MEET THE PRODUCER Small Things Wine co-founders Cleve Robinson (left) and Ian Batt (right)
No Small Thing When ex-filmmaker Ian Batt cofounded Small Things Wine in 2018, he wanted to do what hadn’t been done in Western Australia before: to make premium wine and sell it in cans rather than bottles. Five years on, he’s selling it countrywide, and to Singapore, Sweden and the UK. Interview by Tanwen Dawn-Hiscox
What were you doing before starting Small Things ine I grew up on the south west of Western Australia. I spent my childhood on beaches, fishing and surfing so always aware of untouched beautiful environments. I spent 30 years in the film business as a travelling cinematographer, then I decided I was going to transition out of film, so I went back to university and studied winemaking at the campus in Margaret River. As I studied, I recognised that there were no alternatives to wine in glass that involved really good wine. Being able to enjoy wine in an environment where you can’t take glass with you - hiking in a bush, going to the beach for sunset drinks, it was always glass. That’s not very practical, not very safe, and as it turns out, not very recyclable. So that motivated me to think about the options. How did you go about starting the business? There was quite a bit of R&D, a lot of reaching out to manufacturers to find out what we could and couldn’t do. We started with one tonne of Riesling in 2018 and that’s progressed to about 122 tonnes for the 2022 vintage. With successive vintages, we went from one to six wines: as well as Riesling, we now have Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Gris, Chardonnay. Our rosé is made out of 100% Tempranillo. We have a Pinot Noir which is from Pemberton in the south, and a Shiraz from Frankland River.
What has your journey been since then? There was no strategy when we started, there was always going to be an opposition to it - so it was a case of trying to convince people from day 1 that what they were getting was okay, because some people have this misplaced view that the wine was going to taste ‘tinny’. We landed a contract with a restaurant group called Betty’s Burgers - we’re an exclusive provider for them and they take four of our wines. We improved their profit margins by 3%, we exceeded their demand forecasts on stock, by 300%. We knocked off one Australia’s biggest wine companies, who was supplying them with wine. This year we’ve confirmed an export to Singapore, we’re exporting to Sweden and we’ve got an agreement in place to launch in the UK at the end of the year – Enotria & Coe is our distributor. Other export markets will include the USA and Japan by the end of the year. What is your mission statement? We offer premium wine in cans. Our wine sits in the 16 to 16.5 points out of 20 category. They’re varietals, they’re vintage, we don’t blend a bunch of bad grapes together and sell it as wine. It’s got provenance. It’s got the head of a winemaker behind it, all the winemaking traits you’d expect out of premium. Life’s too short to drink bad wine, regardless of format. Where does the sustainability element come in? The origins were really about trying to find a product that was better for the environment in that it is recyclable. Then there’s the part of our mandate to make sure that we aren’t contributing to greenhouse gas emissions through transportation. If we send a pallet of our wine, 40 kg of that is packaging and the rest is wine - as opposed to the equivalent of weight in wine glass, we’re talking 340kg of packaging.
Where do you get your grapes? We’ve got three contract growers who work for us. Part of being able to talk about premium anything in Western Australia is about where you source it and the quality of that origin, so for us, our relationship with our growers is the strength of our brand. They’re sustainably accredited through Sustainable Winegrowing Australia, and we apply the same principles in our winery, which is low-intervention. Is defying stereotypes a big part of what you need to do It’s a David and Goliath fight. We are essentially two guys running a business without the backing of a big multinational. The brands we’re competing with are owned by gigantic companies. They have endless marketing budgets, social media tie-ins, brand ambassadors, tieins with massive events like Formula 1 and motorcar events - we don’t. But we’re the only voice that is actively advocating sustainability in our messaging. The challenge we’ve got and the opportunity is to find the avenues like that where the cans work best. Is retail one of them? Wine in cans is an ill-defined, misrepresented category for retail, and none of the big supermarkets do it well. They could easily say, ‘look, this is a step that supermarkets are taking towards making an effort towards net zero in 2030’ by moving towards that, but you don’t see any of them doing it. I think that’s a lost opportunity. What about independent retail? Independents have the flexibility and infrastructure to work with brands that are unique and authentic. They value quality, premium and provenance and that aligns directly with our USP. We are really excited to partner with independents. smallthingswine.com Vol.24 Issue 7 | August 2023
43