Weve all come to accept it as an amusing little minor frustration with a super reliable store.
My question is simply why? Why do they take 6 months to a year longer than every other store? What is different about their importer or their purchasing schedule?
Edit: fixed spelling errors due to fat fingers and ipad
Because they’re smarter than all the other stores.
They get to play with your money for much,much longer…and their is no surfeit of customers to buy into this scheme.
6 months,a year you say?
Hah,that’s a good one…
They are the importer. They assemble wines as far as I know in their Beaune warehouse from deliveries across Europe. On the gray market, normally, but perhaps not exclusively? Then they pack it up and ship it. The slow cases seem to be where the gray market guys do not ship it, e.g., I am still waiting for 2004 Clerico Barolo. I don’t think that they have these bottles in their Beaune warehouse, otherwise they would ship it.
Just take a look on cellartracker at the pending deliveries by store. They outnumber every other store by a good margin, and I’d anticipate that a good chunk of “Unknown” pending deliveries are actually Premier Cru. Add in the people that don’t use cellartracker, and I bet the dollar value of their undelivered product is enormous.
Thank you. This is what I was interested in. I should have explained I was after the actual mechanics of how their system differs. I was trying carefully at the outset to not start another bashing thread. (Apologies to Neal and others who think this has been talked to death)
I’m not particularly worried about PC suddenly disappearing with my undelivered wines. If I do, it’s not a tremendous amount of money and I’ll be the fool. In the meanwhile they’ve delivered every bottle I’ve ordered within a time frame that does not bother me, at great prices, with great customer service, making me a happy customer. Perhaps I’m a willing participant in a ponzi scheme, if so, I’m a satisfied participant as well.
Where did I defend them? Your “conjecture” is that they are engaged in a massive fraud. Committing felonies. That and Andrew’s really unconscionable use of Madoff’s picture. Nice.
I posted Madoff’s photo in jest. I honestly have no idea what the true nature of the delays is, but you have to admit that the number of outstanding deliveries, combined with the period of time of which they have been outstanding is quite scary. Do you think they are sitting on giant pile of cash?
It never fails the anger questions about Premier Cru seem to stir up, though I can’t fathom why at this point. Those of you so happy to toss out Ponzi, Madoff and the life, are you buying things from Premier Cru?
Are you under the impression that your responses are going to sway folks further one direction or another regarding premier cru? Really? It seems similar to folks posting in threads about wineries they would never remotely consider purchasing, just why…
I for one do buy from Premier Cru, and find the original question interesting. I’ve heard conjecture of some of the random places they’re sourcing from, and find it interesting. I have no idea what would represent the long delay, clearly it seems there are times they’re offering wines they don’t know they have “stock” on, then finding them. Given a very high success rate of eventually finding those wines, my hat goes off to them.