The Wine Reserve
The Wine Reserve is a wine merchant based in Cobham in South London. The character and personality of the shop drive the brand and keep local customers coming back time and again.
Challenge
The Wine Reserve needed an ecommerce platform that could handle a structured wine catalogue that changed frequently, while supporting both individual bottle sales and mixed cases with automatic quantity discounts.
The platform had to integrate with their existing purchasing and inventory system to keep stock accurate. The small internal team needed to manage promotions, pricing and content themselves without relying on developers. Checkout had to stay simple and secure for retail customers.
Selling drinks online poses for expensive shipping costs, so we need to find a way to incentivise customers to order more than one bottle at a time to manage the labour and shipping costs required in picking, packing, packaging and shipping individual bottles so that the customer can ultimately get the best value.
Goals
- Build an ecommerce platform for curated wine sales
- Enable mixed case purchasing with discounts
- Provide secure, straightforward checkout
- Integrate email marketing for customer retention
- Allow the team to manage promotions and pricing without developer support
- Include advanced levels of SEO and digital marketing to be competitive
Background
The Wine Reserve has built a strong reputation in the UK wine market through expert-led curation; every bottle is personally selected by the team. Beyond retail, they supply wines for Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET) courses, reinforcing their standing in the education and specialist wine sector. The Wine Reserve also has a unique range of craft beers and spirits.
Approach
We worked closely with The Wine Reserve to understand their catalogue structure, pricing logic and internal workflows through a series of discovery workshops.
As their long-term digital partner, we've delivered design upgrades, development, hosting, integrations, and ongoing support to nurture year-on-year growth in their online sales.
Solution
We built the site on Drupal 10 with Drupal Commerce. Customers can buy individual bottles or build mixed cases, with discounts applied automatically when they hit quantity thresholds.
Stripe handles payments, Klaviyo powers email communications, and CloudSend supports shipping workflows.
Key Features
Mixed Case Pricing
Discounts apply automatically when customers build mixed cases, encouraging larger orders without adding friction to the buying journey.
Structured Wine Catalogue
Searchable, filterable catalogue allowing customers to discover wines by type, region, price and other attributes.
Promotion Management
The team creates, schedules and adjusts promotional campaigns using Commerce Promotions no developer required.
Secure Checkout
Stripe integration provides a smooth, secure payment experience.
Email Marketing Integration
Klaviyo integration, enables automated email campaigns and customer retention.
Product Feeds
Shared with Google Merchant, Wine Searcher, and Direct Wines, from which pass through a high level of referral traffic.