Winery Hardball

This morning I had a winery tell me they will only accept 10 tons from a particular field. Last year the same thing happened. We had 3 tons leftover. Luckily I had another guy will to take the overage. A couple of weeks ago I told the customer that there might be 12-13 tons…they said ok. Now this morning 24 hours before the pick they say 10 tons max.

Now some of this is my fault for not making the contract read 10 tons or the entire contents of the field.

After some texts back and forth they offer to buy the overage at a reduced price. I suggested placing the overage up their ass.

But you’ve given them a marketing angle: “From our a** to your glass”

I love me some barnyard funk.

Winery customers are often a finicky bunch and expect a lot for very little. My guess is that they still have not planned ahead, fermenter & space wise, for over 10tons. Coming back at you to pay less per ton is a slap in the face. Since they are repeat offenders I would guess that looking for other “appreciative” customers is in order. Do you contracts by tonnage and not acreage? Hope your harvest went well and you found others for the >10 ton amount.

Yeah, working on a plan. Might crush it for myself to bulk it.

We usually contract by field and charge per ton pricing. We’re not quite in that league of selling fruit by the acre.

Most customers are understanding when yields aren’t exact. Super all guys have much less room for error.

We won’t let it hang, that’s for sure.

What variety?

Pinot

:stuck_out_tongue: :stuck_out_tongue: :stuck_out_tongue:

I took this fruit to custom crush today. Too beautiful to let hang any longer. I’m guessing that with some of the extreme heat loss on some Pinot vineyards that people will be looking for quality bulk wine. Hope I’m not sorry. I lost my ass on the 2013 late harvest Gewurtz I made and bottled in shiners.

Good luck Casey.

Just a random thought, but ya know that Patricia Green stopped doing the Berseker Cuvee and Jim suggested that he’d be ok with someone else picking up the mantle, so…

Casey,

As I am obviously not ITB, it seems screamingly obvious that you would have little difficulty in selling off bulk Pinot these days. How on Earth could it not be so?

Yields are down so I don’t see why there is a space problem this year.

Yields may be down, but the lots aren’t.

Not all - brought in malbec yesterday from Rutherford and it was heavy.

I agree that contracting for the entire yield of a block is best. It’s a relatively minor sharing of the risk on the winery’s part. That is, “minor” relative to a per-acre contract where they may be asked to pay for fruit they’re not going to get in a short vintage.
In the absence of that sort of agreement, however, I don’t know that the winery’s position is all that unreasonable. They apparently don’t want the overage, or at least don’t want it to the same extent as they wanted the expected amount. It seems fairly rational that they would pay less for the amount they don’t really want.
I had an agreement with a small winery for them to buy the whole yield from a certain number of rows. When I had a really big year (probably 2013) and the yield way exceeded what I knew they were expecting and could afford, I dropped the per ton price as a meet-you-half-way sort of approach. I think the winery, in your case, may have felt they were doing something similar.

+1

Hell, you could even revive the Curmudgeon Cuvée with that “shove it up your as$” comment! In memory of Bob Wood if course, God bless his soul.

How many tons per acre?

3.2 T/A