Digby Fine English Wine

Idea

Introduction

The Digby brand of English sparkling wine is authentically modern with a respect for the past, focussed first and foremost on quality yet remaining playful, like the lining of a Savile Row suit.

The Company is developing a portfolio of fine sparkling wines that are structured, rich, classy, fresh, but with underlying strength of being punchy, confident, bold. Wines that are true to their origin: England.

Sales of Digby’s first ever vintage of sparkling wine were launched at a quintessentially English event on the Bowls Lawn, Hyde Park, London on 30th July 2013. This 2009 Vintage consists of the 2009 Reserve Brut and 2009 Rosé Brut and retail for £35-£45 in shops like Selfridges and £60-£80 in top restaurants.

We believe our approach to quality, that of a pure négociant, will enable us to produce the finest wines in England by building long-term relationships with a number of meticulously managed vineyards across English Wine Country then focusing on achieving the ideal blend.

Intended impact

Innovations: Why will we win?

The traditional approach to starting a wine business is to focus initially on buying land and planting a vineyard. This is not only capital intensive, but slow (it takes 3-6 years for a vine to mature) as well as risky since a good site is never really known until proven by good crops. We are instead focussed on building a luxury brand, leveraging the availability of grapes for sale from farmers and winemaking capacity from contract winemakers. Our experience is that this is a well-proven strategy in the Old and New World wine regions, but is not prevalent in England.

For example many of the large French Champagne houses follow the négociant model like us. Branding is at the heart of all we do. We have a design-led presentation of our products, achieved by collaborating with one of London's best brand agencies, Big Fish.

Great care and attention go into the production of every single bottle of our English sparkling wine. We spend much time in our partner vineyards to help ensure top quality fruit is available for harvest. In October, grapes are hand-harvested in whole bunches to preserve the delicate skins. Pressing at the winery is performed with very gentle pressure so that only the best juice is removed.

The Founders work collaboratively with our winemaking supremo, Dermot Sugrue, to develop the Company’s slowly emerging house style and determine the best wines to make with each year’s individual grapes. The Traditional Method wines are made using the Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier and Chardonnay varieties, with an average of three years cellar ageing in bottle.

And then there is the element of experimentation – combining the art and science of winemaking – that comes into play every year. It is this craft and patience that come together to make a product worthy of our brand. The exact disgorgement date that marks every bottle of our wine is a nod to this care that has been taken from vineyard to glass.

Substantial accomplishments to date

Contracted for highest quality grapes & one of England’s best winemakers.

Built & trademarked innovative brand identity with one of London's top branding agencies.

Closed first fundraising round, bringing total cash invested to date to over £400,000.

Won Silver medal from Decanter 2013 (putting our wine in the top 11% of all 14,362 wines tasted) & UKVA competitions.

Formally launched brand & sales on 30th July 2013 with a positive reaction from wine critics & press (clippings: http://tinyurl.com/DigbyPress).

Initial customer list is prestigious:

• Selfridges – Voted Best Department Store in the World
• Vagabond Wines – Harpers 2013 Best UK Independent Wine Retailer
• La Trompette – One Michelin Star
• Gillray’s Steakhouse & Marriott London County Hall, Five star hotel
• Restaurant Story – One Michelin Star
• Hedonism Wines – Decanter 2013 London Wine Merchant of the Year

Strong rate of sale achieved in first holiday trading season. Targeting to be profitable in calendar year 2014.

Monetisation strategy

The Company is focused on the production and marketing of fine English sparkling wine made using the grape varieties of Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier and Chardonnay, as are the top Champagnes.

The Company is taking an approach recommended to it by established industry players outside the UK:

• Buying grapes, rather than planting a vineyard, which means we have a much faster time to market and much, much lower CAPX.
• Producing sparkling wine through a contract manufacturer rather than by building a winery, leveraging existing capacity and skills and with almost no CAPX.
• Focusing intensively on branding and marketing, while keeping sales and distribution in-house – building a close, loyal customer base to achieve a high but sustainable price point. The brand goals for the Company are to establish a deep, emotional resonance with our customers, thereby achieving lasting margin defence. This approach plays to the weakness of the competition and to the strengths of the Founders.

It also means that most of the capital that goes into the Company would go into inventory. The Company contracts to buy in its grapes for several reasons:

• Ability to select the very best grapes from across southeast England.
• To obtain a variety of flavour profiles from different vineyards for blending.
• For increased scalability.
• To significantly reduce the Company’s capital investment required as we avoid land / equipment / infrastructure spending, planting of vines and care of the vines for several years before they become productive.
• For much faster time to market, since a new vineyard would take from three to six years to produce fruit in commercial quantities.
• To lower the overall risk level as it is not dependent on the weather and topography of one or a small number of locations, but rather can source the best grapes from multiple sites across the southeast of England.

Use of proceeds

The Company has had substantial cash investment of over £400k already by the Founders and from its pre-launch First Fundraising Round. These past investments paid for initial production and the CAPX required for launch. This Seedrs campaign forms part of the Company’s Round 2 of external fundraising. Round 2 will provide growth capital to help scale up our production. The production of our luxury sparkling wine takes a minimum of three years after the October grape harvest to be ready for sale, so the main use of capital by the Company is investing in work in progress on the Balance Sheet. The production costs to be invested in are buying raw materials (i. e. English-grown, high quality grapes) and paying our contract manufacturer to manufacture and store new English sparkling wine for future sale for an average of three years.