Andrew,
I’m relatively new the Burgundy scene, do you have any retailers you can recommend that might offer recourse for defective bottles? I’m aware of Benchmark but that’s really about it.
Thanks,
Alec
I’m sorry to hear that happened to you and that is their policy.
I used to shop there a lot but rarely do anymore; I have gotten the sense for a long time that their business isn’t really thriving.
I think that is a bad business practice on their part, and I won’t shop there now knowing that bad policy is their policy. If they sell a defective product, they should refund / credit / replace a customer who receives one.
Just like if you bought a toaster and took it home and it doesn’t toast bread, you should be able to return it. I don’t know what it is about wine that should exempt it from normal business warranties.
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Benchmark does for 6 months on the provenance guarantee bottles. If you have a good enough relationship with a retailer they make take care of you regardless of what their policy is.
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You’re conflating two very different scenarios. Buying a toaster at an Ace Hardware is completely different from buying one at a swap meet.
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I think their business is doing just fine. They’re getting access to a lot of wines at good prices.
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I think some corked bottles is basically the cost of doing business. I’ve had 2-3 defective bottles in the last 5 years or so, out of hundreds opened so it doesn’t happen that often.
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It happens to almost everyone more than that. I think it’s fairly well understood from dialogue here that you are either very lucky, not that sensitive to TCA, or both.
That said, I have never tried to return a coked bottle, so I suppose I also think it’s one of the costs of the hobby, even though I agree in principle with everyone who argues otherwise. It’s a point on which I am not consistent between belief and practice.
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This 100% - if they are not willing to stand by the products they sell, why should folks purchase from them?
Cheers
Because they’re getting wine for 30% less than they would from an authorized retailer.
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I’m not very sensitive to TCA but the people I drink with are very sensitive to TCA. I do have pretty good luck in general in terms of TCA, though.
I asked them if there were any scenarios in which the policy enforcement might be reviewable so that I could have a clear understanding in order to make a decision to continue to do business with them.
Apparently if you buy a mixed case and all bottles are defective, they said they would still enforce the policy. Of course, that is highly unlikely to happen but after receiving that clarification point, I just can’t see myself buying any more wine from them. In my opinion that is a terrible customer service practice.
You should probably buy from someone else then. That being said if you’re not buying from authorized retailers you shouldn’t expect them to take the wine back if it’s defective, unless explicitly stayed such as at benchmark,
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Agreed. Will chalk this up as lessons learned. I asked Andrew upstream if there were any authorized retailers recommended by the board. Would love to know if you have any recommendations as well.
Rosenthal has a list of retailers on their website. I believe flatiron and Astor are authorized retailers.
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Wine is not a machine. It’s an agricultural product, like fruit.
Cue the Seinfeld routine between Kramer and Jerry…
That said, I have returned corked wines at times. But not always. It’s a tricky situation for reasons we all know.
Educate me here. I thought The Wine Club is a retailer selling mostly new products.
I’ve stated upthread that I understand when you buy used products second hand, like a 10 year old car off Craigslist, you don’t expect any warranty from the seller.
This was a 2022 Burg. Was it a consignment bottle or something?
The Wine Club is a wine retailer. Their business is selling product with a known documented failure rate (from TCA) of 1% to 5%. They are happy to knowingly sell a product with this failure rate to you and make their full retail margin on the sale to you. But if it is defective they attitude is “go fuck yourself”. They know they are doing this and they don’t care.
What a great business model, you the consumer take 100% of the risk and they get to keep your money and make their profit margin.
I would never ever buy from such a retailer which a policy like this
At the end of the day the failure rate is quite low and the discount over authorized retailers is ~30% so you can decide whether it’s worth it to buy from them, or not.
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But it should not be tricky - a winery chooses to use a closure that has a known failure rate . . .
Cue the story of the cork manufacturer visiting an Italian producer’s booth at VinItaly a number of years back and inquiring why they had switched to screw caps. The winemaker lookers at the cork producer and said - ‘You’re flying back to Portugal right? What if I told you that 1-3% of planes were faulty and may not make it back - would you still fly?’
Mic drop . . .
This is kind of where I would have hoped there would be some discretion applied in an attempt to keep customers happy in the interest of new sales but at the end of the day, they can run their business however they choose to.
They do have an info page dedicated to bottles marked “Pre-Arrival” where they refer to their “trusted overseas suppliers”… though I don’t think those wines are being treated any differently.
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