Our Story

In a Bordeaux bistro called La Tupina, Ryan Quinn and Alastair Pope hatched a plan. It was our first ever buying trip to France and we were going to need a pretty good plan if we ever wanted to pay off the credit card bill. We may have been staying in the worst hotel in Bordeaux but that didn’t make it cheap, nor does La Tupina Bistro give away its legendary Cote de Boeuf (or multiple bottles of Branaire Ducru for that matter).

But like all good plans, ours was simple. Take a good thing and make it better. For well over twenty years, customers have enjoyed dropping into Wine Direct for some quality browsing, some good advice, and walking out with armfuls of tasty wine. The kind of wine that can’t be bought at a supermarket or a chain liquor store, what we call Real Wine.

Now we just needed to find more good wine and more happy customers. So over the last few years our wine selection has grown dramatically. Our Family Album (this is what we call the stable of our most cherished producers), has been steadily growing year on year. We can't seem to help ourselves, whenever we find really great new wines, we just have to import them! In fact, that first ever French buying trip of ours wasn’t all Steak Frites, we also discovered some of the finest wine producers we’ve ever come across, like Francois Chidaine, Clos Marie and Domaine Grand Veneur.

But importantly, many of the first wines we ever imported more than twenty years ago, like Domaine de la Mordoree from the Rhone valley or Ch de la Tuilerie from Costieres de Nimes or Domaine Corsin from Burgundy, are still with us, and their wines are better than ever.

We used to have to drag people off the street to get them to shop with us but these days it's all a bit more civilised. We keep in touch with our loyal and growing customer base by phone, website and regular email contact. (By the way, if you're not already on the list, sign up now via our 'Sign up to Latest Offers'.

Today we can boast what is perhaps NZ's widest selection of imported wine (yeehaa!). From the fabulous and rare right down to those essential everyday slurpers. But the Wine Direct idea is still basically the same as it was back when it began in the 1980's: To many people, imported wine often seems complicated and it just doesn't need to be. All you need is a quality wine merchant and some good advice. We'd like to be the most accessible, relevant and interesting wine company in the country.