I am in the process of interviewing folks to discuss the pain points involved with purchasing wine online, especially ultra-premium wines and up.
I have read a number of posts with really intriguing insights and was wondering if anyone would be open to speaking directly to chat about your experiences?
If so, you can schedule time via the link below or let me know and I can connect directly. Meeting Schedule Link
Otherwise, if you could share any thoughts via thread, the help would be much appreciated!
Start by reading the long wine.com related threads (you can find it using the search function). Many of the typical problems are covered there. For fun, and further context, read the legendary Premier Cru one too (and modern incarnation, Sherry Lehman thread).
I’m guessing mentioning the pain point of the price of burgundy isn’t what you are looking for!
So here are some real answers:
Ease of searching. A lot of wine stores have horrible interfaces and little to no ability to filter and sort wines. Wine.com is one of the better ones but you pay a per bottle premium for that (and it still lacks the ability to sort by alcohol %)
Transparency of inventory. Only in the wine industry is something so often shown in stock and then the order cancelled.
Starting off by listing ABV should be a baseline, which many stores do not do online. Any additional stats like pH and TA are very helpful for me to figure out if I am likely to like the style.
Additional scaled like the IRF sweetness scale and Scott Harvey’s old/new world scale are also extremely helpful.
Forget ABV and pH and all that. The pain point is inventory. Most of the web technology is poor and wine is rather difficult to keep track of with all the different SKUs and vintages. I can always look up details elsewhere but it would be nice to know what is actually in stock.
All the other issues pale in comparison with the endless network of inconsistent policies about delivering alcohol in the US with crazy state laws. On top of that are the gangsters in the three tier system who don’t want delivery to be frictionless because they will lose money.
Locking this thread, as it is a thinly-veiled attempt to glean information for a wine investment fund, which, after further research and data submitted to us, appears to be inaccurately portraying the true market value of the wines in the fund.