Tag Archives: wine importers

Winebits 564: Kroger wine, wine importers, magazine death

kroger wineThis week’s wine news: Kroger wine and home delivery, plus the best wine importers, and a noted beer magazine closes

• The great wall of wine wine at your home: Kroger will offer home wine delivery in 14 states. This Bloomberg story, which looks to be written from a news release and isn’t quite clear about the project, doesn’t quite get what a big deal this is. Which it is, if only because Kroger is one of the largest wine retailers in the country and it’s not just selling wine. Apparently, it will be private label wine from California, Italy, France and Spain, costing between $11 and $17 a bottle and come only in six- and 12-bottle “assortments.” In other words, grocery store wine premiumization.

• Only the best: Frank Whitman, writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, lists four of the best wine importers – names on the back of a bottle that almost always deliver quality and value. You’ll see the four importers mentioned in the story – Kermit Lynch, Rosenthal, Skurnik, and Louis/Dressner – frequently on the blog, and regular readers know how picky I am about these things. It’s not surprising, though, given the way wine works that distinguishing between the best importers and everyone else can be complicated and time consuming.

• So long, All About Beer: Yes, it’s not a wine magazine, but those of us who write for a living know exactly what happens when a magazine folds – and doesn’t pay the contributors. Hence, this item about the respected All About Beer magazine, which apparently did just that and left its writers in the lurch. Reports Forbes: “Reporters and editors have complained for years about late and missed paychecks, and recent editor John Holl and at least ten other staffers left their positions because of bounced checks and failure to make vendor payments.” Sadly, I am all too familiar with that in the world of magazine freelancing.

Winebits 462: Lidl, expensive wine, wine importers

lidl This week’s wine news: Discount grocer Lidl and its cheap wine plans Texas expansion, plus more expensive wine is sold, and wine importers are your friend

• On to Texas: Lidl, the European discount grocer that will will debut on the East Coast at the end of next year, has said it will make Texas its second destination. This is huge news for wine drinkers, since Lidl is one of the leading wine retailers in Europe, regularly winning awards for its cheap wine. It also means we will have arch-rivals Lidl and Aldi in Dallas, and as a grocery store consultant friend of mine put it: “I wouldn’t want to be in the supermarket business in Dallas and get caught in the middle between Lidl and Aldi when they go at it.”

• Too expensive to drink? How about paying $18,000 bottle for a bottle of red Burgundy? Or this quote, from the owner’s daughter after the wine was sold at auction: “My father would have been so proud and so honored. He bought the right wines at the right price.” Nothing, of course, about drinking the wine, supposedly some of the best in the world. In this, just one more example that more and more high-end wines are made to collect, and not to drink.

• The fine print: Marrisa Ross in Bon Appetit tries too hard to be hip and with it, but her point is spot on – the wine’s importer, listed in tiny type on the back label, speaks volumes about the quality of what’s in the bottle. We’ve said this on the blog for years, and even listed some of the best cheap wine importers. Know, too, as Ross writes: “Shopping by importer helps you buy more strategically, because even if you don’t know the grape, the region or the producer, you know and trust the importer.”