Scaling a wine brand to 30 million bottles, wine sales techniques, and the future of the wine market with Robin Copestick

Summary

In this episode of Dolia Talks, Giovanni Binello sits down with Robin Copestick, managing director of Freixenet-Copestick, longtime industry leader, and co-creator of the iHeart phenomenon, to unpack what still drives success in wine sales and branding. Robin recounts how an accidental part-time job in a London wine shop at 19 turned into a 40+ year career, shaped by hands-on experience across every role in the business and a leadership style grounded in empathy for frontline teams. He explains how iHeart was born from a deceptively simple sketch (“I ♥ Pinot Grigio”), then scaled rapidly by cutting through consumer confusion with instantly recognisable cues, strong shelf standout, and reliable liquid quality that earned repeat purchases, proving itself first in convenience before winning supermarkets. Looking ahead, Robin argues there’s always room for new brands (noting most top UK brands didn’t exist 25 years ago), but success now requires a fully integrated “360°” approach spanning production, packaging, logistics, sustainability, and modern communications, with sales teams able to tell that whole story. He sees direct-to-consumer as useful for credibility, community, and experimentation but not a substitute for retail scale; agrees the market will polarise with the mid-tier under pressure; expects US tariff disruption to stabilise; and believes generational “wine panic” is overplayed compared with broader shifts in how people socialise and choose drinks. Finally, he highlights the rise of genuinely good low/no alcohol wines, and sees sustainable formats like Packamama’s recycled PET bottles as a realistic future, drawing a parallel to how screwcaps went from stigma to standard, while urging the industry to stop “navel gazing” and make wine simpler, more exciting, and more fun for consumers.