Wednesday's Domaine on rewriting the rules of wine

0:16Hello and welcome to the Tomorrow Brands podcast where we explore what it takes to build a brand of tomorrow. I'm your host, Ruth Pittock, and in this episode, Luke Hemsley shares the honest story behind building Wednesday's Domain, an alcohol-free brand on a mission to preserve, ritual without compromise, and change the way we see non-alcoholic wine forever. Let's get into it. Let's start with your background and how you got to where you are now. I think the first thing to say is that my background is absolutely not in food and drink. So my background, by and large, is in early-stage businesses, tech startups.

0:50startups. Prior to that, I spent three years as a commodities trader out of university, but I realized that I want to set up a business and realized that being a trader was one of the worst ways to go about learning how to do that. And so made the pivot into early stage tech startups. I joined one that was post series A, they had kind of 50, 60 people, I spent 18 months there. And that grew to about 100 people learned a lot there as much as how there's a lot about how to run a business, but also a lot that helped shape ideas about how I wouldn't want to do things. And from there, I was lucky enough to join a very early stage startup called Fluidly.

1:24We had a product which helped businesses manage their cash flow, incredibly unsexy, but very necessary for huge swathes of SMEs across the country. And I joined that as the first employee. So I worked alongside a serial entrepreneur called Caroline for five years. And that business grew to 50, 60 people somewhat messy exit so whilst this is my first experience in food and drink it's not my first experience of seeing a business go from an idea to a product to to something bigger than that and it didn't I think like startup life is either you love it or you hate it it sounds like you got the bug yeah absolutely and that's not to say that there aren't moments or days where I think what the hell am I doing I could have had the easy life but absolutely love it I thrive in the chaos and the disorder and everything that comes with being in a startup yeah very much caught the bug i would say nice and then with the brand it's called wednesday's domain was there a particular wednesday that took you from idea to action yeah it's it's funny that you asked that so for anyone listening who's not familiar with the brand wednesday's domain we're an alcohol-free wine brand and we want to be the midweek wine alternative for food and drink lovers it's important to say that we don't demonize booze we're not anti-wine anti-alcohol we're just saying that there are better options at certain moments.

2:39As to whether or not there was a particular Wednesday, I think with most things in life, the answer is, or certainly for me, the answer is no, there wasn't one defining moment. It was a collection of small experiences that got me interested in the space. And ultimately, those were centered in or rooted in COVID where like a lot of people, I found myself having a drink most evenings. That was how you delineated day from night. And I realized after a month or so of doing it that outside of COVID, I wouldn't be doing that. And I wouldn't be waking up each morning feeling a little bit fuzzy, a little bit below par.

3:13And it was a desire to change that, really, that kind of led me towards the alcohol-free space. It's interesting to hear you ask that question, though, because there were other experiences which I think did feed into that. And a great example of that is that my wife and I, during COVID, went on holiday to Devon, as most of the UK just went towards the coast. And we did that. We're sitting on this packed beach that we had to drive down a small little lane to get to. and I knew we were going to be there all afternoon. I wanted to have a couple of beers, but equally I knew that I had to drive back out.

3:40And I ended up buying a pack of small beers, which are the two, two and a half percent beers. And so I sat there through the afternoon, had a couple of those and ended up driving home. And it really opened my eyes to the experience and the ritual that you can get from no and low alcohol, but also the benefits that you can have being able to drive home, but also feeling absolutely fine afterwards. So that was also quite a key experience, so in the early days when's this mean it's interesting isn't it because i feel as as brits and probably in other parts of europe as well like alcohol is so baked into so many of our social occasions and the way that we relax and unwind and it's hard when you want to drink feel better but not to lose that sense of ritual like you say so it's not actually just about the alcohol makes you feel it's how it it is always fit into our social lives and with wine especially that's a trickier space right so we've seen low and o innovation more in spirits or in kind of spirit alternatives and then beer what's been the biggest early misconception you found with alcohol-free wine i think it's interesting that there are two kind of misconceptions or bits of feedback that come up a lot the first is which i can understand isn't that just grape juice and so that comes up all the time and that will continue to come up i'm sure the second one is isn't it all terrible and i think again that's a misconception that that is rooted in a one-time reality which is that there was a point in the not distant past that almost all alcohol-free wines were terrible so we are fighting an uphill battle to get people past that so a lot of what we do is focus on awareness and appreciation those are the two things that we need to absolutely nail and there's a number of ways that we do that but i would say those are the two misconceptions that that we face a lot and you just mentioned taste i just saw that you've just won two great taste awards yeah which is which is amazing it's interesting i think as a food and drink founder there are dozens and dozens of awards that you can apply for and that you can win and certainly the approach or try to win certainly the approach that i've taken in the last year or so is what are the two or three that really matter and so you have things like the international wine and spirits competition which is more relevant for the trade so sommeliers buyers that sort of thing and then you have others that are more consumer facing and i think great taste is probably the number one example of that So to win two great taste awards for our sparkling wines was lovely.

6:21Yeah, it reminds me of like healthier snacking in a way. I remember when we launched Pop Chips, the biggest barrier was taste because there'd been so much bad innovation. And then you think, oh, I've been told this tastes good. And then you eat it and you're like, no, it absolutely doesn't. And that had done a lot of damage to the category. Bad innovation with a lot of money behind it had just eroded consumer trust. And so having that uphill battle again of trying to prove to people that actually this is different and it tastes good. And I think it's really interesting because if you look at the wine industry, if you look at the entrenched players, you essentially have two things going on.

7:00You have big global conglomerates who tend to have a no and low option within their portfolio. And they do that products produced for optics over enjoyment. And that's just ticking a box. We should have a no and low. and they do it and it's just a bit it's a it's terrible and it gathers dust and no one really wants to talk about it and then on the other side you have a lot of winemakers saying absolutely not i will never make a no and low it fundamentally you're tearing the heart out of a wine this couldn't possibly something be something i would put my name to so you've got these two competing forces both of which push towards the same outcome which is to convince the consumer that non-alcoholic wine or alcohol-free wine isn't a thing and I think what's interesting is those companies and those winemakers are very quickly changing tact they've been resistant for a long time and now the first tranche of people are saying if we're going to do this we've got to do it properly and the second are saying actually this could be a thing and this could be a way to continue to engage aging consumers or to freshly engage new younger consumers who maybe have less of a fixed idea of what wine can and should look like.

8:09Do you think that has been helped by the sort of bigger low and no wave and brands like Lucky Saint doing a great job? Yes absolutely and again this is something that I think about a lot. You touched earlier Ruth on the fact that beers are very good, spirits are pretty good. I think spirits are helped by the fact that in almost all cases they're enjoyed with a mixer or as part of a mixed drink so you can borrow from some of the flavor profiles of the other liquids but we absolutely benefit from that and if you look at someone like lucky saint again a challenger non-alcoholic beer brand they benefit from having good big brands in the space so if you look at heineken zero zero some people say won't like it but there's a decent chunk of people who do like that and more recently guinness zero not only are they good products but they're also putting tens of millions of dollars into sponsorship globally so So Heineken sponsor the Champions League, Peroni sponsor the F1, Guinness sponsor the rugby.

9:07You pretty much, if you like sport, you pretty much can't turn on the TV without seeing some kind of advertising around no and low. And so all of a sudden that begins to normalize it in a consumer's mind. And if you're a wine drinker, you'll probably have had a good non-alcoholic beer. You may have had a good non-alcoholic spirit. And so now that natural curiosity is leading people to the question, where's the wine? And hopefully we can fill that gap. do you think then the sort of bigger brands you just mentioned they're starting to see the opportunity and they're upping their game a bit do you think that's something that then can help you rather than be something that you're worried about yeah i mean there's both sides to that coin and i i think for the time being the way that i see it is it's a rising tide lifts all boats when i see another branded good quality liquid come into the space my my gut reaction is that's not ideal and normally a few swear words under my breath and when i've calmed down about five seconds later i'm like actually that's great and we'll often get in touch with the founder and have a bit of a conversation you realize that they're just like you and they've got an interesting idea and they want to make it work and actually we certainly stand to benefit from that i think that's very much a short to medium term phenomenon.

10:24I think in the long term, it will become incredibly crowded. You only have to look at, if you as a consumer go to the wine aisle section of a supermarket, there are so many products. Most big supermarkets probably have over a thousand different SKUs or products when it comes to wine, or certainly bottles on shelf. I don't think alcohol-free will get to that stage, but it will become more and more crowded. So I think there's a time frame during which we have to build and build consistently and hope that all those efforts compound. I think it's a good, it's an interesting response to competition there.

11:01I think you're very honest about it, that trying to change your mindset from competitive to collaborative and seeing the opportunity, but that like gut feel of, oh God, is a very kind of natural response. But actually with, in the kind of challenger brand space, trying to flip it and see competition as something positive, I think is a really good mindset shift. Yeah. And it's interesting, something I was thinking about last night, question I get asked by people all the time is, do you drink Wednesday's Domain? And the answer is yes, definitely. And I could tell you about when I drink, you have six different wines, two sparkling, four still, and I could tell you about the different moments at which I drink those wines.

11:40But I also drink no and other no and low products. If you look at our shelf or our fridge downstairs, there's probably 10 products in there, of which two or three are close competitors. And that's because I enjoy those products in the same way that if you ask a consumer what's in your alcoholic roster, whether that's a fridge or cupboard or whatever, there'll be loads of competing brands and products. And again, that's not something that I shy away from or I'm afraid of talking about, because that is the reality of how consumers behave and we all stand to benefit from having a stronger no and low space that has prominence in retail but also prominence in consumers minds are there any signals that you're seeing that make you think that 2025 is going to be the tipping point for alcohol-free wine it is it's funny because i began the year saying 2025 is the year that non-alcoholic wine will tip into the mainstream.

12:35I suspect I'll be saying that in 2026, 2027, maybe 2028, who knows. But I think what I'm certainly seeing is I've been doing this now for three years. We launched our first wines in July 2022. And so that means that I've been through five or six kind of menu cycles, ranging windows and retail. And a lot of people who have just outright ignored me or sent me very blunt email saying this isn't a thing, leave me alone, are now just responding saying, hey, Luke, sounds interesting. Let's chat or can you send me samples or whatever. And that tells me that people are opening up to this. And I think that's a very encouraging sign.

13:19You talked a bit earlier about how you're not trying to demonize wine, you're a wine drinker yourself. How do you avoid excluding traditional wine lovers when you talk about Wednesday's Domain? Yeah, it's a very interesting question because if you look at the space, and when I talk about the space and non-alcoholic generally, I think historically those products were for people who had a reason which prevented them from drinking. That might be that they're on medication, that might be that they're pregnant, that might be a religious reason. But if you look at the kind of second wave of brands that have come through, they're very much talking about moderation and sober curiosity.

13:57And those are all interesting words, but they're also quite heavy words. And so I think the way that we do that is, we just speak very openly. And honestly, we speak in terms that are relatable and familiar to people. And we speak about kind of normal drinking habits in terms of, I will often talk about the fact that I like wine, that I drink wine. And then we will just play that back to people in their own language. Probably gives people a bit more confidence if you're a wine love of yourself as well absolutely it definitely does you're right to say that was there a moment when you knew you were onto something i mean it it will just entirely depend on which day you ask me if you ask me some days i'll say absolutely we're onto something and if you ask me on others i'll probably say to you oh god it's a nightmare what i would say is that that there are very rarely when you hear other founders talk about this, there's a kind of competitor or peer of ours in Australia called Non, and they make wine alternatives.

14:58And their founder, Aaron, I remember hearing him on a podcast once, and he was saying that he used to obsess over, if we get this listing, if we get this team member, if we get this bit of press, then we'll have cracked it. And he had come to realize that that moment never arrives. And I think that's true of lots of things in life, not just in business. There's not a single moment that says to me that we've cracked it, but there are a lot of little signals that tell me we're on the right path. And I think those signals may be winning a certain listing, or they might be a second order, or they might be a third order, or they might be an investor coming in, or they might just be multiple people in a single day saying, I really like your product.

15:41And all of those things, I would say, come together to give you a sense of the fact that you're moving in the right direction. the momentum exactly and we talked a bit about ritual initially how have midweek rituals shaped the brand's voice and positioning how important is ritual to wine drinking do you think yeah i think ritual is hugely important to wine drinking and when we talk about ritual i think in terms of wine that often involves a bit of a process going to a cupboard a shelf a fridge pulling a bottle out opening it finding a nice glass pouring it having that first sip which is often not often in some cases preceded by giving having taking in the aromas nosing the wine all that sort of stuff and all of those pieces play into the ritual of wine another way of looking at that is the ritual of wine could be i'm cooking and i want a glass of wine it's as simple as i'm just taking the cork out because it was already open from yesterday and i'm just going to pour myself some wine while I cook a bolognese, some for the bolognese, some for me, that sort of thing.

16:47And so I think that those elements are hugely important. And in terms of how that translates to our brand as Wednesdays to Main, it's ultimately in the name. It's all in the name that we want to be this midweek wine alternative for food and drink lovers. A lot of our comms, a lot of our branding is rooted in that. We have two newsletters that go out intermittently on a fortnightly basis, one called table talk one called picky bits the first one celebrates the meandering conversations that you have around the dinner table the picky bits but the second one is a lot more quick fire it's snippets of conversations things that have made us smile so everything that we do is rooted in those rituals in whatever format that they take i love it's called picky bits and for anyone listening in the us they're going to be like i've got no idea what that is it really is it really is but i think it's it these things are a real joy to put together and they might seem a bit abstract or a bit odd at first but i think as a brand you have to do things which which make you distinctive which make you stand out there's a commonly used phrase and startups do things that don't scale and in many respects the way that we approach that in the early days really didn't scale but now it does because we've got tens of thousands of people signed up to that newsletter they're reading it week in week out i sometimes worry that we're we've become a bit of a content vehicle rather than alcohol-free wine brand but ultimately all these things are intertwined and related and come down to building awareness and appreciation of what you're doing so let's talk a bit about route to market you started d2c then independence now on ocado what have you learned at each step what i would say is that there's a few things i'd say being a single channel business is incredibly hard.

18:36And so I'm very glad that we have multiple channels. And D2C is brilliant in terms of you need a website, you need to be able to fulfill the product and you need to get people to your website in the first place. But actually it's relatively simple and it allows for a huge amount of experimentation and ultimately allows you to build the closest possible relationships with your customer. The flip side of that is it can sometimes be expensive and you need to have a very clear handle on your margins. You'll hear a lot of investors say that consumer DTC is dead. The days of Dollar Shave Club and all that sort of stuff are long gone.

19:14They're consigned to history. I don't necessarily think DTC is dead. And I think if you look at alcohol-free wine, a lot of consumers are underserved by the options in the supermarkets. And as long as that's the case, we will still have the ability to grow a big DTC business. and you have to if you take the UK for example UK consumers are very au fait with ordering wine online you look at things like Naked Wine, Lathe Waits or they've all built the habit and the familiarity with ordering wine online. As for the other channels primarily retail and the on trade retail is massive for us and we built primarily through independent retail and I'm so glad that we did because as a brand with limited resources you have to find ways to amplify what you're doing and if you go into an independent wine shop or a deli or somewhere like that more often than not there's going to be someone incredibly knowledgeable incredibly passionate and incredibly kind and helpful there to talk you through the product so if you walk in saying looking for something alcohol free they can probably tell you why you should or shouldn't purchase the various products on shelf there the entree is an interesting one for us i just don't think that many people buy non-alcoholic wine when they're out and about and the reason that I think that is going out has become increasingly expensive the days of going out for dinner two three nights a week are pretty much behind us and so when you do go out it's more of a thing and so when it's more of a thing you're more likely to say I'll just have a drink that's not to say that it doesn't play an important role if I take the example of barafina we don't have our we have one of our red wines in there in a sangria, in a non-alcoholic sangria, and it absolutely flies in a way that I don't think our standalone non-alcoholic wine would in that environment.

21:01And that's a really interesting thing because it brings people to the brand in the first instance, but it also provides credibility for us. It allows us to tell stories about working with Barofina in a very open and honest way. So everyone stands to benefit. What channel is next, you guys? I think one of the things that I spent a lot of time focusing on in the last six months or so is looking at international opportunities. And again, there are a lot of people who will say you shouldn't go into another market until you've cracked your home market. I think defining cracking anything is really hard, as we touched on earlier in the conversation.

21:36And we're actually seeing some incredibly positive signs abroad. We have very good distributors in Australia and in the Netherlands. And what's interesting in those market that is different to the UK is they have exclusivity over the brand. So they're far more willing to dedicate their time, their resources, their energy to building Wednesday's Domain. And how that's played out is in the Netherlands, we're now in Albert Heijn, we launched in 488 stores there recently, that doubled our distribution overnight. And similarly, I've just come off the phone to our Australian distributor, a lot of early mornings or late nights for both parties.

22:15and the conversations they're having there are unbelievable conversations that we would struggle to get into so i think international markets are absolutely a focus and then back here in the uk i think it's really about growing availability in the right places so if i think about where i'd love to see wednesday to may next it would be on waitress shelves there is no doubt that our brand their customer base is a fantastic fit what's also interesting is all of the media headlines suggest that it's Gen Z who are buying alcohol-free products. Gen Z who don't drink. There is a huge and underserved customer base that skews older.

22:54People who have built familiarity with drinking wine regularly and are looking to cut down for whatever reason. They are being underserved when it comes to good alcohol-free products. And I think there's a great alignment there. So we'll see what happens. You know why that is, is because as you probably have experienced, your hangovers get worse as you get older so the price to pay becomes higher of drink from drinking wine especially i think as well they really do your hangovers get worse health considerations become more acute but also you have you know more to think about jobs jobs are more serious careers are more intense you may have kids all of those things you can no longer afford to just stumble through or muddle through and you also don't want to old enough and wise enough that you're like actually I'm going to pick my moment but I still want that ritual and that experience of having a drink.

23:47So what is your ambition for the brand? It's an interesting one I think when I the way I tend to articulate this is I want to create a global category defining brand and so if you split that out global speaks for itself as in sold in in various international markets recognize the world over i think when it comes to category defining that doesn't necessarily mean the brand that sells the most or is in the most places it's the brand that creates consumer cut through and cultural cut through that we become the brand that people say they got that like they get it they helped shift my perception of what alcohol free wine can look like and you gave an example of Lucky Saint earlier I think they've done that in beer certainly in the UK if you look at the US athletic brewing have absolutely done that in the US Australia you have a brand called Heaps Normal there are lots of these brands or lots there are a handful of these brands in different markets that have done that I think the opportunity exists to do that in wine and I think we have a good shot at it this is probably a good follow-up question to that where have you had to balance patience with the pressure of creating a new category all the time and i think the important bit of context when answering that ruth is that we're a brand with fairly limited resources so we're not entirely bootstrapped we have raised money but it's in the hundreds of thousands rather than the millions and so what that means is in creating that category we have to do a lot lot of things, as I said earlier, that don't scale.

25:28We have to rely on and believe in the fact that small efforts compound rather than doing massive brand activations and sponsoring festivals and taking over Carnaby Street and all that sort of stuff. So I think I've had to have a lot of patience along the way. We have to have a lot of patience as a brand, but you also have to be very deliberate in how you go about creating a category. And something you hear people say is when you're bored of saying something when you're bored of delivering a message say it a thousand times over and you're probably getting close to to breaking through and so that's where we've got to be very deliberate and how we go about it and i think the final thing that i'll say there is whenever i introduce wednesday's domain i'll always introduce the category first always speak about the category how it was terrible how beer was terrible but has since changed and now winds on the way and then we talk about where Wednesday's domain fits into that so that's where we've got to be patient because it requires we can't do it alone we need other good quality entrants to come into the space and collectively raise the floor being comfortable with boredom is a very underrated skill for people working in startups and scale-ups and it feels quite counterintuitive doesn't it because it's like a far from boring job experience and yet that point of you feeling bored by saying the same thing a million times over it's something you just got to get used to yeah and and also i think you're always learning how to express yourself as an individual and as a brand and how to do that better and what you learn is there are different ways of saying the same thing based on who you're speaking to and who the audience is and what resonates with them and that's what i on a personal level find very interesting and that will continue to evolve over time i'm sure what brand finance trade-offs that we learned to navigate?

27:20A lot of what I just said around the cost of building brands, I think coming from outside of food and drink, I hadn't quite realised how much cash and stuff big brands have to deploy. When you go to a pub beer garden, and take an example over the last five years, hundreds of beer gardens up and down the country, all of a sudden madri branded and everyone's talking about the spirit of madrid having never once thought about that prior you realize that big old brands can suddenly just turn up and build the following quite quickly just through sheer volume of money and resource so i think that's a big trade-off what the other side of that is when we've been building wednesday's domain on as i said fairly limited resources there are certain things that you never compromise on so the first thing is the liquid and the product, particularly in a category with a poor legacy.

28:16And the second is the brand. You need to stand out. You need to cut through. You need to create a reason for someone to pull the product off the shelf or to walk proudly into someone's house with it. And I think there are a lot of things that we have compromised on and that have been difficult. And that can range from how I've paid myself at certain points through to how we show up as a brand through point of sale and a lot of stuff that we don't have but those two things liquid and brand will never compromise on is there one mistake you'd happily repeat it's it's an interesting question because most of the time when you make a mistake whether it's a business or with your kids or whatever you're like you've made that mistake let's learn from it and not do it again so to think about a mistake that i would happily make again i think people who follow Wednesday's domain and have done for a little while will know about one particular moment in our history whereby when we were making our old wines which we made here we blended here in the UK using the alkalized Spanish wine we were producing a white wine and some red wine got put into the tank which resulted in a kind of student-esque rosé blend which I was minded to put down the drain very reluctantly and my wife Hannah to her eternal credit said you're mad does it taste good can you do this legally all that sort of stuff and the answer was yes on all counts and we ended up launching that product as a limited edition rose and we were very transparent with people we're like we made this by mistake it is really nice it won't last forever and I think I learned a lot from that I learned that you can work through most difficult situations and it also gave me the confidence that we can build on our range that there are appetites for different types of alcohol-free wine I think that's a great example of if you if you don't laugh you'll cry and there are a lot of those moments in startups if you could give one piece of advice to anyone setting up an fmcg business right now what would it be it would be other than don't do it it would probably be i would just really seek to understand your motivations and why you're doing it and i think there are all sorts of motivations that will be very personal to the individual but i think these things take time they're most definitely not a get rich quick scheme they're incredibly difficult you're operating in probably the single most competitive space possible to launch to launch products.

30:59And so you've really got to want it, you've really got to be committed to doing what you're doing for a sustained period of time. And I feel very lucky that I spent a lot of time in startups around a lot of founders. And I've seen both sides of that. I've seen people really dedicate their lives to something. And I've seen people launch something because they think that it's a quick in and out. And the latter almost always fails, either because the product doesn't quite land or because the founder or the founders burn out or lose interest. And when you're getting up early, when you're staying up late, when your head is completely fried, if you're really committed to what you're doing, and you really enjoy it, then you're going to push through.

31:45And so I think it would come down to motivation and kind of interest, I would say. so actually saying don't do it as a test is a good thing to say and if they come back you're like you can do it exactly okay a few quick fire questions which i might actually rebrand to picky bits now perfect what is your midweek wednesday meal of choice oh it's funny because my wife and i always talk about how we cook the same stuff but i actually can't think of anything that we cook regularly so i'm gonna say something like almost like a store cupboard pasta so we've probably got some spaghetti or linguine you've probably got lemon anchovies parsley the past is probably gone off if it's stuck in the store cupboard but capers that sort of stuff like punchy flavors very distinct flavors easy to cook it feels like you're in a restaurant i think it's very clear you're a foodie from that answer actually favorite new brand you're watching a brand i really admire a founder that i really admire is a laura the founder is a guy called dom dalton who's previously been involved in some amazing businesses but they really so they're in the limoncello space they talk a lot about provenance and where they get their lemons from this island in italy called progetta he combines him and his co-founder who i don't know seem to combine incredible brand building with real like gnarly financial discipline and what on LinkedIn is all the sexy stuff the cool stuff of being down in Cannes or launching in Young's or whatever but when you speak to him he is like all over the numbers he's a robot and I really admire that because you need both and they also seem to have a good time while they're doing it I think Allura is the brand that I would say there dream brand collaboration we've got halfway to doing it but if I think about Wednesday domain what we stand for, what we believe in.

33:41It's the power of sitting down, of taking time, of having a chat with family and friends. And a brand that really embodies that for me is Glasset, which is a marketplace for really nice stuff to have around your house, stuff that no one needs, but stuff that everyone loves to have. And as of the last couple of months, we now sell Wednesday Domain Glasset, which is lovely. Our Instagram in the very early days, when it was just me and we didn't even have a product. It was basically loads of pictures of long tables of people sat in fields and in barns and all that sort of stuff. And they actually bring that to life.

34:15So I think finding some kind of way to do a Wednesday's Domain glass set, collab, in real life, big long table, lovely crockery, Wednesday's Domain being poured alongside alcoholic wine if people want it, I think would be a dream come true in many respects. Final question that we ask every guest, in your opinion, what makes a brand of tomorrow? I think it's about meeting people where they are and talking their language and saying to them that you're coming on a journey with them and that you're going to be part of their lives for the foreseeable. And that's one of the things that I love about Wednesdays to me.

34:53Someone might start drinking it because they're at a very specific moment in their life. They might be pregnant or on medication. Those old school not drinking reasons. But actually in a couple of years, it might be because they're just drinking a bit less and they still love their wine. and actually Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, they want to have a glass of Wednesday's May. So I think it comes down to going on a journey with people. Nice. Thanks so much for coming on, Luke. It's been a pleasure. Thank you very much for having me, Ruth. I've loved it.