California specialist saw restaurant buyers trading down to cheaper wines, says boss James Doidge MW. Interview: Graham Holter

The Wine Treasury saw its annual turnover plummet by 40% before directors pulled the plug on the business in December.

The importer, which represented producers in many European and new world countries but was best known as a California specialist, has been a favourite supplier of many indies since it started in 2002. But the on-trade was its main focus, and as beleaguered customers traded down to cheaper wines, managing director James Doidge MW had no option but to pursue voluntary liquidation.

The Wine Treasury had debts of just over £1m when it folded. Some of its creditors are the wineries it worked with, including California’s Kistler Vineyards (£66,970) and Silver Oak Cellars (£51,937). The biggest creditor is Ferovinum, which provides finance and logistics to the wine trade and is owed £328,171.

“We were very focused on and dependent on the on-trade, arguably to an unhealthy level,” Doidge admits.

“Our sales effectively dropped by about 40% between 2024 and 2025 and we couldn’t afford that. Arguably our turnover wasn’t high enough anyway, but it was enough to get by on. But to see that drop by 40% just makes all of the numbers unworkable.”

The Wine Treasury’s list featured mainly premium-priced wines that were impacted proportionately less than lower-priced wines by duty increases.

“But duty is one of those things that compounds the increased costs of both running a restaurant and then eating out in a restaurant,” Doidge says.

“Eating out is such an expensive thing to do now. Once you’ve added on the multipliers that a restaurant has to apply to operate, while still not making much in the way of money, then a £20 bottle of wine becomes a £100 bottle of wine.”

He adds: “Really, not many of our customers went out of business. But we did lose listings.

“In the last couple of years, there’s been a general dumbing down of wine lists. I think they’ve become less interesting. Restaurants are forced to take advantage of whatever offers they can get from wine suppliers.

“It’s the ones with bigger pockets that can offer incentives, often financial incentives in whatever form – whether it’s offering a cash advantage or very deep discounts.

“That means that smaller companies really suffer, because if a wine buyer is having to choose between a couple of wines, you can’t blame them for taking what’s potentially the less interesting but more lucrative option.”

Was Doidge surprised at how quickly things unravelled, and was there any indication in early 2025 that things might deteriorate?

“I didn’t anticipate it, to be honest,” he says. “I had no thoughts that The Wine Treasury would be gone by this time this year.

“I didn’t feel that this particular cycle was different from other ones. I think it’s just been another straw that broke the camel’s back – just another difficulty to add to everything else that we’ve had to endure since Covid. In the end, it was just too much.”

The agencies that The Wine Treasury had are now being eyed by other UK suppliers, with Roberson tipped to take some of them. Conversations with producers have been “really tough and saddening”, Doidge says.

“I didn’t fully appreciate that the ending was so close until the last quarter of last year. It all came to a head very, very quickly. So the vast majority of our suppliers were surprised and, of course, disappointed.

“Some of those relationships do go back a very long way. We’ve been working with Kistler for about 25 years. Our suppliers have been really supportive and they know that we’ve done our very best for them as long as we’ve been going.”

Does Doidge think that other suppliers, of a similar size, could be vulnerable?

“Well, I can’t speak for other people, and I wouldn’t want to, but clearly you need to have fairly deep resources to be able to get through this kind of situation,” he says. “And I think those companies that are going to survive are going to be ones that have deeper pockets than The Wine Treasury finally had.”

Three members of staff lost their jobs, along with Doidge and fellow director Rory Benham.

“I’m taking a couple of months out to explore a few things that are of interest to me and consider my options and what I’m going to do,” says Doidge. “Perhaps some role in customer education; regional tastings, that kind of thing. Maybe some brand ambassadorial work; maybe a bit of wine writing, which is something I’ve always wanted to do.”