At the recent The Wine Gang Christmas Fair I had the chance to taste lots of wines and meet importers and wineries from around the world. One of the ones that stood out for me was a small online retailer looking to sell wines in a novel way: FindWine.co.uk

Most wines in this country, whether in the supermarkets or independent merchants, are sold mainly by country. They might then be divided by region, price or even style, but the first arrangement is almost ALWAYS by country. Most (surviving) online merchants have therefore taken this format as well, and although you can usually filter by many different criteria, country still dominates the thinking.

The other thing most retailers have in common is that they generally list a larger range of wines that may then be categorised or tagged with tasting or buying information to help consumers decide between them. The thinking is, if you give consumers a broader range of choices, they’ll find something they’ll like … and buy.

The truth is, many consumers are not looking for anything too specific, and in fact are often put off by too much choice. They want a good deal, and a recommendation of a ‘good’ wine, so may well leave without buying anything.

FindWine decided, instead, to create a list with only 54 ’slots’ that represent 6 different price categories across 9 different ’styles’, and find just 1 wine that is a good example for each. The prices vary from under £5 to £15+ and the list of categories includes “zippy” whites as well as “soft-isticated” reds, so should appeal to lots of consumers.

I think what these guys are up to is very interesting, especially as their model allows them to buy good quality wines in small parcels so they can keep things fresh and change regularly. All we need now is a bit more interaction and visibility from the faces behind the business to demonstrate their passion for the wines and give us confidence they are choosing interesting wines for these ’slots’.

On that note, watch this short interview I recorded at the show with John Critchley, one of the guys behind FindWine:

If you have used them, or tried their wines, do let me know what you think of their model and their wines. Is anyone else doing something similar?

(Update: I apologise to Mike Howes as this is in fact John Critchley, Mike’s partner at FindWine who I identified incorrectly in the video)

A month ago I mentioned that I have been impressed by the potential of the wine newsletter sent by The Wine Gang. I am excited to say that I have done a deal with them for the Wine Conversation to give away 5 free subscriptions to their newsletter, worth £20 per year.

However, being an inquisitive and social chap, I thought I’d do it in my own way and seeing what we can learn from it.

My contention is that the best wine sites (& newsletters) need to balance learning with buying advice.

I believe that this newsletter, arranging its reviews not by style or region, but by retailer, makes it much easier to use it to buy better wines, and thus encourage subscribers to try new wines and even trade up with confidence. Most importantly, it can be used without making you change where you currently buy your wines (but you can).

So, here’s what I’m thinking (for stage 1): …

At £20 per year, the cost of the subscription works out to £1.67 per month

I’m looking for 5 people who would like to receive the newsletter (and browse the archives) of The Wine Gang (FREE), and all I ask is that you commit to answering this question: “how have you saved £1.67 (or more)“?

• It could be that you know you spend £6.99 on a decent bottle of wine, but you find two worth £5.99 you really enjoyed drinking
• It could be that you discover a wine you might have considered buying rated poorly, so you bought something else & saved that money?
• It could be that you found a wine worthy of giving as a gift that cost less than you expected
• Maybe it saved you buying another wine book (I hope not too many, they need love too)?
• Or maybe it is something else … there must be other things worth £1.67
• Or maybe you didn’t – and I’d like to know that too

I’d like to hear your thoughts (especially as this month they rated the wines of Majestic who just reduced their minimum purchase to 6 bottles). I’d love to know if YOU, wine drinkers, found value in this product. I’d like to share those experiences on this blog and on twitter.

Stage 2 will involve drinking some of your favourites together, maybe sharing the moment online, but I’ll save that for another day – but The Wine Gang are organising a Christmas Wine Tasting event so watch this space

So, who wants to test this out?

Leave me a comment below and I’ll see how many volunteers I get and the decide how to apportion the subscriptions.

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Expect to see a fair bit about coffee and wine over the next few weeks as I’ve “discovered” that there are a lot of similarities between the two and maybe learning about coffee will give me a different perspective on wine.

Rather than a post this time, here is an AudioBoo I posted earlier.

If you are interested in some of the things I’m planning (even if I have not told you what these might be), leave me a comment here.

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