Naked Wines responds to angry Angels article

The following materials arrived via email following the September 28 publication of “Majestic: Angels angry over Naked Wines closing of Kenwood tasting room without warning.

Naked Wines did make an effort to notify its Angels, but apparently some did not get the message as evidenced by numerous emails received by Wine Industry Insight and by the perplexed Angels we interviewed Friday afternoon at the site of the former tasting room.

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Thank you for the opportunity to provide a bit more detail about several points in your article.

We wish we could personally relay the news with everybody who has come to the tasting lounge and thank them for their incredible support. That’s why we organized a large event at the winery, and announced the closing to local Angels (as long as they had subscribed to communications about the tasting lounge). This announcement went to over 4,000 local Angels living within 40 miles of the tasting lounge.

That’s why I’m surprised you wrote, “It failed to tell any of its “Angels” about the move, and that has not set well for those who stopped and found nothing Naked to taste.”

On top of the announcement, staff at the NakedWines.com Tasting Lounge were told about the closure several months beforehand and were encouraged to share this information with our regulars. We’ve also made announcements in groups on the site, where folks who are subscribed to messages from the company would have seen the news.

On another note, the statement “few consumers ever pay the list price” may be confusing in this context. Almost half of the sales at the tasting lounge paid list price (thousands of orders), so it might seem confusing to say that just a few consumers paid that price.

I’ve included a reference materials section in the bottom of this email with a copy of an email that was sent to local Angels and a link to an event announcement for the Farewell party.

Please feel free to contact me directly when you’re facing such short publishing deadlines and want information.

Cheers,
Ryan O’Connell
Winemaker & marketing manager
NakedWines.com

Farewell event – http://www.eventbrite.com/e/kenwood-farewell-bash-tickets-17927020200

Email to Angels –
subject: Tasting lounge news

I need to thank you from the bottom of my heart with a special invitation. Your support has been absolutely invaluable, and sharing a glass (or two!) of wine with Angels like you always kept us going through good times and tough times alike at our Kenwood Tasting Lounge.

About 3 years ago we found an opportunity to lease a state-of-the-art winery in Sonoma County. And we’d even get to have a tasting lounge! We didn’t know the first thing about running a brick and mortar tasting lounge, but the idea was too fun to pass up – so we put together an all-star team and an army of devoted Angels turned up every week to taste new wines, meet the winemakers, and just enjoy the sunshine in a peaceful spot full of great vibes.

And it turns out that while we were sipping wine and listening to fine music in the sunshine, over 3,500 Angels joined our ranks in that beautiful little piece of Heaven on earth. That’s an incredible result that we couldn’t have achieved without you. Many times we found Angels like you in deep conversations convincing non-Angels to join the ranks!

And that makes this news very hard to deliver. Our lease at Kenwood is coming to an end in August, and while we’re able to keep the lease on the winery, our landlords want to take over the entire tasting lounge, which means we have to close the tasting lounge.

Your Angel support was critical at Kenwood and still is to every vineyard, winery and cellar we fund. So I wanted to tell you first. You’ll have a couple weeks to come to the tasting lounge one last time, show your support for the gang who are still working their heinies off with all the enthusiasm that you’d expect from that amazing team.

Please don’t worry about us. The business is growing very quickly, and of course, you can still get wine on the website and taste at home (every wine is still covered by our unconditional money back guarantee). And our winemakers are all hitting the harvest at full speed, with all the Angel funding they need. We just won’t get to party quite as often.

But there will still be parties! We will still get to have a few events a year at the winery, and you’ll be a VIP at all of those. And with all our partying bottled up into just a few events a year, you better believe they’ll be big, unforgettable shebangs!

The first of these big shindigs will be on Saturday, August 15th starting at noon and you can reserve your spot right now. I’ll be there, along with a few of your favorite winemakers – I even heard rumblings of a winemaker cook-off. We’ll be closing in typical Naked style, poppin’ corks, filling glasses and having a great time with our good friends. So get your party pants ready and RSVP so we have plenty of wine and food ready for you.

Thank you so much for being a part of this – I hope to see you on the 15th!