The wife picked up this in lidl yesterday. South African (14%) Nicest wine I’ve had in a long time
This lovely claret is on offer for a tenner in Centra at the moment.
I was given a couple of bottles of this for xmas a couple of years ago and thought it was lovely. Had trouble sourcing it but eventually got a case delivered from England. Not cheap, approx £15 a bottle but if you like Chateauneuf style, Grenache with a touch of Syrah
wines this is the business.
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CHRISTMAS its fucking CHRISTMAS.
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You’ll be flat on the ground after it.
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A crusty top layer I’d say?
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You’ll be lights out before the final quarter.
This just launched
Worth a look
Let’s see how this goes. Read an article on this about a month or so ago - sounded pretty interesting
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I had a good experience so far.
Let me know what you think.
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No chianti?
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Minervois is poor anyway for a start. Strange French red to lead with.
What’s the story, 10 a month membership plus whatever wines you buy?
It was an idea born over street drinks in a suburb of Dublin after the first lockdown last year. Thirty-six-year-old Eamon FitzGerald was working as global wine director for an international listed wine business called Naked Wines when he found himself, for the first time in nine years, not travelling the world hunting for the best little known vineyards.
Instead, the vineyards were sending him dozens of bottles of wine every month in the post to sample and decide whether to offer them on to Naked Wines customers.
It was too much for one man to drink, so FitzGerald started offering free samples to his neighbours. The get-togethers took off and became both social and an opportunity to talk about wines. It reminded FitzGerald why he had given up a job as a management consultant to go into the wine industry back in 2011. “I love discovering great winemakers and sharing them with normal people,” FitzGerald said.
“I had worked for a global company which was a good experience and knowledge. I thought about how the cost of wine in Ireland is nuts. I know how much wine costs to make commercially in every region on Earth, and how the absolute key to unlocking value is connecting ordinary people like my neighbours who love wines to the best-talented winemakers.” This germ of an idea has evolved into his new business called WineSpark, which launches at the end of the month. “I wanted to create a spark between people and winemakers that unlocks amazing value and quality,” he explained.
FitzGerald was in the thick of working for Naked Wines, so it wasn’t an easy time to think about starting a new business. Naked Wines, a London stock market-listed company, had tripled in value during 18 months of on-off lockdowns in its markets as demand for wine soared online.
It was a lot to walk away from for the young father of two young children but last December, he did it.
He was on his own with just the first draft of a business plan for how WineSpark could do things differently.
I first met Eamon FitzGerald over a decade ago when he had just quit as a management consultant with Accenture to go and work in London for Decanter, the premium wine magazine. FitzGerald was taking a big risk leaving the world of consultancy behind him, but he felt he had to take it. He’d developed a love of wines growing up and worked as a grape-picker while in university.
He’d worked part-time selling wines in Donnybrook Fair and started a blog about his favourite wines. FitzGerald knew he was far more interested in wine than managing projects for banks and big companies.
When he was working with Decanter, he bumped into an entrepreneur called Rowan Gormley. Gormley had worked closely with the billionaire Richard Branson leading Virgin Money, and setting up various businesses for him including Virgin Wines. The South African took a shine to FitzGerald and convinced him in 2011 to join his new venture called Naked Wines, which was just three years old at the time.
By 2014, then 29-year old FitzGerald was running Naked Wines in Britain and selling tens of millions of pounds worth of wines sourced from independent producers around the world for a network of supporters called angels. In 2015, Naked Wines merged with Majestic Wines, a big off-licence group listed on the London Stock Exchange, with Gormley taking over the combined company.
In 2019, Naked Wines sold off the brick-and-mortars part of the business to private equity firm Fortress, allowing it to concentrate on its online business.
FitzGerald had taken the British arm of Naked Wines, which was headquartered in Norwich, to sales of over £80 million a year. “I have experienced growing Naked wines from 25,000 customers to 250,000 customers,” FitzGerald said. “It was massive growth and scale and the challenge was to do that while retaining that personal touch. You need to treat this business like a good local pub where the publican recognises his customers, knows their orders, and appreciates their loyalty.”
“You can use technology to deliver that approach on a bigger scale but you can only do that if you keep caring about people and service and never compromising on it.”
A 12,000-bottle start-up
Eamon FitzGerald founded WineSpark in January, the month after he quit Naked Wines. He has 12,000 bottles of wine in his warehouse, representing 37 different varieties. “When we launch at the end of this month I’d hope to have 50 or 60 from all over the world,” FitzGerald said. This will bring WineSpark’s offering to 20,000 bottles. “The Irish market is quite dominated by France and Italy and traditional regions like Bordeaux, Burgundy and Rhone. I have some really good wines from there, but there is also a great opportunity to show people the best wines from underappreciated regions like the Languedoc in France, as well as Chile, Australia, South Africa. I will have wines that everyone will recognise, but given my experience I know you can make amazing wines for a lot less money. It is a great opportunity to show our members some really amazing wines.”
FitzGerald said the business plan for WineSpark was to offer a subscription service costing €10 a month to members, in return for which it would connect them to hand-picked winemakers. “For members who buy wine with us, they pay just the cost of wine plus shipping and taxes to your door. I make my money from €10 a month, rather than the bottle. It is the opposite of the industry where the higher the bottle price, the higher the margin. One of the great big myths of the wine industry is that you get what you pay for. That is total rubbish. The most expensive place on earth to make wine is in Napa in California, but even there the most expensive wine costs $25 to make with the best grapes, processing, oak barrels, ageing, packing… and yet these wines sell for hundreds if not thousands of dollars a bottle. There is an absolute ceiling on the most a great wine can cost to make, yet there is a much larger amount that people end up paying for it.”
“I am looking to close that gap and give our members genuine value in return for their loyalty. There is a value play and there is a quality play and then finally there is a community piece.” FitzGerald said WineSpark intended to hold events both real and virtual to allow its members to interact and learn from winemakers. As people travelled again, he added, this would also extend to being given a behind look at WineSpark vineyards all over the world. “There is nothing like meeting real winemakers,” he said. “I want to give people the experience of being a wine insider, where they can go to really authentic places where locals go to eat and drink and enjoy those places.”
“For me, the ideal group of people to raise finance from were my suppliers, the winemakers.”
Eamon FitzGerald said WineSpark had no plans at present to go outside Ireland. “I want to prove the model here,” he said. “I would go to the UK eventually but only if the community got stronger and it wouldn’t compromise service and uniqueness.” When FitzGerald started his business he thought about how to finance it. “Banks won’t touch you as you’re a startup,” he recalled. “I thought about private investors but I really wanted to raise money from people who were the most aligned with my customers. For me, the ideal group of people to raise finance from were my suppliers, the winemakers.”
FitzGerald said he raised €300,000 from 11 winemakers in six different wine-making countries to get off the ground. “We’ve got an amazing spread of winemakers and countries funding WineSpark who really understand our aspirations for quality and customer loyalty. In terms of finding amazing wines, if I email my network of investors and say I’m looking for Chablis at this price point that needs to be organic and from a small producer by Monday morning, I will have eight names of really high-quality winemakers. You won’t get that type of input or value from other types of investors.”
WineSpark, FitzGerald said, would be offering its members access to wines hard or impossible to find anywhere else in Ireland. “We are working with Federico Cerelli who was a red winemaker for Antinori. The famous wines he made were Tignanello and Solaia which are two of Italy’s most iconic and expensive wines. Yet he’s never made his own wine with his name on the bottle. He’ll be making a range called I Filari for WineSpark and he’ll have a Toscana Rosso from the up-and-coming Suvereto region beside Bolgheri in Italy, and also a Chianti Rufina Riserva for us. They will be priced between €25 and €30 when the wine he would normally be associated with cost hundreds.”
“It is a great example of what you can do when you remove all the marketing and sales and other costs in the wine industry and connect directly with passionate wine drinkers,” FitzGerald said. “Another wine I am super excited about is an Albariño from Spain made by Iria Otero. She is making wine in a very traditional style. She makes wine with soul and craft that is authentic. It is the sort of wine I want to bring to Ireland.”
Eh, bullets?
Founder has significant experience in the wine industry and thinks customers often miss out on value in wine. €10 monthly subscription is what Winespark make and he looks to connect directly to producers to reduce costs and provide better wines at a cheaper price point.
Thanks. That was easier. I’ll make note of it as a present for my mother, she’ll love it for a month or two and then forget about and I’ll be still paying the subscription like a mug.
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That’s the idea.