Tell us about the new wine bar and retail store you have opened?
It’s certainly another one of my mad ideas. However, it makes perfect sense with regards to commercial diversification and spreading risks. Covid was a great leveller and what I personally learned from that is you can’t put all your eggs in one basket. Those who suffered the most were those who were very commercially rigid.
Coulure Wine Bar, gives us another avenue for getting wines to the market. This is our first foray into B2C and it brings fresh enthusiasm and rejuvenation to the team.
Having spent so long building up your wine importer business - why did you want to open up a bar and shop at a time when so many hospitality businesses are struggling?
Mags Janjo says he knows it is a risk to open a wine bar in such touch conditions for hospitality but he spent has years getting to the point when he knows it is the time for him and his business
I’m not oblivious to the challenges of bricks and mortar. Hospitality is experiencing its toughest period, certainly in my 10 plus years experience. However, I’m a believer in opportunity in troubling times. We have been deliberate with our actions, our location, our budget, our size and our offering.
For example, the community around us, consists mainly of young, working families. The area has a real neighbourhood feel, which we are keen to bed into. It has seen some exciting new openings and has been nothing but supportive of us thus far. We had neighbours popping their head through the door to wish us well and express their excitement, even whilst we were renovating.
Our space is intimate, with just 16 covers in the main reception space, with a further six to come in the lounge. This means in reality, one person can run it if need be. Thereby, keeping our costs down.
By integrating our wholesale business, we can control product costs without upsetting our trade clients but still offer our guests remarkable value.
What range of wines and styles are you listing and the price range?
Mags Janjo is able to supply Coulure with wines from his own wine importer business MJ Wine Cellars and is providing a platform for many black-owned wineries and winemakers
The space allows us to show around 30% of the MJ Wine Cellars portfolio. This means we can always tinker with wines while things new and exciting. Price point ranges from £15-£180. However, our average bottle price sits around £20-£30.
The idea is to cover the classics, Burgundy, Bordeaux, Tuscany etc, while also introducing exciting bits from Greece, Cyprus, Hungary and so on.
What sort of customer base are you hoping to attract?
We are keen to keep this a neighbourhood wine shop and wine bar. Our bread and butter guests, live within 15 minutes of us. This allow us to form real connections with the local, take feedback on board and continue to improve our offering in real time.
How does it work between having a shop and a bar - are you selling wines to drink in the bar?
With an on and off-premise licences, guests can simply walk in and pick a bottle off the shelves. Alternatively, they can choose a bottle to drink in for a £20 corkage, and also select from our ever changing by-the-glass menu.
What opening hours do you have and why did you want to have those times?
We are open from 12pm-10pm Tuesday to Sunday. Everything is very much a a learning curve for us at the moment. We have now brought in coffee machine and have a cafe vibe during the day, switching to wine-mode in the evenings.
When you say we who is your business partner?
Award-winning sommelier Henny Zinzuwadia is the face of Coulure and is there every day serving customers and bringing her personality to the business
Henny Zinzuwadia is a multi-award winning sommelier with an enviable list of restaurants under her belt. She has a real passion for creating memorable and iconic experiences through food and wine.
Henny runs the space on a day-to-day basis and is responsible for our seamless service.
Why have you opened the site where you have?We had looked around for about six months, with lots of research. This was just perfect for us, the space, the type of clientele, our neighbouring businesses and things like the logistics of staff getting to and from the site, all seamlessly fit into place.
Tell us about the name Coulure - what is the inspiration for that?
The Coulure site on a busy road in south Tottenham before it was transformed into the bar it has become
If you build it...they wil come...
It’s a bit tongue in cheek. To the wine nerd, they think Coulure is terrible, reduced yields and so on. This space is about celebrating the beauty in being small and sending a message that small doesn’t necessarily mean bad.
What is now like to have the bar open?
A big sigh of relief, seeing a busy service with all the tables occupied, the artwork, the music. It really feels great.
What advice would you give to anyone else looking to do a similar project?
It is simultaneously easier and harder than you think it would be. It’s like anything else in life, once you know what to do, it’s relatively straightforward from there. The challenge is, it’s taken me almost 20 years to amass the knowledge and experience to know what to do.
Find a decent space, in a decent location, budget to within an inch of your life, and always carry a bit of fat. Things always creep out of the shadows that you don’t see.
Just be honest with yourself and your guests, I find sometimes, people are so desperate for the finished article, that they forget the human element. Things will always go wrong, how you respond to this can endear you to guests.
How is the wine importer business - MJ Wine Cellars - going and what have been the big step changes there?
The wholesale side has been fantastic. We’ve shown year on year growth for the last four years. We have expanded our wine range while also offering different solutions to our clients.
Examples of some of the food being produced at Coulure
For example, we’ve added wineries like Weingut Dr Hermann from the Mosel valley, one of the few producers with red slate in the region. We have also beefed up our US selection with wineries such as Peirano Estate and Brown Estate from Lodi and Napa, respectively.
At the same time, we’ve expanded our solutions to high street retailers; we have about a dozen retailers own labels in the market.
We have also entered the bulk shipping game, which allows us to be more cost effective, while simultaneously remaining commercially sustainable throughout the supply chain.
Does having two businesses now spread your risk and widen the opportunities?
Spot on, it just adds another string to the bow in terms of routes the market. There are wines we have imported for their stunning quality which have historically struggled, perhaps due to the obscurity of the grape or region.
However, with a bar space, you can hand sell them and watch guests face light up once they try it.
I’ll give you a perfect example, Cas Amaro Falatorio Sercial from Lisbon, typically a slow seller to via wholesale. It has consistently been one of our top performers in the bar since we opened. Both by-the-glass and by-the-bottle.
* You can find out more about Coulure at its website here. You can follow them on Instagram at @coulure_wine.
* You can find out more about MJ Wine Cellars at its website here.
