FRESH THINKING - FOR WINE COMPANIES THAT WANT GROWTH
Commercial strategy, sales and marketing consultancy for wine producers, distributors and retailers, built on more than 25 years inside the wine trade.
Hello,
I’m Nicola, a Management Consultant with over 25 years of hands-on experience helping wine businesses sharpen their commercial strategy and grow their sales. I’m approachable and accountable, with a successful track record of delivering impactful and lasting results.
My career has encompassed roles with retailers, distributors, and producers, which gives me a 360° understanding of how the wine industry operates. I am adept at identifying the most relevant changes needed across all business functions, to bring about the greatest rewards with speed and efficiency.
From building smarter routes to market across Europe and Asia, to engaging the right consumers and strengthening brand positioning, I bring the insight and practical know-how to make change happen. Whether it’s refining your sales strategy, improving marketing effectiveness, or rethinking business processes, I work alongside teams to make improvements that stick.
I believe effective change is as much about what you don’t do as what you do. Each strategic solution I develop and implement is tailored to what the circumstances require, and nothing more.
Best regards,
My experience
A unique blend
My career has encompassed roles with retailers, distributors, and producers all around the world, which gives me a 360° understanding of how the wine industry operates.
Services
Brand positioning & marketing
Consumer-relevant positioning and marketing plans that work hard for their budget.
Portfolio management
Shaping the range for the channels and customers that matter most.
Pricing & promotion
Price positioning and value chains that meet every margin and promotional requirement.
Commercial process improvement
Simpler, leaner ways of working across sales, marketing and fulfilment.
Category insights
Insight-led selling stories that show buyers how you add value to their category.
Commercial finance
Understanding true profitability by channel, customer and product.
Performance management
Clear targets and measures, so teams know what good looks like.
Route to market
Choosing the right distributors, channels and markets for profitable growth.
CASE STUDY 1 · 2025 · Candover Brook
WHO: Candover Brook is an award-winning English sparkling wine, grown regeneratively in Hampshire. It was planted by the late Lord John Sainsbury with his sons Mark and Julian.
THEIR OBJECTIVE: To build a resilient route to market that will enable them to sell their annual production profitably.
CASE FOR CHANGE: Selling less than what they were making, a disengaged and underperforming distributor, ineffective marketing return on investment, and high commercial team and fulfilment logistics costs
Candover Brook: progress summary
SALES GROWTH: Annual sales have nearly tripled in two years (CAGR 68%).
ROUTE TO MARKET: A new route to market is now in place, delivering sales today and giving a strong platform for continued growth.
BRAND BUILDING: An annual marketing plan with a proven return on investment, which also builds and strengthens the route to market.
Case studieS
WHAT VINHALE DID
Business audit: including cost reallocation to understand impacts on profitability.
Brand positioning: identified a cohesive and consumer-relevant brand positioning from their existing materials.
Commercial strategy: a three-year plan to accomplish the objective, including price positioning, route to market and revenue streams.
Worked with sales to establish the target client base and provided the sales materials needed to approach them.
Identified and planned additional projects, such as switching logistics partner and building a direct-to-consumer database.
Wrote the year 1 marketing plan, with activation aligned to supporting new distribution and communicating the revised brand positioning effectively.
Supported execution by overseeing sales and marketing for the first six months to embed the changes.
WHAT VINHALE DID
Range review for each supermarket to establish the branded and premium own-label opportunity, and prioritise targets.
Identified their highest-potential portfolio, labelling and brand positioning without jeopardising their existing independent and on-trade business.
Established price positioning by building value chains for each retailer that meet all relevant promotional costs and margin requirements.
Built a category-insight-led rationale for how Emiliana could add value to each retailer’s wine category, considering each retailer’s own strategic priorities.
Created a specific selling proposal for each target listing: provided their distributor with sales pitches based on these outcomes, and made direct approaches to retailers where the distributor could not present the wines.
CASE STUDY 2 · 2025 · Emiliana Organic Vineyards
WHO: Emiliana is the world’s largest organic winery and exporter.
THEIR OBJECTIVE: Get listed in UK supermarkets.
CASE FOR CHANGE: No success through their long-term UK distributor.
EMILIANA: progress summary
UK SUPERMARKET PRESENCE: Have presented specific selling proposals to all major retailers. On shelf in UK’s Largest supermarket.
NEW SALES APPROACH: Category led sales rationales and selling porposals being rolled out globally by winery commercial team.
How I work
I offer a day rate for smaller projects, ideal for companies seeking fractional expertise. For larger projects, I quote a tailored project fee based on scope.
With over 25 years in the wine trade, I have developed a global network of experts I can draw on to benefit your business. I also regularly collaborate with a choice group of professionals whose skills complement my own.
La Grande Dame du Vin
Wine lists & tasting events
I started learning about wine at the turn of the century (!), when I was working for Majestic Wine and gained my WSET Diploma. As their Marketing Manager, I wrote the tasting note descriptions shown on every wine in-store and online. To be able to do that, I had the privilege of joining the daily QC tastings with their buying team for several years, and developed a good palate off the back of it.
Tasting and discovering wine has been a great passion ever since, and I have always enjoyed being that friend who is asked to navigate the wine list or recommend which wine to order for parties and special occasions.
A subsequent two-year stint at a distributor to the London on-trade taught me a great deal about how to build interesting and commercially effective wine lists that consumers find approachable, great quality and good value. As well as my management consultancy work as VinHale, I also have great fun moonlighting as La Grande Dame du Vin, writing wine lists for restaurants and hosting wine tasting events
