Chapter and verse: Tackling our next big problems
15 June 2026
During a business workshop at the Wine GB Conference at Plumpton in April, I proposed a UK Wine book club, and commended three books that address some of our sector’s biggest needs.
This article is a highlights reel of that workshop.
Need # 1 – Imbalance of production and sales
The UK produced over 22m bottles in 2023, which puts the gap between production and sales at over 14m bottles. In a time of over-production, the ability for a brand to cut through and achieve distinction will be a vital tool to sustain sales.
Stengel consolidated 10 years of research of over 50,000 companies to look at how a selection of 50 businesses achieved standout financial performance having put connection with people’s fundamental human values at the centre of their own business’ purpose. Staggeringly, an investment in these 50 companies would have been 400 percent more profitable than an investment in the S&P 500 over the 2000s.
Kantar’s 2022 Brand Z report found that clearly articulating purpose had 2.5 times the contribution to a brand’s pricing power, compared to businesses whose messaging was more product-led. This brings into focus the financial value that the learnings from Stengel’s work can deliver.
Stengel identifies five fundamental human values, which he termed brand ideals, which many of these businesses have in common. They are listed below.
- Eliciting joy
- Enabling connections with other human beings
- Inspiring exploration
- Evoking pride
- Impacting society
Think of Red Bull’s mission to inspire exploration, Innocent Smoothie’s mission to impact society or Samsung’s ability to enable connection with others.
What does all this have to do about wine? Well, channelling care and attention into ripening grapes on a carefully chosen site, then gently pressing the juice, and expertly blending the wine before patiently laying it down to mature ready to be opened one day on a special occasion hits so many of these brand ideals; exploration, pride, joy. There is such a rich seam to tap into when you contemplate the purpose of your brand, and the way in which you want to connect with human values. As research from Stengel and Kantar suggests, the results will follow.
If you are puzzling over how to bridge the gap between your production and sales, I commend Jim Stengel’s book to you
Need # 2 – Investing in the cellar door
The greatest concentration of the UK’s 200 or so wineries are in the Southeast, so choice abounds for wine tourists heading to Sussex or Kent. To win a share of this market, differentiation will be extremely helpful.
Many wine producers have differentiated their core cellar door offering by leaning into the arts, like Artelium, or by collaborating with other food and drink producers, like Squerryes, or creating quirky places to stay, like Oastbrook. Lots of wine producers will be asking themselves which direction to take the cellar door in.
Priestley cautions against assuming your vision for the business will align directly with what the customer wants and cites several examples of businesses who acted on their personal conviction, without doing any research on demand for the idea and ploughed capital into a dream which the market did not want. Far better, Priestley argues, to create waiting lists for a concept that you have and invite customers to sign up to the waiting list if they would like to pre-register their interest. The number of people who join the waiting list gives you data on the demand for the idea you have and allows you to measure and validate your potential investment without spending any capital.
I love the simplicity of this idea, which Priestly expands upon by suggesting you should invite those in the waiting list into a discussion group to allow them contribute ideas of their own, which others can comment on. It can also be submitted as supporting evidence for any loan applications, to give lenders confidence in the risk profile of the lending request. Priestly describes how Elon Musk created a waiting list for Tesla’s Cybertruck, because he knew that the bank would not lend against the idea if there was no evidence of the market’s demand for an all-electric truck.
Need # 3 – Solving the last mile
Most wineries are in rural locations, only conveniently accessible by car. People visiting wineries for tours want to be able to enjoy themselves without worrying about whether they are safe to drive, so unless you tackle the last mile challenge, or the accommodation challenge, you are not addressing the customer’s every need.
Hormozi talks about ‘Grand Slam Offers’. Offers that are so good, people feel stupid saying no to them. He boils the preparation for a grand slam offer down into 5 steps:
- Identify the customer’s dream outcome
- List every conceivable problem that stops them from achieving it
- Produce a list of solutions to each one of these problems
- Eliminate the solutions that are high-cost to your business but produce low value to the customer and those that are low cost and only provide low customer You will be left with low-cost solutions that provide high customer value and high-cost solutions that provide high customer value.
- Bundle these solutions together into a high-value offer which is so tailored and unique it is in a category of one
You can do your own run through of this using any example you want. One of the guest’s problems you will need to solve will be how the guests get to their accommodation once they have finished their tour and tasting. I have set out my thoughts on this in a table, below.
|
Solution |
Cost |
Value |
|---|---|---|
|
Build accommodation at the winery |
High |
High |
|
Create accommodation package with local hotel |
Low |
High |
|
Include transport with executive minibus company in the package |
Low |
High |
|
Grant lease to glamping operators to provide accommodation at winery |
Low |
Depends |
|
Put on a shuttle bus to local train station so people can reach accommodation via rail transport. |
Med |
Depends |
Depending on the price and value combination you are aiming to offer customers, and whether you wanted to make a capital investment, you could stack those solutions into a few different combinations to create packages for markets you are targeting.
Once you have bundled the solutions together, Hormozi goes on to describe how to use naming, urgency, scarcity, bonuses and guarantees to finalise the grand slam offer.
An example is below of a dinner, which might be hosted by the vineyard itself or by a collaborating catering partner:
Sunset memories made over dinner in the vines
To ensure these evenings are unforgettable for our guests, we intentionally limit bookings in order to create the perfect ambience at your table, so availability is often scarce. Bookings made at least two weeks before your reservation date include a complimentary wine tasting. We know you will love your time with us, which is why we offer a Break Even Guarantee, where we promise to refund your bill, minus only our costs if you aren’t fully satisfied. |
Hormozi found that there was a 30% increase in uptake of offers where guarantees were given. On average only 10% of customers took the participating businesses up on their guarantees. The net increase in sales is therefore 17%. See the breakdown below, using a base example of 100 sales.
Example:
- Offer without guarantee – 100 sales
- Offer with guarantee – 130 sales, 13 refunds (10%)= 117 Net sales 117/100 = 1.17x (17% increase)
