I have had it with this email allocation first come first served BS.

I decided that I would reduce purchases this year because I have too much wine. That would have been painful, except that the lumpen proletariat who have the ability to sit by their computers all day and place orders while some of us have to work for a living managed to gobble up all the wine and shut me out. This, the culling decisions have been made for me, without lots of agonizing. In the past, I would have been annoyed, despite my belief that every winery has the right to use whatever allocation and ordering method it wants. However, this year I am much calmer. The “sold out” notices that get to me before the offer notices make it through my high security Spam filter allow me to consider “WOW, look at how many thousands of dollars I saved today.”

Props to Saxum, however, because I get to have a relaxing relationship in which I can read the release, consider my purchase plans, and still order the max without worrying about whether someone still living in his mother’s basement sniped me on a mailing list that I have been on since the winemaker planted his first seedling.

Rant over. Back to work.

Carlisle guaranteed allocations arrive tomorrow!

Outpost?

Tom

You forgot to mention that I’m wearing my pajamas while sniping you from my mom’s basement.

Have you found the secret wine menu upgrade for GTA 5 yet?

You can get '82 Petrus!

Did you want us to edit it as an open letter for you jay?

So, you’re a producer of a good. What would you rather have happen?
A - sell out of your product
B - give each former customer a guaranteed allocation when only 60% of them buy 40% of their allocation 10% buy none and 30% buy all.

In scenario A the bills are paid and you can look forward to the next vintage.

In the B scenario you have unsold product. Perhaps you re-offer to your list. Customer says to himself, should I buy any more? Nobody else wanted it. You have half your wine left over which you now have to sit on, release to retailers at a discount or whatever.

I’ll take A every day of the year. As a retailer I want my inventory turns to be as high as possible. The faster I sell it the more money I can make.

Get yourself a Gmail acct, when Save the Date emails come put the important ones in your calendar like everyone else does. If you’re going to be in meetings all day call the winery in advance and ask if you can place an order over the phone. I’m sure most people would be accommodating.

You can still set up alarms and reminders on your smart phone these days, right? Someone should check and see if these functions still exist.

Yes, and if in the middle of surgery (patient or staff) or in court or a business meeting would be an excellent time for it to go off and go buy wine .

Do you ring a bell each time you make a snarky post?

Just so long as you can keep replacing the customers you lost, for sure.

In scenario B, why can’t the winery fill guaranteed allocations for a period of time, then open it up to others? That’s my experience with many mailing lists I participate in.

So, I vote ‘invalid A/B either/or limitation’ and go with C…pre-buy for guaranteed allocation, then open for the first come, first served frenzy.

You don’t think Saxum sells out? As I understand it, they mix your 2 scenarios. They have a first run where they give long-timers a week to buy a fixed allocation. Then they have a 2nd run which is FCFS till they sell out. See, compromise. Win Win.

Not every time, but I did this time ding ding

And if you are that important, making that type of money, you can have your assistant or secretary log in for you. Or your partner, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, cousin or good neighbor

Didn’t realize unemployed slackers living in their mothers’ basement bought so much high-end wine. Seems like a pretty good gig. Why work if you can buy wine without working?

%$&*ing millennials!

I’m with Anton on this. To have the best of both worlds (appeasing both the retailer and customer), I’d allow former customers the option to “pre-buy” in advance, securing their allocation. They could then offer the wines to others based on what’s no longer available. If they want to “spread the wealth” to additional customers, they could simply reduce the pre-buy allocation. They get $ sooner up front, we get the satisfaction of purchasing the wine, and there’s still more to offer to first-time customers. Win-win-win.

Note my statement, “my belief that every winery has the right to use whatever allocation and ordering method it wants.” All I can say is that there are a few wineries that treated me like crap in the past because they were highly allocated so I stopped buying from them, and now they are begging me to come back and buy from them because they can’t move product. It’s their wine to allocate however they want and my money to spend however I want. Seems fair. That doesn’t mean that I can’t point out that short term business plans do not do so well in the long term.

sometimes things sell out. At least this isn’t beer. Sought after beer sells out in SECONDS.

there is definitely a age correlation with this. and if you want it bad enough, you’ll get it.

Tell me about it…Cantillon used to SIT on our shelves when I was in college (2006-2010). Now it’s a buy everything you see whenever you see it beer.

You guarantee me that you’ll buy all of everything I offer you and I’ll guaratee your allocation. BTW your allocation is a mixed case plus large formats. Hell, I’ll even bill you in advance for it since you’re so sure. What, you only want 4 bottles and no large formats? But I guaranteed you a case plus Mags nd 3Ls, what’s wrong?

Not everyone is Saxum, Maybach, Screagle.