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Editor’s Note: this article and several like it are highly-detailed breakdowns of the Nakedwines.com subscription. This may be too much information for your needs, and if so I recommend reading my main Nakedwines.com review.
FYI: I find great wine deals so you don’t have to. To keep me on the hunt, I earn a commission when you buy wine based on my recommendations.
At a typical winery there’s a salaried (or consulting) Head Winemaker, and often assistant winemakers (depending on the scale of the winery). At a winery as large as Naked Wines — at least 6 million bottles per year (Naked Wines plc) — there might be dozens of winemakers overseeing production of many different wines.
Instead of this hierarchical structure, Naked Wines has a Head of Winemaking overseeing production in their US bottling facilities, and independent winemakers, producing wine at other locations.
Naked Wines offers winemakers, typically locked into producing wine the styles their winery owners (or customers) prefer, a chance to do things the way they want to. Something that, for most winemakers, is quite out of reach. Let’s look at why:
A great example of this happening outside the Naked Wines universe is Neil Collins, the renowned head winemaker at Tablas Creek Vineyards in Paso Robles, California. He also made wine (until quite recently) at his own winery, Lone Madrone.
The wines at Tablas Creek are heralded for their sustainability and incredible quality, but most of the wines at Tablas are quite restrained (very French). When you taste what Collins made at his own winery — big, bold, fruity, complex reds and whites (very California) — it’s easy to understand how a winemaker, a creative person, would want to chart their own course.
Collins was fortunate in that he had a sister (co-owner) and a wife to help him manage a tasting room and a wine club to help run his winery while he was at his day job. His industry status probably helped him secure leases for great fruit and loans for the equipment he needed. Now his sons and nephew are involved in various aspects of running the winery, including winemaking.
Not every winemaker is a Neil Collins, connected and brilliant with a great support system, but the creative urges winemakers have are often the same — to make wine the way they see fit and to build a life around the pursuit of winemaking.
Enter Naked Wines. The company asks winemakers to come to them and say “I want to make [choose your grape, blend, or style] wine from [choose your vineyard or region].” Often they also have already secured the fruit they need and they really just need capital to make it happen — and someone to sell the wine for them.
In my last Naked Wines review update, I started digging deeper into the winemakers they have on board and how that plays into the overall decision process of becoming a Naked Wines Angel (vs joining Firstleaf which has a different, less maker-centric story to tell).
Here I want to call it out again — Naked Wines enables winemakers at any level of their career to make wine the way they see fit, bearing none of the risk of a startup business.
When you take a close look at who is making wine for Naked Wines, it breaks down into a few interesting categories:
The latest feather in the Naked Wines winemaker hat is Rudy von Strasser. Von Strasser is a Napa legend who has been producing award-winning and expensive “mountain Cab” at his own Diamond Mountain estate for decades. He now works exclusively with Naked Wines, giving Angels access to fabulous prices on the wines he made under his own label and now the The Strasser Collection as part of Naked Wines.
Jesse Katz is another Naked Wines winemaker of significant note. Katz is a former Wine Enthusiast 40 Under 40 Tastemaker and Forbes’ 30 Under 30. His own sommelier-approved Aperture Cellars is racking up awards to the point where a one-off six-liter bottle of his wine (from The Setting Wines) fetched a $1M bounty at a charity auction in 2021 (normally $185 for a standard 750mL bottle). Before all that he made wine at cult wine producers Petrus and Screaming Eagle, in addition to Lancaster Estate and Roth wineries.
But von Strasser and Katz aren’t the only famous winemakers who saw the ease and simplicity of making more approachable wines under Naked Wine’s aegis. Here are some other names you might recognize:
While it’s always nice to get a nod from the pros, one of my favorite stories of Naked Wines winemakers is how they’re helping small family wineries and vineyards grow their businesses and solidify their futures. I go into detail about why these wineries need wine clubs in my discussion of The California Wine Club and their dedication to small family wineries.
This group of wineries gets squeezed the most by the wine industry. Here’s a quick breakdown of how and why:
We have a three-tier alcohol sales system in this country made up of the producer (which includes the grower), the wholesaler (and distributors), and the retailer (stores and restaurants).
In this illustrated example, if you paid $20 for a bottle of wine at the store, the store made $6, the wholesaler made $5, and the winery made $1 (5% of the cost) with the remainder of the purchase price covering the direct costs of production and distribution. And the cost would have gone up if this demonstration was an imported wine, while the winery profit would have remained the same.
Most small wineries can’t get distribution deals, which is why you don’t see a lot of small production wine sold outside the wine region it was produced in, and they’re left to sell through their tasting rooms and to loyal wine club members.
Most small wineries don’t have the resources to hire people to get them out of their squeezed positions.
That’s where Naked Wines comes in. Instead of being subjected to earning a minimum income for their efforts, these winemakers can choose a setup which includes a monthly retainer or a per bottle fee, and also possible sales bonuses.
I’m not sure when this infographic was produced. I’m reasonably certain it was pre-pandemic and that these percentages may have shifted around a bit due to inflation, supply chain issues, tariffs, etc.
Infographic courtesy of My Wine Tribe
Back to those small family wineries and vineyards that Naked Wines is working with:
If you’re paying attention to the people who made your wine, you’ll never find another sizable selection of wines that you can feel so good about.
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