We hosted a Wine Circle event with Chateau Palmer, a winery in Margaux, yesterday. Their Director of the Americas said his biggest distribution challenge in California is that restaurants and retailers often source wine from private cellars. That means a restaurant could have a Chateau Palmer wine on their wine list but never purchase from the importers and negociants that Chateau Palmer works with. This limits the customer data available to Chateau Palmer.
Additionally, it could mean that that wine had changed hands many times with no guarantee of being properly stored in every location. This is particularly a problem for wines that are designed to age for long periods of time. As wines get older, they get more delicate and proper storage (correct temperature, limited light, laid flat) becomes critical. Without it, the quality of the wine may not remain intact.
Even worse, it could mean that the wine is a actually fake. Without buying directly from a source associated with the winery, you cannot ensure that a wine actually is what it says it is.
This puts retailers and restaurants in a tough position. Do they buy on the secondary market or buy directly from an importer/negociant who works with the winery? The secondary market often offers good value. Quality, though, cannot be confirmed.
Thanks for the post, Jasmine. I agree that it seems there are a lot of parallels between the secondary markets in both wine and sports tickets. In fact, Alder Yarrow talks about how premiere wineries - similar to the 49ers and other sports franchises - are also very worried about the secondary market for their wines. He describes DRC's (a prominent wine producer in Burgundy) hands-on attempts to limit the sale of its wines to individuals that it knows won't be prone to reselling on the secondary market: http://www.vinography.com/archives/2012/06/should_wineries_care_about_the.html. I don't see how this approach is efficient or very effective, but it is interesting to see the lengths top producers will go to in order to maintain control over how their wine is sold.
ReplyDeleteAs the DBR case mentioned, the wineries can stop selling en primeur to maintain more control of their distribution channels/the secondary wine market. However, there are major cash flow implications of forgoing en primeur.
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