Naked Wines Announces the 2023 Montoya Opportunity Fund Grant Recipients

Grant Provides $80,000 in Financial Support to 12 Up-and-Coming Latino Wine Professionals NAPA, Calif., Jan. 30, 2024 — Naked Wines, the largest 100% direct-to-consumer winery in America, today announced the […]

Domaine Della 2023 Soberanes Vineyard Santa Lucia Highlands Pinot Noir Takes Top Prize  November 18, 2025 — Winners have been announced in the 2025 Harvest Challenge Wine Competition. After two spirited days of judging, Domaine Della 2023 Soberanes Vineyard Santa Lucia Highlands Pinot Noir took the top prize. It was also awarded Best of Show Red Wine and Best of Monterey County AVA. Coming in at 98 points, judges praised the wine as “warm and spicy” with “fig and nutmeg.” Other descriptors included “meaty,” “prosciutto,” and “dried rose petal.”  With entries from across the globe, the Harvest Challenge bases judging on a group of vineyards (or even vines) from the same region, belonging to a specific appellation and sharing the same type of soil, weather conditions and grapes that combine to give personality to the wine.  In other competitions, this terroir is ignored. At the Harvest Challen

MAY 18, 2021 (Santa Rosa, Calif.) — Experience Rosé, a wine competition that focuses exclusively on expressions of pink wine — sweet, dry, and sparkling — has announced results of the 2021 contest. Taking top prize this year is Naked Wines’ W. Donaldson 2018 Sonoma Rosé from famed sparkling winemaker Wayne Donaldson (former head winemaker for Domaine Chandon). Judges’ praise included: “Ranier cherry”; “Brioche!” “Orange zest”; “Pretty on palate”; “Fresh-lush at same time”; Hibiscus.” In addition to Best of Show, the wine also took honors as Best Domestic Sparkling.  Mathis Wine’s 2020 Rosé de Grenache was awarded Best Domestic Dry; judges described the estate single-vineyard wine as “Plush wild berry”; “Celery salt”; “Red apple.” Best International Dry honors went to Wayne Gretzky Estates Okanagan Ro

The world took a drastic shift to the digital world in 2020. Many businesses, specifically ones that strived within the offline world—through brick-and-mortar retail sales, tasting rooms, and events—have had to adapt to the changing world. In brick-and-mortar stores, consumers wanting to buy wine, beer, spirits, cannabis products, and other products can touch the product, twirl it, pick it up, read the label, run their fingers over the package, and decide on the spot if they wanted to purchase it or not. Labels and packaging are extremely important for in-person retail sales. Typically, it takes the shopper around eight seconds to decide what products they will purchase—making that first impression is essential. With the COVID-induced shift to digital retail and ecommerce sales—which is expected to last long after the pandemic is over—how can wine, beer, spirits, cannabis product producers bring the label experience to customers online? TAKE LABELS SERIOUS

JUNE 28, 2024 – Winners have been announced in the 17th annual Women’s International Wine & Spirits Competition (IWWSC). The competition, which took place June 10-12 in Santa Rosa, Calif., was founded on the premise that the majority of wine purchased for home consumption is bought by women. The IWWSC judging panels consist entirely of professional women in the wine and spirits industries — winemakers, distillers, marketers, buyers, sommeliers, educators and journalists.  “As always, the International Women’s Wine & Spirits Competition shined a spotlight on hundreds of deserving wines,” says Debra Del Fiorentino, owner of Wine Competitions Management & Production, which organizes and presents IWWSC. “And even though entry is open to all winemakers regardless of gender, I found it gratifying that six of this year’s sweepstakes wines were created by women. And our overall wine winner also was named Best Woman Winemaker

Glass Reimagined: Towards a Carbon-Free Wine Packaging Era    Every consumer goods manufacturer has a roadmap to environmentally friendly stewardship, with measurable goals for reducing carbon emissions, using sustainable resources and minimizing waste. With somewhere between 23% and 29% of a winery’s carbon footprint coming from the glass bottle, the challenge for the wine industry is to make the venerable glass bottle more sustainable considering that according to the latest EcoFocus® consumer trend survey, 85 % of American grocery shoppers over the age of 21 choose to buy wine in glass. The Core Value of Recycling    Recycling glass bottles is core to a circular packaging economy since recycled bottles are crushed and cleaned to produce cullet, which goes back into the glass furnace to make new bottles. Using this recycled cullet reduces the natural resources and energy needed to produce glass. In fact, increasing cullet to 55% reduces the use

Turning the Tables on Elizabeth Smith

By Carl Giavanti Elizabeth Smith’s recent appointment as copywriter for online wine retailer Naked Wines is an example of dedicated wine writing that evolved into a full-time staff writing position. […]

Afternoon Brief: Wine Market Council Tackles Domestic Wine Industry's Current Setbacks

This past April 2 at the 2025 Wine Market Council (WMC) Annual Research Conference and Members Meeting, held in the City of Napa, there were some illuminating discussions on the overall state of the American wine industry...