Case study | E-tasting
Turning a holiday range into a sustainable growth engine
- Client: E-tasting, an online store specializing in wine tasting sets for education and wine-related accessories
- Market: Europe Online retail
- Challenge: Capturing holiday demand by enriching the catalog with differentiating products
- Solution: Fractionalizing wines into 2 to 5 cl Vinottes® with custom labels (QR codes, scratch-off labels) to power a line of Advent calendars and gift sets
- Nature of Collaboration: A seasonal initiative turned into an ongoing partnership
The client
E-tasting is a niche online store specializing in wine and spirits sample tasting sets, designed in particular to support education programs (such as WSET). Its offering extends to a wide selection of accessories and merchandise across the wine world, from Le Nez du Vin aroma kits to vineyard maps and apparel.
Positioned across a market of wine and spirits students, enthusiasts, and curious shoppers, E-tasting constantly looks to refresh its catalog, stand out from the crowd, and deliver innovative tasting experiences to its customers.
The context
For an online store, the holiday season is a make-or-break period. The final quarter drives a major share of annual sales, and the gift-giving season opens up a growth window that cannot be missed.
- An Underlying Trend: The Advent Calendar. Each year in November, average monthly search volumes for the term “advent calendar” reach:
- 1.2 to 1.8 million searches in France
- 2.5 to 3.5 million searches in Germany
- 1.5 to 2.2 million searches in the United Kingdom
Now an essential holiday gift, Advent calendars have naturally expanded into the wine and spirits category.
- The Need to Innovate and Stand Out.
In a competitive marketplace, expanding the catalog with original, themed products that deliver a real experience is crucial to breaking through the noise and attracting new shoppers. - The Need to Test Without Taking Risks.
Rolling out a new line requires validating customer interest and gathering reviews before making larger investments, all while avoiding burdensome in-house production and logistics.
The challenge
E-tasting wanted to capitalize on the holiday shopping rush by launching a festive, distinctive product line: Advent calendars and gift boxes, divided into themes (food and wine pairings, 100% organic, blind tastings of world wines, and a selection curated by its partner Vivino).
This project required bringing together multiple wine labels in a compact format at controlled costs, adding an experiential, interactive layer (scratch-off labels, QR codes with video content), and launching the line as a market test.
The Vinovae solution
To address this challenge, we provided a 100% turnkey, bespoke service. Thanks to our patented inert-atmosphere rebottling process, La Vinotte® perfectly preserves all the organoleptic qualities of the original bottle. E-tasting’s customers enjoy an optimal, true-to-the-bottle tasting experience.
Implementation
Following E-tasting’s selection and purchase of the wines, the bottles were shipped to our production facility. Our teams handled the entire supply chain: printing calendar packaging using artwork provided by the client, inert-atmosphere fractionalization, labeling, final box assembly, and shipping the overpacked products.
The first campaign, made up of 4 Advent calendars (including 3 dedicated exclusively to wine and a gourmet box pairing wine with cured meats) and 2 themed gift sets (featuring 6 and 12 wines), served as a test phase.
These new products made it possible to evaluate market response and collect initial customer reviews while minimising financial exposure.
Driven by these strong results, E-tasting renewed the initiative the following year with an updated selection. The line was also expanded with two new items: a 100% world rums tasting set created with an industry-leading partner, and an edition dedicated to wine and cheese pairings.
Key benefits
An Expanded, Differentiating Catalog:
This new holiday range accounted for nearly 30% of the new items added to E-tasting’s catalog, positioning the online store on strong consumer trends and high experiential value items.
Measurable Growth:
Between the two years, E-tasting recorded a 65% increase in revenue and a 49% increase in the number of units sold, driven primarily by the rollout of this festive line.
A Significant Surge in Traffic:
During the final quarter of the year, from October through December, the site experienced a 377% traffic increase, demonstrating the strong pull of these seasonal products during the holidays.
A Controlled Rollout:
By testing the lineup on smaller runs before scaling up, the framework mitigated risk and gave E-tasting the confidence to renew and broaden the offer.
A Memorable Experience:
Blind tastings with scratch-off reveal labels, QR codes linking to digital content: features that transform a tasting kit into an interactive, memorable experience tailored for online retail.
End-to-End Support:
Fractionalization, labeling, and packing were fully managed by Vinovae, allowing E-tasting to stay focused on wine selection, marketing, and customer communication.
Client testimonial
“Thanks to Vinovae’s Vinottes®, we turned our festive holiday offering into a sustainable growth engine. Furthermore, the tasting quality of the wine was never once questioned by our customers. It has become an unmissable seasonal highlight and a tremendous performance driver for our online store.“
In summary
By facilitating the launch of multiple themed sets, Vinovae’s Vinottes® enabled E-tasting to turn the holiday season into a strategic lever for sustainable growth. What started out as a test quickly established itself as an annual tradition, renewed and expanded year after year.
This collaboration demonstrates a model relevant to any online store: a sample format built for quality and experience can become a powerful driver of differentiation, traffic, and sales, season after season.