PSA on Fass Selections - regarding policy on wines over 5 years of age

EDITED to add a bit more context to avoid tarnishing any future business relationships :slight_smile:

Well, this will be the first (and hopefully only time) I have to make a thread like this.

Over the years I have enjoyed Fass selections wine from friends. I recently joined the mailing list and starting buying a few wines. When I received my first shipment and encountered a flaw bottle, my experience was not what I had hoped.

Over the last year or so, I purchased a case. I received this case a few months ago and opened one of the older nebbiolo wines. Unfortunately, the wine was horribly corked and I e-mailed Lyle asking if they offer replacement bottles.

Inquiry to Lyle:

**
Hey Lyle,

I don’t know if you’re the appropriate person to ask or not. I recently had our '01 Boca (Podere) and unfortunately one of the bottles was corked. Do you offer replacements for corked bottles? I’ve never had to replace a wine through you luckily so I’m unsure what’s covered.

Let me know, thank you.
**

This was the response:

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That is unfortunate. Wines are like people’s faces. A small flaw in youth will become more pronounced over time. It is very difficult to source older wines and they are much more likely to have obvious flaws. Having said that, when they are tasting well, they are unique and extraordinary tasting experiences. The standard industry practice is that wines over 5 years are not available for credit.
**

Notice he didn’t answer my question.

I’m “in the industry” and can tell you, that’s not standard practice. At least not in our state. The e-mail correspondence didn’t really improve. I mentioned this “disclaimer” should be abundantly clear and I was directed to a PDF of the Terms and Conditions (which is ambiguous) and has allegedly been on the website since day 1.

After this correspondence with Lyle, he removed me from the mailing list as well :frowning: Apparently my business isn’t welcome any longer.

Frankly the policy doesn’t bother me, but the slick used car salesmen attitude does. Had he been honest and upfront with me and pointed out the policy I would have chalked it up to my own oversight but he was beyond insulting. Tis a shame.

Lyle did end up crediting me for the bottle but I would have been much happier with an honest answer and no credit. It wasn’t an expensive bottle, and had I received a genuine answer, I would have move on my merry way.

I was also removed from the mailing list for questioning a shipment during temperatures of 80 degrees plus.

I don’t want to pile in here, but this seems the thread to relate bad experiences with Fass. While he does import some really cool stuff, he have to discount the fact that their shipping prices are higher than average and offer small shipping windows (because you are basically upfronting him the money while the wine sits in Europe). I had not one, but two, issues with wines being found “broken” when it came time to ship, which seemed odd. The money was credited, so nothing lost there, but after waiting a year for your wine and hearing it was smashed in the warehouse didn’t inspire me with confidence. I no longer subscribe to his emails or to the hyperbole.

While i acknowledge Lyle is a polarizing figure for some people, I have had no problems with buying/shipping/receiving in the past. Total number of bottles well over a hundred, and our tastes generally align.

I’ve had luck with older bottles from Lyle, but, old bottles are a crapshoot and risk is taken by the buyer across the board. Some people have said that Chambers will take back a bad old bottle - I don’t know that anyone should expect that. I have old bottles from Chambers, Envoyer, other retailers, auctions. Ex-cellar, Ex-negoc provenance doesn’t mean crap. If a bottle’s corked, cooked, DOA, I don’t blame the seller, nor can i reasonably expect them to cover the cost of the bottle working on thin margins and trying to maintain individual relationships with small producers. But if he was rude, that’s another issue and not one I can address.

Frankly - that 5 year window is usually for “after” you have purchased a wine from a supplier. It’s hard for a supplier to know how the wine has been stored over a long period of time, so after 5 years (some do a ten year window), they usually don’t give credit on a bad bottle.

wholeheartedly agree with Noah and would add that my experience with Lyle (largely by text, but also email and phone) has been uniformly positive.

Sorry you had a bad experience. So far mine with Fass have been quite positive. I am glad to hear that eventually you got credit for the bottle. I have seen practices all over the board on TCA. It seems to me that the winery should ultimately bear the responsibility (assuming they are still in business) as the wine was corked on Day 1 but of course, DRC and Dominus and other’s would differ.

As for Marcus’s points, that is the nature of doing business with such a small company. Breakage happens. The shipping windows are a pain, but that is there model. At least they refunded the money. If the model doesn’t work, you move on (as Marcus has done). No harm, no foul.

+1 to all of this.

This is where I’m torn. Lyle is a DIRECT importer. Over the years, I’ve dealt with probably 20 plus importers and have never seen a claim like that. It doesn’t make any sense. 5 years of current release dessert wines or Rioja riserva wouldn’t be covered? Come on. As an importer, you have risk and should have insurance for things like this. Or at least have it baked into your business model. Now, on the retail side, if a bottle shop happens to come across some older wine and doesn’t know the wine’s storage history, then I totally get that the buyer owns the risk. Any good bottle shop or retailer would refund you most likely anyway. Specifically with TCA, bottle age has less impact. If a wine is corked, it’s corked. Will it get worse over time? In some cases, yes. But TCA specifically is the wineries accountability and in every scenario, the importer should work with the wineries to absorb the cost and not pass that to the consumer. AT LEAST he states it in terms and conditions now. Not sure if it’s on the e-mails.

Personally, I don’t care about the refund. I get that he’s a small outfit and may not have that cost aspect baked into his margin model. But I didn’t care for the attitude and certainly didn’t care for being removed from the mailing list for sending a perfectly acceptable inquiry.

Seems like opinions vary on this subject, but I normally function as if the risk is on me, and if I cannot carry the risk, I should not make the purchase. Most times it’s just not worth the hassle to me to chase a credit or return on a bad bottle. But I also agree with Noah, when I know I’m buying mature wines from a retailer that bought from someone’s else’s cellar, there is some risk. If you want to play in the mature wine market, just assume a small percentage of wines will be bad or less than optimal. The only two times that I can recall where I sought a credit back was from Bassins, once when a 1982 Bordeaux I had shipped had a cork floating in the bottle, cap sealed perfectly but wine was bad; another time a 1986 Italian from Chambers with rank TCA, and I was just annoyed with my very bad luck with mature Italians, and Chambers does offer credit willingly and I was a long-time customer. Both stores are fantastic, but in truth, I still felt a little cheeky. That’s why normally I just move on.

was this bottle one of his direct import bottles from the domaine? or just something he acquired through euro-brokers?

From a consumers perspective, does it matter where it was sourced from?

This is an absolutely fascinating thread for someone like me who doesn’t purchase a lot of older wines. I would think that guaranteeing these wines from the Retailer’s perspective would be a challenge because their ability to be reimbursed should there be an issue might not be that great.

I guess that shows how much of an inherent risk there is all around with wines like these.

I think that direct-from-domaine matters because corked is corked at bottling. If the bottle has passed through several buyers working with the producer might be a challenge, but if the seller bought directly from the domaine then the seller should be able to arrange a refund. (if that’s not why Charlie was asking it’s why he should have been [wink.gif] )

Chambers Street shows that a retailer can guarantee old wines if it chooses to. Obviously they have to factor that into their pricing – they’re plainly not going to get reimbursement when they’ve bought private cellars – but their prices are very reasonable generally. And where they have questions about the condition, they sell off bottles in the store (not on the website) without guarantees, at very reduced prices. (I picked up a '75 Giscours and a '75 Beausejour Duffau for $25 each a few months ago because the fills were mid shoulder. Both proved to be excellent bottles.)

I can fully understand why a seller might not opt to take the risk, but I think the cost of returns is probably overestimated (a lot of buyers won’t bother to return bottles). Personally, it’s a HUGE factor to me in buying from Chambers. I suspect it’s more viable for them because they’re buying private cellars rather than purchasing at auction, where the provenance is hard to determine. And, if you buy entire cellars, your costs are probably lower than if you buy through brokers or at auction.

There was another thread recently about some store that had a really ambiguous, weasley “guarantee” that basically allowed them to refuse a refund whenever they felt like it? I just looked for it but couldn’t find it. A lot of these issues were covered there.

I lovingly, and respectful disagree with this perspective. Obviously I’m not in auction any longer, but I completely value the transparency that is required of auction. Frankly, I throw out the lavish consignor headers, but I have always VERY closely read the descriptions of the wines and their condition. Someone recently published a retailer was posting similar condition notes like auctions do about old bottles they had (and I wish I could remember to give them another kudos). A mid-shoulder filled 1982 Lafite should be looked at as not buyable, and the buyer will get what they paid for- a lesser than stellar, if not completely shot bottle of 1982 Lafite.

A lot of retailers buy wine at auction and resell them too. Maybe not Chambers, but a huge number do. Chambers is actually rather unique in their approach.

I don’t know the answer but as a consumer, that should be irrelevant unless clearly delineated in the terms and conditions.

That’s a fair point about the vetting by conscientious auction houses. But, as we know, there’s a lot of very dubious wine that passes through auction houses.

I didn’t follow this part:

I agree Lyle’s response was inadequate. Corked is corked is corked. It has nothing to do with a wine’s age, so that’s some bullshit he threw out right there. To the extent his policy was not previously disclosed, that’s pretty shitty, BUT, he did refund the bottle, so no biggie. And removal from the list is a juvenile move, but he has the right to do it.

exactly. If it’s going domaine -->importer -->distributor —>retailer —> customer, might be tough sledding because for some insane reason wines are one of the few goods where the customer assumes the risk of defects when it passes through hands.

But if it’s going domaine —> retailer —> customer the retailer should be taking it back and not be a dick about it.

Either way, corked is corked. Kermit Lynch took back a corked Raveneau purchased from them a couple weeks ago. So at least some retailers are doing the right thing when they have that minimum level of connection from Domaine–>retailer–>customer.

I’ve been buying from Fass Selections for a few years. Any small issue I’ve had was promptly dealt with by great customer service and to my benefit; sorry if this hasn’t been other’s experience. I think their shipping costs are related to that only one or two states will allow this model to legally work–and thus the wines have to warehoused and shipped from a state which isn’t ideal for the rest of their logistics. I think this is what also gets them into trouble on their shipping window; they have to plan when wine is going to be shipped by a third party a few months in advance. While they do ship in Spring and Fall, this Spring was particularly hot. That said, so far all of my shipments have arrived on days with temperatures well within safe wine shipping.