There has always been a steely confidence about Nik Darlington and what he could offer the wine industry. An individual who has never going to be happy quietly working in the background sourcing, buying and selling wine. That was the day job. That is what came easily to him.
He knew from the moment he decided to start his own wine import and retail business- Red Squirrel Wine in 2012 -that he needed to offer something more than just off beat wines, sourced from up and coming wine countries.
Nik Darlington has always wanted to play an acvtive and vocal part of the wine industry
His background working as both a government researcher and then political journalist, reporting on the ins and out of government strategy for the likes of the he likes of the BBC, Telegraph, Spectator and others, meant he was always going to seek a higher profile and bring his own voice to the industry - even if he was a newcomer coming in from outside.
In his early days in the wine trade he was a journalist’s dream. An up and coming business leader willing to speak knowledgeably and insightfully on the bigger issues facing the industry. Someone who did not shy away from the spotlight, was happy to sit on industry panels and be at the sharp end of industry debate - and the sector was better off for it. Perhaps it was also the management consultant training kicking in that he did before entering the House of Commons in 2010. Either way he knew he how to tell his story and get his message across.
Not that he is in any way pushy or demanding, he just feels he has something to say. Which has always made him such engaging and fascinating company.
“I think working in politics and media taught me that you have shout loud enough then someone will listen,” he says. “I was used to having a media profile. I want to tell people what I think and have a voice.”
His political background meant, he adds, he has always been “comfortable working with people a lot older and experienced than me”. “Mind you I am now having to teach myself how to work with people a lot younger than me!”
Early years
He admits his route into wine may not appear straightforward, but wine has long been a strong influence in his life going back to his school days when he moved with his family to live in Paris from the formative years between 12 and 20.
“Those years growing up in France exposed me to French culture and its food and wine in a way that would not have been possible in the UK at the time,” he says. Not that his parents were in any way wine buffs, but wine was always part of a meal time or social occasion. “Wine was just there,” he adds.
That connection with wine and wine culture grew stronger during his time at Bristol University where he became a keen cook and would scour the city’s delicatessens looking for the right ingredients.
It was only, though, when he became disillusioned with political life and the House of Commons’ journalism scene, and quite how hard it was to break through, that he started thinking about an alternative career that tapped into his business and management consultancy training at Simon-Kucher & Partners.
Nik Darlington joined the wine industry after successful careers as a managment consultant and political journalist
“That’s when I decided to start my own wine business,” he says and utilise his management consultancy experience like working with BMW and major airlines on their pricing strategy models, or universities on their tuition fees.
“As I said I had always been interested in wine, but had not done any formal studies, so ended up doing my WSET level 3. Wine allows you to play in a lot of fields be it culture, history, travel, food and history.”
Good timing
He admits he joined the wine industry at a good time. On the back of the 2008 and 2009 crash, and way before Brexit appeared on the scene. “It was a lot easier time to run a business.”
But you also have to make your own luck and Darlington was certainly ahead of the curve when it came to sourcing and championing lesser known wines, grape varieties and regions with Red Squirrel Wines. “I also read voraciously about what was going on around the world. I was like a magpie, following my nose and learning as you go.”
The Red Squirrel concept quickly took off and he was soon doing healthy numbers initially through its DTC retail site and then expanding into wholesale too.
After its initial success Darlington admits things started to move quicker than he could cope with and for a long two years “he lost sight” of what was important in his life.
“It is a very capital intensive business, particularly when you are growing at the rate we were. You are constantly having to feed the beast and it all became very stressful and unhealthy,” he explains.
Scaling a business from an exciting start-up to an established wine company is hard work and a delicate balancing act. “It’s the biggest obstacle. I found it easy to go from nothing to something. But then you have got to keep the investment coming in order to go to the next level,” he adds.
“Red Squirrel needed to grow and we had reached its ceiling and did not have the head room to grow without a lot more investment,” he adds.
Joining forces
Which is where the opportunity to join forces, and share that pressure with a like-minded and similar-sized business in The Knotted Vine, which started out in the same year as Red Squirrel came along - and a kindred spirit in its founder, David Knott.
“We were two very similar but distinct businesses that complemented each other very well,” he says.
David Knott and Nik Darlington have been able to create a bigger, more effective business with Graft Wine Company by goining forces
The decision to bring “two of the UK’s most significant small importers together” and create Graft Wine Company in 2019 has proved to be a win, win for both sides. Darlington says they are now able to offer the “best of both worlds” where they have a bigger, wider and more diverse portfolio, but are still flexible and nimble enough to react to market demands and create at the same time a “young and exciting wine business”.
“We are still growing, we are profitable and we are sustainable,” says Darlington. Not that it has all been plain sailing, particularly dealing with Covid, Brexit and all the various other trading hurdles the whole industry has had to grapple with over the last five or so years.
Covid came at a particularly good time for the business, admits Darlington. It gave himself, Knottand the rest of the senior team the time to take stock of the fact it had overnight “doubled the size of the business” and there “were a lot of unresolved issues” that needed sorting, but they simply had not had the chance to do anything about them.
“We were able to re-examine our roles and had some hard conversations,” recalls Darlington. “It allowed us to rethink and rework the business.”
It was also perfectly placed to switch Red Squirrel’s DTC back on again and take advantage in the big boom in online retailing during the first wave of Covid in 2020. He also used it as an opportunity to open up a small retail store close to his home in Farnham called Pip of Manor Farm.
A year later and Graft took advantage of post-Covid times by opening up another store - Mother Vine in November 2021 - on Pavilion Road just off Sloane Square in Chelsea, London.
Mother Vine just off Chelsea's Sloane Square has been an added dimension for the Graft Wine Company
Coming out of Covid it was also clear the company would work better if it did not have two chief executives and it was decided that Knott would take the role of managing director and Darlington would concentrate his efforts where his skills lie as marketing director.
“We have got some things wrong, but we are now in a good place.”
Around 70% of Graft’s business in now through the on-trade and serving “great restaurants and wine bars” in London and around the country. It also has a growing trade with leading number of independent wine merchants He says the importer and distribution sector as a whole has become a lot more competitive
Moving on
All of which means Graft is in a very strong position to allow Darlington to move on and achieve a long held ambition - and become a secondary school history teacher.
“The business can grow more sustainably without me. It needs more specialist skills to come in to grow,” he says. “More than simply coping without me it can be even better as it will free up resources.”
“I have got to a point where I want to do other things in my life. To find something that makes me feel really useful and focus on what I love.”
The move into teaching is “something that has been in the back of my mind for some time, going back to my early twenties,” he says. “I woke up one morning and realised I didn’t want to turn to teaching in a decade’s time, love it, and regret not taking the plunge sooner.”
“It is the chance to do something I have always wanted to do, something I really care about. The opportunity to make a genuine contribution to the next generation of people.”
He says it is going to be a big wrench to walk away and, in particular, will “dearly miss" working with people he really cares about. A close-knit team that has been together every step of the year since Knotted Vine and Red Squirrel came together.
Leaving wine
Whilst he might physically be moving out of the sector, his heart will remain very much in wine - and so will his shares in Graft Wine Company. He is also excited about wine’s future and the fact there are now “so many more opportunities for people to discover wines and get excited about it”.
He adds: “The number of interesting wines is increasing all the time. The landscape for wine is so much more exciting than when I started out. Even if it is a harder environment to run a business in.”
But he has his frustrations too. There are still too many people who “fall into the industry because of the love of wine and its lifestyle aspects, without a real passion for the professional business side of it, and that’s the root cause of the lack of competitiveness”.
He says the industry has a delicate balance to get right in the coming years between the need to sell more wine but in the context of an increased anti-alcohol lobby and people simply drinking less.
He ends on a positive note. “I will also miss just how good the hospitality sector is now, not just in London, but all over the country. You can find amazing food and incredible wine lists. Operators who really care about provenance and how wine is very much part of that.”
As for his last line? Well he is journalist, and now an academic, after all: “I feel like I joined the wine industry and am now leaving the hospitality industry.”
