i can echo this, I’m a consistent buyer and every week I ask my retailer that I’m tight with if Vom Boden has dropped anything to the distributor and it is consistently no or it went to a restaurant or some other goof ball account. I haven’t had access to Julian Haart, Stein, or upper tier Lauer in a year.
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What does this have to do with the article? The article is mostly about the wineries in Germany that are not selling to the U.S. The wineries that Vom Boden sells are doing great hence the reason you can’t get them. I don’t think most people are getting this article. There are 5,000 producers in the Mosel. Most of us here would have a hard time naming more than 20. I go there 2-3x per year and have been collecting German wine for 20+ and I could not name many more than 20, the domestic wine market is in very tough shape. The only way to survive as a small Domain is to focus on quality but that is hard to do without some resources, many of the wineries we know and love have proven that there is a market for high quality wine.
Also I would point out the problems in the article are no different in the U.S., think about Lodi, or Bordeaux or most other wine regions around the world it is not a German problem.
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Probably nothing, I’m just complaining, that’s what WB is for.
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Love this response. Truer words have never been spoken 
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Apparently Briggs has never heard of Skurnik.
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Well Sweden is a lot closer to Germany than California lol.
In fact - Hillebrand often doesn’t even run reefer containers for LCL they run insulated containers. It’s quite an issue.
I’m not really sure what this means, but I am well aware of Skurnik, and I can tell you that they are not thriving.
The other issue here is that one does not actually need to play the three-tier system in most of the major states. There are strange brokerage needs in GA, but in NY and California—the two biggest markets—when you have an importer in NY who takes full margin and then uses a distro in California who also takes full margin, and the price in NY is “nationalized” to allow that to happen, it’s bad for everyone. The funny thing is that it’s quite easy to have a license to sell in both states, so the importer could do it, but they choose not to so they can make more money.
Easy to buy some wine and sell it to someone else who does all the work. It’s a shame, because if even that small detail could be fixed, it would make a huge impact.
And again—I am only talking about wine of quality. We are going through a consolidation in the market, and if the wine isn’t on the level it needs to be, it will struggle. So it’s a bit hard to speak to those wineries. If there are producers in Germany who have no representation, there’s a reason. It’s not because some guy in Mosel has been making wine on the same level as Egon for 30 years and is undiscovered. There is a reason—whether it’s the marketability, the taste, the consistency, or the price.
At the end of the day, it’s a business. Why is Coco Gauff the highest-paid female athlete? Well, it’s not that (yet) she’s the greatest of all time. But she is marketable/sellable, so someone is taking a chance. The same can be said about wine. Ifyou think importers are not looking at the all-around sellable attributes of the wine, then you are mistaken—or you’re dealing with someone who doesn’t get the business side of things.
Again—being sellable could mean either the wine is mind-blowingly good, or there’s some other factor, i.e., Glandien…
This also plays in with how the wine is sold - it’s so confusing for the end consumer - they still don’t know (easily) what they are getting.
And yes - 1000% Bordeaux is dealing with the same issue. However, it model is quite different and so are the capital requires. From the views of the Chateau - they always sell the wine. From the views of the Negoc - brutal. But I’ve had many recent conversations with Chateaus on how steps could be made. Ch.Lafleur is a leading example. Yes, much much much smaller. But they figured out how to commercialize the wines. They have an importer, thats where you go to buy the wines. Chateau Y’Quem…who is the importer? No idea how to even actually buy the wines in the US.
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I don’t really see what Sweden has to do with all of this.
But as we order wines from all over Europe, Germany is by far the cheapest and most reliable place to order wines from. So singling Germany out as brutal sounded very weird to me. Unless “brutal” is your lowest level of logistics to the US and it only gets worse from there.
As a US consumer who buys from Europe time-to-time, it has been hardest to buy from Germany. My experience is anecdotal and not professional. The best option given to me in past was to ship it to France and then ship from France to the US. I don’t know the vagaries of why that was suggested to me on multiple occasions (I think it was specific to purchasing ex-VAT)
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I don’t think you understand what I am speaking to.
I am speaking about logistical channels of getting pallets of wine or containers from Germany to New York or California. I am speaking about LCL challenges and reefer issues specifically with Hillebrand
Also - the USA is not Finland (typo) so the logistic channels are not the same.
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Well the main reason is that large percent of importers are just too lazy for discovering such wineries. Instead of going ProWein once a year you would need to spend plenty of time in region and visit & taste something else than high profile trophy wines / producers and also be able to market & sell them from scratch which is hard work. Discovering new things has never been as easy as it’s now with all available online resources and publications but somehow I don’t see many takers for very good and well priced stuff. And it’s exact same thing in Europe also so I’m talking about importers universally.
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They are so lazy haha!
It’s very true. Just like in my example of using a distro or not really doing the work.
We represent about 40 producers and 90% of them we started with the first or second vintage ever. It’s hard work, but it’s possible.
It’s obviously easier to sell things people want to buy already, but a silly thing, especially at the moment if that is the only thing you are focusing on.
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When things work in Germany then they really work well usually. If you’re doing something outside the ordinary or basic structure you’ll hit a wall.
French, Spain, and some other countries have more “flexibility”.
If a logistic company cracks the code for US then you’ll know Otto is referring to 
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The situation in Germany is marked by the following trends.
The wine consumption is in decline. People drink less alcohol. The younger generation is not much interested in wine.
A lot of wine is produced by Winzergenossenschaften (cooperatives). A few of them are quality oriented. Most of them are mass producer.
Not every talented winemaker is equally good in marketing and sales. I know quite a few of them who believe it is enough to produce high quality wine and good sales will be the logic result. That is at least some kind of naive.
The situation is comparable to almost any wine producing area in Europe. Too much production while demand is sinking. The pressure on most wineries and more so for cooperatives is rising year after year.
Totally different is the situation for the premium segment. The well known names in the business like Keller, Müller and so forth are able to ask for prices in the stratosphere. But this is a pretty small group and in no way representative for what really happens in the German wine industry.
I spoke to a close relative of mine who own a vineyard in Baden (Waldum, Pinot Land). He is very pessimistic for the future and said: what we see now is only the top of the iceberg. It will get much worse in the coming years.
But what we see in the vineyards is already very depressing. It is a growing disaster for the tourism wich is essentiell for countless small wineries, restaurants, hotels and villages.
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BINGO! Same in the U.S. I would just add anecdotally that I do think there are more extremely small micro wineries in German although I could be wrong.
In general, I would say that both French, Italian and German small wineries are not that great at standing out with their design and marketing. I’m always perplexed that so many seem to go to some generic label template that must have been created 50 years ago - many are extremely interchangeable. I think the worst offenders are in Burgundy in this regard, Germany is a bit better w. Sybille Kuntz etc - at least trying to introduce some design and color.
But you’re absolutely right about that sense “that if I just make good wine, customers will find it”. So many small wineries fall into this trap and it couldn’t be further from the truth. You’d be much better off making mediocre wine and be good at marketing, unfortunately.
Selling wine is hard and few have it figured out.
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I think that applies to pretty much everything nowadays.
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I’m not sure about this. Burgundy seems to have no problem selling its (fine) wines. These wines’ history and tradition are one of their differentiators and strongest selling points. Why turn them into critter wines?
California has far simpler and more marketable labels and they can’t seem to move their wines either lately. I think it’s a macro issue above all.
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I don’t know where you’re shopping but, for example, just randomly searching on W-S, most of Donnhoff’s Kabinetts are widely available for less than $30 and Schloss Lieser’s single vineyard Kabinetts are running in the low $30s. And then there are a few outliers like Prum and Egon Muller.
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Apart from the limited demand for sweet wines, most of the top vineyards on the Cotes de Nuits are small compared to, say, top sites in the Mosel. Moreover, yields per acre are much higher for riesling, even in quality German vineyards – up to twice that in top French vineyards:
Clos Vougeot (often called the largest vineyard, with big variations in quality*): 125 acres
Charmes-Chambertin: 72 acres
Bonnes Mares: 40 acres
(*Corton/Corton-Charlemagne has 364 acres, but with exposure, elevations and quality varying widely)
Wehlener Sonnenuhr: 134 acres
Graacher Himmelreich: 163 acres
Urziger Wurzgarten: 136 acres
Brauneburger Juffer: 86 acres