🚨Open for controversial wine commentary 🚨(aka, how Gratsi is building a new kind of premium) -- -- report excerpt

Gratsi is everything a modern consumer wants from a wine brand: simple, easy, enjoyable.

This is an excerpt from our newly released 2026 Report: The New Rules of Brand Building in Bev/Alc. It’s our most comprehensive look at the industry yet. And it’s free to download ↓

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First, let’s deal with the controversial part: wine branding is boring – and it’s overcomplicated

If Gratsi has any lesson to teach, it’s that wine companies need to work a lot harder, and do a lot less. Long-established brands are losing consumers because they’re speaking a language people don’t understand, and don’t particularly care about. Flavors and characteristics are appealing, yes, but most people aren’t interested in this as a selling point.

“They don’t care about spices, or subtle aromas,” says Gratsi Marketing Director Achilleas Petris, “they just want to drink something that’s easy and that they like, and if it’s good enough for them they keep buying it.”

Wine brands are also overwhelming people with options. People want an experience, and they don’t want to have to think too much about it. Gratsi’s philosophy is one of a simple life well-lived. The brand offers people easy options: white, red, rosé. If you’re keen, you can buy a bundle, or add on some pasta, or a glass. But whatever it is, it has to be straightforward.

As Achilleas says: “If you want to make something that appeals to most people, you should speak a simpler language. You shouldn’t overcomplicate it and paralyze people with too many options. Just give them something great.”

What does Gratsi do differently?

Well, they sell you on the convenience first and then they bring you into a brand world that’s a genuine delight to inhabit.

There’s no snooty messaging and no old-fashioned tasting notes. That’s been replaced with evocative storytelling and content, generously shared and beautifully told. It’s premium, version 2.0. Now, let’s talk about how that came into existence…

A wine brand born from the Mediterranean lifestyle

Gratsi’s origin story will be relatable to anyone that’s been on vacation in Europe. Let’s set the scene: you’re in Greece (or maybe Italy), you’re at a local tavern, they bring you the five-Euro house wine and it’s some of the best you’ve ever tasted. This was the feeling Gratsi founder Stephen Vlahos wanted to capture: simple, easy, enjoyable. And he didn’t just want to do that by selling wine — he wanted to create an all-encompassing experience.

“There’s this whole mentality of enjoying wine without thinking too much,” says Achilleas. “Wine is one part of it. He wanted to amplify the lifestyle of the Mediterranean. He wanted to bring this idea of people enjoying great quality wine, without spending too much money — and without all the additives and sugars — home to the States.”

Enter the box

When it comes to wine, anything that arrives in a box has historically been seen as inferior. Boxed wine isn’t for true connoisseurs — it’s for students, or drinkers that don’t “get” wine, or people that don’t want to spend too much.

On the other hand, a box is an incredibly practical way of storing and transporting it. One three-liter bag can hold four bottles’ worth of wine. That wine can be better quality because the brand isn’t having to pay for glass or extra weight while shipping. And that wine can be marketed more effectively because there’s more budget left over for it.

Gratsi has definitely had to find its place on the axis of quality versus convenience. Achilleas says that, in the early days of the business, they encountered plenty of latent snobbery around boxed wine. It wasn’t an easy object to sell as “premium”.

The answer? To get “logical”. He says that the brand started tuning their ad messaging to focus on convenience – luring people in with a practical message, and then keeping them there with everything else the brand does so well.

“At tastings we were telling people about the unique selling points — the freshness, how much wine is inside the box. They’d try a glass and say, ‘that’s really good, it’s half the price of what I usually pay’. The whole idea of premium comes after that, once we can keep them and educate them on what makes us different.”

Being premium means giving more than you get

Gratsi began life as an ecommerce brand — although it’s now stocked in 1,600 shops across four states — and it’s maintained that way of thinking. They prioritize creating best-of-the-best content, and they liberally share that with their customers.

There’s Gratsi’s Slow Dinner Club blog, which is an online treasure trove of recipes, travel writing and Mediterranean culture. There’s also their newsletters, which feature playlists, book recommendations and short films — such as Gratsi’s recent ‘One Week in Tuscany’ mini-doc, which played out over 23 minutes and introduced Nonna Laura and her Tuscan farm.

The bar for this content has been set high, according to Achilleas, who says the strategy is to only ever send out the kind of thing they would love to receive themselves. That means lots of storytelling, with sales and offer messaging kept to a minimum.

“We give more to the customer than we ask in return,” he explains.

It’s the whole experience

Achilleas says that Gratsi’s “premiumness” is 30% what’s in the box, and 70% everything else the brand does. We’ve already spoken about their content, but they also prioritize great customer service, ensuring people can speak to another human, and not AI, if they need to resolve an issue. And subscribers to Gratsi’s wine boxes can expect “surprising and delightful gifts” to turn up in their mailbox, as an extra part of the experience.

Those gifts have to meet as high a bar as Gratsi’s content. According to Achilleas: “Everything we produce — the wine, the design, the product, the gifts, the merch, the customer service — we want to do in a way that we love first as a team. If we don’t love it as a team, we don’t give it to the customer.

“The product has to be great, but the product is not enough to make a premium brand. You have to surround it with everything else around it to keep it there.”

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NEW RULES FROM GRATSI

You don’t need to kill people with choice
Simple decisions are easy decisions.

But killing them with kindness is a strategy
Courting your customer is absolutely the way to go.

Premium brands give, and they give generously
Content, merch, extras, it all adds up.

If you don’t love it, your customer won’t
Set a high bar for yourself and the people you serve.

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