Vivino announces new premium wine delivery service in attempt to revolutionise industry

Online wine marketplace Vivino has launched a new premium service which gives customers free delivery on 32,000 different wines.

Image: Vivino.

Vivino, an online wine marketplace powered by 27 million customers, has just announced the launch of its new premium wine delivery service.

Vivino Premium will give customers unlimited free delivery on more than 32,000 varieties of wine for an annual fee of £32.

Heini Zachariassen, the CEO of Vivino, is looking to change the way we buy wine by making online delivery accessible for his users. He said: “Wine has not been that big in e-commerce. We think one of the reasons for that is shipping – it’s incredibly expensive. We want to take that out of the equation.”

Zachariassen says he is trying to take the “frustration” and “intimidation” out of buying wine to make it easier for everyone to enjoy good wine without the complicated technical talk.

He added: “I would walk into a shop and see a wall of wine. I didn’t know what to buy, I didn’t know what was good and what was bad”.

Vivino was the first online market place to make user reviews a central part of its company. The wines are rated and reviewed by customers so people have an idea of what to expect from the wine on offer and they get to contribute to the conversation without having to be a wine expert.

The company also aims to open up the market by helping local and regional wine merchants reach new customers. Not everyone has access to a specialist bottle shop and not all merchants have the means to reach a large customer base, but Vivino’s deliveries are nationwide in Europe so it is able to help merchants in smaller areas reach a wider clientele.

Zachariassen said: “Small merchants have amazing wines in their stores, but it’s hard for normal consumers to reach them. The cool thing about Vivino is the immense reach that we have.  We can get our stuff out to the masses very quickly”.

Vivino’s plans don’t stop there. Their goal is to become the world’s largest online wine marketplace and sell $1 billion worth of wine by the end of 2020. It is also looking to focus on personal recommendations using the data it collects from users so all of its customers are given a tailored selection of wines based on their preferences.