Italian winemaker discovered by Naked Wines

Online wine retailer Naked Wines has made one Italian winemaker very happy by selling out their wine within 24 hours of it going on their website. They pre-sold over £37,000 worth of the Italian wines after discovering the winemaker at the ProWein exhibition.

Having asked 100,000 Naked Wine customers, known as Angels, what wines they wanted more of, they tasked their Archangels buying team to shortlist wines from unrepresented producers. The chosen winery was Le Tobele estate in Valpolicella and the three wines are Valpolicella DOC 2012, Valpolicella Ripasso DOC 2010 and Amarone della Valpolicella DOC 2009, retailing for between £8.99 and £18.99.

The Angels spend more than £2m a month on future orders which the company uses to fund independent winemakers in return for exclusive wines and wholesale prices. Naked Wines has a total of 250,000 customers and grew sales by 57% to £34.7 million last year.