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Leading Italian online wine retailer launches first international branch in the UK

Published:  06 October, 2016

A consumer website selling the "largest selection of Italian wines in Europe" has launched its first international base 50km north of London.

Italian on-line wine retailer, Tannico, aims to rival Majestic and Virgin Wines in terms of its Italian offering by aiming to bring a 6,000-strong wine catalogue to UK consumers.

The new operation began three weeks ago with a soft launch of 300 wines but the full catalogue of 6,000 wines from over 1,000 wineries will go live at the end of October.

According to the company, Tannico became the Italian market leader after in 2015, with 15% of the market share and 40,000 customers.

Entrepreneur Marco Magnocavallo who founded Tannico in late 2012, said the UK was an obvious place for expansion where Italian wines are often "unrepresented and misunderstood".

"Italy is one of the world's largest wine producing countries with over 100,000 wineries, many of which lack representation. The Italian online wine market is at only 0.2% of penetration with huge opportunities for growth over the next few years," he said.

According to the IWSR, sales of Italian still wine were down by 4% in 2015, whereas Italian sparkling wine boomed by 58%.

After founding two start-ups, Magnocavallo turned his attention to wine in 2012 with the aim to increase the penetration of Italian still wine in Italy.

In the UK, he believes that Italy can seem complicated for consumers, with "so much to offer from so many regions".

"UK consumers know a bit about Italian wines, but Italians haven't been great at communicating their message in the UK. We aim to bring not just Prosecco and wines from Tuscany, but to enable consumers to find new regions and discover small wineries," he said.

"Our site educates and provides informative tasting facts and figures and descriptors to help our customers navigate their way around Italy. We hope to spark customer intrigue about still Italian wine."

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