The lovely people at Nakedwines.com will be sponsoring this week’s Shoreditch Twit event (the SDT6 picture is a little apt as well). I asked founder Rowan Gormley (@rowbags) some questions about what they’re up to, why they’re using Twitter, and if they had any good naked stories.

LW: So tell me about Naked Wines…

RG: Naked Wines is an online farmer’s market. We believe that the most exciting wines in the world are made by the little guys, who don’t have the big marketing budgets to break into the UK. So we go direct to them. This saves them the money they would usually spend on selling so we can give our customers a better wine for a better price. And by bringing the winemaker and customer together through our website, where they can chat directly with each other, the customers know they are getting the genuine article, and the winemaker gets crucial feedback on their wines!

Why “Naked”?

We’re stripping away everything in a bottle of wine that you can’t drink, but that costs you money – the average bottle of wine sold in the UK today has just 30p of wine in it. And £1 of marketing, packaging and other stuff you can’t actually taste. Because you can talk to our winemakers and other customers direct you can see through the marketing, we have nothing to hide – we’re Naked!

What’s your best story involving nudity?

When we teamed up with Parcelforce who deliver our wine for us, they loved the Naked philosophy so much that when we returned to the office after the New Year’s festivities, we had photos from one of the guys there standing on the top of a snow covered mountain holding one of our wines in all his glory! Brrrr!

How are you using Twitter?

We’re still finding our feet with Twitter (@nakedwines). But the great thing about it is that it isn’t another sales channel, instead we see its as a great way to encourage new ideas and share things that have our attention. Whilst we will keep our followers up to date with what is going on at Naked HQ, we would much rather use twitter to pass on a great new wine blog we’ve found, or to see if anyone can source us a new Italian Pinot Grigio!

You’re involved with the Shoreditch Twit, tell us about that and why you’re being so generous?

As a group of people, we’re very ideas orientated and we see the Shoreditch Twit as a great way to share these ideas, and get feedback. We’re about to launch some exciting new social networking functionality on the website and it would be great if the ST community could get involved, in return for early Naked social status! As for our generosity, we just like to share the love!

How can we get involved with the site?

The new features on the website will allow you to go way beyond the usual “if you like this you’ll love that” functionality on other wine sites. Each customer can build their own profile, find people with similar tastes to get recommendations, share their reviews on Twitter, interact with the winemaker and they even have the chance to become an Arch Angel for a wine, which means they actually get involved in how we buy that wine.

Is drinking wine better without clothes on?

We think most things are better without clothes on, so yes!

Red or white?

Both! Depends on the situation, as an aperitif on a hot summers day a cool Sauvignon is a treat, but if I’m tucking into a bit of rare steak I’d usually crack open a big bold Aussie Shiraz.

Well cheers then!

To find out more, visit the Naked Wines website or have a chat with Rowan at Shoreditch Twit #6.