if the wine is corked, it was corked from the day of bottling and no five year window applies. Lots of places won’t replace wines over 10 years old.
2 out of 2 corked 96 Dujac CSD from Morrell Wines in NYC and no credit back 
I like the idea that a retailer will take back any corked bottle purchased there, regardless of the age of the wine or when purchased. As suggested in some of the posts above, it seems pretty simple to me that any retailer that has been operating for some time could easily keep records of the average bottle return rate for corked wines. It then adjusts margins on wines with corks based on the average bottle price (for btls with corks) to absorb the effect on profits of always taking the return. Good will. Clear simple policy. Happy customers. Such self-insurance seems like a good business choice to me for those who service the geek crowd. Like the retailers at which most of us by. If we are talking a 1% or so price increase, it’s probably not an issue for most of us.
I’m curious why Lyle does not make this choice of policy. Are margins that tight and customers that fickle about pricing?
Is the issue the cost of dealing with the return, so this policy only makes sense for stores where most customers are local?
I think it is just silly to expect a retailer to take back corked bottles. Sure, an operation as huge as Kermit Lynch might be able to absorb some of that, but most retailers have to entirely eat the cost. If a small retailer or small importer tries to pass that cost back on to the small producers they represent, that relationship will sour very quickly and that importer will be out of an allocation and potentially poison lots of potential other client relationships once word gets around. Margins are small and the amount of money refunded for a corked bottle of wine is probably 2-4x the profit margin of that bottle.
Who cares if a corked bottle was corked at birth? If you’ve got enough disposable money to buy a significant amount of good wine, you’re probably doing better than most small retailers and small importers. Suck it up people.
I don’t think that’s true. I think retailers can generally get credit back from distributors for faulty bottles, and I know of at least two relatively small importers that have gone back to their producers when there have been premox and other quality issues. The producers rely on the importers and retailers, too.
Of course, the quantities that Lyle is bringing in are usually very small, and he often claims the wines are hard to obtain, so it may be harder for him to try to get credit from the producers.
Some folks on here are sounding like we live in some socialist economic environment.
No offense, but as a “consumer” I don’t care if the bottle comes from a producer grossing $200K/year or $20MM per year, you should stand behind your product as a retailer because most winemakers stand behind their product. This idea that we have to be sensitive to importer’s margins as buyers is silly. Furthermore, I CANNOT fathom a situation where you have a winery small enough that couldn’t or wouldn’t accept corked bottles. If you can’t absorb that cost than maybe you need a different business model, or need to increase the price of your wine.
Now, on the flip side, I get that there’s exclusivity and certain wholesalers have a wine that’s “only available through them”. If an importer has such slim margins, then that should be totally transparent.
Also, this talk about tarnishing relationships with winemakers is mostly nonsense as well. With every importer I’ve worked with, there’s at the very least a handshake agreement between the importer and winery on how to handle corked bottles. Often times importers have a mixed portfolio where 80% of the wineries can absorb returns/credits and 20% cannot absorb because they’re so small. The importer then makes a statement to retailers saying “we accept all corked bottles” (and eats the cost on the 20%). I’ve even seen one importer put together a totally separate portfolio of wines that they won’t stand behind. It’s full transparency.
Lastly, this “you can afford a $500 case of wine therefore should absorb the cost of corked bottles” is ALSO silly. Lots of silliness here.
Buying rare wine, auction wine, wine of unknown storage conditions etc. I do that often and fully accept the risk, but I have never seen a retailer/importer with this level of poor policy.
Is Premox a quality issue? Do we actually know? Has Don Cornwell sent his exhaustive list of premoxed wines back to Distributor/Retailer/Importer/Producer to be replaced? How much does a Producer make for a bottle of wine compared to what it eventually sells for? You think small producers can absorb that? They already deal with the vicissitudes of weather, pestilence, and a fickle and hype-driven market.
Perhaps retailers can get money back from distributors, but distributors are large, have large portfolios and are just middlemen who make money by transferring and bundling importers’ wine to retailers and restaurants. They can absorb that cost. That’s the entire 3-tier system that small importers who sell direct to mail order bypass.
I can’t imagine why someone would no longer think that its’s worth the time to interact with you as a customer?
From the consumer’s standpoint, absolutely. In one case I know of, a large proportion of one of a producer’s white wines (not a Burgundy) premoxed within a year or two. And it was a serious enough wine that people expected to keep it that long. It was a decent sized winery, though not huge, and a small/mid-sized importer. Why should the importer have to bear the risk of a faulty product?
You’re making a lot of assumptions. Not all distributors are huge. Not all states have rigid three-tier systems. Sometimes there are importers who are also distributors, or which are owned by the same people as a distributor.
California, where Fass Selections is based, is not a three-tier state and there are a number of retailers there that are direct importers.
John, when you can explain how and why premox occurs, you can blame it on the shoddy producer. A lot of very smart people seem to have failed to understand why it has affected millions of dollars worth of Burgundy and are waiting for your insight. Your response seems very cavalier given what we don’t know about the phenomenon.
I don’t deny that a retailer has an obligation to a customer, an importer or distributor has an obligation to a retailer, and a producer has an obligation to an importer. But financial responsibility when something goes wrong is murky at best. The only reason that a consumer will ever get compensated for a bad bottle is because a retailer either (a) knows he can transfer that cost to a distributor, importer or producer or (b) is willing to take that loss to stroke that customer’s ego. If you’re a small shop and not bankrolled for that, it’s not easy, I’m sure.
Dude, you got credited for the shit bottle – correct? And yet you’re still here bitching simply because you dislike Lyle’s policy, his response to your question and that he subsequently booted you off his mailing list.
Lmao.
Ask people on the W-D list for DRC how much luck they’ve had receiving replacements for corked bottles.
Touché.
Apologies for being crass but it just amazes me how sensitive people are to the FREE MARKET which goes both ways.
Why should the consumer assume zero liability in this transaction? I’ve been grateful when retailers have accepted returns of bad bottles, but I’ve also understood when they told me to go (politely) f*ck myself (I can count the times both have happened on one hand).
What is to keep me as a consumer from drinking a 1990 DRC, pouring a shit bottle of spoiled Cali Pinot in, and then demanding Wilson Daniels reimburse me for the current value or directly replace it?
I assume you mean besides me challenging you to a duel with pistols?
I just saw Hamilton too. Shit is $$$$
I’m sorry I thought this was the Berserker forum. What else did you expect?
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Sure, there’s uncertainty about the exact cause of premox, but there’s no question that it’s a winemaking issue. It’s not a problem in the distribution chain.
In the premox case I mentioned, the winery had gone to a very low sulfur regime. And the oxidation occurred very quickly. Their importer in one country was refusing to pay. It’s obviously more complicated if the wine doesn’t go off for five or 10 years.
As I recall, the second example involved a big batch of bad closures.
With very old wines, responsibility may arguably be murky, and most consumers probably figure that they assume some risk. I get that. But there’s nothing murky if the wine is flawed on release (e.g., TCA) or shortly thereafter (many cases of premox).
The fact that it may be hard for a consumer or retailer to get compensated for flawed wines from the next layer in the distribution chain doesn’t mean it’s right.
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John,
Your points are well taken, and we can agree to disagree. The issue is not, in my mind, whether premox or TCA is a winemaking issue - I agree that, while it may not be controllable by a winery, it’s not happening at the level of distributor or importer presumably. The question is who is best equipped to eat that loss and what reasonable expectations should be. I think the answer is clearly the consumer and you think it is the producer ultimately and retailer proximately.
I think that retailers and distributors in this country are driving costs up, not producers, when a wine gets hot, and those folks benefitting most from that arbitrage can absorb the cost of crap bottles, but small importers of small producers are not in the same category.
Also, while TCA is a problem that is part of the winemaking process, other “flaws” that often result in returned bottles range from Brett to VA to dissolved CO2 fizz to just not liking the wine. In the case of sulphur - that’s a very trendy thing and people seem to pay a premium for zero-sulphur versions of wines. If wine is being advertised as low sulphur, you can’t complain if there are resultant issues. I would not expect a winemaker or retailer to take back a bottle that smells like acetone or horseshit - sorry, but that’s just the wine you bought.
Unless you can prove there’s TCA and hand back or send back a mostly-filled bottle for analysis, I don’t think you have a case - I have been asked to do that before.
But is TCA the “fault” of the winemaker, or just a risk inherent in the winemaking process if you use cork, no matter how comprehensive your QC process is? Given that it is an inherent risk that every wine consumer/buyer knows about, I don’t know how you can argue that a consumer/buyer should pass that risk off to the folks least able to absorb the cost: small winemakers.
It would be an interesting experiment to tell people with all defective products “hey, nothing is perfect, you knew the risk.”
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