I bet this has been covered before, but bear with me please. I’ve given up buying some classes of wine because they’ve become too expensive for their own good. Brunellos for me are in this category. Can’t really see spending $60-100 for most of these wines (although I’m sad to give up on Pertimali). However last night I enjoyed a $38 or so 2004 (Canalicchio) that was direct imported into our local market. How can this happen? I thought most everything had to go thru the three tier system. Why not direct import a whole lot more stuff?
The way I understand it is that a retailer might place a large order in advance with an importer, maybe close to the entire allocation for the country. The importer clears the wine thru customs for a relatively minimal fee, maybe as cheap as a buck a case, instead of their normal markup, since the wine is already pre-sold. Sometimes that savings is passed on to the consumer, sometimes the retailer takes some of the savings as additional markup, since there is little or no price competition. I’m sure there are some additional wrinkles.
John - what state do you live in? The three tier system is whatever the individual states decide it should be. It’s not the same in every state. Some places might allow retailers to bring things in while in other states, you get someone to clear it for you. But whatever the law is, someone will be figuring out some way to work around it.
I’m in Washington State (Seattle)
I’ve been in the business for 18 years and I have never heard of that Brunello producer. That is how that happens. ![[winner.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/07ec25c9fd71159fe15d7f1ba5fad64e91238d0e.gif "winner"){kind=small}
Plenty of decent quality, relatively unknown to the US market wines out there. Somebody just has to find them and sell them here.
But you’re really comparing apples and oranges. If, for example, you said that you were tired of paying $80 for Pertimali when Importer x is offering it at $50, and why does this happen, that would be a more ‘classic’ DI/Gray Market question.
Also, you should consider that many of the ‘popular’ wines that are now well known to the market and highly rated/sought after once started as ‘under-the-radar values.’ Such is life in the global wine market.
First, I live in a State that allows direct shipment of wine from wineries!
I have imported wine for my own consumption from both France and Italy. This is wine that I typically bought and ordered there, but an email today from home can get you the same wines.
One arranges shipment with the winery, from the winery to your home. When it hits the American port of entry, you get a telephone call, or card from a customs company, telling you what the custom taxes and fees are. When those fees are paid, credit card is easiest, they send the wine along on its merry way to you.
I have used two methods of transportation. Ship and air freight. When using ship the freight is considerably less, since the winery will include your wine in a container with their other wine being shipped. Delivery time this away may take 3 months. Air freight is considerably more, but gets to you much faster.
The important thing is to do the math. The wine must be priced high enough to overcome the direct shipping costs. I have found this method to be very good for wines that are difficult to impossible to obtain in the local retail market. Considerable money can also be saved on upper end wines. I have delivered full cost Brunellos and Burgs to me at about $60 US, that would cost well over $100 retail. I have saved major dollars on Barolos also.
It is not necessary to ship only from the winery. Fed-ex and UPS have facilities in most of the wine producing areas that will provide the shipping functions for you also. If you are consolidating many single bottle purchases into one or mutliple cases, this may be your best option.
One winery offered another solution. He would have his importer ship me wine, from his stock in the US, and then replace his inventory at the importer. I ended up passing on the offer. It was open-ended and I could probably do it via email from home. It’s important to talk with the wineries. Many have been around a long time and they want to sell you wines and often know the best way to facilitate the sell.
Brent–Canalicchio gets reviewed by Tanzer every year (along with Canalicchio di Sopra-a separate producer) and shows up in our local shop (perhaps because of the direct imprting thing-I’ll discuss with the shop). Usually a pretty good but not necessarily top Brunello.
Gordon–Good ideas. I’m nervous about direct importing myself. Mostly I have visions of a bunch of expensive wines in a non-temperature controlled customs warehouse waiting for clearance.
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John,
Gordon has some good ideas for DYI on the consumer level. You may be able to get one of your local folks to clear wines for you also if you buy direct from the wineries or other European stockists.
Which is just the journey many expensive wines you purchase from a local wine shop have taken. Young wine is pretty resilient.
It can mean a lot of different things…but most of the time, DI refers to the following situation:
Importer X maintains a US warehouse to which he ships containers - Small distributors across the country can buy directly from the importers warehouse and have the item within two weeks…for this convenience and lack of inventory exposure the price the distributor pays is high…
The distributor can, if they have the room and the money, direct import the same wines…filling up a container of wines and having all 1,500 cases sent directly to their warehouse, skipping the Importers warehouse…if you do this you save big $$$
That is why you, a lot of times, have products that are not close out items that vary widely in price from state to state. It’s not b/c the retailer is trying to make more money - it’s because the distributors in their state may not have the capability to handle serious volume…
Some of the things posted on this thread could result in folks getting a visit from the BATF [TTB] and/or their state ABC compliance officers.
I would be very, VERY careful about posting stuff like that - on a public forum, under my real name - unless I were ABSOLUTELY certain that all the i’s had been dotted and all the t’s had been crossed on the [nearly infinite amount of] paperwork involved in doing it by the book.
Especially in an economic climate like this, wherein the gubmint is looking to tax anything that moves [and, for that matter, anything that doesn’t move, like the wine sitting in your basement].
There are some non-ITB Burgphiles that have had less than an easy time with the never-ending details of d-i-y importing.
RT
Matt I think that’s a little different. That’s basically an importer who is also a distributor. We are both in several states, but it’s not feasible to be your own distributor in many states, so we work with a network of distributors. As licensed importers, it’s not a problem for us to bring in wines. However, usually the direct-import people are not using someone whose main job is importation.
I believe that in places like CA, a retailer can actually import. Someone correct me if that’s not right. In NY that’s not legal.
So what a retailer might do is buy a container or so and then hire an importer to clear it. The importer just gets paid for his costs and maybe a service fee, but he doesn’t have to run around selling it or worrying about it sitting in his warehouse, so the retailer gets a better price.
None of this is illegal of course. But if you’re not an importer, it may be hard to get wine delivered to you. I had some samples shipped to me recently and when they hit FL, DHL held them until I got them an importer license number.