Wine distributor e-commerce case study: Carviresa, the 1870 winery that launched its own brand and online store

* Data verified in the store. Sales figures will be published once the store has enough of a track record and the client confirms them.

The context

Some companies have been doing things right for so long that the world changes around them without anyone finding the time to sit down and take a look. Carviresa is one of them.

In Tàrrega, in the heart of the Vall del Corb, this family has been making wine since 1870. Six generations tending century-old vineyards, and a family of house brands that each tell a different story: Don Quien, Valerna, Sot Neral, Tararot, Pocapena, Lo Traguet de Sant Eloi. They also make their own olive oil. That alone would be a business.

But Carviresa is also a distributor. Besides its own wines, it sells wines from other wineries (from Catalonia, the rest of Spain, and abroad), along with cavas, spirits, canned gourmet foods, cured hams, cheeses, and accessories. It has its own brick-and-mortar stores, supplies bars and restaurants, and for years it has also been selling online.

That “also” is the key. The store existed, but it lived inside the company website. The same address had to tell the winery's story, explain the appellations, talk to restaurant and bar professionals, showcase the brick-and-mortar stores and, somewhere in the middle of all that, sell a bottle to a consumer. Five different jobs under one roof.

When that happens, sales always lose. Someone who comes in to buy a cava for a dinner party runs into the family history first, then a section for trade customers that isn't meant for them, and only then the product. Meanwhile, the website was showing its age: the blog had stopped in 2020, the structure belonged to another era, and the shopping experience was nothing like the one that same customer gets every day from any other online store.

The challenge

The conversation didn't start with “we need a new website.” It started with a business decision: Carviresa wants online to be its number one sales channel. Not a nice add-on to the brick-and-mortar stores, not a showcase: the channel that sells the most. That completely changes what needs to be built.

• Taking direct-to-consumer sales out of the corporate website and giving them a place of their own where they don't compete with anything.
• Running a broad, constantly changing catalog (wines, cavas, spirits, food, accessories) with prices and stock always up to date, without anyone having to update it by hand.
• Serving two audiences that are nothing alike: the consumer picking up two bottles and the restaurant or bar professional who buys in a completely different way.
• Meeting the legal requirements for selling alcohol online, without making customers feel like they're filling out paperwork.
• Making the store easy to find. A store that only loyal customers know about can't be anyone's number one sales channel.

And one condition running through all of it: no starting from scratch behind the scenes. Carviresa runs its business on a management system that holds the products, the prices, and the warehouse. The store had to build on that, not live apart from it.

The solution: an e-commerce brand that does nothing but sell

The first decision was the most important one, and there's nothing technical about it: the store shouldn't be called Carviresa.

Carviresa is the family name, the one suppliers, restaurants, and the trade know. To a consumer looking for a good wine to give as a gift, that name means nothing. That's how Divina Bodega was born: a new brand, with its own web address, its own tone of voice, and a single mission: selling to the end customer. Carviresa is still there, behind it, as the winery and the track record that give everything else its credibility.

1 · A store that keeps itself up to date

Divina Bodega is connected to Carviresa's management system. Products, prices, and stock come from where they already were, and the store follows. Nobody has to copy anything from one place to another.

It looks like an internal detail, but it makes or breaks the project. A store you update by hand is out of date within three months: prices that no longer apply, products that are out of stock, and an annoyed customer on the phone. Because it's connected, the store tells the truth every day without costing anyone hours.

2 · A catalog organized the way customers search

There are two ways to organize a catalog: the way the company sees it internally, or the way people ask for it. We chose the second.

People buying wine don't search the same way as people buying spirits. Some shop by appellation (Priorat, Rioja, Ribera del Duero, Empordà, Costers del Segre), others by type (red, white, rosé, cava), others by occasion (a gift, a dinner, something special), and others go straight to a specific brand. The store supports all of those paths at once, and each one gets you somewhere useful in two or three clicks.

3 · Trust from the very first screen

In a new store, customers aren't wondering whether the wine is good: they're wondering whether it will arrive. That's why the first thing you see isn't a product but the answers to those doubts: delivery in 24-72 hours anywhere in Spain, free shipping over €75, 30-day exchanges, secure payment by card or Bizum, and a phone number with a real person on the other end, from nine to seven.

This is information that's usually buried in the footer. Putting it at the top isn't decoration: it's what gets someone who doesn't know you to risk a first purchase.

4 · The winery, front and center

Divina Bodega sells many brands, but it has an advantage no generic wine store can copy: there's a real winery behind it, with its own vineyards and its own signature wines. The store tells that story and puts it front and center, with a dedicated space for the house brands and the olive oil.

That does two things at once. It gives the store a personality that sets it apart from any price comparison site, and it turns the house wines (the ones with the best margins) into the stars of the show instead of one more category lost among hundreds.

5 · Built to be found

This is the difference between building a store and building a sales channel. Before adding a single product, we look at what people actually type into Google when they want a wine from a specific appellation, a cava for a celebration, or a bottle to give as a gift, and at the words they use.

The catalog was organized around that. Each category has its own page and its own copy, written to answer a real search. That way the store earns traffic on its own, little by little, without relying only on advertising or on reaching out to loyal customers one by one. It's the least visible work in the project, and the work that decides whether, two years from now, this is the number one channel or still an experiment.

6 · Two languages and room to grow

The store launches in Spanish and Catalan, which is where its natural customer base comes from. It's built to add more languages and markets when the time comes, without rebuilding anything. Once a company decides online will be its main channel, the website stops being a project with an end date and becomes a tool that grows.

The shop from the inside

Visitors to Divina Bodega find a store that gets straight to the point. At the top, the shipping promise and the phone number. Below that, the main paths: wines, cavas and sparkling wines, spirits, gourmet food, accessories, and the house olive oil.

A little further down comes the winery, with each of the six house wine lines summed up in a sentence (the laid-back charm of Pocapena, the elegance of Don Quien), because you don't sell a wine with a spec sheet, you sell it with an idea. After that come the week's best sellers, the section that performs best in any store: people want to know what everyone else is buying.

Every product has its own page with a photo, appellation, price, and a quantity selector right in the listing. There's a search box for shoppers who know what they want, a customer account for repeat buyers, and a cart that doesn't make you register before you can see the shipping cost. And on your first visit, the age check the law requires, handled in one click.

Results

Let's be honest about the timeline: the store has only just launched. Quoting sales figures today would mean making them up. What we can say is what has really changed and why this project marks a turning point for Carviresa.

The first is focus. For the first time, the company has a site whose only job is to sell, without sharing it with the family history or the trade side. Everything decided there (a promotion, a new category, a campaign) is measured against one thing: whether it sells more or not.

The second is sustainability. The store keeps itself up to date because it pulls from the management system. That means a bigger catalog doesn't mean a bigger workload, which is exactly what you need when you want one channel to outgrow the rest.

The third is image. A company with more than 150 years of history that shows up with a modern, fast, clear store sends a very specific message: it's still very much alive. And suppliers, restaurants, and brick-and-mortar stores notice that too.

The fourth will take the longest to show and is worth the most. A store organized to be found wins customers who had never heard of you. That's the real leap: going from selling to people who already know who you are to selling to people who discover you while looking for a wine.

We'll publish order and growth figures once there's enough history and the client confirms them.

What the project includes

A brand of its own for the online channelA complete online storeConnected to their management systemA catalog organized around how customers searchProduct pages and searchCustomer area and cartShipping, returns, and secure paymentAge verificationSpanish and CatalanBuilt to show up in Google

Frequently asked questions

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