Lucy Isles and Kim Wilson in conversation with Chris Davies – Investment Manager at Baillie Gifford, and a long-standing friend of the Makers and the House.
This conversation forms part of an ongoing series. Chris brings an external lens, grounded in investment and long-term thinking, alongside a personal understanding of the House’s making.
Together, these conversations explore not just what has been created, but why – and what it asks of those encountering it for the first time.
Chris:
Let’s start at the beginning. Where does Sablière come from? What was in your head before you met Kim, and then what was the creative explosion that happened when you got together?
Lucy:
I’d say Sabliere came from both of us individually but could only be realised when we met. Why don’t you begin, Kim?
Kim:
Sure. So I've always been in technical drinks development.
Most products were trying to repair a loss. You remove alcohol, and then attempt to rebuild what’s missing. But you are always constrained by that starting point – trying to fill a gap that, structurally, cannot be filled.
What struck me was how limited the ambition had become. The category had largely accepted imitation as the goal – mimicking an alcoholic parent using ingredients and processes designed for alcohol in the first place. You end up chasing your tail, working within a system that was never built to produce something truly non-alcoholic on its own terms.
But the deeper issue is how the category itself is built.
A significant amount of product development in food and drink is outsourced. You are working within fixed timelines, shared facilities, and commercial pressure to deliver something viable quickly. That structure is efficient – but it is not designed for invention.
It narrows the field of possibility. You are not set up to create something fundamentally new. You are set up to iterate on what already exists.
So the limitation was not just in the products.
It was in the conditions that produced them.
Which left a more fundamental question:
What would a great non-alcoholic liquid look like if it were conceived from first principles? Not as a substitute. Not as an imitation. But as something real in its own right, built from ingredients, processes, and intent that belong entirely to it.
The wine space had been on my mind for a long time, but I struggled to commit to anything because I always had so many different ideas. I wrote in my diary in 2020, one of my goals. Probably similar time to when Lucy started thinking about it, to create the world's best non alcoholic wine.
So when I met Lucy, I first thought she was crazy - an independent cuvérie - the project and ambition was so big. But we kept talking, and the more we talked, the more I fell in love with the idea.
Chris:
Hearing that – this idea of building over mimicry – where was your head before you met Kim?
Lucy:
For me, Sablière began with an observation.
Many of the people I admired most – those at the very top of their game – shared a common trait: they didn’t drink, or drank very little. It intrigued me. I’m deeply competitive, and I’ve always wanted to be the best at whatever I put my mind to.
A car accident after university shifted my path, and I fell into finance. I found it intellectually rigorous, but something didn’t sit right. I was creating derivative value, not direct value – and I felt unquenched.
During Covid, I began to imagine something different: a cuvérie at 0.0%. A House of non-alcoholic wine, with women and sustainability at its core.
Life, as it does, put that idea on the backburner. I was promoted to director at a multi-billion-pound asset manager and lost any real sense of time outside of work. Then the market turned. I was caught in a restructuring – and I saw the deep.
In hindsight, it was one of the greatest gifts of my life. It gave me the space – and the fire – to return to the idea and invest in it fully. All my decisions up to that point had quietly kept that door open. But coming through that period was one of the most gruelling experiences I’ve faced.
I had the vision, but not the technical capability to realise it. So I put myself out there – and found Kim.
I met someone who shared the same quiet audacity: the instinct to take a different path, not for the sake of it, but because we believed it could be better.
It was a serendipitous moment. The vision initially felt daunting, but what ultimately brought us together was something deeper: shared values, and matching scars. Different industries – finance and beverage – but strikingly similar paths, shaped within male-dominated environments.
The real shift came in how we chose to build.
We were both willing to step outside convention – to go left of the decimal point, to rethink the problem entirely, and to draw on expertise from across disciplines and geographies.
Two years of R&D later, we are now launching Sablière.
What gives me the greatest pride is what it has become.
At its core, Sablière is a catalyst for collective effervescence – the amplification of energy that comes from shared moments.
Seeing it poured at birthdays, Easter celebrations, wedding anniversaries – those moments have filled my cup.
For the first time in a long time, I feel quenched.
And this is just the beginning.