Wine Club 27 April

Something new this week, with our first-ever offer from Naked Wines, the online retailer that’s been much in the (wine) news thanks to the proposed rebranding of Majestic. Majestic — which, along with venerable, old-school merchant Lay & Wheeler, is part of the Rowan Gormley–led Naked Wines stable — will close some of its stores while renaming its remaining ones as Naked Wines. Watch this space.

Anyhow, it was Naked Wines that famously shook up the trade a dozen years ago with its novel concept, whereby so-called ‘angels’ stump up £20 a month and lob it to selected winemakers in return for decent vino, available at what NW claims to be knock-down, wholesale prices. The idea is that the middleman is sent packing and whatever might have been spent on marketing, advertising, agents, wholesalers or distribution instead goes into the wine. There are now some 200,000 angels backing hundreds of producers.