Tag Archives: Put a Cork in It

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Winecast 63: Chris Keel and the independent retailer during the pandemic

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Chris and Deedra Keel of Fort Worth’s Put a Cork in It

Chris Keel’s small wine shop in Fort Worth, Put a Cork in It, evolved and adapted over the past 18 months, offering a number of retail lessons

Chris Keel’s wine shop is tiny, and it isn’t in a typical retail location. Yet, somehow, his Put a Cork in It shop has thrived for more than 15 years and emerged from the pandemic battered but unbowed.

Chalk that up to Chris and wife Deedra, who have terrific wine sense, a great business knack, and know what their customers want. In this case, it’s a small but excellent inventory, priced properly, and absent of the fads and foolishness that propel the wine business.

“We had to shift from more people coming in to less people coming,” says Chris. “But we’re so small, we adapt quickly and chaos is normal.”

I’ve known Chris almost since the store opened; he let me do a couple of cheap wine book signings. So when Chris talks about wine retail, he’s worth listening to. He mentions several top-notch value wines in the podcast: Gonnet Le Reveur”Cotes du Rhone red; the Italian Banfi Col di Sasso red, and a 1-liter rose from Spain, called Arco.

We also discussed:

• Change in approach: The Keels went from three tastings a week to none — and haven’t had one in the past 18 months. Given that tastings drove purchases, they had to find a different way to drum up business. That meant special orders, something most retailers dislike, and then dislike some more. But that has paid off in increased customer loyalty.

• Delivery mattered: Chris never thought his shop would be able to offer delivery, but he was able to find a group of people to help. At its height, the store made as many as 15 deliveries every day. Which is impressive for an operation staffed by a husband and wife and one employee.

• Keeping focus: Put a Cork in It has always focused on less expensive wines,, and that didn’t change. Yes, it was harder to find quality wines costing less than $12 or less, what with the Trump tariff and the pandemic. But Chris added more Italian wines, and that helped bridge the gap.

Finally, we talked about bringing younger consumers to wine, since the store is near the TCU campus. Chris said tastings were especially successful, and he hopes to resume his outreach to 20-somethings once tastings resume.

Click here to download or stream the podcast, which is about 14 1/2 minutes long and takes up about 10 megabytes. Quality is very good.

Holiday wine trends 2015

Holiday wine trendsHoliday wine trends in 2015? Red wine — lots and lots of red wine.

That’s the consensus from the retailers I’ve talked to over the past 10 days. The red blends boom, combined with an upsurge in interest in pinot noir, has shoppers going for what Chris Keel, who runs Put a Cork in It in Fort Worth, calls “a bigger style in red blends.”

That was born out by numbers from Wine.com, where two-thirds of the wine sold over the past year were red. Mike Osborne, the web site’s founder and and vice president of merchandising, reports that the leading red wine categories, including merlot, have grown by double digits.

Interestingly, prices seem stable, particularly on the high end, and we’re still looking for value. But we’re also willing to pay for a holiday splurge, says Nick Vorpagel of Lake Geneva Country Meats. “They’re generally OK with $15, especially for domestic wine,” he says, noting the difficulty in finding quality for $10 from U.S. producers. “And I think consumers have decided that wine is an integral part of their meal and they’re OK with paying a bit more for a quality bottle of wine.”

Among the other holiday wine trends this year:

? Rose is still popular, even though it’s not rose season. Wine.com is selling more rose than merlot, which is as welcome a development as it is hard to believe.

? “Customers are looking for wine recommendations that fit their palate, not just a generic ‘best pairing’ recommendation,” says Vorpagel. “I’m having more customers come in and say, ‘I don’t like pinot noir; what other reds will go with turkey?’ It’s great because people are getting more comfortable with their palate to say ‘I’m not going to drink something I don’t like just because an expert recommends it.’ ” That sound you hear is the Wine Curmudgeon’s sigh of pleasure.

? Oak is not going away, no matter how much I want it to. Those of you who like it are still buying it, and especially in chardonnay, and producers have launched several wines in the $15 to $20 range for these wine drinkers.