WithWine founder and CEO Richard Owens addresses members of industry at the WithWine launch. Words by Harrison Davies

Winery Direct to Consumer (DTC) app WithWine had its official launch at the National Wine Centre of Australia yesterday.

The app hopes to streamline wineries’ DTC capabilities by offering an all in one platform that allows users to highlight wines they have tried and enjoyed and buy them, as well as facilitating email databases and wine clubs.

Representatives from across the Australian wine industry gathered to learn about what the WithWine platform could offer them.

Founder and CEO Richard Owens said the idea for the app was born out of a desire to access the wines he loved at tasting more easily.

“I started going to cellar doors, going to wine festivals and tasting dinners and I especially fell in love with the fact that I was interacting directly with the people who were making the line rather than to some middleman who didn’t really care as much,” he said.

“Along the way I started noticing that all the times, I wanted to give wineries my money and I wouldn’t or couldn’t. I discovered that in every instance the reason why was the same.

“I go to cellar doors, and I’m probably going to two or three in a day, try five wines at each of them, like three of the wines, buy one of the wines. Then I’d leave and be on the freeway going back home and then just be thinking, ‘probably should, of bought some of the second wine from the first winery, but I can’t remember what it was.”

Owens has created an app that solves this problem and allows users to catalogue the wines they have tried and enjoyed at cellar doors, wine festivals and dinners by saving them to their account and connecting them with the winery.

Owen said he hopes this will create an easier way for consumers to buy their wines direct from the winery.

“I wanted to make it easier for people to buy wine from wineries and make it easier by making it easier for customers to remember, what they tried and what they liked.”

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