October 2023

This being some retweets from the October 2023 number of 'the drinks business', the glossy drinks trade magazine which is sometimes to be found on the Raynes Park Platform Library.

First, we have the bottling operation which is called Encirc. An integrated operation which appears to take in tankers of booze and the ingredients for glass at one end and spit out filled bottles for dispatch to the supermarkets and others at the other end. Inter alia an attack on line that the closer to the point of origin that you bottle the better. In the case of wine, all that bottled on the estate business. Two lines of attack being that it is a lot cheaper to shift booze in bulk and that it is a lot cheaper to use a bulk bottler than set up your own bottling lines.

I have not found out anything about the history of the company, what its roots were, but it is now a member of the Vidrala Group, from a small town south of Bilbao in Spain. A company which also appears to be about glass and bottles. A town which appears to be old and small enough to have allotments and stone walls.

Vidrala have a share price in Europe, so perhaps they are at the end of the chain. A share price which looks to have been fairly steady over the past five years at least.

Back with the drinks business, I read that the company shifts 460mn litres a year, mostly wine, which amounts to around half the bottling done in the UK. Taken at face value, this would suggest that a lot of the wine one can buy in places like Sainsbury's passes through their hands. Not to mention beer and soft drinks. Plus lots of science and sustainability. I guess they have to work to persuade the people making booze to trust them with it. I have failed to identify a customer for the Encirc offering, so perhaps said people are a bit coy. Better if the punter does not know their favourite tipple is getting shifted around the country in vehicles which look like petrol tankers.

Second, we have a different part of the business, the 2023 Sauvignon Blanc Global Masters, a wine trade promotion event which looks to have taken place in September last year at the Park Row Brasserie and Bar in London, an interesting looking outfit to be found at reference 4. Except that when you poke it, you find that it is just a glossy shell. There does not appear to be anything left inside.

But they are still visible in Street View. They live on in the digital world, if not the real one. I must try and pay a visit - with it being a good bet that the 'Crown' opposite is still up and running. Given the previous item in this post, appropriately close to Glasshouse Street, a street I used to visit in the past - can't remember why - but have not visited for years.

On the strength of the Masters write-up, I went out and bought three bottles of something called Volcaia Fumé, from Italy, via some people called 8wine.

Which I thought meant some warehouse somewhere on the Thames Estuary. But I was quite wrong: the efficient UPS parcel tracking service told me that the parcel started out in the Czech Republic and at the time of asking had made its way, through some government agency or other, to Nuremburg (aka Nürnberg). By this morning, it has reached Stanford Le Hope, which appears to be a modest little place just up the road from a facility called the London Gateway, to be found at reference 5. Which suggests to me that the parcel has been trucked from Nuremburg. Perhaps UPS run a truck service all over Europe. While DHL have more or less all of some middle sized airport in the Midlands. In any event, UPS say the parcel should be with by close of play Saturday. The festive wine store is shaping up. For the start of which see reference 7. Further report in due course.

Third and last, I read that Waitrose have teamed up with an cork company from the US called Amorim to sell wine in bottles without a capsule, that is to say with a naked cork. Naked, that is, except for some branding on the cork itself for Waitrose. The latest fashion in the closure trade?

Probably the people at reference 8, where I tried asking the AI assistant in the bottom right hand corner about capsule free corks, but he was a bit too keen on taking my details. I suppose he was filtering out tourists like myself and was only prepared to help if I was a genuine trade person. But maybe something promotional will turn up in my email.

In the meantime I have learned that Amorim are very keen on TCA, more particularly on the absence of TCA, which I now know is something with an unpleasant smell which may get into the wine from or through their corks. 2,4,6-trichloroanisole (TCA) or 2,4,6-tribromoanisole (TBA) in the wine. The stuff that your wine waiter pretends to smell for when he opens your bottle: how many of them actually know what to smell for? See reference 9.

And if he can't tell and you don't know, does it matter at all?

PS: Tuesday morning: I now have a short email from Carson Guzowski of Amorim. 'Corks for wine bottles do not require foils/capsules for tamper proofing. The cork is sufficient to protect the liquid and it’s becoming quite common to see, at least here in the US, brands going capsule free'. I don't recall mentioning tampering, but I await coming across a capsule free bottle. I shall have to take a look in Waitrose. Maybe the security guard who now hangs around that part of the store will be able to help.

References

Reference 1: https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/.

Reference 2: https://www.encirc360.com/. 'Part of the Vidrala Group, Encirc is based across three sites in Derrylin, Northern Ireland and two in England; Elton in Cheshire and The Park, Bristol. Encirc employs almost 2,000 people and each year we produce more than 3 billion glass containers for leading global brands. Encirc is also one of the leading wine, beer and spirits bottle fillers in the UK, enjoying a 40 per cent market share and bottling 18 of the top 20 wine brands in the UK'.

Reference 3: https://www.vidrala.com/en/.

Reference 4: https://www.wonderlandrestaurants.co.uk/park-row.

Reference 5: https://www.dpworld.com/london-gateway/port.

Reference 6: https://8wines.com/wines.

Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/11/fake-184.html.

Reference 8a: https://www.amorimca.com/.

Reference 8b: https://www.amorimca.com/products.

Reference 9: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cork_taint.