Booths is gearing up to make its wines available outside of its northern heartland for the first time by extending into D2C online wine deliveries. The upmarket supermarket retailer has also revealed a major rebrand project for its own label wine range.

Rachael Machin, former sparkling and champagne buyer for Booths, is heading up plans for the online launch for the retailer’s wine category. She said: “This will be the first time we are able to bring the Booths brand to the nation online. We are aiming to be ready for Easter, offering a rotating range with seasonal offers as well as discovery boxes and gifts. We will be putting a lot of resources around the launch to target ‘outside of Booths country’.”

Emma Booth, chief brand officer, said: “We are working hard to keep the scarcity of our products as well. It’s a very fine line. We have always been exclusively available in the north, where our stores are based, and we have a lot of visitors to our stores around the Lake District (Keswick and Windemere) who encounter Booths for the first time, so we know Booths products are always being discovered but these are often customers who can’t easily make a repeat purchase. We don’t want to feel like our wines are available everywhere, but we do want to be more accessible, and the online launch will help grow this awareness and reach.”

Separately, the retailer is working on a new identity for its 48-strong own label range. The new wine branding has already been introduced for its Booths Gran Norte Rioja Crianza and Gran Norte Rioja Reserva, with plans to gradually roll out the revamped label across the range.

Booth said: “The rebrand strategy has been about going back to our roots and our heritage dating back to 1847, which is what we are all about. We have introduced the strapline ‘Purveyors of fine wines since 1870’ [the date when the retailer first introduced wines to its grocery offer] to double down on the heritage message, and we will roll this out across the range.”