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Independent wine retailers report major sales uplift over Jubilee

Published:  06 June, 2012

Independent wine retailers have reported a major sales uplift over the Jubilee weekend, with some merchants seeing a 70% boost.

Hal Wilson, managing director of Cambridge Wine Merchants, said he was 71% up on the 2011 Spring Bank Holiday.

"The busy weekend came after a record sales month for Cambridge Wine Merchants in May 2012, so many customers had already placed orders before the weekend started, for street parties and other celebration events. In terms of what sold well, I have some comparable data for our two branches in Cambridge city centre, King's Parade and Bridge Street. These branches nearly doubled their turnover in the period June 1-5, 2012, compared with May 27-31, 2011.

Wilson said the categories that saw the largest increases in sales were England (583%), South Africa (240%), sparkling wine (206%), malt whisky (180%), cigars (175%), Argentina (136%), cider (127%) and spirits (105%).


John Hodges, owner of the Vineyard in Dorking, saw a 50% uplift in sales on what he would term as a "good" Saturday.

"I was very pleased at the end of the day. We sold a real mix of things and not all were linked to the Jubilee. We didn't have big party wine orders as a lot of street parties went on the premise of 'bring a bottle'. People weren't patriotic with their choices either, we sold a lot of Denbies wines, but it wasn't necessarily all about English products," he said.


Jane Cuthbertson, owner of Barrica Wines in Preston, said it also sold a mix of products and saw a 30% uplift on the previous Saturday.

"There were many people buying and collecting things for street parties. Customers were buying quite odd things, such as cocktail ingredients, liqueurs and syrups, like they normally do over Christmas. We've taken on Rubis Chocolate Wine and we completely sold out of that," she said.

Cuthbertson added: "It wasn't really a Champagne-led event, it was more sparkling wine."

Let us know how your independent business performed over the bank holiday weekend. Email carol.emmas@wrbm.com.

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