Al Wighton knew it was time to leave the world of accountancy and try his hand at a career he thought he would enjoy more. Five years on, his Alteus wine business in Crowborough, East Sussex, has given him the rewards he was hoping for – and they are more emotional than financial. By Nigel Huddleston

Al Wighton is explaining where the name Alteus Wines came from: the “Al” is from his name, the “te” from wife and business partner Teresa, and the “us” is the two of them together. “After I thought of the name, I spent about three days trawling the internet making sure it wasn’t the Greek god of fornication or hellfire,” he jokes.

The Wightons bought what was formerly the Cork & Keg off-licence, just adrift of the main high street in the market town of Crowborough, in the heart of the Sussex Weald, in 2019.

The site had been a wine shop of some description or other for more than 50 years, serving as an Unwins and a Thresher at various times.

“I know it was the Crowborough Wine Company at some point because when we moved in the meter was still registered under that name,” he notes. “There were still loads of Thresher carrier bags in the cellar and when we took out one wall there was some racking with paper labels saying ‘Bulmers Cider 90p’.”

Teresa still works full-time outside of the Alteus business, so former accountant Al pretty much runs things single-handedly day-to-day.

“I’m a commercial animal from way back, so I run a tight cost base,” he says. “Teresa helps me out on weekends and does all the social media stuff because I don’t understand it at all. I come from the accountant’s school of marketing, which is ‘how much does it cost?’.”

He decided to upscale a passion for wine and become an independent retailer after becoming fatigued from three decades in the corporate world.  

“I just got bored with sitting around having the same conversations year in, year out, with the same people, the same outcomes, nothing ever changing,” he says.

“I sat there in one board meeting and realised I was the one out of step, not them. They were all perfectly happy having the same conversations. I just decided I’d had enough.”

What was it about wine that appealed as an alternative career?

I love the complexity of wine, the infinite possibilities. Every single bottle is different: different vintages, different locations, different times of day you drink, different meals you have it with, different temperatures you drink it at. I can have two bottles out of the same case two weeks apart and get something different each time.

Why did you decide to buy an existing business?

The location is interesting. Parking outside is a massive benefit. If we were in the town centre people would have to use a car park. Most people come in to buy a case of six or 12, and don’t want to lug it five minutes back to the car.

There’s not really a great deal in the way of retail in the town centre either, sadly. Consequently, not that many people come into Crowborough to wander round and browse so there’s not a great deal of passing trade potential there for us. We’re a destination: people will drive here just to come to us. At first that’s a slower burn, while people get to know who you are and what you do.

What changes did you make straight away?

We always had in mind that we didn’t want to be an off-licence. I don’t mean that in a snobby way; it’s just a different model. I don’t want to be here at 10 o’clock at night serving cigarettes and crisps and £8 bottles of Sauvignon Blanc and four-packs of cider. 

But we didn’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water either, because we were starting from zero. We were happy to take some of the old customers along on the journey, but we have changed what this place is about.

Did you have to make compromises on the range initially?

We started looking at what already sold well, which was actually tricky because it had an old-fashioned till that just rang up the numbers without capturing any data. I retained lines that I knew were popular and fitted our model. As we stand here five years later, maybe 10-20 of those lines are still left. We’ve got about 350-400 and we roll things in and out all the time.

I want to stock as broad a range as I can. I’d rather stock breadth than massive depth and I like to keep my supply chains short, so I can offer as much choice to people as possible without having to hold 20 cases of every single wine on the shelf.

Can you expand on what you mean by keeping the supply chains short?

I like to work with suppliers where I can access wines very quickly and who are reliable. I’m not storing 18 cases of every single wine. I’d be tying up hundreds of thousands of pounds and I’m a small business. I’m also an accountant, so working capital is very important to me. Managing the balance sheet is something I do day in, day out. I want to have three cases in stock but know I can get more in a couple of days if I need it. 

Does that mean you’re driven towards a particular type or size of supplier?

I use Boutinot and Hallgarten, who both have minimum orders, but I’m smart about how I roll those wines through. Beyond that most of my suppliers have fairly low minimum orders now and are quite easy to access. If they don’t and they’re not, I simply don’t use them. I’ve been there and done that in businesses where I’ve worked in the past, but I choose who I do business with now. I work with good, reliable people and I’m not going to deal with fools. And there are fools out there.

Has your approach changed since the early days?

I’ve started to use some smaller specialist importers over the past couple of years, such as Buckingham Schenk for Italian stuff. It’s been great for us. I’m finding much more flexibility with some of the smaller suppliers since Covid. Previously, they would usually want you take a significant volume, but the reality is I might only want four or five wines from them. I don’t need 20 cases of each. I want a couple to see how they roll. Since Covid there’s no doubt that minimum orders have come down. 

Some are overstretching themselves. We had one smaller importer we picked up and took five or six lines from. I’ve done three orders now and each time three lines have been out of stock. It doesn’t matter how much I like the wines, if I can’t get them on the shelf, what’s the point?

I’m tolerant up to a point, especially if they’re nice people. I’m less tolerant if they’re big organisations that just can’t get their act together. 

What price level are you doing most volume at?

Around £12-£16 is the price range people really respond to well. When we took this on, the average price was probably around a tenner. Those prices have become harder and harder to hit in the last couple of years. 

There was a rep who popped in the other day, who we don’t work with yet, who used the term “volume builders”. I think that’s quite smart. There are too many importers who’ve got lovely wines at £20-£25 retail, but in independents, as we know through The Wine Merchant survey, the average price is about 15 quid. There’s no point in trying to sell me loads of stuff at the £25 mark. You need volume builders, those great-value wines at £12-£15, otherwise you become niche. It’s very easy for me to find a great £40 bottle of wine but that doesn’t make me useful.

Having said that, trying to find anything you can hang your hat on under a tenner is getting tougher and tougher, but it matters less to me now than it used to, in terms of the customer demographic.

You have a wall of wines for summer, with food pairings and the like. That changes seasonally, presumably?

Actually, it normally has new wines. This is the first time we’ve done something a little bit different and put some recommendations up. As a feature, it draws people straight away. The regulars are always interested in what new stuff we have, so normally it’s the first place they go to. 

It’s always surprising that more wine shops don’t do a “new” section, like book shops or record shops.

I had no background in this industry, so I didn’t really know what most other people did, other than from my previous experience as a punter. Whenever I’m away I’ll always look into the local independent because it’s fascinating to see what other people do – and they’re all different.

Tell us about your tastings.

We do them in the shop. It’s an intimate setting and people can buy at the same time. We do 23 people, which is not massive. The last one I posted online sold out in half an hour, but sometimes the fact that people can’t get into our tastings means there’s more demand next time. For most of our events we could probably sell about 50 tickets, but I don’t want to take them off site. 

Why not?

You then have to hire a hall, and you have to take the wine out there, but most importantly with the way we do them now, people are in the shop where the wines are. The tickets are reasonably priced because I want people through the door. I want them to spend the extra £10 I could put on the ticket price on another bottle of wine, go home, enjoy it and come back and buy more. 

We do free spring and Christmas tastings. I want as many people as possible through the door enjoying wine and coming back again, rather than charging a tenner which might put half of them off coming. I do a preview event on a Friday evening for my wine club members, big spenders and good customers. They tend to know each other as well, so it’s a social thing. Then the Saturday is open house: you can’t get in the door. 

On one hand it’s hard to manage, but on the other it creates excitement and interest. If you were walking down the road and you’d never seen Alteus Wines before, you’d think “my god, I wonder what’s going on in there”, and you’d go and have a look.

The wine club seems to go a bit further than just “we’ll put a case together for you”.

The most important thing is every case is bespoke. We start with what people like, what the big no-nos are, what sort of splits they want, and it just gradually evolves from there. They get a case every two months, but if they want it earlier they can get it. We contact them a week before it’s due and see what balance of wines they want. It doesn’t always have to be the same. It might be in the winter they want 12 reds, or in the summer a few rosés. Or they might want to spend a bit more for Christmas, or a bit less at other times. It’s very flexible. We get to know people, that’s the most important thing. 

If you get a case from Laithwaites or Naked, there are three wines you think are great, three where you think “I don’t like Sauvignon Blanc”, and a few average ones they just want to get rid of, so you might enjoy half of them. The aim with us is that you enjoy every bottle in the box. They also get some tasting tickets and discounts through the year.

Beer has a prominent place.

We’re a wine merchant but I want other strings to my bow. We focus on local stuff. Harvey’s is like mother’s milk round here. They’ve been around for well over 200 years and they’re great to deal with. It’s much more predictable business for me. Regular Harvey’s customers will bring their empties back and always take another case. 

The Sussex Best is probably around 60%-70% of the sales but we do the full range. Bonfire Boy is a seasonal beer that comes out in the autumn but people want to drink it all year round. The shelf life is two years, so I stock up on it and there’s no risk. It ties up a bit of capital but that’s fine because I know it will turn over. 

 Craft beer drinkers are very different because they always want something new and only buy one or two cans at a time. If they find they like it they’ll go and buy a case online directly, so I never sell cases of it. It’s nice to have, but it’s never going to change my world. 

You have a spirits range with a local focus too?

I think you can either stay with local stuff or become a real specialist. Commercially, it costs a lot to hold the stock and I make less margin on that than I do on anything else. I don’t have any ambition to be a specialist spirits retailer. I’ve been involved in strategy in big companies and my philosophy around that is to focus on your core business and be really good at that. Don’t be a magpie and grab shiny things left, right and centre. That’s why Harvey’s have been around for getting on for 250 years.

And you only deliver locally?

During lockdown, of course, the whole delivery thing went crazy, but we kept it to a very small radius. We were doing it all ourselves and delivering 95% the same day and the rest by the next day. Since then, I’ve found people prefer to come in and look around and have a chat. But we still do local deliveries. 

Why haven’t you expanded it further? 

I’ve looked at national delivery, but a lot of the wines we have you don’t see elsewhere around here, so I’ve pretty much got a captive audience. If I went online, I’d be competing with someone in Hartlepool and the only way to do that would be on price. We’d need to advertise pretty heavily, and that’s expensive. And then we’d have the worry around packing, couriers and breakages. I’d be looking at low gross margins, high marketing costs, dealing with couriers and complaints, and finding someone to do it. My instinct is telling me I’d make some money out of it, however … it’s not a hard “no” but I’m yet to be convinced it’s going to change my world for the good.

Five years on, what’s the best thing about being a wine merchant?

Wine! I’m very lucky to have access to a lot of lovely wines. It’s also a really nice industry. I come from quite a hard-nosed commercial background, in sectors like health and insurance. So many people who work in wine do so because they love wine, but I don’t think anyone who works in insurance does so because they love insurance. Almost everyone who comes through the door is in a good mood and has chosen to be here. They’re not here because they have to be. Every interaction gives positive energy and that’s a really nice thing. But the best thing is I get to do what the hell I want. I don’t have to work on corporate structure or get approval from boards or risk committees. I have complete autonomy in what I do.

And the worst?

I don’t earn anywhere near as much money as I used to, but that’s my choice. There’s nothing bad about it really. The worst thing is the [pre-election] government, which deals with the wine industry in a pretty poor way considering how much it contributes to the economy. The policies around duty are outrageous and foolhardy and downright incompetent – the biggest rise in duty in history and no one gains. The producer’s not gaining, the importer’s not gaining, the retailer’s not gaining, the punter’s not gaining, and the government’s not gaining because the tax receipts have gone done. Which makes them idiots. That sort of thing makes me angry. 

Have you considered a second location?

Could I replicate this? Probably not, because I wouldn’t be in there. I’d be relying on someone else to replicate it. You see it with franchises, like Jamie Oliver and the like. Fantastic chefs, great celebrities, opening a brilliant restaurant and then franchising it out and the whole thing falls over in five years – because it’s not them, is it? It doesn’t work.

And we’d never open another shop with Teresa running it because we’d never see each other. We’re in our fifties now; this is a second career for me. I didn’t open this to work 70-, 80-hour weeks like I used to. I want to enjoy what I do and work reasonable hours. Does that prevent me making more money? Yes, probably. Does it mean I’m happy and have more balance in my life? Yes. I’m not 25. I don’t want 20 shops … but that’s OK.