There are some businesses you just wish you’d dreamed up yourself. The sort of business that takes you off to vineyards from Puglia to Australia, local cuisine. The sort of business, say, run by JeromeSmoking circles
Harlington Wine, the high-touch concierge service, was conceptualised in July last year over several meetings with Global Partnership. Harlington persuaded friends and business partners to develop a market disruptive wine concierge service and app that would transform the generic, tired and dusty Wine Club offering that has been serviced by the same company under many different guises since the early 1960s.
It all started six years ago under parent company Harlington Wine founded by father-and-son team David and Jerome Harlington. David helped Jerome set up a wine broking company supplying and broking wines to Waitrose, Wells & Young’s, The Ledbury, Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, Texture, The Gilbert Scott and many more independent restaurants, caterers and delicatessens, both locally and nationally. Indeed, the journey of discovery for the father-and-son team began long before then. David Harlington’s love of wine reaches back over 30 years, and his son Jerome has the same abiding passion.
Wine trailblazers
Discovery is a word you find yourself reaching for more than once when talking about Harlington Wine. Discovery of new and emerging wine regions across the world; discovery of new flavours and food-pairings; discovery of a new way to develop an interest in real wine; discovery of a new way to find and buy real wines.
“We’re keen to demystify wine and to debunk a lot of the myths that have taken root over the years,” explains Jerome Harlington. “For us, it starts with our Club wines; these are the wines we’ve discovered from getting to know producers from wine regions across the world. These are ‘the best wines you have never heard of ’ and they help our customers explore the diversity of wine from off the beaten track.”
For the wine-afraid, or those starting to find the usual array of Bordeaux and clarets a little too predictable, Harlington Wine has come up with several intriguing and highly effective answers. “Everyone has a unique palate —you could call it a taste profile — so our starting point is to offer our members a taste test and consultation to understand the flavours and wine styles they would naturally enjoy,” says Harlington.
For the Harlingtons, this system as a starting point is highly effective. “We think wines are best when they’re paired with the right foods, and we pass that information on to our customers too. We find it really helps to dispel the smoke and mirrors surrounding wine, and gives customers a genuine, informed choice,” he adds.
I don’t need persuading, though I wonder if others might, those who prefer to stick with what they know. What happens, for instance, if someone buys a wine they don’t like? “We’ve tried to remove the element of risk for our customers,” says Harlington. “We offer a 100% guarantee on all our Club wines, which means if a customer chooses a wine that they later find isn’t really to their taste, we replace it or refund in full.”
Locally sourced
So how does a wine make it on to the Harlington Wine Club list? For Harlington, nothing can take the place of being at the source, meeting the producers and tasting the product at its point of origin. Harlington describes their approach as best summarised by the Slow Food Movement, an international movement that espouses the pleasures of real food over fast food and aims to reconnect us to where and how our food is produced — even who produces it. The movement started in the late 1980s and is, appropriately enough, extending its influence slowly but surely.
Perhaps the movement is best characterised by Jerome’s description of how Harlington Wine chooses its produce. “Of course the wines we source have to be of good quality,” he says. “But it’s more than that. We know the producers well; we’ve sat with them around a table and shared a meal. We can guarantee the provenance and quality of the wine, and the production methods used. And we import direct from the vineyard — it’s an unmediated supply line.”
“For us to introduce a wine to our members, it has to be made in an ecological and sustainable way. That means minimal manipulation, and no overuse of chemicals –especially sulphites, which are widely used as a preservative. Sustainability doesn’t stop at the vineyard; we follow it through to the shipping, the storage methods we use once the wine arrives in the UK and distribution. Need we add that the packaging is 100% recyclable?”
Global reach
Given that Harlington Wine sources from all corners of the world, including France, Italy, Slovenia, Macedonia, California and Australia, these are impressive environmental credentials. Nor does the sustainable philosophy stop there; fairness is a vital part of the equation. “We pay our producers a fair price,” Harlington explains.
“And because we deal directly with them and ship straight from the vineyards, we don’t have agents or middlemen chipping away at the margins. This means we can both pay the producers fairly and pass on any savings directly to our members who save between 10% and 30% versus the market norm retail prices.”
Browsing the Harlington Club wines, I’m prepared for unfamiliarity but it’s still a surprise to see so many new names there. Jerome takes up the story. “We don’t shy aware from the classic areas, such as Burgundy or Bordeaux as we have found that there are so many undiscovered wines nestled there too as most of the trade brokers and suppliers just stick to the tried-and-tested Chateau. We also love to bring in wines from emerging regions. It’s all about discovery, finding unknown producers who haven’t exported before. One of the great pleasures is the ‘unfurling’ of a wine, how one sip can take you on a journey to the heart of the region where it was made.” Anyone who has ever found a sip of wine suddenly recalls a languid Mediterranean lunch, or conjures a sun-drenched, poplar-lined hillside will know what Harlington Wine aims to bring to our shores.
They also bring that same vision right to your door.
“Because we ship the complete range of wines from the producers, we can offer our members a virtual, sensory tour from the comfort of their own homes,” he says. Since wine is often best consumed with the complementary flavours of good food, the Harlington team helpfully supply food-pairing tips and style guides as well as webinars and wine taster kits that are an invaluable aid to choosing only the wines we’ll be sure to love. There’s even a Trusted Wine Advisor service for premium club members to provide guidance on choosing the perfect wine to accompany the meal we’re planning to cook and to help ensure customers get the most out of their membership.
Identifying wine
The Harlington Wine Club sounded fantastic to me but I was itching to show Harlington a picture of a bottle that I’d discovered whilst on holiday in Portugal last year. I’d taken a picture on my phone but had struggled to find it anywhere when I got back to the UK.
Harlington’s eyes lit up – “you’ve just hit upon the second service we offer with our Harlington Wine Club and app,” he exclaimed, “we noticed that a lot of people were taking pictures of bottles of wine and with my background in broking, friends and customers alike were asking me to source the wine for them. So we have developed a search facility within the Harlington Wine App where you can take a photograph of an obscure bottle of wine anywhere in the world and we will source it for you and arrange for it to be delivered to your door.”
I was now under no illusion as to how innovative and market changing the Harlington Wine Club is and I wanted to learn more. Jerome summarised the main offerings of the Harlington Wine Club as follows:
• The first wine club that allows you to source the wine YOU want from anywhere in the world and have it delivered it straight to your door.
• The first wine club to deliver an app that allows you to take a picture of some obscure bottle anywhere in the world and get it sourced and sent straight to you.
• The first wine club to combine the supply of exceptional Club wines that you’ve never heard of with a proper learning experience, enabling its members to enjoy wine and learn more about it in a safe, non-judgmental environment.
I was keen to get hold of the app and to become a Harlington member right away. Jerome could see I was keen but had to stop me there, stating that “the Harlington Wine Club is exclusively available to Global Partnership and their family office members”.
I’m working on Jerome to become an honorary member!
