The GenXperience Podcast: Tom Bell distrupting drinks one sip at a time
Our Founder, Tom, had the pleasure of speaking on the GenXperience Podcast with hosts Stacey Jackson and Roy. As someone just outside the Gen X age range himself, Tom brings a fresh but deeply relevant perspective, one that taps into gen X rethinking alcohol, wellness, and lifestyle without giving up the good stuff.
From disrupting the wine industry to navigating label laws and launching guilt-free favourites like low-sugar Prosecco and organic red blends, Tom shares what inspired him to build DrinkWell that balances indulgence with intention – especially for an audience who grew up on Bacardi Breezers but now reads the label!
Stacey: How did you come up with the idea for DrinkWell and what was your history leading up to the start of the company?
Tom: It was an interesting one and I think probably one that’s not as usual as you’d find within the drinks industry. I didn’t have a history in the drinks industry, I don’t have family in it. My dad has always been a plumber, my mum was a secretary who worked in administration for her entire life. We haven’t lived in the world of the drinks industry, certainly not in supermarket retail and distribution. It came from a pure passion. It was certainly something that I needed as a consumer. I was a very active, fit, and healthy guy. I played a lot of rugby, and I think it was that that really kicked it into gear.
As you know, rugby is accompanied by a drinking culture, which is probably the best part of the sport. We were training at quite a high level, playing for all sorts of different teams and levels. I wanted to find something that fit into my lifestyle and my lifestyle purely was that I enjoyed drinking, I enjoyed having a good time, it’s part of the culture I’m involved in, but equally, the other side of it was being fit and healthy and active. And I couldn’t find it. It wasn’t available in the UK, but it was available widely in the US and Australia. In principle, I listened to myself and the people around me and found a solution and went on to create it.
Roy: With the rugby drinking culture, I wouldn’t have thought wine would have featured in it. I would have thought lagers and beers, which you obviously do. Is it that where it came from then? You thought having a few beers after the game and feeling a little bit ropey the following day?
Tom: Yeah, you’re absolutely right. It started predominantly in beer. I first started doing this from my bedroom office. The first product I ever brought to DrinkWell was a beer called Moosehead Light from Canada. It’s the only beer that I could get my hands on. It takes about 10 weeks to get it from Canada into the UK. So I’d completely forgotten about it. I was in my driveway washing the car when a TNT truck turned up, and I thought, ‘What have I ordered?’ Two pallets of beer get dropped on my driveway and my garage is probably smaller than the office I’m in now. I had a couple hundred cases of beer delivered. I just went around every bar that I knew, every rugby team that I’ve ever played for and against, all the lads I’ve ever been friends with and asked, “Do you want a case of this? It’s a wonderful low carb beer. It’s 4.5%. It tastes fantastic. It’s gonna have less of the drawbacks.” Simple as that. Sold it out in a couple of weeks and completely forgot that it was going to take me 10 more weeks to get any more. So, just from that point, it snowballed into lots of different products on a retail platform where consumers can just come on and make a purchase.
Stacey: That is what I love about you, because you actually source it. You do your own due diligence basically. You find the things that you would drink yourself that aren’t shitty. That’s what I think makes DrinkWell, you wouldn’t sell anything that you wouldn’t drink yourself.
Stacey: Where do you think this drinking culture is going to go in the next 10 years? Do you think that people are going to start leaning more towards drinking better?
Tom: .Less people are drinking now than there has ever been before. People are drinking better products less often. In wine, we’re seeing a significant trend towards healthier, considered drinking and I think it’s down to consumers just deciding that alcohol is something that I need to moderate in a way. It certainly does affect you in a way if you overconsume. However, I think there is a lot of credence being given to a very small amount of studies that suggest alcohol is significantly damaging to your health. There is an overwhelming majority of research that suggests a moderate and balanced consumption of alcohol in and around a healthy diet and exercise has 0 or significant impact on our health.
We’ve lived in a bit of a Big Mac and Diet Coke category. You know, people are looking to have their cake and eat it. They’re looking for everything. Unfortunately there is not enough product out there to fit these needs. There’s either full-strength alcohol, full flavour, full sugar, full everything. Or there are non-alcoholic drinks. So you’re either in a drinking occasion or you’re out of a drinking occasion. The non-alcoholic beverages are just trying to make you feel like you’re in the drinking occasion by designing it in a way in which you feel like you’re drinking an alcoholic product. In effect, some of those are even worse for you than the alcoholic versions when you think about the alternatives that they use to create them. As a prime example, one of the biggest beer brands in the world, its non-alcoholic version compared to its alcoholic version has 1000% more sugar, because they have removed the alcohol but then they have to put something else in it to make it taste good.
Stacey: Is there a specific cocktail or something that we should be drinking in order to still get the buzz, still feel like you’re drinking, but you’re not drinking a non-alcoholic, but you’re also not drinking something that’s crappy. Is there something you could recommend that we should order at a restaurant or at a bar?
Tom: So in the wine world, a really good hack is looking for a wine that is 11%, that’s the perfect number. The nature of wine at the moment is, if you want to go below 11% and it still tastes ok, it’s going to be full of sugar. So, you want an 11% dry wine because that means they’ve naturally produced a lighter alcoholic product that still tastes good, without having to dealcoholize it or add sugar. It can be white but you can also find some amazing Pinot Noirs at this level, especially French.
In spirits, some of these little spritzers. A lot of bars now carry sugar-free elements. They might have some sugar-free syrups. If you want to have some sort of spritzer, you could have a gin, a little sparkling wine in there, and elderflower. That’s a really lovely option that’s not too high on sugar and it’s not going to blow your head off and make you feel horrendous in the morning.
Stacey: You kindly sent us some TRACES, which is your own wine brand. You sent the red, white, rose and Prosecco. I’m going to try the red wine first, can you tell me a little bit about this wine?
Tom: TRACES is a dissemination of everything that we’ve ever learned from selling millions of bottles to customers. So what sells the most, what should it smell like, taste like, feel like, where it comes from, and what’s on the label. TRACES is essentially the baby born out of that information and data. The red wine you have is actually an uncommon grape called Cinsault. It’s actually a very common grape in France but you don’t normally just see it singularly on a normal bottle. Cinsault is a wonderful product that gives you everything that you really want in a classic French red: it’s light, still has loads of fruit, quite punchy and is lovely on the nose. It’s also really clean and really smooth, hardly any tannins in it at all. So it’s nice if the sun is shining in the afternoon, it’s not going to blow your head off.
Stacey: It’s really light. It does smell very fruity. For me, it smells very cherry-like and a bit of melon.
Roy: Here is what I’m going to say, and I am by no means an expert on wine whatsoever. When I go out, I tend to be a rosé person or a white wine person. Red is normally not on my cards. But I like that. And I’m not just saying that Tom because we’re in your presence, but I really, really like that. It meets with my palate, shall we say. What is really interesting about the TRACES bottle is the amount of detail on the back of the bottle that explains everything, down from protein to the volume and all that kind of stuff. It’s incredible.
Roy: Once you’ve opened a bottle of wine, is there a period of time within if you put the cork back in, is there a period of time you should consume that wine?
Tom: It is relatively dependent on the type of wine and how you’ve closed it. So, there are some lovely little gadgets these days that can take out the air that is in the bottle when you put the cork back in. You need to get the air out. It’s about oxidation in the wine. So when the wine starts to oxidize, that’s when the wine is going off. It starts to smell a bit vinegary and it’s not quite as nice. You know what though, 80% of wine drinkers will probably still open the bottle a week later and not tell the difference on some wines!
Stacey: With sugar-free wines, does something happen in the process of making the wine to remove the sugar?
Tom: So, the nature of wine is, you’ve got sugar in the grapes, and the world is getting hotter. There is more sunshine continuously baking the grapes and therefore, there is more sugar in those grapes. When you come to the fermentation, you’re converting the sugar in the grape into alcohol through the process. When you get very hot environments, with lots of sunshine and lots of sugar in the grapes, those grapes could sometimes ferment up to 16%, 18%, 20% in some regions, but the label says 13%.
When the alcohol gets to 13%, the winemaker shuts it off and all of the residual sugar in there that would convert to alcohol would be swimming around and that’s why you’d have additional sugar in wines. Some winemakers in some regions and some grape varietals put additional sugar on top of that, so that is why there is loads more sugar in some wines. Now, what we’ve done is determine exactly when in the year and under what environmental conditions we harvest the grapes, ensuring that they are fully fermented and produce a completely dry wine, with no residual sugar to convert into alcohol. There’s nothing left, and there is no residual sugar or extra calories. That’s the science behind it.
Roy: So to give me an idea, in a typical glass of TRACES Wine, there are 78 calories. Can you give us a comparison to a standard glass of wine?
Tom: Standard wines at 13% to 13.5% will be anything between 110 and 150 calories a glass. It depends on which style of wine it is and which product. Red, white, and rose wines can vary, and their alcohol levels can also differ significantly. If you think about the amount of glasses you drink, there are 6 glasses of wine in a bottle, so it mounts up.
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