When in Rome was co-founded in 2015 by Rob Malin, Andrea Marchesi and Lorenzo Canali with the aim of bringing the joy of wine drinking in Italy to the world in the most environmentally sustainable way possible. In 2016, we began trading on Bath Farmers Market and via a very homemade website. In 2017, we got a call from Waitrose and ended up with a national listing. In 2018, we began selling our wines in Finland and in 2019, we entered the Canadian market.

Having increased revenue from £379K in 2019 (-£209.5k P&L) to £654K in 2020 (+£33K P&L), we launched a new brand with Phillip Schofield. Our wine range is sourced from small, independent producers across Italy. We have blended our passion for Italian wine with utilising new alt, eco-friendly formats that have emerged recently, such as bag-in-box and cans.

As of 2018, the UK wine market is worth around £10bn per year, with less than 10% of frequent wine buyers opting for alt format wine. Meanwhile, in France, 38% of wine by volume is sold in bag-in box and in Sweden the figure is over 50%. It comes as no surprise to us that in April 2020 the UK alt format wine market grew by 59% due to the effects of the pandemic.

We want to build on the momentum behind our brand and the alt format wine market by investing in new product development (like paper bottles), new key people, upscaling our marketing and expanding our distribution.