Confessions of a Wino

If you like red wine so fruity that it tastes like a compote, made from 3 metric tonnes of berries reduced down to 3 fl oz, then you will love this Tannat.

Personally, for a wine that retails at north of fifteen quid, I would like to see a real cork, or a screwcap, instead of a trendy black ‘plastic cork’. Conversely, and equally surprising at this price point is a bit of metal, a lead seal (presumably also plastic) on the label. What a waste of money that could have been invested in a new vat, or some wine making expertise.

I’m tempted to call this a triumph of marketing over quality. In fact, the wine is quite nice. Just not £15.99 nice, even with 25% Angels’ discount. Come on, Naked, you can do better than this.

If you are looking for a cheap and cheerful Malbec, you could do a lot worse than try this specimen from Naked wines.

Imagine a bowl of fresh cherries and vanilla ice cream.  Not as dark and devious as many Malbecs but tasty and good with or without food.  Seems like incredible value at  £7.99 (less a mysterious discount of x%*) which probably means you are paying little more than a fiver.

* x = 1/y+3σ (no I can’t work out Naked prices either).

Amy has been kind enough to allow me to taste a couple of samples from La Gramière in the past, and I loved them, but this is the first time I have actually bought a bottle.  Mind you, at £16.99 from Naked Wines, it better be good!

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A plastic cork.  Oh my GOD!  Hugo Mesquitah (@mesquitah) will kill me if he knows I even looked at this bottle, never mind drank the wine.

This came from Naked Wines at a pretty expensive £9.49.  But, then again, there is such a super-complex array of discounts that the real price could be anywhere between £3.50 and £750.

The wine is typical Mabec and tastes of dark chocolate and cherry liqueur (probably Thornton’s) and has a velvety texture.  Very nice and possibly even worth a tenner.  A bit lighter than most Malbecs and a refreshing 13.5% ABV.

I recommend drinking young (as it is plastic corked), trying to avoid the “face” price,  and following WART advice to drink at circa 16°C.  Snap some up quick though.  Before you know it, Gaucho Grills will be serving this at £56 per bottle.

I’ve just placed my first order with Naked Wines.  Is this news?  Not really, I suppose, but the strange thing is the reason why.  Naked has persistently pestered me, offered free samples, discounts and special offers and I have resisted for over a year.

I attended EWBC 2010 and witnessed something very interesting.  Naked founder, Rowan Gormley,  (fortunately wearing clothes in front of several hundred people) standing side by side with Willi Klinger of the Austrian Wine Marketing Board, a top guy by any standard, running a mass taste-off between 11 Austrian Wines.

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Well at first sight, you have to admire a man with cojones the size of decanters.  Rowan Gormley, not content with taking on the mighty Direct Wines (owners of the Laithwaites and Virgin Wines brands) at selling wine, is now considering a legal defence in the light of a provocative press release that Rowan put out on behalf of Naked Wines to which DW took offence.  Offence that was duly passed to their lawyers who promptly threatened to sue his ass.

Rowan’s blog offers the viewpoint of a man on one side of an argument that is undeniably exacerbated by the fact that the Virgin Wines founder left the employ of Direct Wines last summer under a compromise agreement (another word for a cloud).  The word “bollocks” is used to dismiss Direct Wines’ allegations.  Maybe storm in a teacup is better phraseology.

But before you dismiss this as a spat between two former lovers and tell them to grow up and get a life, be aware that this is a business tactic straight from the Virgin playbook (remember Virgin Atlantic/Richard Branson’s long term, bitter and very public fight with BA for example?).  Rowan certainly learned something from his years at Virgin.

Naked Wines needs publicity and hasn’t got a big advertising budget.  If I were Direct Wines, I would shut up and get on with running a successful business and starve Naked of PR oxygen.  Every time they react to one of Gormley’s prods they are adding fuel to his fire.

On the other hand, if I were Rowan Gormley, I would probably continue to aggravate my former employer and provoke whatever reaction I could.  The general public loves an underdog, especially one that looks like it is being grievously mistreated by the older school bully.

If you want to enter a declining market and make a meaningful dent then you better innovate.  Naked Wines is doing just that and gaining publicity by the jeroboam.

Rowan Gormley’s latest stunt was to hold a “crowd taste off” with AU$100,000 of Naked Wines purchase orders available to the winning wine makers.

The tasters were the 50 most active customers of Naked (fully clothed, I believe).  The winemakers were selected by The Government of South Australia and the Australian Trade Commission.  After rounds of tasting and price estimating, the final coup de théâtre was the winemakers themselves in a reverse auction to adjust their prices to see how much of the $100k they could take in orders.

I managed to get my paws on three of the winners that will be going on sale via the Naked Wines website in the next few weeks:

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The third sample from Rowan Gormley’s new venture, Naked Wines, is a Chenin Blanc from a part of the world Rowan should know well, since he was born there.  Not surprising then that South Africa is well represented in the early offerings from Naked, and Bain’s Way seems to be manning the midfield with several varietals available.

I like Rowan and want to support his new venture but I can’t pretend that I like a wine when it smells of napalm.  Come to think of it, I have never smelt napalm but I imagine it to be a rubbery petroleum mixture.  Anyway, of the first two naked wines that I tried, one was good, one poor.

So with the scores level at the hour mark, can Bain’s Way nip into the penalty box and slot home the winner?

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So, Naked Wines has launched and as the website quips “Rules:  Nudity Optional” but this looks like a serious undertaking to me.

You may recall that Rowan Gormley described it as the LastFM of wine shopping, but there has been some controversy over the half launch of Naked Wines, the latest project from the former founder and MD of Virgin Wines.  Its aim is to match wine makers to buyers directly (well via Naked Wines to be precise).  True to his irreverent style, Mr Gormley claims that winemakers “would rather be with their vines than in a Travelodge waiting for an appointment with Tesco”.  This is what the internet was invented for.  Look at the effect it has had on auctions, travel agents, banks, electrical stores, estate agents, bookstores.  The internet is the world’s cyber-wholesale Exchange & Mart.

On the other hand, orders still need to be processed, the wine still needs to be shipped, local duty accounted for, customer service delivered, refunds processed.  In this sense, is Naked Wines really so different from other online wine retailers?

I was invited to join the “tasting panel” and three bottles arrived in the post a few days later.  I was expecting some yawningly predictable staples:  a Petit Chablis, an Aussie Shiraz and a NZ Sauvignon for example.  In fact I got a South African Chenin, a Chilean Cabernet/Carmenère and a Spanish erm….thing.  My interest is aroused but I can assure you I was fully clothed as I tasted the first two – both reds.

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I just found out what Rowan Gormley (formerly of Virgin Wines) is up to these days.  He is getting naked – well in a wine sort of way.  It’s a new concept in wine retailing, although knowing Rowan, he would hate to see it described so stuffily and, after all, everybody hates “new concepts”.

This new concept could be yet another Wine 2.0 also ran – it is claimed to be a bit like LastFM where you can recommend and follow other people’s recommendations, except unlike LastFM I think you might be expected to actually buy some wine.  On the other hand maybe there is something new here – let’s wait and see.

Anyway, there is definitely one good side to it.  They are looking for 100 wine tasters to receive three bottles FREE OF CHARGE, simply in return for bringing your opinion back prior to launch.

As you might expect, being a thirsty (and gobby) git, I have signed up, so if you want one of the remaining 99 places head over to www.nakedwines.com