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Masters to Watch: Henrico van Lammeren

A good wine is actually indispensable during Christmas dinner. MASTERS talked to Henrico van Lammeren, CEO of the family business Vinites. Which trends does he see in the wine field and which wine should you arrive with this Christmas to properly surprise your guests at the table?
John van Helvert

Storytelling

"When I was still working at a subsidiary publisher of De Telegraaf, I developed a loyalty program for the subscribers of the daily newspapers produced there based on their areas of interest, including food and drink. Together with Vinites, I developed a wine website - that was something totally new twenty years ago. A year and a half later, I was the wine importer's marketing manager. That was quite a turnaround for me, because until then I didn't drink wine at all. Now I can really crave certain grapes and flavors at night, one time a Cabernet Sauvignon, the next a delicious Sangiovese. People sometimes ask about my best wine moment. That's when I joined Vinites: that's when a world opened up for me. Wines have enriched my life, and part of that is in the storytelling. I am a storyteller and behind every bottle of wine is a story. Vinites differentiates itself from other wine importers in several ways. First, Italian and Spanish wines are the backbone of our assortment. Second, with the exception of consumers, we deliver to all channels in the Netherlands: the hospitality industry, wine specialty stores, wholesalers, Internet players and supermarkets. Third, Vinites is a family business, founded in 1979 by owner Eddy de Boer. Winemakers like working with us because of this family structure: short lines, approachable, enthusiastic. 95 percent of our wineries we do on an exclusive basis and the majority of them are also family businesses - that gives a huge click."

Better for more

"The trend in wine that I observe is 'better for more.' There is a world of difference in quality between a five-euro bottle from the supermarket and the same wine from the same area that you buy for double the amount at a specialty wine store. During corona, more and more consumers started enriching their homemade food, whether bought in the familiar trays at a restaurant or not, with wine from specialty wine stores. That has taken off in a big way. But good and accessibly priced wines will always exist. So now with the energy crisis, you see some people taking a step down in their spending and picking a slightly cheaper wine, because they do want to continue to enjoy it. Another trend is driven by climate change. That leads to the shifting of temperature zones, which prevents certain grapes from growing or increasing sugar, which increases alcohol content. So you start sourcing wines from cooler areas, including the Netherlands: we work with Wijnhoeve de Kleine Schorre from Schouwen-Duiveland, which produces a range of wines from classic grape varieties originally from Alsace. Our history may be in Italy, but in addition we have wines from almost every wine-producing country, even Patagonia."

Firing

"Besides better and cool climate wines, biodynamic and natural wines are more in demand. Yet another trend is that consumers are drinking less alcohol - and the ideal non-alcoholic wine has not yet been found. We drink from each other's pond the; one time you lose some ground to special beer, the next to gin-tonic. My challenge lies in being able to offer as much as I can to my customers. Actually, I would like them to be able to buy everything they are looking for from us based on the one-stop-shopping principle. We respond to that by offering certain spirits products from Italy that fit well with our portfolio. Then you have to think about grappa, whiskey and also gin: the Marconi 42 has really gone through the ceiling. We even worked with beer brewery Peroni for a few years. We keep innovating, even though the wine world is a very traditional world. 7,000 years ago, people were already drinking wine, when there wasn't even beer. There is so much history and culture behind it! Just imagine: we work with the oldest wine dynasty in the world, Barone Ricasoli: that family has been making wine since 1141. Those people have been through everything: shelling by knights on foot and on horseback, attacks by the Germans. Talk about storytelling!"

Mission

"The thing I like most about my job is that you get people excited about the product very quickly. Funnily enough, being in wine has made my family drink better wine. I got a message from my cousin last week: 'We started red wine tonight. How much you have brought us! Because we are now drinking something completely different than before.' That's my mission: to connect people with better quality wines. At Restaurant M* at MASTERS EXPO, we put guests in touch with a sparkling wine from Gusbourne Estate, a top-of-the-bill sparkling producer from Appledore in the English county of Kent, where rising temperatures now allow grapes to be planted. Twenty-five years ago, that would not have been possible. The guests seated at the table in Restaurant M* have experienced everything. But we're really going to surprise them with this!"

 

MASTERS MAGAZINE

The winter issue of MASTERS was created in collaboration with Jordi van den Bussche. Many will know him as YouTuber Kwebbelkop, yet he has been working hard as an entrepreneur for some time, as he reveals in the Big Interview. What's new is that his company JVDB Studios is offering to do social media marketing and short-format content marketing for other companies. "They can also go and figure it out themselves, but we cracked the code." Jordi gives a stage to like-minded entrepreneurs such as Jay-Jay Boske, Demy de Zeeuw, Chahid Charrak and Marcella de Bie, and discusses developments around games, crypto and NFT: "Just as bitcoin turned the financial system upside down, the same will happen with gaming." This extra-thick winter issue also features Lengers' first own ship, an interview with Corendon chief Atilay Uslu, specials on the new BMW 7 Series and Samsung foldables, and - exclusively for MASTERS! - an interview with Max Verstappen.

MASTERS #52 with guest editor Jordi van den Bussche