Over the past couple of years there’s been a lot of talk about the “hybrid” wine shop model. Merchants aren’t just selling wines for customers to take home with them. They’re inviting them to take a seat and enjoy their purchase on the premises, sometimes with a plate of charcuterie, and occasionally with a free-jazz musician providing some added entertainment.

As we reported a few months ago, most new entrants in the specialist independent trade are going the hybrid route – indeed it’s hard to know whether some should really be classed as wine bars that happen to have a retail element. But when you look at the market as a whole, it’s clear that these businesses are in a minority.

Our reader surveys of 2016 and 2017 reported that just 28% of indies sold wine for consumption on the premises. This year, that figure has jumped to nearly 36%, with a further 4% saying they will switch to the hybrid model in the coming year. Fourteen per cent of respondents are still weighing up the idea.

There will still be room for the classic wine merchant model. But how many more years will it be before such retailers find themselves in a minority?

Read part two of our 2018 reader survey analysis, produced in partnership with Hatch Mansfield, in the April edition of The Wine Merchant.

The new wine bar at Connollys in Birmingham

Michael Smith and Jess Scarratt    (picture by Simon Booth)

People are visiting Hastings these days to take a look at its award-winning pier. It’s pretty good. But not as impressive as the wine shop just around the corner.

We say “wine shop”, but Borough Wines, Beers & Books is much more than that, as its name suggests. Not many merchants host gigs in their basement featuring a bloke playing free jazz on a sax while hitting himself on the head with a tray, or welcome Faust and their angle grinder for a midweek performance.

Jess Scarratt and Michael Smith embody a truth that is becoming more self-evident in the UK trade: there’s no such thing as a “typical” independent, and attempts to analyse the sector through generalisations and averaging-out will only ever take you so far.

For some merchants, wine has to be the focus, at the expense of all other distractions. For others, it’s simply part of the mix, but that doesn’t have to mean that such retailers lose their specialism. You’re allowed to specialise in more than one category.

Borough Wines, Beers & Books is very definitely a wine specialist, as a glance at its range will attest. But its owners are interested in other things too. And so, it would seem, are its customers.

Read our profile of the business in the February edition of The Wine Merchant.