The UK’s largest winemaker, Chapel Down, has set its sights on convenience stores as part of a strategic push to make English sparkling wine a “more informal” challenger to champagne.
Off the back of 30% off-trade revenue growth in H1 2025, Chapel Down CEO James Pennefather told The Grocer he saw “plenty of headroom” to accelerate growth further.
“There’s still significant distribution opportunity within the UK off-trade,” Pennefather said, following the release of the company’s first-half results.
The results showed a rapidly expanding Chapel Down gain 11% in net sales to £7.9m, boosted by a whopping 30% leap in off-trade sales. The company has now taken 35% market share in the English sparkling wine category.
The wines are priced at around 90% of champagne, with the winery aiming to eat into UK fizz share by presenting a “more approachable” product for “less formal occasions” than champagne.
“What we’re finding for Chapel Down in particular is that the fresh, crisp flavour of our wine is suitable for a broader range of occasions, including more informal celebrations [than might be typical for champagne],” Pennefather said.
“Those might be May bank holidays, going to music festivals: that is where we’re seeing Chapel Down over-indexing compared with some of the big champagne brands.”
He added: “There is a great opportunity to expand our distribution into the type of outlets where consumers and shoppers are buying for those more ‘everyday’ occasions, like convenience format [shops], where there is plenty of headroom for growth.”
Chapel Down has entered into discussions with retailers over the move hot off recent successes, including listings for the company’s Rosé in Tesco and its Grand Reserve in Waitrose.
Predominantly a sparkling wine producer, the winery is a key engine for English fizz’s 10% category growth, reporting 12% revenue growth in its sparkling wines.
The total sparkling wine market makes up 200 million bottles a year in the UK, with wine from England making up about 4% of that total.
“There is a huge growth opportunity,” said Pennefather.
“We’re finding that English sparkling wine is really appealing to millennial consumers, who are interested in authentic storytelling experiences, and heritage. The fact that they can come visit our vineyards, only about an hour from London, really reinforces that loop and strengthens that brand affinity with English sparkling wines.”
He added that the quality of Chapel Down’s wines were only improving as the vines – first laid down in 1977, but with substantial additions in recent years – improved.
“As that quality story grows, we believe Chapel Down will lead the category in growing English sparkling wine’s share to much more than that 4% of current sparkling wine consumption.”
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