Is it normal that wine prices from domestic US winemaker would be less at retail than from the winemaker direct? If so, what advantage is there to buying wine direct?
I presume the advantages of buying direct would be to (1) obtain wines that you can’t find at retail or (2) increase allocation on other limited production bottlings. Assuming neither of these are an issue and price is more direct, why purchase direct?
One of the biggest reasons is to ensure provenance of the wine to include treatment of the bottle from the time it leaves the winery. You can follow your wine delivery and look at the delays in route checking against temperatures so you have an excellent idea of the condition of your wine on delivery. Most reputable wine stores are careful of their delivery methods, timetables and have a way to store bottles not on the racks that keeps them cool but there are others who are less careful. Which category does your local wine store fall into?
Another more altruistically oriented reason is to give the actual maker of the wine the profit normally reserved for the middleman in our 3 tier system. This rationale is nice but hard to support if the discount at retail is significant. More common reasons are the ones you mentioned yourself.
Very common for wineries that rely on the conventional distribution system. They don’t want to piss of retailers by undercutting them on prices.
What John said.
In fact, it’s not even about the conventional distribution system. If you were a winery and you sold 80 pct of your wine thru resellers, would you want to compete with your own distribution system? They’d drop you immediately and you’d be stuck with a warehouse full of wine.
So if you have more than you can sell out of your back door, you don’t undercut your resellers.
The resellers of course, aren’t concerned with only you. So if your stuff doesn’t move, they want to get rid of it and they discount it. You might not like that and you might try to impose floors below which they can’t go, but those are kind of illegal. They may just use your wine as a loss leader, or may just dump it at or lower than cost to get it out of their inventory. Happens all the time. Not only in the wine business either. It’s common in the fashion industry. People pay a lot more for one brand than for another, even though there’s absolutely no difference in quality and the stuff is probably made at the same factory.
I purchase over 50% of my wine from the winemaker for provenance and the rest from online retail because most of it is not domestic. Depending on the wines you purchase you’ll find out that purchasing them from the winemaker is often cheaper than full retail. I’ll pay a few extra bucks for some of my higher end cabs for the provenance anyday but have dropped a few lists because I could pick up the wine much cheaper at auction or online. I subscribe to a plethora of newsletters from trusted online retailers that I have been lucky with and take care of me when a misc order goes awry. You just have to research online and get a subscription to Wine Searcher Pro if your serious about purchasing wine online. Good luck!
I found that also in Europe.
Especially in Bordeaux, if you can purchase bottles off Chateau at all, the prices are higher than at retail in (e.g.) Germany … managers watch the market very carefully - and raise prices according to the market.
Same happened in Burgundy and Rhone valley, but my consequence was that I didn´t buy anymore off domaine if I didn´t get a good price.
(Sure it´s different if you are lucky to get the wine at all, no matter from where …)
Once the manager of a domaine told me that he askes for the same price off domaine as the importer in Germany - because 1) he didn´t want to compete with him … 2) he already wants to sell more and more through importers and less to private customers.
I asked him what I´m doing here then … and left. Never bought a bottle of this producer again.
Very uncommon in Europe. In Italy, Switzerland, Germany and Burgundy (the regions I have experience with), off cellar prices are almost always lower than retail.
In this way both the winery and the buyer have an advantage, as the price you are paying is higher than what the importer/retailer is paying the winery, but lower than what one is paying retail.
Otherwise, why should one bother?
Has anybody mentioned the ageing of the wine. Most, not all, stores are selling you recent vintages and these have not aged. Most likely, the majority of this is drunk fairly soon after purchase. But buy direct a case of wine and wait for the drinking window to open, which can be a few years to a few decades, and then you have something. Find that bottle 12 years later at a store and you may pay 2,3 or more times for it without knowing where it was stored.
In Barolo/Barbaresco, I’ve found that differential has narrowed over the years. In the late 90s, when I first visited, the cellar price was typically lower than in the local stores and about 50% of the US retail price. On my last couple of visits, I’ve bought wine only to find it for the same or nearly the same price at stores back home in the States. That’s not always the case, but bargains at the cellar door (or in the shops) in the Langhe seem to be many fewer than they were 10 or 15 years ago.
Yes, I regret I didn’t start visiting 10 or 15 years ago…
But even in the Langhe you still can find good prices at the cellar door, but indeed not everywhere. You also find prices 20% higher than in shops in Alba, but luckily that seems to be the exception.
Same as the other above…
I like buying direct because…
Access to wine that doesn’t last long in stores. Sometimes, wine that never even appears in stores.
Provenance.
Supporting a winery I like. It is obviously to their advantage, as well. They are getting a huge mark up selling to me at retail vs. going through any other distribution channels.
+1
+2
Also when a winery, or representative thereof, really pisses off a distributor or a major retailer they might mark their $100 retail wines down to $20 and blow them out thus negatively affecting their ability to further compete in that particular market. Drama. It’s real. It’s childish. It happens.
Speaking strictly of domestic wines (US), I think the provenance rationale is overplayed as it relates to recent releases. If all I wanted is Turley Juvenile, I’d go to the local store and buy it. I’m on the list because I want some of their Petite Syrah every year.
The same could be said about Bedrock, Carlisle, Copain, or Williams Selyem. I can find the “easy” bottles at retail…but forget about anything that’s produced in limited volumes. And, I just like these guys, to point #3 in an earlier post.
Old thread, but I’ve seen some retailers discount current release bottles from Ceritas $35 off email offers directly from the winery. Especially with retailer shipping incentives it makes it weird when retailers are offering essentially a 20%+ discount on release.
examples please 
you know for the sake of evidence. just asking…curious minds want to know. i love ceritas but the price has started to get a little uncomfortable. by me I only find maybe 1 certias label on shelves at stores
Comparison for ceritas is really huge when you look on WS, can get back vintage bottles for 1/2 of what winery charges
This is true for like 90% of California wines.
I’ve complained about this for years and basically what I understand is domestic producers rely on their distributors for the lion’s share of their revenue. They don’t want to piss them off by undercutting them out of the cellar door, so the price they charge DTC is at least the MSRP of the wine.
Naturally that price is considerably more than the distributor pays, so once the distributor gets the wine they can sell it for whatever they want, which is often less than MSRP, especially on closeout specials.
It’s an unfortunate reality for most producers that their best customers don’t get the best prices.