Why sherry and English fizz will be toast of the town this Christmas

English sparkling wine, Eastern European reds and dry fino sherry are flying off the shelves as families stock up ahead of Christmas.

That is the view of Rowan gormley, the boss of Majestic Wine, Britain’s largest specialist wine retailer with more than 200 stores around the country and sales of £465m last year.

And as customers get in the festive spirit, bigger has become better, both in terms of wine and champagne.

‘Magnums have become trendy,’ says gormley.

Majestic has undergone something of a transformation under the ebullient 55year-old’s leadership.

it has converted its store managers from shelf stackers, taking their marching orders from head office, into wine enthusiasts who know and understand the tastes and aspirations of their customers.

‘We’ve got bright young people in stores who love wine and are very good at helping customers discover wines they probably wouldn’t have found themselves,’ the south African proclaims.

so as to empower managers, gormley, parachuted into Majestic through a reverse takeover by naked Wines in 2015, led ‘a bonfire of silly rules’.

And to encourage store bosses to seize the opportunity over the holiday season, when so much business is done, managers at the best performing shops this Christmas will earn bonuses of up to £10,000. That compares with a miserable £400 to £500 before the gormley makeover.

‘We’ve tried to get the stores as close to having your own shop without having to go and find £100,000 to finance it. We call it franchise-light.’

Clad in a plaid shirt and bomber jacket, serial entrepreneur gormley, the founder of Richard Branson’s Virgin Money, is infectiously enthusiastic about wine. he likes nothing more than diving into the market to buy ‘50 cases of something delicious at a great price’ and getting it onto the shelves in super-rapid time.

HEis working hard on giving consumers better, more value-formoney choices in wine. since the Brexit vote, for example, he notes a rise in wines coming from Eastern Europe.

‘Romania and slovenia have produced very good wine for a long time. But slightly snobbishly, people have ignored it,’ he says.

A wine that gormley recommends is a dry Furmint from hungary which historically has been associated with the sweeter Tokaji brands. ‘Absolutely delicious,’ he gushes.

Majestic also needs to be fleet of foot when it comes to the festive table and filling the holiday cocktail cabinet consumer, because tastes change rapidly.

‘sherry is making a big comeback,’ gormley notes.

That is not the sweet harveys Bristol Cream sherry favoured by Aunt Maud ‘but the dry style, the fino drunk with some salted almonds,’ he says.

The other big winner is another favourite tipple of a past generation. ‘Craft gin grows by leaps and bounds,’ the Majestic chief adds.

indeed, Britons have bought more than 47m bottles so far this year, setting a record.

it was partly driven by the growth of craft and premium distillers such as sipsmith. gin sales in the UK have doubled in value over the last six years, reaching £1.2bn in the 12 months to the end of september.

The more local the gin, the more popular it is among consumers. And the boom in gin has been enormously beneficial to fashionable mixer brands.

‘People come into our stores and ask for Fever-Tree,’ he notes.

The popularity of Fever-Tree, whose shares have risen more than 1,000pc since it floated on the london stock Exchange in late 2014, is ‘phenomenal’ gormley says. ‘schweppes must be absolutely kicking themselves,’ he adds.

The other big surprise is the number of people wanting English sparkling wines in preference to French champagne.

The demand is ‘fantastic’ gormley says. so much so that Majestic is crowdfunding its own sparkling wine production and let customers name it. ‘They didn’t call it Winey McWineface, which i am very grateful for,’ gormley quips. instead they opted for the name of Anglo-saxon princess Beora. The vineyards are in Kent but it is too soon to get it on the shelves for this holiday season.

Even though Majestic is primarily about wine gormley is hugely supportive of the way in which craft beers are starting to displace the bland, big international brands that have come to dominate the industry. ‘They have much more in common with wine. it doesn’t all taste the same. People do want to taste them and try them and that works for us,’ gormley says.

since taking the helm, gormley he has only closed seven ‘dogs’ out of the 217 branches he inherited.

Majestic’s flagship branch is in fashionable Clapham in south london. The best performing branches are in Oxford and Chichester in West sussex. Both are out- of-town.

GORMlEyhas been focused on making wine buying a better and less stressful experience and in spite of the squeeze on household incomes this Christmas, gormley is confident that the shock to consumer confidence ‘will work its way through the system.’

The net effects of Brexit have been to put at most 20p extra on the price of a bottle which gormley describes as ‘negligible’. he notes that the average bottle of wine ‘is still a lot cheaper than a movie ticket.’

The proprietor of Britain’s biggest wine store chain is confident that consumers will keep quaffing.