Online Wine Retailer Rant

It’s been a while since I have had a rant, but today feels like one of those days that feel the need to vent a little bit about wine retailers. That said, if you don’t feel like listening, I won’t be offended in the least, so feel free to stop reading here. Many of us use different sites to “source” specific bottles of wine. A few of the most commonly used are Wine Access, along with my favorite, Wine-Searcher.com. I find that we use Wine-Searcher a ton, and I can even justify paying the $30 a year for the Pro Version. What is the difference between the free version and the Pro Version you might ask? The answer is simple. With the free version, you do not get all of the stores that may carry the specific bottle that you are looking for, where the Pro Version gives you all of the results. Sometimes this is beneficial as a result you do not come up with may end up being the cheapest price, or a retailer that you may have done business with in the past. In some cases, I can think of times when the savings from just one purchase have been more than enough to cover the cost of the subscription. With that being said, I highly recommend this site. So, on to my rant. One thing that I have been finding, which I find extremely annoying, is the fact that online retailers will register with Wine-Searcher.com, and they will list particular wines that may have been small in production, or are just all around hard to find. There is nothing wrong with that….unless of course they are just doing this to attract people to their site, in hopes of getting them to browse their store an purchase other bottles. I cannot tell you how many times this has happened to me, and I really wish Wine-Searcher would do something about these retailers. A perfect example was today, as I was searching for a 2004 Sine Qua Non “Covert Fingers.” This is a beautiful pinot noir, and happened to be my personal 2009 Wine of the Year. This is an amazing wine, and happens to be in the top 5 wines I have had during my lifetime. Today was no special occasion, and I actually search for deals on this wine quite often. Today however, a hit came up for this wine from a company located in Los Angeles, who's name I will not call out, as I do not want to give them business that they do not deserve. As soon as I saw the search result come in with a price of $125, I knew this was a hoax. Regardless, I clicked the link to see if they did actually have the wine, and sure enough, they did not. However, they achieved what they were trying to achieve, and they got me to browse their site because they were advertising a product that people are interested, yet they do not carry it. This is a perfect example of retailers using the old bait and switch, trying to get you to come to their site, in hope that you will look for something else when they do not have the wine that you are looking for. Unfortunately, this seems to be a very common practice. I even had a similar thing happen a few years ago, while looking for magnums of Foxen pinot noir “Sea Smoke.” Many of you know the awesome mystique of Sea Smoke Cellars, and their vineyard where Foxen sources these grapes from. Foxen happens to be the only other winery producing pinot noir from this vineyard, with the exception of Sea Smoke. These are incredible wines, and not exactly easy to get, especially in the magnum format. So I finally found the wines from a now defunct retailer (this was karma at its best) called Cellar Brokers. They had magnums of the 2004, 2006, and 2006, so I purchased one of each. My card was charged, and a week went by and I never received an order confirmation. So I called them, and never had a phone call returned. I e-mailed them, and still nothing. After several weeks, I was refunded my money, because they finally decided to tell the truth in the fact that they could not acquire these wines. With all of that said, how many of you have run into situations similar to this one with online retailers? What do you think should be done to keep this from happening? I think that this is a very poor practice, and these sites like Wine-Searcher and Wine Access really need to crack down and initiate some kind of fraud policy on this. If one good thing has come out of this however, it is the simple fact that now I am weary to purchase from a retailer that I have never purchased from before. If I do come up with a retailer that I have never heard of and find questionable, I use my online resources on the different wine boards to research them, to get feedback from other board members. I will encourage you to do the same. Long story short, be very careful of placing orders with stores you have never purchased from before, and do the leg work to ensure that they are a respectable retailer. I will say that I am grateful for sites like Wine-Searcher and Wine Access, and it would be hard to obtain such good wines at great pricing without these resources. I'm a huge fan, and will continue to be!

Off my soap box….for now! Stay tuned for more rants in the future! Cheers! -F. Scott