holdings, has grown its portfolio over the past year to include several big names such as Champagne brand Nicolas Feuillatte as well as many smaller producers. Its annual tasting – at the sizeable Old Billingsgate – sets out the company’s stall under the ‘Our Next Chapter’ banner, with almost 1,000 wines open for sampling.

Down on the floor, the wider team is out in force and as Coterie CEO Michael Saunders walks the aisles, newly-listed wines from South Africa’s Bruce Jack are being shown to the trade by the man himself.

 We’re sitting in a nearby side room, away from the hubbub, talking about what the trade can expect from Hallgarten. “We’ve had a phenomenal year of expansion,” Hallgarten managing director Andrew Bewes tells me.

“We started a year ago with one of the smaller portfolios of our competitive set and we had a strategic review and looked at the areas where we felt we needed to strengthen the breadth and depth, partly from a purely vinous point of view,” he says. “But it’s also an inevitability as you grow your customer base that you need to have choice.”

As well as welcoming 30 new faces to his team, Bewes has added around 30 news producers – all in the past 12 months. And turnover has risen accordingly. For the year to March 2024 Hallgarten achieved £62 million; for the year to end of March 2025 Bewes anticipates finishing at around £75 million, however the underlying run rate, taking into account new customers, would put the firm at around £90 million in a full year.

“15 years ago, Hallgarten was possibly in danger of being all things to all people. We still have an ethos of working with everyone, but I guess as a company matures and grows, you find your niche and you find your market sector.”

In terms of its position in the market, Bewes says around 27% of sales by value are currently in the off trade (73% is on trade), however the expectation is that it will head towards 35% in the future, “while still growing the on trade”.

Volume wise, the off trade is split around 50/50 between indies and mults, however Bewes says he expects that to move closer to 60/40 as the company grows in favour of multiple retailers. He’s keen to stress, though, that there are different ranges for different parts of the trade.

“Broadly speaking, our UK stock holding is very much governed by the needs of the on trade and the independent off trade. And of course, there’s some differences to what we sell to each of those but broadly, the people going into the indies and spending £25 on a lovely bottle of wine are the ones that are going into a restaurant spending £75 on an equally lovely wine.”

MARKET CHALLENGES

Some of those wines could be set to change, as the UK braces for a duty increase and the end of wine duty easement.

“The impact of changes in employment law, to minimum wage and employers NI contributions will hit us all soon enough but, more immediately, we will feel the full effect of a rise in duty for all wines and the end of duty easement,” he says. He also talks about the “new and frankly ill-considered packaging obligations” via the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme.

“Let’s say we’ve got 20 red wines that retail between £25-30, after the duty rise and EPR, we will still have 20 red wines within those price points, but they will largely be different wines, because the wine that was £28 will now be £32, for example.”

LOOKING FORWARD

With so many new faces and new producers on board, Bewes hints at calmer waters in 2025.

“It’s back to basics,” he says, highlighting both a challenging marketplace and a busy previous year for his business.  “30% of the team have been here less than a year.”

He talks about bedding in new team members as well as “really launching the wines that we’ve selected and taken on”.

 “The challenge that I’m setting the team is ‘how can we help our customers further’, because we’ve seen ourselves as much as anyone else, like-for-like business is under pressure, which means we need to help our customers turn that trend around, if possible. Wine should be a really, really exciting category.”

Speaking about the differences between the on and off trade, Bewes says: “I think it’s very easy for us to define what a restaurant needs in terms of, ‘I need my staff trained’, ‘I need a wine list that makes sense and takes people up a ladder and therefore generates more profit’. I think retail is a bit more difficult.” Though he’s also keen to add that retailers often stock many more bottles, giving them “amazing choice”.

“We’re looking at how we can help our off trade customers really promote sales and promote interests, and that will come down to tastings and promotions. There’s so much excitement out there, and one of the potentially positive silver linings of the change in duty is that, broadly speaking, if the consumer wants to spend £15 on a bottle of wine, they’re going to spend £15. Whether it’s January 31 or on February 2, it’s probably going to be a different wine. And that’s an opportunity.”

Bewes says that although the trade can’t ignore the pain of duty changes, EPR and other business constraints, there is a need to concentrate on the positives.

“I always say to my team, nobody wants to buy wine from a miserable git. You need to be excited. You need to be enthusiastic. And it goes for retailers as well.”