Wine Lead

We are looking for someone to help us develop the wine side of The Warren into something bigger than simply a wine list.

We see an opportunity to create a really exciting, accessible and thoughtful wine culture around the restaurant, bringing together great wines, education, events, retail and our community.

We are particularly interested in someone who understands and is excited by natural, organic, biodynamic and low-intervention wines, but who is also passionate about making wine approachable rather than intimidating.

The resident’s list. Every season you hand-pick a small list of wines that are not on our menu and not on our website, each one paired with a dish on that season’s Friday, Saturday and Sunday menu. It has its own printed list, with a QR code beside each wine that plays a short film of you saying why you chose it and what to eat with it.

Each new list opens with a ticketed tasting night: the wines, food, music, and you.

• Four to six wines a season, paired to the menu
• A short film for each wine
• A tasting night to launch every list

The wine list. Help shape the identity of the Warren wine list and keep it fresh. The final purchasing decisions stay with the directors, but you would be an important voice in them.

• Finding interesting and distinctive producers
• Building relationships with suppliers and producers
• Reviewing the existing list and recommending new wines
• Helping develop pricing and margins

The Warren Wine Club. Deliberately informal, social and welcoming rather than a traditional formal tasting. You host the evenings, introduce the wines and create a room where people learn, drink good wine and have a great night.

• A different theme each time: a region, a grape, a producer, orange wine, wines under £15, wines of Wales, blind tasting
• A membership model to explore, with discounts or purchasing credit

Wine education. Accessible wine education, sold commercially and hosted at The Warren. One starting point could be a six-week Introduction to Natural Wine, with shorter workshops and one-off events alongside it.

• What natural wine actually means, and how it is farmed and fermented
• How to taste wine and how to read a wine list
• Food and wine matching
• How to buy interesting wine without spending a fortune

Staff wine training. Helping the Warren team become confident and enthusiastic about talking about and selling wine.

• Regular informal staff tastings
• Training on the current list and every new wine
• Teaching the team how to recommend wine to guests

Retail and online. Developed gradually, with the aim of building something commercially sustainable: wine to take away from the restaurant first, and longer term an online shop selling the wines people discovered here.

• Bottles to take away and mixed cases
• Wine club and seasonal selections
• Subscriptions, special releases and possibly wholesale

Marketing and storytelling. We want the wine offering to have a personality. You would help tell the story behind the wines through Instagram, email, our website, events and short films, talking about wine without talking down to people.

£15 an hour for the work we agree together, plus a share of what the wine side of The Warren earns. The exact split is agreed with you. The principle is simple: if you help us grow the wine side of The Warren, we want you to benefit from that growth.

• Genuinely passionate about wine
• Particularly interested in natural, organic and low-intervention wines
• Knowledgeable, but able to make wine accessible
• Sociable, confident and a good communicator
• Excited by hospitality
• Commercially minded
• Organised and reliable
• Curious and constantly learning
• Comfortable working independently
• Excited by building something from scratch