Two Reds from Naked Wines - South Africa and Portugal‏ (and Lot18 UK)

At the end of a very challenging week in the day job, not being able to get to the Wines of South Africa braaiday lunch and tasting last Friday due to yet another very sudden, very heavy downpour was mildly disappointing to say the least.

It was held at a restaurant a mere five minutes' walk from my office and the stream of excitable tweets from fellow bloggers who'd made it there was as relentless and depressing as the rain.

I decided to make up for it by keeping the theme South African with an Arabella Shiraz from Naked Wines for dinner that evening.

Naked Wines have been hugely successful as a business since their launch a mere 4 years ago. Reports that Lot18 UK (another internet only wine retail start-up) have closed down operations after just 4 months throw Naked's success into sharp relief.

Lot18's press release blamed the supermarkets in a somewhat huffy parting shot - but that's a bit like blaming the wind for blowing or the rain for falling.

I don't know the details, but clearly Lot18 failed to find a commercially-robust strategy in this country (they are faring somewhat better in the US) and I can't help again drawing a comparison with Naked Wines' founder Rowan Gormley - a savvy, commercial, entrepreneurial finance guy.

Arabella Shiraz, 2011, South Africa - £8.49 / £6.25 for Angels

After a long week at work, an uncomplicated, ripe, fruit-driven quaffer was exactly what I needed - the oenological equivalent of burger and chips or the sausage and mash that we served it with.

Lots of sweet, sunshine-filled plummy fruit, hints of spice and liquorice and a slap of leather on the finish.

Balanced and ripe - pleasant acidity and soft tannins. Top-end fruit appeal without any bottom-end complexity, it's a well-brought-up girl-next-door of a wine.

Friendly and pleasant to have around, reliable and well-behaved; won't challenge or thrill you too much; pretty much what its IWC commendation says about it.

Montaria 2010, Alantejano, Portugal - £9.99 / £7.49 for Angels

With that bottle gone, we picked out another from Naked - a Montaria 2010 from Alantejano in Portgal.

Made from the native Trincadeira plus Aragonez (Spain's Tempranillo) and the less well-known Alicante Bouschet grapes, it displays the Naked house-style qualities of being extremely pleasant and balanced.

There are touches of Portuguese typicity - red and black cherry fruit, some roughed-up herbs and eucalpytus, prominent acidity. But the tannins, which are so often a touch astringent in Portuguese wines, owe more to Naked's preference for gentle softness than to their country of origin.

Less full-on New World in style, this is not as quite as ripe and sweet as the Arabella and the texture improves with air by the following day when the left overs (plus a second bottle) match well with a roast beef dinner.

Well-made, reliable, perfectly ripe, enjoyably crowd-pleasing wines for easy quaffing - is it any wonder Naked has been such a success story ?

Links

Naked Wines - http://www.nakedwines.co.uk/
Arabella Wines - http://www.arabellawines.com/

Naked Wines in Cambridge

Is Naked Wines an online wine retailer, or an events and social media company with a sideline in quaffable crowd-pleasers ?

Last week, Naked brought their innovative approach to wine retailing (as well as a number of their winemakers) to Cambridge as part of their 2012 tour of UK cities; no formal presentation, limited technical information in the hand-out, just the chance to get up close and personal with the winemakers themselves.

I went along to try out some wines familiar and new - and in the process bumped into a large number of fellow Cambridge-based wine enthusiasts, including Davy Kurniawian who has already written up his thoughts on his Vinoremus blog.

Prices and full details are on the Naked Wines site, but unless otherwise, they were generally around £10 before Angel discounts.

New Zealand

Lay of the Land Destination SB 2011 is a half-step away from the typical, signature Marlborough Sauvignon; with three months spent on the lees it feels softer, fuller and more rounded out.

Small and Small Theodore SB 2011 is several steps away - with 10% of the blend spending 8 months in new oak, it has a mouthfillingly oaky, creamy texture.

The Riesling 2011 has a linear, citrus purity that is reminiscent of the Australian style; this wine has a Gold Medal from Sydney.

The Pinot Noir 2011 is pale in the glass, aromatic on the nose with sweet red berry fruit, a toasty smokiness, savoury depth and juicy acidity with good grip on the finish. Textbook entry-level Pinot.

Slovenia

Tilia Estate Pinot Gris 2011 has a smokey, toasty nose, rounded acidity and a touch of spice, with apples and pears as well as stone fruit.

Austria

Rotes Haus Gemischter Satz 2010 is a field blend of mainly Pinot Blanc and Pinot Gris, fermented half in stainless steel for freshness and half in vats for rounded fullness. It is crisp and aromatic with, unusually, aromas of bananas as well as spice and has a rounded, soft and creamy texture.

Landhaus Mayer Riesling 2011 is rounded and citrus-sherberty with a Mosel-esque sweet-sourness.

Portugal

The Negreiros Douro 2008 has funky, herbaceous and struck-match aromas with red and black cherry fruit; balanced with good acidity.

The Filigrana Alvarinho 2011 showed aromas of petrol and sweat on the nose, with sherbert and zesty citrus pith on the palate. Crisp and linear with good depth of flavour.

The Montaria Reserva 2010 red shows cherry and prune fruit, with vanilla spice and liquorice. Complex, rounded and mouthfilling with gentle grip on the finish, it has an IWC Silver.

Spain

The Franck Massard Herbis Verdejo 2011 is grown at an altitude of 850m; aromatic on the nose, it is crisp and herbaceous yet rounded. It has an IWC Silver.

I tried, but was less inpressed with the wines from Carlos Rodriguez

France

Ryan O'Connell is an American who moved to Languedoc to make wine - his Domaine O'Vineyards Proprietor's Reserve 2008 is a Big, Oaky Red - a blend of Mourvèdre, Syrah and Carignan it has a perfumed nose of vanilla, liquorice and spice, with black cherry fruit, juicy acidity, an inky texture and an impressively complex palate.

Stylistically, a little too over-the-top for me - and not cheap at £17.49 even for Angels.

Recommended Wines

As ever, there were lots of affordable, well-made quaffers here - with a high degree of consistency.

The NZ Sauvignons were interesting as they suggest a new direction for this region. The Small and Small Pinot was also worthy of investigation as a reliable, textbook example.

My two favourites, however, were from Portugal; the Filigrana Alvarinho 2011 and the Montaria Reserva 2010.

Review by Davy Kurniawian on Vinoremus:

Part 1
Part 2

Links

Naked Wines - http://www.nakedwines.com/

Naked Wines' New App‏

As I have written before, I am not a greater believer in wine apps - specifically of those that purport to tell you whether you are going to like a particular wine or not.

Something of a technophobe myself, I want technology to be intuitive and useful and am generally not prepared to invest much time in learning how to use something new before I decide it's too boring to pursue.

So, whether it's my attitude towards these things in general or the fact that I have not actually used the app in question that disqualifies me from expressing an authoritative opinion on the new Naked Wines app is perhaps something of a moot point.

However, when within 24 hours of launch the app overtook Amazon, Groupon, Asos and Autotrader to become one of the most downloaded Free Lifestyle apps in the UK, then clearly something has worked.

It has also doubled the amount of interaction between Naked's customers and wine-makers.

The press release from Naked gives the usual stats about the company that will be familiar to many - 200,000 customers of whom half are Angels.

To me, however, there are several more interesting stories here:

- firstly, the growth of M-Commerce; now representing just under 10% of e-commerce sales with an average transaction value of over £100, it is finally turning into the mobile web that was talked about around a decade ago

- secondly, Naked's ability to keep moving ahead and constantly change in as staid an industry as wine retailing is little short of phenomenal

- finally, the app was developed in-house; I know from painful experience how difficult it is to get even the simplest of apps launched for a client using an outsourced consultancy, so to do the whole thing in-house is really impressive

With a strong brand, huge customer loyalty and a constantly innovative business model, Naked have successfully combined old-school retailing with cutting edge social media.

And curiously, part of that success is an eye for some fairly basic insights into human nature - that people love to interact, chat and share new discoveries with friends, and that they like a strong sense of community and identity.

For a more considered assessment of the app itself, I recommend this article by techie wine enthusiast, Dave Lowe, on his Big Pinots blog: http://bigpinots.com/naked-wines-new-app

Another wine blogger who has some techie inclinations and is positive about the app is Colin Smith, writing as Grapefan.
Links

Naked Wines - www.nakedwines.com

A Tasting of Naked Wines‏

It's been a while since I reviewed any wines from Naked, but the lovely Fran who oversees the company's PR got in touch and asked if I would like to try some of their new wines with colleagues.

I suggested that a general mix of wines would work well for a tasting, but left it to her to do the final selection.

What arrived a few days later was a fizz, three whites, three reds and a dessert wine and whilst some of the producers were familiar to me, a number were new additions to the Naked portfolio.

For the tasting, I organised a straightforward buffet of salamis, various cheese, bread and olive oil and started by explaining how Naked's business model is heavily based on the concept of choice architecture as put forward in Nudge.

From a standing start in 2008, the company has gained 200,000 customers, most of whom are Angels, with a "house style" of wines that are well-made, unashamedly populist crowd-pleasers.

The first of the wines was a Sachetto Prosecco - with good ripe cox's apple and pear fruit.

This, like most of the wines, was generally well-liked, with just a few dissenters finding it rather one dimensional or lacking in finesse (which I take to be more of an opinion on Prosecco in general rather than on this specific wine).

Next was a Californian Chardonnay, the Angels Reserve from F Stephen Millier, which was ripe with good orchard fruit, good acidity and balanced, creamy oak.

This was again well-liked with people comparing it vary favourably to the over-oaked, overly sweet style of New World Chardie that led to a backlash and the rise of kiwi SB and the now ubiquitous Pinot Grigio.

We followed this with, perhaps slightly out of order, a Loire Sauvignon from Villebois; aromatic and herbaceous on the nose, it has crisp acidity and minerality.

It perhaps suffered coming after the (gently) oaked Chardonnay, but went very well with some creamy goat's cheese.

The final white was a Pinot Gris from New Zealand's Classic South - with floral spice on the nose, it is very much an Alsation-style PG.

Big, rich and fat on the palate, it would match perfectly with a tarte flambee spiced with nutmeg.

The first of the reds was a 2006 Rioja Reserva from Carlos Rodrigez. It spends 12 months in oak, giving just the right amount of vanilla spice, but also preserving a lot of the fruit characteristics.

With aged brick red hints and a pale rim, it is showing some signs of age and feels wonderfully soft and mellow.

This wine proved very popular with colleagues for its oaky vanilla spice, bramble and cherry fruit and mouthfilling texture.

Next up was a Lirico Argentinian Malbec from Maurizio Lorca which proved to be rather more restrained and textured than I was expecting.

This wine was a little less well-received than the Rioja, perhaps because it had less instant appeal, but for me was the best of the reds and perhaps the best wine of the evening.

I also thought it proved an exception to Paola Tich's theory that Argentinian Malbecs tend to be like Essex Girls - fundamentally attractive, but overly made-up to the point where the natural beauty gets lost.

The final red was a mixture of select parcels (otherwise known as leftovers) from Australia's Brewery Hill, named Assemblage.

With prominent juicy acidity, low tannins and simple ripe cherry fruit it was reminiscent of a Languedoc red but was not so well received after the complexity of the Rioja and Malbec.

The final wine was a Moscato - a light sparkler with just 7% alcohol and some residual sugar.

With lots of floral Muscat aromas and refreshing lemon-lime acidity, it is a perfect match for a summer fruit pudding or an Eton Mess.

Recommended Wines

All these wines are very much in Naked's house style of well-made crowd-pleasers, but for me the best white was the rich, perfumed Alsatian-style Pinot Gris from Small and Small, whilst the best red was the Lorca Malbec.

Links

Naked Wines - http://www.nakedwines.co.uk/

Naked Wines' $1m Zero to Hero Competition‏

One of the things I most admire about Naked Wines is their entrepreneurialism and willingness to keep trying out different business models and ideas.

With 200,000 customers, over half of which are Angels, they have clearly found their market and are getting it right, but are also not resting on their laurels.

Some of the most interesting and thought-provoking people I have met in the course of my wine-writing have been those who have a background in business rather than wine and can therefore bring a degree of fresh thinking and commercial acumen to the difficult process of making money out of wine.

And charismatic South African Chartered Accountant Rowan Gormley, who heads up Naked Wines, is about the savviest businessman I have ever met either in my wine-writing capacity or my day job as a company director.

All of which brings us on to Naked's latest venture - the $1m Zero to Hero Competition.

Put aside the awful title - which evokes a TV quiz show and sounds like they picked $1m because £1m was too much money - and the idea is that wine-makers in the UK (plus France, Spain, Chile, Argentina and Australia) apply to Naked to win an order worth £50k from the company plus the chance to wine a $500k investment contract.

The details on my press release are a little sketchy and it is never really explained where the $1m figure comes from.

However, for any of the "talented unknown wine-makers" that Naked are looking for, these are mere details at this stage - Ts and Cs can presumably be obtained from Naked's Development Director Eamon Fitzgerald who is given as the contact for registering interest.

As ever, Naked also has an eye on the customer and is looking to recruit wine drinkers - be they existing Naked customers or not - onto the judging panel and paying them in Naked Wines credit to do so.

Registration for this side of things is via www.facebook.com/nakedwines.

The competition has all of Naked's hallmarks - a bold, novel, industry-challenging approach, direct investment in winemaking, a customer-centric assessment process and lots of buzz.

It also has a zeitgeisty feelgood factor, as investing in British business is very much A Good Thing right now, whilst the profile of award-winning UK wines is on an upward curve.

I just wish they'd thought of a better name for it.

Naked Wines at Cambridge Food and Wine Society

I have been a customer of Naked Wines for around a year now and as a committee member of Cambridge Food and Wine Society, it made sense at some point to bring the two together.

So I invited Rowan Gormley, a charismatic South African entrepreneur who has worked as the right-hand man of charismatic British entrepreneur, Richard Branson and founded Naked Wines in 2008, to come and present some of his wines to a mixture of Cambridge Food and Wine Society regulars plus a group of Naked's own customers.

It proved to be a fascinating evening - for a number of reasons, mostly unrelated to the wines themselves as most fitted into, for me, a fairly standard pattern.

I find that Naked's wines have a very strong sense of identity or "house style" - well-made quaffers with generous up-front fruit, but not overblown in style, they are perhaps best categorised as "restrained New World style", coming generally either from the New World itself or Europe's New-World-style regions such as southern France or inland Spain.

We started with a Sachetto Prosecco NV; with simple, straightforward pear fruit, a ripe palate and a touch of yeastiness developing on the nose, it was a good example of what an enjoyable Prosecco should be.

With an eye to the mood of the audience, Rowan asked how many people preferred Prosecco to Champagne before going on to explain how many Champagnes can be just too acidic to be enjoyable as compared, say, to more drinkable Proseccos.

This was just the first of a series of communications master strokes from Rowan who clearly understand his audience, for whilst good Prosecco can indeed be more enjoyable (and cheaper) than poor Champagne, no Prosecco that I have ever tried has matched really good Champagne for complexity, intensity or sophistication.

With 15 wines to get through, we sampled them in pairs, generally from the same producer and usually a red and a white together.

Historically, I have generally found myself preferring Naked's white wines for quality of their structural acidity rather over the reds which, for me, are a little lacking in tannic structure and texture.

However, at this event, trying reds and whites side-by-side, I generally found myself preferring the reds.

Our first pairing of wines was from South African producer Carmen Stevens - the Chenin Blanc was herbaceous and fresh with lively acidity and a gentle minerality and showed a degree of restraint and sophistication from being grown on cooler, elevated, south-facing slopes.

The Shiraz showed typical pruney fruit with pepperiness, an inky texture and some grip on the finish.

The next two wines were from souther France's Benjamin Darnault - a Picpoul and a Faugères.

I have had the Picpoul previously and whilst it is a good example of the variety, at £9.99 I find it a little overpriced for such a straightforward wine which often retails for just a few Euros on its homeland.

The Faugères I found much more impressive - mainly Syrah, it had a toasty, tarry nose with eucalyptus notes whilst the palate shows bramble fruit, prunes, liquorice with a soft texture.

The next pairing, from Spain's Carlos Rodriguez, was an Albarinho that was crisp, fresh and floral with peach and apricot fruit followed by an unoaked Rioja which showed lots of up-front varietal fruit rather than the vanilla and secondary aromas one associates with Rioja.

In another commuications coup, Rowan outlined the oaking and aging regimes of Rioja, noting that a top-level Gran Reserva will have much less up-front primary fruit than an unoaked or more lightly oaked version and that people might well find themselves therefore preferring something with less oak.

The next wine was a Loire Sauvignon from Villebois whose wines I reviewed a while ago here and here - in style it is half-way between a traditional lean Loire and a full-on tropical kiwi, so it came as no surprise to learn that it was made by a French winemaker who has spent time working in New Zealand.

Next up were a pair of Argentinians from Mauricio Lorca which were both well-made, but not to my taste - a floral Torrontes with ripe fruit sweetness and a light, juicy Malbec with sweet prune fruit.

The logic of the next pairing, a Macon Uchizy from Burgundy and a red Alentajeno from Portugal, was not immediately obvious until Rowan pointed out the theme here was the use of oak.

The Macon Uchizy I thought was very impressive - the nose is toasty, whilst the palate is buttery-oatmealy with a creamy, smooth and rounded texture, balanced with fresh acidity and a toasty finish.

This was, for me, the most interesting white wine of the night - perhaps because it is the most different from Naked's usual style.

I was less impressed by the Portuguese wine which showed bramble fruit, black cherry and oaky tannins, but this is a country whose wines I feel I still haven't quite "got" yet.

We followed this oaky pairing with something designed to refresh palates - a Castillo de Tafalla Angels Selection Rosé which I reviewed here and was very impressed with once again.

Our final pairing was a couple of hot-climate big reds - a Cabernet Franc from Chile's Kimbao which I had expected not to like (albeit from fairly limited experience of Cab Franc) but which I enjoyed, perhaps because it was a far-from-typical example, and a sweetish Ishtar Shiraz with a Pinot-esque nose of decaying compost that I was less impressed with.

At the tasting, I sat next to fellow blogger Davy Kurniawan who blogs as Vinoremus and is an IWC judge, comparing notes as we went along rather like two avid trainspotters.

I also managed to get a very insightful appraisal of the Cambridge Food and Wine Society's website from someone who does this sort of thing for a living and whose website is here.

I note that for a nominal fee, she will advise whether one's blog stands any chance of being turned into a book - a process one client describes as being like root canal surgery, painful but necessary; which reminds me of the old adage that during a goldrush, the best money is in selling spades.

Recommended wines

White - Le Moulin de l’Oeuvre Macon Uchizy 2010, £11.49
Rosé - Castillo de Tafalla Angels Selection Rose 2010 , £7.99
Red - Benjamin Darnault Faugeres 2008, £9.99


Angels get 33% cashback on all purchases - details of the Angels scheme is here:

Links

Cambridge Food and Wine Society - http://cambridgefoodandwinesociety.org.uk/

Naked Wines - http://www.nakedwines.com/

The Wines - details

Sacchetto Prosecco NV
Carmen Stevens' Angels Reserve Chenin Blanc 2011
Carmen Stevens' Angels Reserve Shiraz 2010
Benjamin Darnault Picpoul de Pinet 2010
Benjamin Darnault Faugeres 2008
Carlos Rodriguez Artemisa Albarino 2010
Black Label Bargondia 2010
Villebois Prestige Sauvignon Blanc 2010
Mauricio Lorca Angels Reserve Torrontes 2011
Mauricio Lorca Angel's Reserve Malbec 2010
Macon Uchizy 2010
Montaria Tinto 2010
Castillo de Tafalla Angels Selection Rose 2010
Kimbao Syrah Cabernet Franc 2009
Balthazar Barossa Ishtar Shiraz 2009

Parrot Valley 2009 Red Blend, South Africa - Naked Wines

I somehow bought three bottles of this South African red blend (Cabs Sauv and Franc) wine from Naked Wines and decided to wait until I finished all of them before reviewing.

Initial impressions of the first bottle were of its big, rich, heady nose of bramble fruit, vanilla, toasty oak and woodsiness - that's the 14% alcohol level for you.

Likewise, on the palate the texture was pleasant enough, if a little juicy and lacking in tannin.

What I found myself unsure about was the somewhat over-perfumed, blueberry aromas that became more prominent with a bit of air, but it was not serious enough to have me emailing the company for a refund.

The second bottle a few weeks later seemed slightly more restrained than the first, with less of the perfumey aroma on the finish.

By the time we came to the third bottle, it seemed to have settled down much more into a ripe, fruit-driven wine with blackcurrant, dark berry fruit, good acidity and lots of easy appeal.

The palate also shows some minty eucalyptus, liquorice and black cherry fruit, some rustic spice, cigar box and fresh, juicy acidity.

As something that delivers more in terms of its range of aromas than structural interest, it prompted something of a discussion in the CWB household about wines to impress straight out of the bottle with lots of up-front fruit, but without so much in the way of texture, subtlety or elegance - Lady Gaga vs Fred Astaire, or wines for wine drinkers vs wines for wine geeks.

It didn't specifically prompt a discussion on bottle variation, but I feel I should point out that I have never experienced quite so much variation in three bottles of the same wine (moreover, sealed under screwcap) consumed so closely together.

The other point that occurs to me is that Naked's reds seem to be more acidity-driven than tannin-driven and perhaps this is to be expected as an appreciation of and enthusiasm for the presence of tough, chewy tannins is maybe one of those things that separates the wine geeks from the mere quaffers and Naked is just not in the wine geek market.

And with hindsight, the focus on acidity is perhaps why I often find myself often preferring Naked's whites.

Overall, this is not a bad wine, but for my taste I would rather less on the nose and more on the palate.

I wouldn't buy it again, and if I were in the mood for a fruit-driven South African red, I would go for one of Stephen de Wet's Arabella wines (which I have reviewed elsewhere on this blog).

List price is £8.99, with 33% cash back for Angels.

Links

Naked Wines - http://www.nakedwines.com/

Mistral Carmenere 2010 - Naked Wines

One of the most notable things about Naked Wines' retail model is their use of social media, and anyone who has used amazon recently will probably find it quite familiar with its various groups, product reviews by customers and a plethora of statistics on what people are buying and rating.

Another familiar feature is personalised recommendations, based presumably on the ratings you give to the wines you liked.

In this case, this Mistral Carménère from Chile was apparently recommended to me by one of my online "buddies" - obviously someone I've never met in real life or know anything about, but as I'm always happy to try out something new and all of Naked's wines come with a satisfaction guarantee anyway, I thought "Why not ?" and added it to my order.

Carménère originated in Bordeaux, but is now mostly associated with Chile where for years it was mistakenly believed to be Merlot.

For a while, it was spoken of as possibly Chile's new signature red grape, but the country seems to be doing well enough with international varieties not to need a the gimmick of a "signature grape" schtick, so the wine can be assessed on its own merits alone.

The nose is quite complex, but somehow hard to define - there is bramble fruit, spice and hints of forest floor.

The palate shows black cherries, blackcurrant and, with time, a hint of inkiness and pencil shavings, some clove and pepper spice.

There is lively, juicy, linear acidity and soft, gentle tannins on the finish with a slight touch of toastiness.

It's not a dead-ringer for the Merlot it was historically mistaken for, but it does share many Merlot's characteristics - juicy acidity and low tannins especially.

Like most of Naked's wines - and especially their top-rated ones - it impresses straight out of the bottle with lots of ripe, up-front fruit whilst being well-made and more-ish.

There is precious little detail about the wine on the Naked website - "Chile", "other red grapes" and "easy-drinking red" is about it, but for those familiar with Naked's house style, that does pretty much sum it up.

Mistral Carménère £7.49 from Naked Wines (Angels get 33% cashback) - for more on Naked's Angels scheme, see here.

Links

Naked Wines - https://www.nakedwines.com/

Domaine Cristia Cotes du Ventoux 2009 - Naked Wines

I poured this southern French Grenache from Naked Wines into the decanter at the start of our meal, but despite this, initial impressions were a little underwhelming - yes, there were some classic "southern French" ripe dark fruits on the nose, but it was all quite restrained and in the mouth the acidity felt a little thin.

In fact, despite some bottle age, it did not really start to open up properly and come into its own until after the end of the meal and later again when resampled after a couple of days; at this stage, the nose had become much more pronounced with prunes and a hint of spice, whilst on the palate the fruit acidity feels fuller and more rounded. There is some ripe blackcurrant and pencil shavings and, whilst the texture is soft with low tannin levels, the finish is gently grippy.

Sampled a further day later and it has developed again - the perfume on the nose has died down and what remains is a really well-made, food-friendly acidity on the palate. It is dark and feels mouthfillingly inky with some savouriness, black-cherry aromas, and hints of pencil shavings and peppery spice.

Anyone looking for a crowd-pleasing quaffer, with lots of fruit to enjoy may be a little disappointed here - rather, with its prominent and sophisticated acidic structure, this is much more of an Italian-style food wine, intended to cut through the richness of something like a beef stew or a bolognese sauce, rather than being an easy-drinker straight out of the bottle.

£9.49, with £3.16 cashback for Angels.

Links

Naked Wines - http://www.nakedwines.com/

Summer Picnic Fizz

Cambridge is blessed with many beauty spots, but my ideal picnic would probably start with a walk through the beautiful historic city centre followed by a punt down to Granchester.

Most typical picnic food is actually quite hard to match with wine, so the trick is to go for something well-made, but straighforward and crowd-pleasing. Nothing makes a statement quite like fizz, so finding a cheap and cheerful bottle of picnic fizz can be quite a big ask. Fortunately, here are three that will match well, won't disappoint and won’t blow your budget.

First up is a light, refreshing and elegant Italian Prosecco from Bacchanalia. It’s a semi-sparkling frizzante and you will need a corkscrew for this one. It has a light, crisp refreshing fizz, with apples and pears acidity, some yeastiness on the nose, a hint of sweetness on the mid-palate and a persistent finish.

If you want to make a bit more of a statement, pink fizz is perhaps the ultimate summer indulgence. Cava Portaceli Rosado NV from Cambridge Wine Merchants, made by the traditional Champagne method and aged for 9 months, is more of a food wine and has a greater body and depth of flavour to stand up to picnic foods.

There is some yeastiness on the nose from the Champagne-method production and a lively, foaming mousse; it feels rounded and has a complex, savoury depth of flavour with food-friendly leesiness and balanced, fresh acidity.

However, the most instantly crowd-pleasing of the three straight out of the bottle is an Italian Sacchetto Rose Brut NV from Naked Wines. Made from a blend of Pinot and Merlot, it has aromas of redcurrants and raspberries. It feels ripe and rounded on the palate and has an easy-drinking creamy texture that tingles on the tongue like sherbet.

The Wines

Primo Prosecco DOC Vino Frizzante, £7.69 from Bacchanalia
Cava Portaceli Rosado NV, £7.49 from Cambridge Wine Merchants
Sacchetto Rose Brut NV, £10.49 from Naked Wines (with £3.50 cashback for Naked Angels)

Links
Cambridge Edition - http://www.cambsedition.co.uk/
Bacchanalia - http://www.winegod.co.uk/
Cambridge Wine Merchants - http://www.cambridgewine.com/
Naked Wines - http://www.nakedwines.com/

Six Summer Picnic Wines from Naked Wines

Cambridge is a great place to be in the summer - we get some of the driest weather in Europe's northern half and we have lots of green spaces.

I can think of no other city where you are likely to see cows grazing in the centre - and that it is against the backdrop of King's College and the river just makes it even more special.

After a couple of years of wash-outs, we are also shaping up for that much-promised and equally derided barbecue summer of a while ago.

There are plenty of spots to choose from, but my own favourites in Cambridge include sitting at the top of Cambridge castle with a view of the city's skyline, lounging by the river bank at Trinity College watching tourists struggling to steer their punts (answer: use the pole) or, further afield, in Grantchester Meadows.

The energetically inclined could take in all three of these, via a walk through the city's historical centre which retains its quirky medieval layout and either a punt or a stroll to Grantchester.

Naked Wines, one of the most exciting wine retailers in the internet-only space, recently sent me a case of their six best picnic wines for review; the company's "house-style" is well-made, fruit-driven wines that impress straight out of the bottle - just what you need for a picnic - and you could do a lot worse than packing one of these, pre-chilled, into your hamper. Most are sealed under screwcap, which is another handy feature.

Best for lazy lounging - Benjamin Darnault Picpoul de Pinet, £9.99

Picpoul is a somewhat unusual grape from southern France's Languedoc region; it makes refreshing, crisp wines with a hint of seashell and sandiness - in a good way.

This one is sandy coloured in the glass with aromas of ripe, thick-skinned grapes and a refreshing cox's apples and pears acidity, with varietal hints of sand and seashells; a good, light quaffer with just 12.5% alcohol, despite its warm-climate origins.

Best with light foods - Arabella Viognier 2011, £7.99

I like Arabella's wines a lot - this one is lemony, with lots of ripe tropical fruit, some typical varietal peachiness, elderflower, rounded acidity and a touch of mid-palate sweetness. There is also some ripe toastiness and a good, balanced finish.

An easy quaffer with the acidity and body to stand up to standard light picnic foods like quiche, chicken drumsticks and salad leaves with cherry tomatoes.

The most perfumed - Classic South Pinot Gris 2010, £10.49

Golden in the glass, this is very very floral and perfumey on the nose, almost Gewurz-like with aromas of lychees and beeswax; there is good, tropical acidity with passionfruit and guava and some honeyed weight.

The best rosé - Castillo de Tafalla Rosado 2010, £6.99

As something of a recent convert to food-rosé wines, I thoroughly enjoyed this ripe and juicy more-ish Spanish rosé.

With raspberry aromas, rounded acidity and a pleasing hint of spice, it has a good, savoury finish. Instantly appealing and more-ish, it also feels very well-made and is excellent value.

The most celebratory - Sacchetto Rosé Brut NV, £10.49

If you are looking to make a statement, nothing says it better than fizz and for the wow factor, a bottle of pink fizz takes some beating.

The added body of a rosé also makes this a little more food-friendly. With aromas of redcurrants and raspberries on the nose and an easy-drinking feel, it's a sure-fire crowd-pleaser.

The best with hearty food - Benjamin Darnault Minervois 2010, £9.49

If your picnic food is a little more hearty - pork pies and sliced ham, rather than mixed leaves and salad - then the Darnault Minervois is what you need.

It has ripe bramble fruit and plums on the nose, some soft vanilla-y tannins, gentle hints of cloves and spice with good, balanced acidity and tannic grip on the finish.

Recommended wine

The fizz makes the biggest statement here, but for all-round appeal - and value too - I recommend Castillo de Tafalla Rosado.

All wines are available from Naked Wines, with up to 33% cash back for Naked Angels.

All wines provided for review.

Links

Naked Wines - http://www.nakedwines.com/

Main image credit: picturenation.co.uk

Naked Wines Launches Marketplace

The best entrepreneurial businesses continually evolve - they don't just carry on doing what they started off with.

Rather they grow and develop, applying their entrepreneurial skills in related areas to increase scale whilst diversifying away some of their risk.

Microsoft, once merely an operating software company, now has three separate divisions covering Platform Products & Services, a Business Division and an Entertainment and Devices Division.

Likewise, marketing services giant WPP, which began by buying Madison Avenue ad agency Ogilvy & Mather, has stuck within its knowledge sphere, but changed the whole industry model of marketing service business ownership and now sees its most exciting growth in BRIC markets.

So it should perhaps come as no surprise that internet-only wine retailer, Naked Wines, having successfully taken on rivals Laithwaites and Virgin Wines, is now moving into new, more ambitious areas.

Certainly, the company is in a good place at the moment - from a standing start, in two years, it has gained 150,000 new customers and converted 50,000 of these into regular subscribers, Angels, paying in a minimum of £20 a month to an account to spend on the company's wine.

For anyone struggling with the maths, that's £1m of cash inflow every month - and I'm one of those contributors.

Rowan Gormley

The company also has 85 exclusive producers signed up with a further 16 in the pipeline and as founder Rowan Gormley recently explained, we are not short of customers, what we need is more producers.

Naked's house style of wines is reliable, above-average, crowd-pleasers, with instant, fruit-driven appeal. Unless you are in the trade or a really serious enthusiast, what's not to like about that ?

Earlier this week, I gathered with a group of sundry other bloggers to hear details of Naked's latest venture.

Called Marketplace, it effectively aims to do for wine retailing what Ebay has done for online selling, creating a meritocracy for winemakers, where the sales go to people with huge talent, not a huge marketing budget as Naked founder Rowan Gormley noted to Jancis Robinson (see here).

As Rowan explained, with the clarity of vision that betrays his finance and venture capital background, wine producers and consumers alike are being badly served by a whole series of non-value-add middlemen who are, as he puts it, screwing both sides - pushing down prices for the producer, ramping up selling prices for the consumer and hanging on to large amounts of cash in the meantime.

Rowan's vision and ambition here is vast - he wants to do nothing less than change the whole industry model and drive out the inefficiency of the layers of middlemen.

There are some historic parallels for this type of change: Martin Sorrell separating out media-buying from advertising and then re-consolidating the buying agencies into GroupM was a similar industry-changing move; as was Roberto Goizueta spinning off Coca-Cola's bottling plants (again, re-consolidated as massive Anchor Bottlers) with the Coke Company keeping just the crown jewel parts of the business, the "secret formula" concentrate and the marketing spend.

The difference with those examples, however, is that they just moved existing parts of the business and put them in different boxes.

What Rowan Gormley has in mind is a change in consumer behaviour, with Naked Wines having a fundamental cost advantage over all other wine retailers and being a central point for online sales - much as Apple has its itunes store not just for buying online music, but all iPhone apps.

But again, there is a difference; online apps are a new product where it is easier to introduce a new sales channel.

Naked Wines' aim is to change fundamentally the way a centuries old product is sold and that will require changes in consumer behaviour.

Naked's customers all seem up for it as the company already has a similar model in place - the advance bookings scheme will allows buyers a set discount for purchasing wine a couple of weeks before it is actually bottled and shipped (this is in turn based on the en primeur concept).

Seen this way, Marketplace is more of an evolution of the existing Advance Bookings scheme than a totally new offering.

The question, then, is how will the producers react ? According to some of the Naked Angels I spoke to at the London International Wine Fair yesterday, the English-speaking former colonials were getting it much better than the other nations - so perhaps South Africa, NZ, Aus and the US will lead the way.

Perhaps the best parallel to what Naked Wines have in mind is the rise of Toys r Us - taking an existing but fragmented industry, and centralising it into something with economies of scale. But again, that does not quite have the same change in consumer behaviour as is needed here.

If it does prove to work, the obvious losers will more likely be the supermarkets and other broad-based wine retailers than, say, the independent wine merchants - the one area where Naked can't, and specifically chooses not to, compete is on the detailed, face-to-face guidance that an independent can give when you step inside the shop for a chat.

In brief, the way Marketplace will work is that winemakers will offer their wine for sale on the Naked website at a set price.

Naked's customers can then make bids for the wine, stating how much they would like to buy and at what price.

When all bids are in, the winemaker has the choice of either accepting the price and quantities offered or not.

If he accepts, the money is taken from the bidders' accounts and the winemaker has four weeks to get the wine shipped to the buyers, with Naked taking a 10% cut - much less than standard industry practice for importers and retailers.

Rowan sees Marketplace working for three distinct types of seller:

- existing Naked Wines suppliers who are known to Naked's customers and whose wines are already rated on the site

- wines for which there is already a marketplace, ie investment wines such as top Bordeaux and Burgundy

- winemakers who want to get into the UK market and have no representation here yet.

In the case of the latter, there is something of a "bootstrap" issue; who will bid for a wine they know nothing about ?

Rowan's solution to this is characteristically simple and clear - provide 10 cases of samples to be reviewed and rated by the company's top tasters (Archangels in Naked parlance) and Naked's remaining customer base will be guided by their views.

The economic logic of the scheme is compelling - cheaper prices for consumers, control over pricing and volume for winemakers and a much less inefficient distribution system.

To succeed, it needs mass adoption by both consumers and producers at roughly the same rate; given Naked's track record to date it may prove to be a case of "nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come".

However, on the day of the announcment, wine journalist Jamie Goode tweeted "I'd love to be convinced, but I haven't been yet", but he has yet to follow up on this pronouncement.

Links

Naked Wines - http://www.nakedwines.com/

Jancis Robinson's article on Marketplace - http://www.jancisrobinson.com/articles/a201105104.html

Jamie Goode on Twitter - @jamiegoode

Tilia Estate Sauvignon Blanc 2010, Slovenia - Naked Wines

Many years ago, I lived in Vienna and spent a summer driving to and through next-door Slovenia on business.

Although technically a Slavic nation, the Slovenians always struck me more as forward-looking central Europeans than their Balkan neighbours in former Yugoslavia - little Austrians, you might almost call them.

This was long before Slovenia joined the European Union and swapped its Tolar for the Euro, but history seems to have shown this was pretty much the right assessment.

I'm sure life in Slovenia has changed hugely for the local population since I last visited - it is a small country with a population of just 2 million; it has 46km of Mediterranean coastline after Tito apparently decreed that all Yugoslav states should have at least some (Croatia gets the lion's share at 5,800 km, bisected by 26km of Bosnia's allocation).

My recollections of driving through Slovenia are that it is green and leafy with hills and farms - geographically, it borders Austria to the north and, as the picture of winemaker Matjaž Lemut below shows, they seem to share Austria's love of bucolic hillside farmhouses.

The geographic similarity to Austria is also relevant from an oenological perspective; this Tilia Sauvignon Blanc, although from the Vipava Valley in south west Slovenia, enjoys a similar terroir to the great crisp, dry Sauvignons of Styria - a high-altitude, fossil-shell ridge with a long growing season. So, as a fan of Austrian wines from Styria, I just had to try this one when I saw it on the Naked Wines site.

One of the handy features of the Naked Wines site is the opportunity to interact directly with the winemakers, so I dropped Matjaž a note asking for more details on his terroir; he explained that his vineyards - bordered by mountains to the north south and east - face north and south west, resulting in more freshness and aroma from the grapes.

The nose is flinty, a hint of terroir, with herbaceous verbena. The palate shows some ripe tropical fruit with a herbaceous edge and a typically linear acidic structure. There is good minerality and flinty gunsmoke on the finish

Being from the lower end of the high-altitude vineyards, it is not quite as intensely structured or piercingly crisp as some of Styrian wines I have had, but then it is not quite as challenging or as expensive, either. It has an ample fullness that balances the acidity and makes this a grown-up easy drinker.

It would work as an aperitif or with a starter of mozzarella, pesto and salad leaves. For mains, try matching with roast pork with rosemary.

The list price of £12.99 feels a little steep for such a relatively obscure wine; however Angels get 33% cashback.

See here for more on Naked's Angels scheme.

Links

Naked Wines - http://www.nakedwines.com/

Arabella Chenin Blanc 2010, South Africa - Naked Wines

The Chenin Blanc grape originated in France's Loire Valley, but has been in South Africa since the mid-1600s and is now the country's most planted variety - to do well, yields need to be kept low and it must be picked at just the right level of ripeness.

This South African Chenin Blanc is from Naked Wines regular, Stephen de Wet who started his winery from scratch in 2006 and, with the help of children Nicky and Jamie, turned it in to a real family business where everyone is completely dedicated.

I had tried and enjoyed Stephen's Reserve Shiraz-Viognier a few months ago (see here), so I was a little unsure of what to expect from this - would it be a typical, well-made easy-drinking crowd-pleaser in the Naked Wines house style or a mouthful of under-ripe battery acid ?

In fact it proved to be pretty much everything I look for in a dry white wine at this price range with hints of wet stones and guava on the nose, a lively but ripe, mouthfilling apples-and-pears acidic structure rounded out with some tropical fruit and minerality on the palate and a good, balanced finish.

There is no hint of rasping, varietal acidity on the finish to tell you that this is a Chenin Blanc at all - just lovely fruit acid structure and minerality; match with roast pork, apple sauce and plenty of trimmings or baked salmon topped with breadcrumbs mixed with parmesan and pesto.

List price is a very reasonable £7.99 with 33% cashback for Angels (for more on Naked's Angels scheme, see here).

Links

Naked Wines - http://www.nakedwines.com/

Classic South Nelson Sauvignon Blanc, 2010 - Naked Wines

Let me start by saying this Sauvignon from New Zealand is perhaps the best white wine I have had from Naked Wines so far - certainly, the one I have enjoyed the most.

It hails from Nelson, located at the northern tip of the South Island which, although perhaps not yet quite as well-known as places such Marlborough, is gaining a reputation as one of the best regions in New Zealand.

Winemaker Heidi Seifried says of the area: my mother and father pioneered modern wine-grape growing in the South Island of NZ. This was back in the early 70s when as a young couple they were told Nelson was too far south and that grapes would only ever be viable in the North Island of NZ.

Of all the New World countries, New Zealand perhaps has as much as anywhere to offer in terms of terroir - it certainly seems so in this case; cooler than the regions further north but with high levels of sunshine hours, this results in a wine with 13% alcohol, but a crisp and focused linear acidity - very different from the lusher style of tropical Sauvignon from the warmer North Island.

To me, with its acidity and structure, this wine speaks of a place, of its terroir, so it was no real surprise to learn that Heidi's winemaking philosophy is focused on a mixture of terroir and good practice:

- Let the vineyard speak through in the wine.
- Ideally, winemaking is just capturing and retaining what has been achieved in the vineyard.
- Fruit purity is all important when we are talking about our wines!
- Clean, well-made wines are imperative.

- Keep tasting wine; no matter how many wines you have tasted in the past, or how much you know about wine, there are always more undiscovered wines out there to learn about and enjoy!

The wine itself is pale yellow and translucent in the glass and has a flinty and slightly herbaceous nose with a hint of honey or beeswax.

On the palate it is crisp yet mouthfilling with lively acidity, some ripe, tropical fruit - pineapple, guava and passionfruit - good, honeyed weight and body and a long minerally finish.

It feels technically very well-made and has a superb balance between ripe fullness on the palate, great structure and subtle, elegant fruit expression.

Match with either a traditional goat's cheese or something zesty like saltimbocca.

£9.49, with a 33% discount for Angels (for more on the Angels scheme, see here).

Links

Naked Wines - http://www.nakedwines.com/

Heidi Seifried - http://www.nakedwines.com/winemakers/heidi-seifried.htm

D'Aquino Reserve Merlot, South East Australia, 2009 - Naked Wines

This seems to be another in a series of Naked Wines that needs a bit of time to open up and then shows good, well-structured, juicy fruit acidity but not too much in the way of tannins.

It came as a free offer from Naked when I bought 11 other wines - add in the £40 voucher for signing up as an Angel and 33% cashback, plus free delivery as the list price of the wines totalled over £100, and the resulting price per bottle was under £4.

Merlot produces a range of styles depending on the climate in which it is grown - in Bordeaux, where it is generally blended with the more tannic Cabernet Sauvignon, it gives red berry and plum aromas to the resulting wine, sometimes with a touch of tobacco, forest floor and truffleyness.

In the warmer climates of the New World, it tends to produce more of a glugging wine, with blackberry and black cherry aromas.

This wine from South East Australia is a ruby-garnet in the glass and although it gives some hints of ripe berry fruit on the nose when opened, it is initially quite restrained.

With a few more swirls, the ripe fruit becomes more prominent with a hint of forest floor and some really toasty oak, but there's not too much in the way of textural backbone on the palate.

Sampled a day later and it has become more harmonious and balanced, but feels overpowered by a beef lasagna that I am having it with.

With some grip on the finish, though, it's not quite light enough to be a quaffer even if cannot stand up to anything too meaty, so I try it later with a simple Italian salad of mozzarella and tomatoes, garnished with olive oil, some rather special balsamic vinegar and freshly chopped parsley.

Suddenly, it all falls into place - the juicy, fruity acidity matches with the sweetness of the tomatoes, cuts through the cheese and olive oil and is not overpowered by the balsamic.

At a different time of year, it might also match well with a stew with sweetness from some root vegetables, but right now, Cambridge is enjoying an unseasonably warm start to spring and I get to have this in the garden.

Winemaker Rex D'Aquino from Orange, New South Wales,  is a third-generation descendant of Italian immigrants to Australia from Sicily and that perhaps explains the rather "Italian" style of this wine - it's mainly about the acidic structure and really shows its best with food.

It would also work with a tomato-based pasta sauce.

The list price for this wine is £10.99.

Links

Naked Wines - http://www.nakedwines.com/

Domaine Cristia Cotes du Ventoux 2009 - Naked Wines

The previous wine I had from Cristia based in the southern Rhône, via Naked Wines, was labelled only as a Vin de France - about as generic as is possible - but proved to be very enjoyable once it had opened up a little (review here).

This one is more specifically denominated as being from Ventoux (also southern Rhône), with the front label noting the grapes as a mix of the the noble Syrah and the more blowsy Grenache.

With previous experience in mind, I poured  this one into the decanter at the start of our meal, but despite this, initial impressions were a little underwhelming - yes, there were some classic "southern French" ripe dark fruits on the nose, but it was all quite restrained and in the mouth the acidity felt a little thin.

In fact, despite some bottle age, it did not really start to open up properly and come into its own until after the end of the meal and later again when resampled after a couple of days; at this stage, the nose had become much more pronounced with prunes and a hint of spice, whilst on the palate the fruit acidity feels fuller and more rounded. There is some ripe blackcurrant and pencil shavings and, whilst the texture is soft with low tannin levels, the finish is gently grippy.

Sampled a further day later and it has developed again - the perfume on the nose has died down and what remains is a really well-made, food-friendly acidity on the palate. It is dark and feels mouthfillingly inky with some savouriness, black-cherry aromas, and hints of pencil shavings and peppery spice.

Overall, then, this is something a little different from the usual Naked Wines offering, but that's no bad thing in this case; generally, Naked's "house style" is well-made, crowd-pleasing quaffers, with lots of fruit to enjoy - and anyone looking for that alone may be a little disappointed here.

Rather, with its prominent and sophisticated acidic structure, this is much more of an Italian-style food wine, intended to cut through the richness of something like a beef stew or a bolognese sauce, rather than being an easy-drinker straight out of the bottle.

Perhaps not surprisingly, then, it seems to get rather mixed reviews on the Naked website, but one recurring theme amongst those who do rate it is the need to let it breathe a little.

Winemaker Dominique Grangeon (pictured) agrees, adding "Ventoux appellation wines can be quite "strong", which is the situation of ours ... let it open a few hours or decant it". Alternately, it will probably improve with a decent amount of cellaring.

List price is £9.49 with 33% cash back for Angels - for more on Naked's Angels scheme, see here.

Links

Naked Wines - http://www.nakedwines.com/