I think these consortiums are already out there and plentiful. We call them wine shops lol.
Buy from them! I happily sell DTC but also have terrific distribution and then retail partners. Honestly don’t care how you get our stuff, I buy direct, I buy retail, I buy at auction. Everyone should. Retailers are great.
The DTC angle is a direct relationship. winery visits. Access to library stuff. Even a quick text - hey we’re thinking of opening the ‘17 Armstrong, what you think? I’m always happy to reply. And then I get pics of the bottles and notes. The relationship goes both ways. I love it. But seriously I hear you, the downside is maybe too much from one or a few producers. Nothing’s perfect I suppose.
Yeah, happy to do that. Or with BerserkerDay coming, we might get a small order and charge shipping. But it won’t ship until spring and then people can fill out a case with our February prerelease offer or whatever and we credit back the shipping paid. Holding orders longer came from people asking - can you hold until fall and I’ll fill out by then? Great. What a terrific idea. So we definitely do that but I worked years and years ago in the North Berkeley shop and we then had some customers who had literally a pallet of stuff they hadn’t taken delivery of. Which was a pain but then again the wine was paid for and I figured it’s just part of the system. Some customers want stuff shipped right away almost no matter what. Most want to hold until the next good shipping window. Some want to hold longer and fill out a box or more. My attitude is - great. Whatever works for you.
GCC is the Grand Cru Cru (Crew) and the Monopole Cru are membership options for being a Berserker. The Grand Cru Cru is the best money you can spend as it gets rid of ads and also gets you access to buying on the preview day right ahead of Berserker Day. See Chris’ link.
And don’t sweat not knowing, even if you are in the GCC already. Asking is the surest way to learn.
Caveat is only Berserker Businesses can sell on preview day, the day before Berserker Day, as well as Berserker Day.
There will be two separate categories that day.
One labeled Preview Only - the ones you can only buy from on Berserker Day, but you can see the offers the day before for planning purposes
And the Active Purchase category- where buying is live that day. Note that Marcus has a blue BB in his avatar. That means GF is a Berserker Business and their offers will be live for purchase on preview day.
If you join Monople Cru, you will have access to secret special offers only available to that group. Not sure if there are preview day offers to buy there or just on BD.
I have been thinking lately about selling off a few hundred bottles, as I have more than enough for my lifetime at the rate my wife and I drink. But the British model has inspired me to think otherwise, and we have already told our teenage sons whatever is left is theirs. That said we have slowed down significantly on purchases, both mailing list and otherwise. My biggest problem is having more than enough wine that is ‘in the drinking window’. Note to self, set up cellar diminishment party for the Spring.
Pat, our son and daughter are about 10+ years older than your boys, and our daughter, the youngest, is just starting to appreciate wine. She had a bit of a 1996 de Fargues sticky last weekend and loved it. Our son likes wine, and will try any red that we offer, but he does not go out and buy wine. Both are happy to try whatever we have open, and we enjoy sharing with them, but they do not buy any.
Age, a full cellar, and a couple of changes in my life last year have caused me to buy less going forward. I still buy from a few mailing lists, one from Oregon and the rest from Northern California. But we have a lot of bottles that are ready to be consumed and shared, and we are looking forward to that!
This is interesting - I could see a consortium that consolidates shipping from multiple wineries. But the operational expenses may exceed the potential consumer savings. I personally (and don’t doubt I’m alone) balk at shipping 3-4 bottles, at a cost that well exceeds 1/3-1/4 of a shipment of 12. But on the other hand, even if it saves $30, is that enough to support the logistics of packing the wines from 3-4 wineries in a single 12 pack, especially if not all the wineries are in this consortium.
Along these lines, a lot of wineries I follow have 3+ offers each year, with separate shipment of each. It ends up being 2 to 6 bottles from each offer that is shipped separately. Many retailers let you hold and consolidate orders and then they ship full cases.
I think it’s these 3 separate offers a year (and no explicit discussion of it’s ok to hold for a case) that bother me. if you really start to work out the numbers, you can only belong to like a handful or less places like that at best and then essentially start to have more wine than you can handle. And then you can’t taste anything else without your cellar just growing out of proportion within a few years.
Unfortunately most states winery-to-consumer licenses forbid this, you can only ship wines that you bottle. Retailers apply for entirely different licenses, which is why they are able to ship multiple producers.
I was thinking the same thing. I live in Portland and 9 out of the 10 top producer’s in my cellar are all Oregon producers and I don’t buy DTC from any of them and I’m not in any clubs. I have nothing against DTC or clubs, but it doesn’t fit how I buy.
Is this a reply to me? I’m not sure I understand. If it is, I’ll try to explain. I really want to narrow down my purchases and consolidate shipping. I signed up for UOVO this year because it gains access to their winemarket so I can try single bottles of wines I might not otherwise get. I purchased my first 3 pack of Heiro, which is honestly really much above my desired price range with the hope to try something new (and high end) and if it’s not to my taste, I can easily consign it. It’s hard to really explore some wines without taking a significant financial risk. I’ve been able to get better pricing on consigned single bottles of things like Corison and 001 Vintners without having to pay shipping or commit to a wine list. It’s an opportunity to explore. If Heiro had been on there, I don’t think I’d have signed up for K-E. I doubt I’ll use UOVO personally for more than a few years, but for me, it’ll “pay for itself” in having a new outlet for some wines. I’d suggest it to others as well in a similar position.
Sorry, I must have had you mistaken for someone else! It’s definitely a common complaint on the K-E post. Fairly high shipping costs plus no way to combine orders. Most people are getting 1-3 bottles per release.
Hmm…i don’t even recall the option to buy a single bottle. I thought they just did 3 packs but honestly I probably blacked out because the prices were so high.
Ed, we have over the last few years let them try sips of our wine at dinner to educate them on alcohol. This summer we took them to Italy and allowed them small glasses of wine with dinner and at the one winery we went to. Our goal is for them to have a healthy relationship with alcohol, especially with my oldest heading to college in the Fall. We have also purchased birth year wine for each of them and shown them ‘their’ bottles in the cellar, to be enjoyed down the road. We look forward to the time coming when we can fully share our love of wine with them.
They are really in a different stratosphere of pricing for my level of comfort. I will be curious to try a bottle and see if it is magnitudes of order better than what else I’ve had, but I think I already know the answer to that question. At some point, many of these wines simply become pokemon trading cards and the notion of “supporting a winery/family” sounds absurd. Like, I really appreciated that @Marcus_Goodfellow mentioned the pricing on that Psycho Killer…and was like, yeah i know it’s high, but that one wine is ultra unique and the best we’ve ever made. I can get on board with that. Similar to like Kobayashi Mizunara. Absurd pricing, but highly unique.
I’ve done about the same. I only buy allocated wine if I happen to get an offer that looks really interesting and can be opened “soon”, which happens more often these days when I skip an allocation than in the past. All standing orders cancelled and unsubscribe as most offers come in. I built a nice collection over the years, then offboarded a lot of wine, and switched my offsite to about 1/2 capacity of what it previously was (no home storage). A lot of it has to do with my own decision to reduce consumption by a lot as I get older and I can’t see myself waiting for (or getting excited about) recent vintages maturing 20-30 years from now. My nieces/nephews are gen Z, which drinks much less or not at all, so I’ll more than happily open and share my cellared wine until the qty = 0 vs passing it onto them (though I suppose that means I get to share their d’yquem and Harlan birth wines with my siblings )
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