“It does seem really pretentious, and there is just no need." - Laurent-Perrier Champagne scholar Rosie Watts on why wine lists are off-putting

Rosie Watts leading a wine tasting at her own bistro, Sip & Olive

Once upon a time in a small wine bar in rural Northamptonshire, a man asks a young Rosie Watts for a glass of Sancerre. Having never heard the word before in her life, she reports back to a more senior member of staff that a customer wants “a 175 of a Sossa”. She bursts out laughing at the memory, recalling the look of confusion on her colleague’s face. “I was just repeating the sounds” she explains to me, “and I remember feeling like, ‘Oh my gosh, I actually know nothing about wine’”.

It is a very different Rosie who sits in front of me today. Now twenty-seven and with several managerial roles under her belt, including a couple of years cutting her teeth as a sommelier at the Four Seasons Hotel in London and being selected as one of our 2025 Laurent-Perrier Champagne scholars, Rosie will shortly be celebrating one year of running her very own wine bistro. “I’d always had this idea,” she tells me, “since working in that very first wine bar, that I would have my own place someday.” Through Sip & Olive, or her “baby bistro” as she affectionately refers to it, she hosts a range of wine tastings, one of which is a very popular Champagne Masterclass. Her tastings are described as “relaxed, engaging, and completely free of pretension” on their website, which is also how Rosie describes her bistro in general. “I wanted it to be that welly boots and champagne go hand in hand. You can go on a walk, but you can also come in for some seriously good wine. Countryside charm meets elegance.”

Well, she has certainly got countryside charm! Sip & Olive is housed in a 400-year-old building where, in her own words, everything is wonky, the walls are made of horsehair and the roof is thatched. Today, the electricity also has decided to stop working for no reason at all, but Rosie won’t let that rain on her parade. She is so excited to finally have a place of her own to host guests in and share her love of wine, and the hard work is definitely paying off. A few days after our interview, I get a message from Rosie telling me that Sip & Olive has been announced as the winner of Best Casual Dining Venue in the 2026 Muddy Stilettos Awards. Not a small feat for a first business.

So who does Rosie look up to in the wine entrepreneur space? After an honourable fangirl mention of Jancis Robinson (“She’s an icon, I’m obsessed!”), she tells me she is a great admirer of Lucy Busk , Co-Founder of Nice Drinks. Incorporated just before the outbreak of COVID-19, the company takes a "Gen-Z approach" to wine marketing, featuring pink overalls and cute mirror slogans such as ‘You look Nice’ or ‘You’d pair with Nice’. Rosie recalls how, even before she was working in the wine industry, mirror selfies from various Nice Drinks pop-ups were flooding her social media feeds. “Don’t get me wrong,” she says, “it’s boxed wine and canned wine, which often gets a bad rep, but it’s good wine and she is making it super accessible.”

We soon find ourselves discussing the industry’s million-dollar question, how does one go about inspiring the younger generation to be more interested in, and less daunted by, wine? Rosie has spent quite some time reflecting upon this. Now in their third quarter, the bistro team has taken a close look at their demographic and consumer habits, and what is clear to her is that the under-25’s simply aren’t drinking as often, but that when they do, they drink with intent. “It’s a once-a-month, they are absolutely obliterated, they are drinking anything and everything, they are happy to spend – but they're not doing it all the time.”  She calls it an ‘intentional drinking session’ and says it’s a trend she’s seen very clearly since opening the doors to her bistro.

Why is that, in her opinion? Rosie believes the answer is simple: the vast majority of young consumers don't know how to read a wine list. She sees it time and time again when going out with friends, emphasising that reading a wine list is becoming increasingly challenging for the average consumer and that many places are over-complicating them unnecessarily. “If you don’t really know about wine, and you suddenly get a wine list with all these letters – AOC, DOC, AOP – or it doesn’t say what it is, it just says the place… if you don’t know where that is, you don’t know what it is, and therefore you are not going to order it.” She believes many young consumers feel confused and overwhelmed when it comes to wine and therefore opt for beer instead, which is perceived as more straightforward. “Beer is beer for them. They don’t even have to try.” A big part of the problem, in her opinion, is the language around wine, which can sound stuffy and old-fashioned. Rosie tells me that even she has attended tastings where she has listened to the speaker and thought they just sounded silly, phrasing things in a way that made her disinclined to pay any attention to them, despite being in the industry herself. “It does seem really pretentious, and there is just no need.”

Rosie is keen to pass on her knowledge to her team of young, Gen-Z staff. She tells me that she regularly sets each team member a personal challenge, something to work towards and feel proud of when they achieve it, and it is paying dividends. Her staff are starting to develop their wine knowledge, taking more initiative and asking insightful questions. The full circle moment is not hard to spot, thinking back to young Rosie at her first job in that rural wine bar, having never heard of Sancerre.

We are very proud to have Rosie as a Champagne Laurent-Perrier scholar and a lovely addition to the GBF alumni. We wish her the best of luck Sip & Olive and a big congratulations on the Muddy Stilettos win!

To keep up with Rosie, follow her on: @rosieloves_rose & @sipandolive on Instagram

Article written by Isabelle Anderbjörk , Head of Marketing at the Gérard Basset Foundation