The Wine World Has No Sense of Humour. That's The Opportunity.

Fraser Thompson built Chapel Down into one of England's most recognised wine brands. He thought his chapter in English wine was over.

Then he met Tom.

Back in the orbit

About five years ago, Fraser Thompson stepped back from his role as founder and chief executive of Chapel Down Group, one of the businesses that helped put English sparkling wine on the map.

He had no plans to return to the industry.

"I didn't think I would be drawn back into the orbit of English wine again," he says. "But then I met Tom."

For Fraser, any decision to invest or get involved with a business comes down to two things: the people and the product.

The product arrived first.

"It was delicious," he says. "Box one: ticked."

What he saw in Tom

The harder test was the person behind it.

"The product is the easy bit, really," Fraser says. "What you really want is somebody who can lead the business, build a team around them and ultimately conquer the world."

In Tom, he saw something familiar.

"I saw somebody who had the passion, the vision and the opportunity. He had a fire ignited in him and he was quite single-minded about seeing it through."

But what really stood out was the team being built around that ambition, and the self-awareness to do so.

Tom was, as Fraser puts it, "brave enough to go out and find a board of people that complemented the skills that he didn't have."

In Fraser's eyes, that mattered just as much as the ambition itself.

"A great product, a great person, and a great team."

The brand gap

With the exception of Chapel Down and Nyetimber, he argues, there aren't really any serious brands in English wine. Consumers haven't engaged more deeply with the sector because of a lack of education or sommelier tastings, the answer isn't more of what France has taught the wine world. The answer is brand.

"It's creating a brand that people can feel good about, can feel engaged with, that understands them."

Speaking British

That understanding, he says, has to be genuinely cultural - not a veneer of Britishness applied to a format designed in Bordeaux.

"We're marketing to British people. British people have a sense of humour. British people also have a sense of style and they have a sense of who they are. We can use sarcasm."

These things, he notes with some amusement, are almost entirely absent from the world of wine. The category is remarkably homogenous. Which makes the opportunity for something different all the greater.

"Wines that stand out in that, and stand out for the right values, I think have got a great chance of success."

Beyond respect

The ambition at Folc isn't to earn grudging respect, not to be filed alongside the French as an almost-as-good alternative. That's not what Brits respond to, and it's not what Fraser is here to support.

"We want people to think that this is an amazing brand, that actually it makes me laugh, it makes me smile, it understands me, it understands when I drink it, how I drink it, it understands the real world."

That's what Brits love, he says: feeling engaged with a brand that gets them. And that, in a category that has spent decades trying to be taken seriously by the wrong audience, is a genuinely different idea.

"That's exactly what you want people to do about your brands. And that's why I'm excited to be involved in Folc."

So,  now you've head why Frazer is here, do you fancy being a part of it too? 

For the first time, our community can own a real piece of Folc as we're crowdfunding! 

Pre-register now here: https://europe.republic.com/folc/coming-soon

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