Adeline Mangevine Crafty move for McKim and Jack East London has gained another independent with the arrival of Gnarly Vines in Walthamstow. Tom McKim and William Jack rode the
wave of the craft beer boom and have seen their joint venture Clapton Craft grow to
five shops since 2014. But as graduates of both Oddbins and Borough Wines, they have returned to their first love.
“We sell wine in all but one of the beer
shops but we wanted to do something
with a much bigger focus on wine,” says McKim. “Everything is on the organic to
natural spectrum, but we’re very much a
neighbourhood wine shop so we want to be responsive to what people are asking for.”
McKim confirms that “phase two”
will definitely involve a bit of licence
negotiation so they can serve cheese and
charcuterie with a bottle of wine. There are also plans to tackle the garden, which “has a lot of potential”.
Suppliers include Les Caves de Pyrene,
Indigo, Provisions and Gergovie Wines. “Ben and Hugo [at Provisions] are
friends of ours from Borough Wines and
we get all our cheese from them as well as quite a lot of wine.
“At the minute we’ve got about 150
wines but we have space for twice that, plus local beers, cheeses, coffee and chocolate.”
McKim and Jack will staff the new shop,
which is just a 25-minute walk away
from the Walthamstow branch of Clapton Craft. “It’s just the two of us – all the beer shops have managers but for this one
we’ll look to have some extra people in at the weekends. I think when something is new you want to make sure it’s the right
environment and it’s a nice shop to work in, so I don’t mind,” says McKim.
Hasty despatches from the frontline of wine retailing
T
hat’s it. I’ve had enough. I can’t
take any more. I’m going to shut the shop. That is unless people
start buying decent white wine.
Whites above a tenner are just as
good as red, I want to shout to so many customers. Stop clutching your throats while telling me how white wines are
“too acidic” (and then in the next breath tell me how much you hate big New World Chardonnays for exactly the
opposite reason). Stop dropping serious money on just the reds. Stop sighing “I
suppose I better get a couple of whites”
and heading for the cheapest Verdejo to
fill the two spaces left in your mixed case of premium reds.
I’m sure it never used to be this bad.
White wines, including those above £20,
would sell almost as well as reds all year round. I’d expect to make a serious dent
in spenny classic whites at Christmas, not be left come January staring at shelves
kicked off a year-long campaign of
positive wine discrimination. Instead of the usual February fizz promotion, I’ve slashed the margins on my premium
whites. Accompanying taglines include: “This Valentine’s Day, fall in love with a classy white wine”; “Love is a rich,
silky white wine caressing your mouth”; “The way to your lover’s heart is with a piercing, steely Chablis”.
The mysterious phenomenon of white flight, and how we plan to address the problem We will match whites to all seasonal
groaning with them.
events. Easter lamb? No problem.
changed. Slash the prices, move the stock,
try white Tempranillo. (See what I’m
Of course, the easy answer is to move
with the times. People’s tastes have
get over it. No one ever got rich by selling just the wines they like (and I like my rich whites, I really do).
Someone or something must be to
blame for this ridiculous state of affairs. America influencing our taste buds?
The general infantilisation of the British
palate, with our reliance on pre-prepared food with all its hidden fat and sugar? The democratisation of wine? A good
thing, obviously, but the downside is that more people demand a soft red they can
knock back by without food. Perhaps it is also partly my fault, for banging on and on about how red wine is brilliant with roast chicken.
To try to redress this imbalance, I’ve
THE WINE MERCHANT february 2018 7
Here’s a big, spicy white Grenache.
Burnt summer BBQ burgers? You must
doing, promoting whites that sound like reds?) Our tasting flights will be whites only – and we’ll be bribing red wine
diehards with “give white a go” special
discounts. We will get behind all generic promotions that involve white wines.
German Riesling, you do not know what is coming.
Come Christmas, we’ll go the full Bing
with a white (wine) Christmas before pelting headlong into “try January”. I may lose customers. I will probably lose money. But if I can just shift the dial
just a teeny bit, then the end must surely justify the means.