Steve and Sophie

I then went to work for a wine company and studied wine, that was for about 4 years and that’s where the wine knowledge comes into this business, Steve started his sandwich shop 5 years ago and we always kept in touch. The idea came to Steve when someone came to him and said they wanted a bottle of Silent Pool but the distillery was closed, why isn’t there an off licence in Shere? So the seed was sown. Then just through searching on Google for breweries and wine distilleries in The Surrey Hills Steve found it amazing as to just how many there are in this area. This place had been empty for 6 weeks so he put the idea to the landlord who thought it was a good idea and he said, yes, go for it, so he did! We’ve now been open for 18 months, Steve approached me to see if I would like to help out and invest in the business and that happened last April so it’s been nearly a year that we’ve been doing it together. Since then we’ve made it a lot bigger, we go to regular farmers markets, we’ve got ideas to do tastings and have expanded the stock hugely. Our next step is to get online, get bigger, better and more out there! We stock some continental wines, which are sourced locally, every single thing that we sell is local and that is our biggest ethos! We call ourselves a specialist boutique, off licence.”