Wine101 Feature: Thoughts on Closeouts/Web Specials on Wine?

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I can only relay personal experiences, but typically closeouts are bottles that have sat too long. Unfortunately, Iā€™ve had a couple oxidized bottles. If the bottle is several years old and hasnā€™t been in my possession, Iā€™m usually skeptical about its quality.

Todd, I believe Im correct in stating that many instances have to do with wineries having to move their inventory to make room for the next vintage, keep the cash flow going and derive some income to move on and keep moving on. In this case, the wines are cheaper and have more months/ years of proper storage and thus more maturity, the best of all worlds if the wine is decent. Ive taken advantage of many offers and have had almost complete success.

Theres greater risk in buying from places such as Wine Commune because of storage and handling issues well never know about until after the purchase.

The other Buyer Beware is when the closeout comes from a wine shop that does not store wine properly. e.g. bottles standing up; poor temperature control, exposure to sunlight, etc. In this case, I want to know more about the store first hand or from a reliable source.

This latter point is one where we can actually use this board to ask others in the local area to give feedback about a specific shop/ store.

People who are interested in closeouts are looking for a deal. Lots of closeouts and high discount deals are frequently conveyed in email offers. That said, there is going to be variances by retailer in the way that the wine is stored, as well as where it has been. Our experience is that most, not all, online vendors will take back stinky wine. That said, forums are a great place to separate the careful vendors from the sloppy ones.

For the most part, closeouts are not problems at all. Most are not just bottles that have been sitting around too long.

You buy a few pallets of wine, you donā€™t sell it all, a new vintage comes in, and you clear it out. Weā€™ve cleared stuff from the warehouse an as a customer, Iā€™ve purchased closeout wine. Some great deals.

Very often a producer loses an importer or wants to change or whatever and the existing importer / distributor wants to get rid of existing inventory. Itā€™s what happened with the A. Conterno wines last year. Those can be GREAT deals for customers all down the line, be they resellers or final consumers.

Once in a while you get some stuff thatā€™s off, but itā€™s not the norm in my experience. Most closeouts come from bad business decisions, sometimes unfortunate for someone in the chain, but good for someone else.

Iā€™ve bought some clearance wines from K&L: no issues having to do with provenance but my take thus far has been that they are not usually worth a dime more than the sale price.

What Greg said. Close outs happen for many business related reasons, the least likely of which is the retailer knowingly dumping damaged/spoiled wine.

I have taken advantage of close outs from the major online sellers and have gotten some really good deals on over stock, winery closing and older inventory. I am apprehensive with the mystery stuff, but did get some good ones. Not pressing my luck there anymore.

Last Bottle has commanded my attention lately with NW wines @ significant discount and free shipping. Strange to get OR & WA wines shipped free from CA. [snort.gif]

Hi everybody!
Iā€™m an italian student new to this forum.
I donā€™t know if itā€™s the right place to do this survey for my thesis,
but I have to do this about online selling of Italian Wine.

Can you help me?

http://gimmy.netsons.org/wine/

+1 to what GregT said. There are many, many reason why wineries/distributors move wine through closeout specials. I have personally purchased many wines over the past 10 years through closeouts. Whether it was because a winery was cutting back production, change in distributors, or just too much inventory on hand, it seems like a win-win opportunity for the consumer. Iā€™d like to believe that a producer/retailer is not dumping compromised wine on a closeout special, but Iā€™m sure it has happened. I just have not experienced it. I believe the web special web sites provide a valuable service to a specific section of the wine buying market.
That being said, I donā€™t sell any of my wines (and probably wonā€™t ever) through these sitesā€¦

I pretty much only buy through close outs and web specialsā€¦

Iā€™ve had pretty good luck with closeout stuff, at first it was an easy way to get my hands on a variety of things Iā€™d not tried before, but as my palate kind of evolves sometimes it lets me get my hands on things I already know I like for a decent deal. I think Iā€™m lucky in that Seattle has quite a few email merchants that deal in the type of wine I like frequently (Full Pull has been a great resource for WA wine at a decent price), and unlike some on the board Iā€™ve had good luck with Garagiste since I can just go pick it up and take it back if itā€™s cooked (only ever happened on one bottle). Around town everyone seemed to be blowing out Rockwell Brown after they closed so a fellow berserker picked up a 4 bottle vertical for around $80 and invited us over for a tasting, which was really fun.

As a retailer for the pass 15 yrs or so let me say that all the stores I have worked at offered discounts/close out specials. These are either slow sellers or discontinued items and every store would gladly take back any spoiled bottles and even those that the customer just didnā€™t like. In store credit or a refund if the customer had the receipt. I havenā€™t had many come back over the years although I have had customers tell me later that the bottle/bottles where not to their taste or just ok.

This being said be aware that Iā€™ve always worked at big chain stores, the mom and pop stores are where I would be careful and ask questions before I trusted them.

I was the wine buyer at a ā€œmom & pop shopā€ in NW Louisiana for several years. I drank the stuff that we purchased from the distributors, so I certainly didnā€™t want to sell any junk - close-out or otherwise.

If we had to make shelf space for a new product, or if a wine had spent a couple of years on the horizontal racks, it often resulted in some bottles going into a close-out bin next to the registers. In most cases, these were subsequently hand-sell items. I was honest with customers, because I would be the one who had to answer for my suggestions.

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newhere

A few times I year Iā€™ll snap up some closeout deals (usually a case) on white burgundies, mostly ā€œoffā€ vintages or vintners that havenā€™t received a lot of hype. All from a local shop in the greater Boston area. Never had any issues with quality.

Another situation where a wine might appear on close-out is when a product switches distributors. The old distributor might try to flush out the remaining inventory at a low price. This is sometimes done with the intent of freeing shelf space in store shelves for replacement wines to fill the spot the previous wine occupied.

Of course, this only occurred with nationally distributed, larger production wines and liquorā€¦

Some great deals. Best protection is to check the reputation of the retailer.

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I like Closeouts, especially at small local stores ā€¦ Gives you chance to try wine you may not ordinarily purchase at that price point. Even if itā€™s old and Dusty ā€¦ every bottle of wine has a story to be told and deserves to be drank.

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As long as the story isnā€™t ā€˜I was stored in the window for 4 yearsā€™ā€¦