Wine for Everyone: How Brodie Meah Took Top Cuvée from One Restaurant to Retail to National Distribution
How did Brodie Meah take Top Cuvée from one neighborhood restaurant to retail stores and national distribution? Dive into insights from Podcast Episode 111 of MAFFEO DRINKS on bottom-up brand building, why wine bars shouldn't educate, and what wine can learn from spirits marketing.
Most wine venues make the same mistake: they turn a social occasion into a lecture, forgetting that guests just want good drinks and a good conversation.
The intimidation problem in wine culture
Fine dining creates an atmosphere of exclusivity by design. Leather entranceways, dark corridors with specific aromas, staff in formal attire positioned like sentries at the door.
The entire experience conveys a single message: this is not for everyone.
We discuss how Brodie Meah spent years working in fine dining establishments in Australia, learning discipline, service excellence, and business operations.
But he also noticed something troubling. Most guests walking into these grand spaces felt intimidated and uncomfortable. Service professionals spent significant time trying to calm people down and help them relax, which raised an obvious question: why create barriers when the goal is showing people a good time?
The wine industry has inherited this intimidation factor. Sommeliers deliver lengthy domain histories to guests who simply want a glass of wine to accompany conversation with friends.
Technical terminology like "spirit-forward" and "herbaceous" makes perfect sense to professionals but creates barriers for regular consumers.
The experience becomes educational when it should be social.
We discuss how this realization shaped everything about Top Cuvée. The name itself came from a sommelier Brodie worked with, who would say certain exclusive wines were the top cuvée, meaning not for you, this is the good stuff. Brodie inverted that exclusivity entirely. Top Cuvée would mean wine for everyone.
From fine dining to wine for everyone
Top Cuvée started as a neighborhood restaurant in Hythe, North London in 2019.
