SCOPE OF WORK

• Creative concept and identity for wine program
• Taste guidelines and selection of initial natural wine list
• Headhunting and hiring of wine professionals
• Economic structure, wine pricing, and stock management systems
• Design of sales and service flow with unique touches

THE BRIEF

Co-owners Dani Bajc and Antonella Tignanelli were opening an attractive yet down-to-earth natural wine bar in Poblenou, Barcelona. They approached us for assistance with making sure that the wine program launched Masa Vins immediately into the upper tier of natural wine bars in Barcelona.

The requirements? Dani and Anto wanted a medium-sized wine list with lots of room to grow. They had a clear idea of their target customer: a mixed, international crowd of the city’s young creatives and digital nomads. Masa would be a community meeting ground with limitless natural wine, where previously there wasn’t one. They gave us a single word – PUNK – to describe the ethos they sought to represent.

THE CONCEPT

We got to work on concepting an intentional and adventurous rotating wine program for Masa Vins. At its core: a natural wine drinker’s living-room-with-a-wine-fridge away from home.

We wanted a place where wines would be shared with an uncomplicated attitude. Any open-minded person should trust that they will walk out having drunk exactly what and how much they wanted. We said no to egregious faults, boring, flat wines, and abusers, liars, and bad actors; but a resounding yes to experiments and unfamiliar flavours, almost-perfect wines with infectious energy, and queer, female, and BIPOC producers.

We flushed out this creative vision with some concrete suggestions for Masa’s unique approach to wine selection and service. In a nutshell: organised chaos. Bright and busy labels, leaning into the anti-systemic aesthetic of natural wine. A very visible wine fridge, busting open with bottles begging to be shared. An outsized wine list written exclusively on the blackboard, for bar-centric ordering. A large “off-menu” selection inviting you to be part of the family.

THE WORK

After the creative phase, we designed practical systems and guidelines for use by the Masa team, both to give shape to the opening wine list and maintain the basic form and proportions as it inevitably went on growing and evolving. These also worked to facilitate thoughtful pricing and control of other important backend statistics.

THE FINAL PRODUCT

After some final touches and the hand-over, Masa Vins was prepared for take-off. And take off, they did.

Masa Vins was immediately a huge success. The initial purchase ran out faster than we could imagine, and as we had hoped, the in-house team quickly took charge of the list, with smart and adventurous wine choices to keep it fresh. Not only did everyone want to try it, but they also wanted to go back again, and again, and again.

Every time you stop by, there’s a line of Barcelona’s coolest natural wine drinkers patiently waiting for a table with a can of natural wine in hand. It has become both Poblenou’s signature watering hole and a destination bar for residents from further away in the city and abroad. The word on the street is – it’s what Poblenou and Barcelona desperately needed.

We are proud to have formed a part of this opening, and you can find us there more than once a month revelling in the hidden gems at the back of their wine fridge. Masa truly feels like our living room away from home.

Then came the fun stuff: tasting wines. Lots of wines. We contacted the city’s best natural wine distributors, formally introduced them to the Masa team, and tasted together through a large part of their catalogues. We selected wines based on several factors: taste, first and foremost, but also narrative, ethos, recognisability, key regions, key styles, and market positioning. We were looking for those coups du coeur, the wines we’d want to drink ourselves (and Dani and Anto, too.)

Once the wines were selected and ordered, it was time to get Barcelona’s best new natural wine bar ready for opening. We combed through our wide network of wine professionals – from former students of our education programming to co-workers, collaborators, and other assorted wine folk – and sourced the perfect pair of on-the-ground sommeliers for Masa’s easy and approachable service style.