The Slurp Story
Slurp.co.uk was founded in 2004 by entrepreneurs and wine enthusiasts Paul Mitchell and Nico Sunnucks. Tired of machine harvested wines produced to satisfy the mass requirements of the supermarket chains, the founders set themselves a mission. This was to seek out quality wines from smaller producers and to bring them to British consumers at reasonable prices. They spent weeks traversing remote lanes in France and Italy, negotiating at farm gates and uncovering hidden gems that the mass market chains had missed. The result was the first Slurp.co.uk wine list, containing just 100 exclusively Old World wines.
Today Slurp.co.uk is the fastest growing online wine retailer in the country
Things started to heat up in the summer of 2006 when the private venture capital company Aspiration Capital Management made a strategic investment in the company. Impressed with Paul and Nico's vision and determination to do something different, Aspiration's Founder and Chief Investment Officer Dr Jeremy Howard joined the Board. The injection of new capital enabled Slurp to embark on an ambitious two year development programme to attempt to build the most sophisticated e-commerce platform for wine in the UK.
Today Slurp.co.uk is the fastest growing online wine retailer in the country, with approaching 4,000 great wines listed and new products being added at a rapid rate. Major innovations around our platform in Q1 2010 will transform the wine choosing and buying experience for Slurp's customers still further.
But Slurp has never forgotten its roots amongst the unmarked farm tracks of Burgundy and Tuscany. We are proud of our continued emphasis on smaller producers of more interesting wines. We are also unique in the very high percentage of organic and biodynamic wines that we carry. This reflects our belief that wine drinkers' tastes are changing: that the factory farming methods used by the supermarket suppliers are no longer what many people want in a wine. Of course price will always be important, but so are authenticity, sustainability and personality. We hope you will find these values in our company and in our wines.
So please, have a Slurp with us ... we might not actually change the world, but perhaps we can brighten it just a little.
