Tiny Wine co-founder: ‘Everyone deserves to try the industry’s best wines’

The drinks business caught up with Tiny Wine’s Harry Crowther half a year after he launched the wine sample subscription business. Taking social media by the horns has helped the business win over tech sceptics.

“Everyone deserves to try the best wines the industry has to offer,” says Harry Crowther, who co-founded Tiny Wine last year with the aim of making wine simpler, cheaper and more accessible.

Crowther, who has more of a decade of experience in the wine industry, brainstormed the idea for a letterbox wine subscription before Covid with entrepreneur Rob Ingram. “But the tech just wasn’t there,” he said, “so we put a pin in it.”

Then, he came across wine-preservation technology Coravin Vinitas at the London Wine Fair, which re-sparked the fire: “I got back in touch with Rob.”

The duo officially launched Tiny Wine in November 2024, selling premium wine tasting kits to consumers, each containing six 100ml samples of fine wine, with the mantra of “drinking less and drinking better”.

Making wine ‘simpler’

For Crowther, who is WSET-qualified, it felt like a natural project to start up. “We’re making wine simpler for people in a meaningful way,” he said. “We are literally making fine wine cheaper by giving people this fractionalised access to these wines. That’s important because it’s usually just reserved for those in the trade and those with the deepest pockets.

“We wanted to make it accessible to people that never really had the access to it.”

As Gen Z turns from wine, opting for healthier and cheaper alternatives, experts have brainstormed how to draw in a younger crowd. For Berkmann Wine Cellars’ Bob Davidson, hospitality training should be revamped, and Gallo CCO Britt West said changing the way wine is described could open doors to new markets.

All about inclusivity

But why is accessibility so important? “Everyone deserves to try the best wines the industry has to offer,” said Crowther. “The wine industry can be quite secular and exclusive, and we’re about inclusivity.

“I want people to see the wine world through the lens I see it through, and this is a good vehicle for that.”

While Crowther made clear he’s “no marketing expert,” he said producers could be more creative with social media to reach new audiences.

For instance, he’s building the Tiny Wine brand with Instagram interviews and tasting series, where he chats to “very respectable palettes,” like Lower Wine’s Alex Pitt and Aulis Simon Rogan’s Charles Carron Brown.

“It’s been good to build content first,” said Crowther. “We were worried about people understanding the efficacy of the technology. But we’ve gone some way to mitigate that, by getting Masters of Wine on Instagram, saying, ‘this is just as good out of the tube as it is out of the bottle.’

“When anything new comes to market, you need to convince people. So that was the biggest hurdle at the start.”

Media movements

As well as tasting kits and social content, the business offers virtual masterclasses, PR outreach and dedicated emails. “The more we operate, the more we’re starting to look like a media or marketing business,” added Crowther. 

This excites him: “PR agencies are constantly looking for new and innovative things to do, and new ways to communicate these stories. And we can help with that.”

And it’s what’s behind the label that counts: “You don’t go to a table and try to sell based on the pH level. It might work, but it wouldn’t sell as well as a good story.”

The Coravin Vinitas system uses pure argon/nitrogen and proprietary tech to prevent oxidation, preserving wine exactly as the original bottle for up to a year. The tubes are made from recyclable glass, slashing shipping weight and carbon footprint.

Growing pains

“Crucially, we can help producers tell that story using a lot less stock… that’s a lot less cost,” Crowther continued. “You’ve got one bottle going to seven people, so that’s revenue recovery; there’s obviously the green credentials that come with it, but there’s actually stock recovery as well.”

Looking forward, Crowther predicts the biggest obstacle to be growing pains. “We’re hopefully launching a subscription model soon, and we’re going to need to buy some stock,” he explained.

But, he reasoned, there are worse problems to have: “We’re still such a small team, and trying to grow all streams at once is time-consuming, but pretty good fun at the same time.”

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