For South African wine estates
The sale your tasting room makes shouldn’t end at the door.
Saber Wine is being built so South African estates can sell to British visitors at the cellar door, and have the wine meet them at home.
You’ve seen this moment.
They taste it.
Visitors from Britain, on holiday. Your wine is the best thing they’ve had all trip.
They want it at home.
They ask whether they can buy some for back in Britain.
The moment passes.
There’s no simple way to say yes. By the time they’re home, the sale has gone.
What if you could simply say:
“Of course. When would you like it delivered?”
The same bottle, bought in Britain today
- Your cellar
- Importer
- Distributor
- Retailer
- Their glass
Bought at your cellar door, with Saber Wine
- Your cellar door
- Saber Wine
- Their door, in Britain
Not to scale. We’ll put real figures on it together, and they’ll be yours.
This isn’t instead of your importers. It’s a sale that doesn’t exist today: the visitor who is already standing in your tasting room.
What it’s worth, on your own numbers.
We don’t put figures on a web page, because the only ones that matter are yours. Tell us roughly what you export and what you’re paid a bottle, and in a couple of minutes we’ll show you what this would mean for your estate. Every line, laid out on the table.
Partners, not clients.
You carry the hard work, the long hours and the risk of making the wine. We think you should share properly in what it earns. So there’s one model, the same for every estate, and we’ll show you all of it.
We’d like to be able to call some of the best winemakers in South Africa partners of ours, and to keep showing our faces at home.
Who we are
Jonathan Burt
Cape Town, Stellenbosch, then London.
Johann
Cape Town, Stellenbosch, then London.
We’re starting with a small group of founding estates.
Arrange a conversationHow it works
From your tasting room to their door.
This is how the partnership is designed to work. We’re setting it up now with our founding estates, and when we meet we’ll show you exactly where each part stands.
The sale happens at your cellar door.
Your team makes the sale, as they always have. The visitor buys there and then, for delivery in Britain.Your wine goes to Britain on consignment.
You send a first shipment. We look after the journey.It’s held in Britain until it’s wanted.
Your wine waits there for the people who bought it.It’s delivered to their door.
The visitor gets the wine they tasted with you, at home.You’re paid as it sells.
You see what sold and what you earned.
What we’ll ask of you
- Your first shipment, on consignment.
- A cellar door that champions it.
- A little of your team’s time to get set up.
What we’ll bring
The thinking. We’ve mapped out what a good tasting-room moment looks like, how your team can offer it, and what happens after the visitor goes home. We’ll share all of it with you. We can’t do it for you, but we’ll be alongside you the whole way.
Our story
Two lads from Cape Town.
We grew up around the corner from each other and met at Stellenbosch. Like a lot of our friends, we ended up in London, building careers in finance.
Somewhere along the way, South African wine started disappearing from British shelves. One by one, the brands we loved dropped away. So we started bringing it over ourselves, for friends and family at first. Over ten years it grew by word of mouth. We never advertised.
And we noticed something. The people most ready to buy South African wine weren’t in Britain at all. They were standing in your tasting rooms, glass in hand, wanting to take it home, and nobody could sell it to them for delivery in Britain.
That’s what Saber Wine is for.
Jonathan Burt & Johann
Talk to us
Let’s sit down together.
A first conversation takes about an hour, at your estate or on a call. It costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
What happens
- We tell you who we are and how it works.
- We work through the numbers together: yours, not ours.
- You leave knowing what it could mean for your estate, and what we’d ask of you.
Useful to have to hand
- Roughly how many bottles you export a year, and what you’re paid a bottle.
- About how many visitors come through your tasting room in a season.