By Nick Gillett, managing director, Mangrove Global Things are pretty grim in hospitality right now. We’re all aware of that. Fast approaching is the unappetising prospect of it getting a whole lot worse. And whilst the immediate impacts of this are being felt most strongly in the on-trade, ultimately the effects will be also felt by retailers and consumers. Drinks retailers need…

When you get overexposed to a smell, you no longer notice it. Anyone who’s taken wine exams is familiar with the creeping dread of repeatedly nosing an unidentified wine as the aromas only become more and more elusive. Similarly, it’s easy to become accustomed to the quirks of the wine trade as a whole. It is riddled with absurdity, yet that soon becomes normalised…

Disagreeing about wine is a fact of wine-trade life, like drugs in sport or corruption in politics. Because taste is entirely subjective, debates about our personal preferences are as inevitable as they are interminable. Indeed, these long-winded, wine-fuelled arguments are precisely what make our jobs so much fun. But I was surprised to hear a table of wine professionals disagreeing about more…

I love Estrons. No, it’s not an obscure grape variety or a hipster wine bar – alright, chances are it’s probably both, but I’m talking about the Welsh band. I first heard them on the radio, started listening to them regularly, saw them playing live a couple of times, and am completely hooked on their energetic, sultry, riff-driven, growling indie rock. They call it…

Ever since cavemen started swapping things with each other, the rules of retail have remained unchanged. Eye level is buy level, retail is detail, the customer is always right, one bear skin costs 10 arrowheads. OK, maybe that last one died out with the cavemen. Those clichés may still be true, but in today’s technological era there are new rules, and they…

Fladgate Partnership chief executive Adrian Bridge has given the UK off-trade market a vote of confidence after fortified wine sales started to arrest years of decline. In 2015 the category – which had been suffering – fell just 1% in volume and grew 1% in value after upping its average price per litre by 2% to £8.60 (Nielsen). Port squeezed ahead of sherry, with £79…

Diageo is planning an appeal over an Advertising Standards Authority ban on an ad for its Smirnoff vodka. The ASA said the Filter ad – launched as part of a £15 million campaign for the UK’s best-selling spirit brand last year – implied that the success of a social occasion “depended on the presence of alcohol”. In the commercial, the atmosphere in…