The modern wine buyer’s credo
Change is inevitable, because change is also natural. To survive change is to adapt to change. To resist change is to attempt to protect antiquarian ways, to live in denial, to peddle influence in the face of fear.
There’s a cold war going on between wine sellers and wine distributors. The wine consumer is discovering new wines online, and the distributors are losing business because of it. When these middlemen lobby to pass legislation that protects their interests, they effectively limit the availability of wine to consumers, and both the small winemaker and the wine consumer get screwed in the process. In this age of the Internet, placing limits on the abilities of producers and consumers to make a natural and orderly market between them flies in the face of logic, reason, and human nature.
How do you feel when history repeats itself unnecessarily? Are you happy with the selections of wine you see at your local supermarket? Can the wines you want be shipped to your state? What do you do when you can’t find the wine you are looking for?
If you as a modern wine consumer were to have a voice (and you do), you might deliver the following credo to the ears of the middleman, whose efforts directly affect the answers you might give to any of the above questions. His ears may be deaf to your voice, or he may try to pervert your reasoning by having you believe that your desire to buy wine directly from a winery or online retailer will contribute to the delinquency of minors (a reactionary non sequitur at best), but his eyes can’t be so blind as to avoid the writing that is incontrovertibly on the wall today:
The Modern Wine Buyer’s Credo
I use the Internet. I learn about wine online. I buy wine online. I am part of an ever-widening circle of savvy wine consumers. I want options, and I will pursue those options where legislation promotes freedom. I am an inexorable juggernaut and a global force that will result in new synergies between myself and the maker of the wine I choose to buy. And I am pounding my hammer on the anti-consumer wall of protectionism.
It’s a classic David vs. Goliath story. To explore the controversy surrounding the topic of direct-to-consumer relationships and why the wholesaler cartel would try to prevent them, I recommend you check out Free The Grapes and Tom Wark’s recent post, The Dictatorship of the Distributariat. Tom is also Executive Director of the Specialty Wine Retailers Association.
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June 19th, 2007 13:44
The modern wine buyers credo…
There’s a cold war going on between wine producers and wine wholesalers. The winehiker has stepped into the fray, corks-a-poppin’, and he’s come up with a minor manifesto that reflects 21st-century reality….
June 19th, 2007 19:01
The distributors think they are losing business, but I disagree. The kind of wines that are bought direct are discretionary – they are bought because they want THAT wine. If THAT wine is unavailable, they don’t run out and buy KJ instead, they don’t buy anything!
June 20th, 2007 10:09
Gosh, if I’m in a mood for a fine wine purchase, I’m not going to narrow my focus to just one wine in particular. Quite possibly I’ll go to another website, though.
But what if THAT wine is available, but you can’t have it because of where you live? Whether the wholesalers are losing business or not, it’s a @#$%! shame that they feel they must throw millions into legislation that restricts a consumer’s ability to buy THAT wine or a winemaker’s ability to ship it to you.