Les Dauphins becomes a million bottle brand in the UK and around the world

By Richard Siddle

Published: 01 April, 2014

Les Dauphins, the Rhone brand from Cellier des Dauphins, is now selling over a million bottles in the UK and a million bottles around the world as it continues to expand in to new countries.

Speaking at last week's ProWein, Richard Evans, director of Dedicated Wines that has helped create, promote and distribute Les Dauphins for Cellier des Dauphins, said the brand continues to "connect with" new customers in new countries around the world.

"We knew when we first launched the brand in 2011 that we had something, but we did not know quite what we had with Les Dauphins," explained Evans.

"I have developed brands all my life and not come across a brand quite like this. It has also been a lesson in that the visual impact of a brand is now so important with consumers. It is that millisecond you have to communicate with a consumer that you have to grasp," he added.

"Brands now have to say what they are in that millisecond."

He said Les Dauphins was now looking to create a website that tapped in to this immediate appeal that the brand has achieved on shelf. It was, he argued, an even harder task to make that connection online, and is looking to tap in to the lifestyle rather than wine attributes that Les Dauphins has. Plans are still at an early stage but Evans said it would be based around the notion that when you are selling a bottle of wine you are "selling a moment, an occasion".

"It happens to be a bottle of wine that is the vehicle, but really what we are doing is selling a feeling, a moment and we hope the website can reflect that," he explained. "Too often the industry as a whole is just selling the product. It is not selling a moment."

Cellier des Dauphins hopes its new Les Dauphins website will allow it to "listen to" and "have a conversation" with its potential customers and understand the kind of moments when they want to drink the wine.

Evans said it was no longer enough just to put up a poster in a tube station and count the number of people that walk past it. "They now walk past you digitally. It is how you can get them to stop and come in to your site and talk to us there."

He said a wine brand can normally expect a life cycle of around five years, but is confident that because Les Dauphins is connected to the Cote du Rhone, which has such a long history with consumers, that it is a brand that has real longevity. "It will always be about the Rhone," he stressed.

But equally it could not rest on its laurels and the Les Dauphins team was looking two to three years down the road to see how the brand can remain as relevant then as it is today.

"We are looking at the evolution of the brands in two to three years," he said.

Brand extensions like its new Cru range showed the brand was able to work at different price points right up to premium levels. There was also the opportunity to introduce appellation and village names under Les Dauphins brand to bring even more provenance to the brand, said Evans.

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