A Premier Champion

Now just a few short months later, it is creating waves in on-line sales, with 200 New Zealand wines from 70 producers on the books.

The New Zealand Cellar is the brainchild of Mel Brown, a former chef, who has found her niche in promoting the very best of New Zealand wine to the UK market.

With cooking all she knew from the time she left school, Brown ended up in London at the age of 21, working for fellow Kiwi, Peter Gordon at Providores. Her time in the kitchen was cut short, when she developed an allergy to the hard water of London, and saw her move onto the floor as front of house manager. It was here her interest in wine began to grow, particularly New Zealand wine. After undertaking WSET intermediate and advanced courses, she was beginning her diploma when Providore’s wine buyer Jeremy Leeming left. Brown stepped into the role.

At this stage, the restaurant had a wine menu dominated by New Zealand wines, but it also featured a dozen “other wines” from around the world. Brown convinced Peter Gordon that maybe the restaurant should concentrate solely on New Zealand (with the exception of Champagne, Port and Sherry). These days Providores has the largest New Zealand wine list of any restaurant in Europe.

The impact of that was diners were exposed to wines that many had never tried before and Brown was being inundated with requests for information about where they could be purchased in London.

“When someone came to me and asked where they could buy this wine, I would give the distributor’s details. But they don’t have a route to market and can’t sell direct to consumers, so it was really difficult,” she says. “There was this demand of people who had cash and wanted to buy premium New Zealand wines, to support the integrity of New Zealand vineyards and they had no way of doing so. I saw a gap in the market and decided to go for it.”

That idea of creating an on-line premium New Zealand wine shop was given even more credence, when she attended a presentation by Nick Mills, on 10 years of Rippon.

“He was pleading with this group of journalists, saying ‘my wine ticks all your boxes, you say it’s amazing, it has the right balance, it has the right characteristics. My story is amazing, my family is amazing and the pictures of my vineyards are amazing. But if I can’t sell my wines, how will we survive?’

 “I thought, gosh I have to sell more Rippon wine. It really touched me, almost to the point where I was welling up. I knew I wanted to contribute to the greater good of the premium New Zealand wine industry and the only way I could do that was to create a platform that highlights and showcases the very best of New Zealand and sell their wine.”

By this stage she and husband Hamish Brown had their first child and she admits she had a kind of “romantic notion” of how The New Zealand Cellar could work. In fact she says, she was extremely naive. 

“My idea was to work from home, it was all going to be very romantic. I would only need myself and I would be able to spend more time with my daughter. I thought I would have really low stock levels and it would be all about the vineyards.”
But Brown hadn’t allowed for how popular her on-line store would be.

“We launched and the reception and support that I received from producers was so over-whelming, that it kind of ignited something for me. I started coming up with all these marketing ideas to promote New Zealand wine. I was getting lots of press and it was like, wow, this is amazing. 

“For me it was all about trying to bring the focus away from supermarkets and own label Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc. It became about really listening to the stories from these producers and communicating them with the integrity that the vineyards needed to uphold along the way.

“I touched on my naivety before – had I known it was going to be so much work, I probably never would have done it. Luckily I had a very supportive husband who has helped me along the way.”

Eight months in, the typical purchaser at The New Zealand Cellar surprisingly isn’t a homesick Kiwi. Brown says the stats so far show that it is older generation Brits, with a disposable income, who have travelled to New Zealand and fallen in love with the stories, landscape, people and wine. They are happy to spend big on good wines, and think nothing about paying £40 to £50 for a bottle of Chardonnay.

Brown could be described as an energiser bunny, full of enthusiasm – and given what she has achieved in such a short time, it’s a fair description. But she isn’t planning on resting on her laurels. Pre Christmas, she opened a pop up store in South London, and in a few short hours sold more than £13,000 of premium New Zealand wine. She is looking at opening a store in the near future, (no details available at the moment) and she has also begun importing direct from New Zealand.

“The UK is such a difficult market to get into. It is established, but it needs a lot of encouragement and nourishment. For smaller producers and New Zealand wineries it can be difficult. So that has kind of sparked another facet to my business, which is importing directly from New Zealand. My aim is to create a small niche portfolio that will ultimately have the exclusive rights to some wines and producers. I want to have small volumes of little bits and pieces from up and coming producers. Quantities aren’t going to be massive, but it will give those smaller producers the opportunity to get into the market and have a presence.”

Brown selects all the wines herself and if she doesn’t feel a particular wine reaches the premium standard she has set, she won’t list it. 

“I am not going to list everything just so I can say I have the largest selection. I am always careful about having the best quality, the best producers and they have to show a genuine interest in what I am doing.”