Official Importer is just a marketing term that is used by importers who have signed a business agreement with the winery. The importer label is required by the TTB for anyone who has the proper Gov’t licenses and imports a wine - they don’t care if you bought the wine from the winery or from a broker in Europe.
‘Grey Market’ wines that make it to the US are typically purchased from brokers in Europe who have relationships with distributors and retailers. For example, when the German importer/distributor is allocated more of a Chateauneuf than they have demand for, one of these brokers is a way they can move the excess inventory quietly. Obviously some brokers are more reliable than others, but you can bet that most major retailers that bring in European wines have three or four guys that they deal with on a regular basis. Once the retailer confirms an order, payment is made and the product is typically delivered from the distributor to a consolidation warehouse - where it sits until the retailer has amassed enough purchased product to make a refrigerated container economical - which usually happens 3 to 4 times a year for us.
It’s really just that simple - nothing ‘grey’ about it. Now if it takes more than 4-6 mos. for the retailer to deliver…well…
Perhaps I am misunderstanding what is going on here, but one bottle has a normal non-grey market importer strip. The other has the same strip.
Or they both have the same strip but only one shows damage.
Am I missing something here?
Eric, the wine is imported by the merchant. I could be wrong, but the merchant did not obtain the wines from the producer. As mentioned above, probably from a broker. I purchased the wines as “pre-arrivals” two years ago. Delivered to me a week ago. I don’t know what the relationship is between the merchant and the broker(s) in this case but that the storage, history, provenance of these wines is a mystery makes them gray market, to me.
The merchant imports gray market wines. That is a fact. These wines bear the merchants importer sticker in their bottles.
The Bourgogne did not exhibit any damage. It was obviously from a different case than the villages. I bought both cases intact, opened them myself.
Regardless, I need to go to my offsite storage to inspect these and the other H-N bottles I got in the same shipment.
If I am misusing the term “Gray Market” someone please let me know.
The distinction is entirely about how they get the wine. Generally speaking, an ‘official’ importer has a long term agreement with the winery to buy directly from them. Gray market (GM) importers don’t.
Most times, GM importers buy from brokers. GM importers might buy directly from the winery, but it would be a one-off type of deal (and, I believe, this would be somewhat unusual…if a winery is trying to move wine, they’d usually hire a broker…but sometimes life is weird).
Once the importer has bought the wine, the rest of the steps are pretty much the same (one or more of: get label approval from the TTB (U.S. Fed), get approval to sell it in the states they intend to, move the wine to a considation warehouse in Europe (assuming we’re talking about European wine here), arrange for transport over seas, etc).
I’m sure I’ve forgotten something, but those are the basics.
For these particular wines, my assumption was always that they were buying from the standard importers, but buying a huge volume of lowly wines in order to get access to more of the highly ranked wines at low prices. Then they would move the low-end stuff quickly at rock-bottom prices (surely below wholesale in many places but maybe around their cost). As for delivery, there might be various reasons why someone getting those prices would stand in line. Are these necessarily gray market?
It’s complicated, but this is not correct. In some jurisdictions, wine shops can import directly. In DC, for example, Calvert & Woodley have longstanding import relationships with producers and import without a broker, in other instances, they buy through brokers in the country of origin, and in others, they buy from distributors in the 3-tier system.
My bottom line is: find a retailer(s) you trust. Buy in confidence. Ignore the presence or absence of a tax stamp. It is less than meaningless.
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