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MERCHANT PROFILE: GOLBORNE WINE & DELI

Graham Holter enjoys some time in a Notting Hill hot spot
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Italy tops global wine production table

OIV predicts a modest increase in world wine output in 2025
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Are you a champion of French wine?

Indies invited to enter VIN 2026’s annual awards
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Change of ownership for London Wine Fair

Hannah Tovey leads management buyout from Hemming Group
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LONDON SAYS HELLO TO STABLE WINES

The team from Goodbye Horses opens Islington indie
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The Vineking crashes with £800k debts

Erik Laan’s new company means Reigate branch is still trading
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Gimmicks aren’t always a bad idea

Aldi’s call for volunteer tasters wasn’t far away from what some indies already do
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Wine and book shops in sync

Both sectors have cause for optimism after their recent success stories
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Rising Stars: Emily Silva, Oxford Wine Co

“She’s brighter and sharper than me,” admits boss Ted Sandbach
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The rewards of a 90-hour week

The Wright Wine Co in Skipton will resort to voodoo to pursue bad debts
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Merchants fear a Brexit disaster

Poll shows 70% of indies still want the UK to be part of the EU
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The shopping street that came back from the dead

A pedestrian scheme has been a gift for Yardarm in Leyton
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Forecast: it’s going to be pouring

Most new entrants in the specialist independent trade are going the hybrid route
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You can specialise in more than just wine

Why not add beer, books or even free jazz performances to your offer?
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Independent numbers continue to grow

There are now 855 shops operated by 624 businesses, according to our survey
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Twelve unsettling wine commercials

You don’t see many TV ads for wine, and these examples may partly explain why
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Now everybody’s a gin distiller

Adnams plans to give more of its customers the chance to make their own gin
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The fun of the fair

The UK wine trade would still exist without the LWF, but it would be a…
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Consumers are getting more wine savvy

The number of consumers taking wine courses is continuing to soar, according to the WSET
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It’s not just Marmite that’s more expensive

Independents have been hit with pre-Christmas price increases. The worst may be yet to come
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The old boys’ club

Just 11% of indie wine specialists are female. It will be embarrassing if that figure…
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Saturation point is a long way off

The UK could sustain another 200 independent wine shops, says study
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Shop? Wine bar? Café? Maybe all three

28.4% of retailers now offer wine for on-premise consumption
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Confidence high but turnover takes a hit

Independent wine retailers saw turnover fall by 5% last year, according to figures compiled by…
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Recent Digital Editions

Issue 151 (October 2025)
Issue 150 (September 2025)
Issue 149 (August 2025)
Issue 148 (July 2025)
Issue 147 (June 2025)
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Our final (and biggest) issue of 2025 is landing n Our final (and biggest) issue of 2025 is landing now, with an early Christmas gift of a 2026 wall planner. Never miss Xinomavro Day again!

As always there is loads going on in this edition, but that goes without saying, because the independent trade is where the fun happens. We do our best to report on it all, and throw in a few cartoons and silly captions along the way.

We next publish in January but we'll keep the website up to date in the meantime.
Issue 151 of The Wine Merchant is here. What's i Issue 151 of The Wine Merchant is here. 

What's inside? Nasty scammers, majestic hawks, repurposed wine bottles, guilt pangs, bleeding cocoa nibs, Sting (the singer), stings (from bees), 10,000 wine louts, people who lie about chocolate, hedonistic vermouth, Torres v Walkers, hairdresser puns, Lennon and McCartney in the northern Rhône, sesquiterpene rotundone, Leicester City and a small cheese sandwich. 

See if you can spot them all!
So sorry to hear of the passing of Peter Hall, pio So sorry to hear of the passing of Peter Hall, pioneer of English sparkling wine, self-proclaimed hermit and a wonderful raconteur who was generous with his time. Anyone with a bottle of Breaky Bottom in their collection will be toasting the memory this week of a lovely man.

Report on the Wine Merchant website, where you can also read the Q&A we did with Peter in 2022. It was the best article we ran that year – and perhaps in any year. RIP.
We used to be the only wine magazine in the world We used to be the only wine magazine in the world to publish album reviews. Now we're the only one with a psychotherapy column.

Plus: a horrible quiz, a stupid cartoon, in-store opera, people covered in treacle, the black hole of wine retailing, disappointing Belgian cuisine, and David Perry's plums.

Open your copy now while it's still got that strangely intoxicating aroma.
The 149th edition of The Wine Merchant is out ther The 149th edition of The Wine Merchant is out there in the wild. A huge milestone. We enjoyed putting it together for you and yesterday we celebrated its publication by tasting so much vermouth that parts of our mouths are jammed into unfamiliar positions and we’re talking in Dutch accents. Other than that, all good thanks 🤜
Loads of new openings, relocations and expansions Loads of new openings, relocations and expansions to read about in the latest edition of The Wine Merchant. But no closures. 

As Kate Goodman of Reserve Wines tells us in her interview, it's "probably as hard as it's ever been" for indies to keep going. But that's exactly what they're doing – and store numbers continue to rise.

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