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News
UK places fast and furious Australian wine orders
Fifty Australian wineries looking for UK representation were given the opportunity to sell to customers in the space of 24 hours thanks to an online auction developed between online wine farmer’s market Naked Wine, the Australian Wine Commission and the government of South Australia.
The auction took place at the Australian Embassy in London last week, and resulted in a total wine order of AU$100,000. Preceding the auction was a tasting of each wine, which customers attended in order to select the wines that should go under the hammer.
Rowan Gormley, founder of Naked Wines said: “This is the future for wine. Customers get to pick the wines they like, at a price they are prepared to pay and the winemakers get to sell their wines at a price they consider fair. The process is fast (we did in an hour what normally takes months) and more importantly, it is free. Winemakers can focus on making great wines, rather than wasting their time, money and a huge amount of CO2 selling them. So customers get boutique wines, chosen by themselves, for the same price they would pay for mass-produced supermarket plonk.”
Winemaker Dave Johnson of Greedy Sheep Winery, one of the producers whose wine went to auction said: “I got woken up by a call at 3.30am, I was online by 4am and by 5am I had an order for AU$12,000. Now that’s the way to do business!”
The event was equally welcomed by UK customers. One such customer, Alex Vidovic added: “It was a fantastic, eye-opening event to experience; part flash mob, part social networking and part online auction all rolled into one. It seems crazy that this hasn’t been done before – it’s the next best thing to visiting three dozen wineries in one night and picking products straight from the cellar."
The Australian wineries looking for representation sent samples to London so that hoards of potential customers could descend on the tasting, try the wines and conduct a process of elimination, ultimately choosing the final shortlist that went to auction.
For further details, visit www.nakedwines.com
Jane Parkinson, 18.03.08