The Big Interview: Euan Mackay

Fells MD Euan Mackay tells Sarah Neish what it takes to succeed in the UK market – and why winning over the on-trade requires some razzle-dazzle.

When Euan Mackay took over as the managing director of wine importer Fells in 2023, a little more than a year after the UK lifted its final Covid-19 lockdown, he inherited something of a golden chalice.

“If you were well entrenched in retail, then Covid was the most amazing couple of years. We sold more Port in the UK [during that time] than for as long as records probably go back,” he says. “It was a totally unique phenomenon, just this incredible infatuation people had with the idea of running out of wine. It was a reflection of how important alcohol has been to the UK, and I joined Fells on the back of that.”

Hard truths

The former commercial director of Port and wine business Symington Family Estates, one of the three owners of Fells alongside Familia Torres and Hill-Smith Family Estates, Mackay knows the UK market like the back of his hand. And he doesn’t hold back from giving new producers on the books of Fells the cold, hard truths.

“I always ask producers: ‘Do you actually want your brand to work in the UK? Or are you just ticking a box? Are you willing to put in the work? Because the UK is an incredibly mature, sophisticated market compared to some other markets, where they tend to take whatever a producer has and try to make it work,’” he tells db.

If the answer is “yes”, then he presents them with a trifold checklist of how to win over the market. “You need three things to be successful here. The look and feel of the wine bottle needs to be simple and clean. You need to keep as much weight off your bottle as possible, and keep your alcohol level as consistent as you can.”

Exceptional value

In the UK, Mackay stresses, “it’s all about value, which is something that needs to be proved at every tier, whether that’s entry-level or fine wine”. Nail it, however, and it can be like diving head-first into a treasure trove. “I don’t know a single other market in the world where, if you get it right, you’re suddenly selling 150,000 cases,” he says, pound signs rolling in his eyes like a pub slot machine. “You can really turn the numbers; the UK is very unique in that respect.”

Ultimately, when determining whether a bottle of wine has that magic ingredient, ‘value’, he says: “Can you look your consumer in the eye and, hand on heart, say: ‘This product is really worth it’?”

One wine-producing country that Mackay pinpoints as offering exceptional value right now is South Africa. “You have fabulous value for money in the glass at £10 and above, and particularly at the £15–£25 price point,” he says. “And there’s a lot of specialisation going on, whether that be in Riesling or Chenin Blanc.”

Unravelling economics

That said, Mackay is noticing “a creep back” to European wines in response to the wine oversupply in places like Australia and, more recently, New Zealand. The latter, he thinks, will start to become more noticeable “from this latest vintage”.

So why the return to European wines? In many ways, he says, “the global market is moving faster than the wine world can cope with. It’s why there are lots of producers in Australia and New Zealand saying: ‘Oh shit, I’ve got a whole lot of wine that I don’t know what to do with,’ from plantings they made five to 10 years ago. The economics are beginning to unravel.”

Subsequently, UK buyers are “refocusing on making sure that their European range is solid”.

EPR ‘fiasco’

The glut of wine grapes, coupled with recent changes in UK taxation and what Mackay calls “the EPR fiasco”, means that “these New World wine-producing engine nations are suddenly not performing”.

On the subject of the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) tax, introduced on 1 January 2025, he laments the failure of the UK Government to consult the drinks trade before deciding to implement the unpopular scheme. In theory, the initiative was designed to shift the financial burden of managing household packaging waste (in this case, the recycling of wine bottles, closures, boxes and cartons) from taxpayers and local councils directly onto drinks companies. The levy applies to all forms of packaging, including aluminium, plastic, cardboard, wood and glass, and impacts all UK-based businesses with an annual turnover of at least £1 million and handling more than 25 tonnes of packaging per year.

In reality, the roll-out of EPR has been a comedy of errors, with hundreds of companies mistakenly charged multiple times due to glitches in the system.

“It’s almost laughable,” Mackay says, adding that the government should have “given us the opportunity to help them find a solution to the waste issue, rather than some bods in Whitehall thinking they know what’s going on when they don’t have a clue”.

Red or white?

EPR woes aside, the UK is an exciting place to be if you work in wine. And, contrary to popular belief, Mackay doesn’t hold too much faith in the idea that people are ditching reds entirely for whites.

“Yes, the white wine culture has shifted, but my God, there are some amazing red wines that it should be a criminal offence not to talk about and enjoy,” he says. “At Fells, we are not finding it challenging to sell high-end reds. The key for us is to keep a balance and to ensure that Fells retains diversity and depth, so we can have a conversation with the majority of the market.”

Indeed, Fells represents the full gamut, from easy-drinking supermarket wines Viña Sol and Oxford Landing, right through to Burgundy’s Louis Latour, Bordeaux’s Clarence Dillon, Super Tuscan Grattamacco, esteemed Port houses Graham’s, Cockburn’s and Dow’s, plus Madeira brand Blandy’s.

“Rather than just have a lot of famous names, we’re trying to build a portfolio where people know they can come to us for a broad spectrum of things,” Mackay explains. “It’s about making sure our business is agile and staying relevant to what’s going on in the UK market. That’s why we have a marketing team of 12 or 13 people, when some much bigger businesses than ours only have two or three marketing people.”

Having so many staff keeping their fingers on the pulse means Fells can quickly offer answers whenever challenges crop up for its customers. “Our whole raison d’être is to provide a solution,” he says. “So we’ve invested a lot of money into buying data.”

Some of this data comes from the likes of NIQ, while other consumer data sets come from retailers. “They pay us to go through information they already have under their own roof; they just don’t have the time to look at it,” Mackay shrugs.

Gut feeling

However, regardless of what the data points towards, important decisions always come down to a gut feeling. Can he think of a time when he didn’t listen to that impulse? The answer is yes and it didn’t end well.

During Mackay’s time at Symington Family Estates, the team was looking at making some big design changes for its Warre’s Warrior brand. “Warre’s is one of the oldest Port houses, and the feeling was that the branding was a bit too ‘war-mongery’ and ‘military’, and it needed a new look,” he says.

“We found out that William Warre had a white charger that he rode, so we thought: ‘Let’s put a great big white horse on the label.’ We tested it with consumers, who responded positively and thought it was interesting, but it absolutely nose-dived on the shelf. Ultimately, consumers just didn’t notice the brand any more, because it looked so different to the original label.”

He admits: “I wanted it to work – and it didn’t.”

Where Mackay did follow his gut to great success was with a different packaging redesign altogether, this time for Graham’s aged tawny Ports in about 2012. “We decided to put them in more chunky, more expensive, whisky-style bottles, and our glass supplier said: ‘You do know you’re going to have to sell 600,000 of these just to cover the extra cost of the bottles?’ But my God, it totally revolutionised things. It took those tawnies from being wines that were thought of as old-fashioned and dusty to something bartenders wanted to display proudly on the back bar.”

Cinematic on-trade

That distinction is fundamental, as the on-trade, according to Mackay, simply doesn’t work without a touch of the old razzle-dazzle.

“It’s got to be fun. It’s got to be cinema! You’ve got to make a show of it,” he says.

Despite loving a bit of theatre, the Fells MD is not one for upholding tradition and ritual for their own sakes, as evidenced by his strong views on not having to age Port at home for decades before you can crack open a bottle. “So much is said and written about vintage Port and when you should drink it. People say it would be a crying shame to open it before 25 years, and that you couldn’t possibly drink it before that time. But why not, if you like purity of fruit?” he asks. Whipping out a bottle of Warre’s 2024, he exclaims: “This is a hell of a drink right now, and it’s just been bottled.”

Mackay is not denigrating the fact that some vintage Port wines can age for 100 years or more, “but so much has changed in terms of viticulture, and understanding that we have fruit that expresses itself at the beginning of its life, at the end, and all the way through”, he says – something that is especially important when trying to attract new consumers to the category.

Waving the bottle of Warre’s around enthusiastically, he continues: “Put that in front of most people and they’ll say: ‘Wow!’.”

Gift giving

That wow factor also informed another strategic decision for the Fells business, that of pouring resources into its luxury gifting arm. No longer just a “nice to have”, Fells’ gifting service, which sees the team add bespoke branding for customers across a range of different products from steak knives to advent calendars, has become another revenue source. Indeed, Ed Thornton, development director at Fells, told db: “It can help to ease the pain… when it’s a bad year for the drinks side, it might end up being a great year for gifting.”

According to Mackay: “We’ve lifted gifting into the purpose of our company,” with the service now representing “about 10% of the business”.

Naturally, a significant component of Fells’ gifting options is alcoholic drinks. For instance, it shifts about 50,000 gift packs containing miniature trios of Cockburn’s Port every year. But, interestingly, alcohol brands do not have to belong to the Fells portfolio, and may even include its direct competitors. Case in point – Fells buys rather a lot of bottles of Laurent-Perrier despite the Champagne brand not being represented by Fells (it does, however, count Champagne Henriot in its ranks).

“At one point I think we were buying more half-bottles of Laurent-Perrier and more Absolut vodka miniatures than anyone else in Europe,” Mackay says.

Product design and packaging is all done in-house, with Fells managing “five or six warehouses” in the UK, and gifts shipped all over the world.

Summer smash hit

If he had to put his money behind one product to become the smash hit of summer 2026, what would it be? Copenhagen Sparkling Tea, he says, is flying off the shelves, with sales “up 65% in the first half of this year compared with the same time last year”.

People, he adds, are “quite comfortable” serving it in luxury hospitality settings. “In the Ritz London you literally see staff walking around with a bottle of Champagne in one hand and a bottle of sparkling tea in the other,” he says. “The moment is completely equal for everyone.”

And, looking to the future, where does he plan to steer the good ship Fells? “Next year, we plan to do exactly the same as last year, but better,” he declares.

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