Zephyr Express- Anyone else getting kicked out?

If so who are you going to use in the future? We don’t ship much and I guess someone decided to kick out 2-300 small wineries to save money. There not giving much time to get out and are stopping shipments. We have a few pending orders for some SF accounts.

We warehouse on-site so I don’t use them, but just heard about this.

Alternatives might be Valley, Groskopf, etc. Heard they are slammed right now picking up Zephyr’s slack, though.

I don’t have all my wine there they just have a pallet of wines that they deliver to restaurants for us. So I am looking for a service that delivers to trade accounts in CA.

Looking into Vinlux today. Any reviews of them?

Joe - FWIW we are very happy with Groskopf. Copper Peak might be another to try.

I only used Vinlux last year to move my newly bottled vintage down the road 5 miles or so from the winery to my warehouse. No problems - planning to use them again.

I have used VinLux, through Groskopf Warehouse & Logistics, successfully. Groskopf has been pretty steady for DTC for us for a couple of years now.

Vinlux told me yesterday that their business had grown and are no longer offering a refrigerated pickup and delivery service. I’m going all of 5 miles. How many cases can you put in a Volvo? Just kidding - I actually already know the answer to that one.

Merrill,

For a second I was going to ask what model it was (my T5 fits about 22 snugly) now the old Oldsmobile that my 2 year old affectionately calls the “beast car” can fit double that number and still have room for a passenger.

Oh and for a D2C run, GSO does really well for anything they service-at least in my experience. I know it depends with them on who happens to handle pick ups

Hey Joe

Our wine is there with our broker, who has been asked to leave, moving all clients wines to Sidekick.

www.baiocchiwines.com

There was a thread on GSO in wine talk I believe perhaps late last fall. Lots of varying opinions on them.

California Wine Transport did a fantastic job for me this morning in a refrigerated truck. Within an hour I had an email from them confirming counts of inventory pick up and intake at the warehouse. Both 2011s and my new Little Black label are, as the kids say, “chillaxing” for the summer before fall shipping.

Check out custom wine services. They are apart of Valley Wine Warehouse down in American Canyon. Great delivery and good pricing

Hi,

I’m in a similar situation, just got all of the wines I rep booted from Zephyr. I thought they did a terrible job at explaining and I feel they’ve probably made quite a few people very sour on them for the future.

I’ve been looking at various options. Anyone have experience with Western Carriers? I like that they have nationwide shipping ability built in. Just called them and they have a 1050.00$ month minimum storage cost, which translates to 3-4k cases. Sounds like they have good logistical and real time inventory support though.

I like the looks of Custom Wine Services. They seem like they might be a bit more “friendly” than Zephyr. I’d looked at Groskopf in the past, but went with Zephyr due to pick-up/delivery rates.

Thoughts welcome,
Chris