Very true, but the line needs to be drawn somewhere and for me personally that line was crossed when distributors started charging over €500 for Selosse anything. I’ve also come across a lot of bundling especially on German websites, and that’s on top of markup. Certainly it must be in place because some people are willing to follow such policy, no? All I’m saying is that there will always be some (albeit not perfect) alternatives and I’d rather support them.
for the record, if the problem for anyone is that theyre not wanting to buy Bouchard’s “lower level” wines for access to the upper tiers, I will happily take the lower level allocations to help keep you on the list.
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For sure. Allocated or not, there’s a separate consideration on whether one thinks a particular wine is worth what is being charged. It’s really up to everyone individually to decide whether they find a particular wine is worth the price being charged or not. There are plenty of wines that I enjoy but don’t buy because of the price.
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This is all a really good argument for wine DKP system for allocations:
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that requires too much transparency to be done correctly for wine. The only way it could be done right is to have a spreadsheet with each person and what they’ve bought. Otherwise, like in real life, the guild leader will just give the items to their friends/family and say they had the most dkp.
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But this isn’t really true. In order to maintain your position on the list, you need to keep buying. Once you start reducing what you buy, you get smaller allocations. So it’s really pretty similar to the way retailers treat European wines.
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From an former retailer, i had guys spend $100k a year with me and they always got 1st dibs. The year the 2016 Burlotto Monvigs rolled out, my top barolo customers got what wanted and the rest came home to papa!!!
My strangest refusal of an allocated wine was the 2016 Armand Rousseaus. I couldn’t give them away! It didn’t help that i received my Mugneret gibourg allocation the week prior and it was pretty hefty that year. I aint saying where those Rousseau s went…
I love this idea. Utterly impossible to implement for so many reasons, but still fun to think about.
For those who are unfamiliar, the distribution process involves the leader presenting each item of value to the entire group in realtime, and the folks who want something effectively bidding with their previously earned points. Imagine trying to get all your interested clients on a Zoom call for every received shipment and going one bottle/parcel at a time to determine interest and allocation. Total nightmare.
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You wish! 
Yes, half the threads on this forum are people complaining about this kind of thing on lists. There is no free lunch no matter what you’re buying.
im just here offering a selfless service. cuz thats the kind of person I am. lol
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I had said earlier I prefer the airline miles system.
Maybe your DKP argument means it should be explicit and not unwritten. But everyone is familiar with how mile awards work.
I’m not saying you get wine for points/miles (though that could also be cool). I’m saying you get access to buy wine with those points once you would no longer get access based on your purchases for the year. That way, long term loyalty gets rewarded but in a limited way (at some point you run out of points).
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I don’t sweat this stuff. I’ve lost my allocations to Vatan, Rougeard, half of my Gonon, and before his retirement, my Juge got cut in half. Etc. Some of these were from retailers that I used for years. There are always big Ballers above us unwashed sweaty masses. Such is life. We can still find these wines in the after-market, they just require a gasp as we hand over our Amex.
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People are seriously overthinking this.
Almost nobody is getting allocations of top wines in adequate quantities (case+) anymore, unless they have been buying directly from the domaine for a really long time.
I have small allocations of top wines from various vendors that I’ve been buying from for a long time in high volume but in general, i don’t get allocated nearly enough of the bottles I want and have to backfill on the secondary market. I was getting offered 1 to maybe 3 bottles of 19 LT, for example, and the prices were better but than market but not to a huge extent.
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There are already websites and programs set up for it. You don’t need spreadsheets. Just need it to plug into current ERP/inventory stuff and you’re set.
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It’s basically the same thing but with more built out for how to use points. Airline seats/flights aren’t quite as allocated so DKP has a few systems built out for how to allocate. But the principle is the same.
Is it really lying if there is no chance there will be any left for him to buy? In any case, my point is the same, that the response by the retailer was honest but rude and a more diplomatic response (whatever the exact wording is) would be a better business practice. Geez.
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honest but honest. the rude part is in the eye of the beholder, which is impossible to predict (hence this thread!). being honest and letting the chips do their thing is always going to be the smartest move. sure you might lose a customer, but if a decade+ on WB has taught us anything, there’s a lot of customers that aren’t worth having.
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And conversely, we’ve learned that there are retailers/winery owners not worth having.
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I would think a business owner would try to avoid communications that might be construed by a customer as rude. I guess we just disagree here.
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