September 25, 2025 (London, UK) — Wine marketing strategist Polly Hammond, founder of the award-winning agency 5forests, today announced the launch of Wine Culture Lab, the industry’s first studio dedicated to cultural relevance.
Nearly half of Gen Z now cite TikTok, YouTube, or Instagram as their main source of news — traditional wine signals don’t reach them.
“Wine doesn’t need louder voices. It needs new conversations,” said Hammond. “We built Wine Culture Lab for the brands that understand relevance isn’t something you buy—it’s something you earn.”
Making Wine Discoverable in Modern Culture
Wine Culture Lab works with wineries, regions, and wine-led experiences to understand how culture moves, what audiences care about, and how to participate in conversations that matter. The studio offers:
- Cultural visibility audits, anchored by its proprietary Wine Signal Score™, which measures brand presence across creators, platforms, and shared moments.
- Research and insight reports tracking how wine shows up in culture, who influences discovery, and how younger audiences build trust.
- Culturally fluent strategy and creator collaborations that help brands appear in the stories, spaces, and signals that shape modern relevance.
Flagship Report: Beyond Heritage
To mark its launch, Wine Culture Lab has released Beyond Heritage: A Snapshot of Trust, Culture, and Wine’s Next Generation. This first-of-its-kind report defines how Gen Z and younger Millennials experience trust and what that means for wine. Findings include:
- Traditional trust signals—awards, legacy press, prestige cues—no longer secure credibility for under-35s.
- Most discovery now happens inside feeds, not in wine media; for younger audiences, “claims are background noise; proof is the only currency”.
- Practical playbooks for designing with new intermediaries, making transparency visible, and treating trust as a marker of competence and care.
“Most discovery now happens in feeds, not in wine media. Proof is the new currency,” added Hammond. “If we want wine to remain relevant, we have to understand how trust really works for younger audiences.”
Podcast: Culture Commerce Wine
The new studio also produces the podcast Culture Commerce Wine, hosted by Hammond. Season One guests include Charl Bassil (Head of Brand, BBC), Cindy Gallop (Founder, Make Love Not Porn), and Anant Sharma (CEO, Matter of Form). Each episode explores how wine intersects with culture, consumer behavior, and the business of relevance.
About Wine Culture Lab
Wine Culture Lab is the first culture studio for wine. Based in London, the Lab helps wineries, regions, and wine-led experiences become discoverable in modern culture. Through cultural audits, strategy, research, and creator partnerships, Wine Culture Lab ensures wine shows up in the stories, spaces, and signals that shape relevance today.
