Tag Archives: direct shipping

Wine availability: How to find what you’re looking for when it’s not on the shelf

Wine availability: How to find what you're looking for when it's not on the shelf
So much wine, but so much that never seems to be available.

Wine availability is the bane of any wine writer’s existence. Even the Wine Curmudgeon, who only writes about wine that I see on a store shelf or am assured is on a shelf on pain of my considerable wrath, gets emails all the time asking why something I wrote about isn’t available.
There are a variety of reasons for this, most of which are discussed in the link above. The point of this post is to help you find wine when your local retailer doesn’t have it.

The caveat in all of this is that wine availability varies from store to store, city to city and state to state. As Michigan State’s Phil Howard noted in his landmark study of the wine business, there are no national brands, and availability is one confused mess.

So these pointers should work — but it doesn’t mean they always will:

• Ask the retailer to check his or her distributor books. More wines exist than any retailer can possibly carry, so just because they aren’t in the store doesn’t mean they aren’t available. A distributor book lists every single wine — often thousands for the biggest distributors — that can be sold at retail in that market, and many markets have at least a half a dozen distributors. If the wine is in one of the books, a good retailer will get it for you.

• Check with the winery. Obviously, if you can buy it from them, so much the better. But if you can’t (thank you, three-tier system), send an email, and there’s a decent chance you’ll get a reply. The best solution: Some producers have database apps on their site, like this one from Terlato, that let you search for their wines in your area.

• The importer should know. If the wine is not made in the U.S., there’s a line on the back label that says “Imported by such and such.” Look for the importer’s web site; sometimes, they’ll have a database app. More likely, you’ll have to send an email.

• Look for on-line retailers like Wine.com. This comes with the proviso that on-line wine sales are notoriously annoying, what with shipping charges and state laws designed to restrict on-line sales.

• Use Wine-Searcher.com. Plug in a wine, and this site will tell you who carries it (as long as the retailer has paid to be listed in the results). Despite its limitations, which include results that aren’t consistent from search to search and outdated retailer availability, it can be quite helpful. And the free version is usually sufficient. One visitor to the blog used Wine-Searcher to find a wine I had reviewed that wasn’t available in her market, but was at another retailer in her state who shipped it to her.

• Send me an email. Believe me, I don’t mind forwarding it to the producer or importer.

Is New York liquor ruling a setback for Amazon?

Amazon Wine, the Internet retailer's end-run around the three-tier system, may be in trouble. The New York State Liquor Authority, reports Wine Industry Insight, has fined a New York retailer for $50,000 for ?third-party liquor sales. ?

Said the authority in its ruling: ?Arguably, since these third party companies are not licensed to sell alcohol, they are violating the three tier system. Additionally, by participating in this arrangement, retailers could be construed as availing their license and sharing their profits with these companies, all of which weaken the system and do not conform to the rules and regulations that govern sales of alcohol. ?

The ruling was not directed at Amazon, and the case is not exactly the same ? the retailer was fined for selling wine on the Internet in conjunction with a distributor. Amazon doesn ?t ?sell wine, ? but allows consumers to use its marketplace to buy wine from retailers and wineries, All Amazon says it does is facilitate the sale, for which it takes a cut from the retailers and wineries.

Still, that sounds a lot like a third-party retailer, and Amazon doesn't help matters by calling itself a wine store on the site. And, as I reported last fall when the program was announced, there was no guarantee it wouldn ?t run afoul of ?newly aggressive state regulators, who might be inclined to sue Amazon just because. ?

Amazon Wine launched in 2012 even though it wasn ?t available in New York, the most important wine market in the country. This ruling seems to indicate it may be a long while before the marketplace gets there. In addition, though the decision has no meaning outside of New York, liquor cops across the country will undoubtedly be parsing it for ways to use in in their jurisdictions.

Amazon goes into the wine business

Maybe Amazon knows something the rest of us don’t. Maybe the world’s largest on-line retailer’s much awaited wine store offers something that isn’t obvious at first glance.

Because, frankly, the debut of Amazon Wine, announced yesterday, is underwhelming. Or, as one winery official told me. “In looking through some of their selections, there are ‘no’ bargains. In addition, Wine.com seems light years ahead of them.”

The wine business has been slobbering over Amazon’s wine store since Lew Perdue at Wine Industry Insight broke the story in September. Initial reports of a limited debut featuring select wines from mostly West Coast producers and sold by the wineries — with Amazon serving as a marketplace and not the actual retailer — didn’t seem quite right. It wasn’t the Amazon way of doing business.

Turns out that was exactly what Amazon announced yesterday, and is what makes its on-line wine site so disappointing. You know that seamless shopping experience it offers for everything from books to music to hiking shoes to pots and pans? This isn’t it:

• A very limited selection, around 1,000 wines ? or about what you ?ll find at a good-sized regional wine retailer. By comparison, Wine.com offers thousands of wines. Amazon has fleshed this out by including third-party, independent retailers like New York’s Morrell Wine and Wine Chateau in New Jersey, which have established on-line presences.

• No free shipping, which will almost certainly be a huge problem given Amazon ?s reputation for and reliance on free shipping through programs like Amazon Prime. The store will charge $9.99 for up to six bottles, which adds 15 percent to the cost of a $10 wine. By comparison, Lot 18, the discount site, charges $9.99 for up to six bottles and free shipping for larger orders.

 • A very odd product mix that includes $100 bottles as well as Coppola’s $10 wines and Ariel’s non-alcoholic products, both of which are widely available in traditional retailers. Why would anyone buy them on the site and pay the shipping charge?

• Very limited shipping, to just 12 states and the District of Columbia The program doesn’t include Texas, with three of the largest wine markets in the country, and New York or New Jersey. Wine.com does 42 states and DC.

In this, shipping — as expected — is the program’s glaring weakness. Amazon’s decision to do an end run around the three-tier system by serving as a marketplace and not the actual retailer means consumers who buy wine on the site face what one marketing executive told me was “a bit of a confusing experience.”

Are they buying from the winery, which may not ship to one of the 12 states and DC that Amazon advertises? Are they buying from one of the third-party retailers, with its own shipping and pricing policies? Do they want to use the $9.99 shipping, which takes three to five business days (so much for buying a bottle of wine for dinner), or pay three times as much for next day shipping?

How confusing is it? There are a handful of New York and Virginia wines for sale, but residents of New York and Virginia won’t be able to buy them.

Having said all this, Amazon is the expert in on-line retailing, and if anyone can make it work, Amazon can. But this haphazard and clanky program doesn’t give one cause for optimism.

Winebits 251: Wine prices, Amazon, Champagne fraud

? Never trust the media? Lew Perdue at Wine Industry Insight must have a wonderfully dark sense of humor. On the same day last week, he posted these two links on his daily e-summary: ?U.S. wine producers reporting 'epic' 2012 harvest ? and ?End to cheap wine prices is near. ? Both, obviously, can ?t be true, but there they are. This points to the serious flaw in most of the reporting about the decline in the world grape supply. What is the demand for grapes? If demand is increasing, then prices will rise. But if demand is flat or shrinking, which could well be the case given the recession in Europe and the near-recession in China, then prices won ?t do much at all, regardless of supply. This is basic reporting, and it ?s depressing that so few people writing about the subject bother to do it.

? Amazon ?s direct shipping plan: My pal Dave McIntyre has a very even-handed assessment of Amazon ?s latest foray into the wine business ? an example of good reporting. Dave hits the high points in what Amazon is trying to do, and also notes ? which even I overlooked ? that the plan will benefit mostly smaller and mostly Napa Valley wineries, which do the most direct shipping. This may well be the key to what seems like a very limited and modest effort by Amazon ? pluck the most profitable and easiest part of the direct shipping market, and worry about the rest later.

? Why we need the French: Because any culture that really cares about wine should be appreciated. Can you imagine a U.S. prosecutor calling anyone who perpetrated a wine fraud despicable? Can you even imagine a U.S. prosecutor filing a case like that? But that ?s happened with a $2.6 million fraud case in France, where a Champagne producer tried to pass plonk off as vintage bubbly. So if they want to be a little cranky about wine names, who are we to criticize?

Winebits 249: Amazon wine

This week, an update on the news that Amazon, the world ?s largest Internet retailer, wants to get back in the wine business:

? Solving the compliance problem: Lew Perdue at Wine Industry Insight, who broke the story last week, follows up with details on how Amazon will help wineries follow the various and byzantine state direct shipping laws. Because, in order to make this work, Amazon won ?t ship any wine, but will leave that ? and compliance — to the wineries. All it will do? List the wine on its website, just like any other third-party reseller. Perdue also reports that only 12 states will be part of the program; again, this makes me wonder why Amazon is bothering, since 12 isn ?t a whole lot and probably won ?t include New York and Pennsylvania, which are notorious for their liquor laws.

? Get those lawsuits ready: I noted yesterday that Amazon ?s plan could well provoke a legal shoot-em-up, given the regulatory climate in the U.S. What I overlooked is that the beer business, which hates direct shipping the way I hate the designated hitter, has very deep pockets. Case in point is a lawsuit in which two distributors are being sued by a beer manufacturer. I don ?t completely understand what the suit is about, but what ?s important to note is that the beer distributor trade group is supporting the distributors: ?Beer distributors are dedicated to keeping alcohol out of the hands of minors and we oppose alcohol sales on the Internet. ? Hope Amazon has lots of lawyers on retainer.

? What about the locals? Stephen Eliot at Connoisseur's Guide to California Wine asks: ?[H]ow this [will] impact the independent, brick-and-mortar wine retailers. I have long believed that the classic wine retailer, is among the most important and underappreciated players in real wine education. A good question, but probably one that won ?t make much difference in the short run. Assuming Amazon gets this to work, its scope will be limited and will only include California wineries (and a limited number at that). Plus, wine is different than music or books, which are mostly Internet-only products these days and put book and music stores out of business. Can ?t have a digital bottle of wine.

Is Amazon getting back into the wine business?

Amazon wine direct shipping

Amazon, the world’s largest on-line retailer, wants to insert itself into the wine direct shipping picture without actually shipping any wine.

The on-line retailer isn ?t commenting. But Wine Industry Insight and the Wall Street Journal reported last week that Amazon will allow some California wineries to participate in its third-party resellers program, in which Amazon lists the items for sale but doesn ?t actually sell them itself.

Needless to say, the wineries were agog at the opportunity to be part of Amazon, which is the fifth most visited website in the U.S. and does almost $13 billion a year. Lew Perdue at Wine Industry Insight wrote that he was contacted by ?numerous ? producers who wanted to know who to call at Amazon so they could sign up.

The legal experts I talked to were less enthusiastic. They asked not to be quoted by name, since they didn ?t know exactly how Amazon wanted to put the program together — though it is apparently based on a 2011 decision by California Alcoholic Beverage Control to allow this sort of thing.

But all agreed that the program could still encounter any number of problems, given the complexity of the three-tier system, which governs alcohol sales in the U.S.; the legal quagmire that is direct shipping law, with 50 laws for 50 states; and newly aggressive state regulators, who might be inclined to sue Amazon just because.

Said one high-profile liquor law attorney: ?It has a lot of moving parts and there are lots of semi-vague statutory commands buried in there, and so lots of problems to work through with even the best intentioned regulators. For those who just don ?t want it to work, there are lots of opportunities to provoke expensive and time consuming litigation. ?

Which, of course, was the reason Amazon got out of the wine business in 2009, after a mostly failed test program that showed just how complicated direct shipping was. Why the company decided to do it again, given those difficulties, could be even more interesting than actually doing it.

Drawing courtesy Appellation America, using a Creative Commons license

 

Direct shipping and underage drinking

Rebecca Williams may have taken on Big Tobacco, but that experience didn’t prepare her for her recent adventure in the wine business. Williams is the lead author of the May study that looked at whether minors could buy alcohol on line. It found, not surprisingly, that they could, and Williams found herself on the receiving end of some less than complimentary comments.

As one Winestream Media stalwart described her: Someone who did the study for no other reason than to burnish her resume.

“It’s not the same kind of backlash when we did tobacco studies,” says Williams, “and I don’t know that I’ve seen a lot of it. What was surprising were all the questions about where the money came from to fund the study. I was surprised that people thought the study was paid for by wine distributors, that we would do that.”

Ah, the naivety of the academic (who got her money from a legitimate public health foundation). Williams, who thought she was doing public health research, walked right into the biggest controversy in the wine business today — the debate over the future of the three-tier system.

She wanted to find out if it was easy for minors to buy booze over the Internet, and instead found herself in the middle of the fight between the distributors and wholesalers who want to strengthen three-tier and those who want to reform it. How this happened and what it means, after the jump:

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