Good news doesn’t make the headlines; companies going under, buy outs and job cuts do – and there’s been plenty of that to write about in the past six months: Constellation and Diageo (among others) slashing the workforce; Foster’s selling off parts of its estate; Ehrmann’s and Playford Ros swallowed up by bigger outfits…I could go on but I won’t because there has been some good news reported in most of the major wine titles this week: The Sampler in Islington is opening two new branches.
Jamie Hutchinson and Dawn Mannis opened the store in 2006 and it has gone from strength to strength. Now, three investors have come on board, raising a cool £1 million to open two new stores in Kensington and Notting Hill.
The Sampler is not your average wine merchant. It has become legendary in wine circles for having 80 wines to taste on a charge card system. Buy some credit and away you go. The wines change daily and the last time I looked, they were sampling 1982 Penfolds Grange, 1942 Marqués de Murrietta Castillo Ygay and 1998 Ch. Latour.
Speaking to the pair for an article in decanter.com, they were both really excited about the prospects and hope to open the Kensington store before Christmas (for obvious reasons). They haven’t yet found a site in Notting Hill so it’s more likely the opening will come a little later. If things go well, they’d like to expand further.
It shows that if you do things right and think outside of the box, then you can succeed in hard times. As my dad always tells me, and reminded me when I decided to go freelance just as the markets crashed, ‘In adversity, comes opportunity’. He talks rubbish most of the time, but sometimes dads can be right.
