We are paying 50% here to keep the system going thanks to entrenched interests and huge amounts of lobbying. Consumers have been consistently screwed for decades and I can’t begin to calculate the money that i have paid out to the greedy sods who pay off the politicians to fatten their bank accounts.
Send on to Tom Wark!
Texas is famous for rapacious pricing through abuse of the three tier system, compounded by protectionist policies to preclude out of state retailers from shipping alcoholic beverages into the state. Terrible.
Life in the Land of the Free is not cheap!
Open carry is not for bottles.
You poor guys.
At least you have the 2006. We have only the 2009 vintage for 200€ here in Finland.
I’ve bought winery direct in Italy and had them ship to me. Might need to make some friends in France who can do the same after the negociantes.
^this here^
Mark,
I may be in London in May (see Coronavirus). If I go there, what are one or two good wine stores to visit to get these types of prices?
Tangential drift . . .
When a winery sells wine directly to customers in the USA, are there regulations that force them to do so close to the full, three tier, retail price? Or are there arrangements/understandings with their partners in the three tier system to not under-price them?
If the wine is in the marketplace via wholesalers, generally a winery tries not to undercut the retailers who are selling the wine in other states. This is also why medium and larger sized wineries who also have a DTC channel tend to create wines specifically for their tasting room and wine clubs.
While, in many cases, I agree, there are some circumstances that make comparing UK and US pricing tricky. Let’s forget that that UK price is probably In Bond, so a UK buyer would pay 20% more anyway. Good chance the UK retailer advertising this price got a direct allocation, so no middle man, modest shipping costs from France to UK, relatively small overall markup from ex-cellar. Here in the U.S., a much bigger market, there aren’t a lot of retailers doing their own importing. And a Domaine like Philipponnat probably doesn’t want to deal with hundreds of direct importers anyway, so in practical terms you kind of need at least one domestic importer, who needs to make some profit. That importer can’t practically sell the wine direct to consumers across a huge country, so they need to pass on at least to retailers, if not regional wholesalers, each of whom need their cut to stay in business. Those two prices don’t look crazy when you take into account the issues involved in shipping to the U.S. and distributing across a huge country. As much as I’d like to be paying what it costs in Paris or London…
Or course I agree that there is plenty of corruption distorting the market, which is obscene.
The UK merchant also has a profit in his $120 sales price. Let’s say 15% would not be unreasonable. Basically bringing the price down to $105.
I am not sure what the problem would be shipping directly to stores in many of the cities with decent ports. Shipping to a consumer in NYC is $70 a six pack, which would bring us close to $132 a bottle. If you bought direct from the winery, it would net out at $120 a bottle.
You are right it does break down if you are shipping a single case to say Nashville. But you don’t need a three tier system, just a general hub for all shipments, basically a carry through, and the retailer. Take away the stranglehold of legally mandated markups and people get creative, for instance creating a co-op to bring wines in.
We’re entirely in agreement with the legally mandated 3-tier states. But California is not one, and my guess is that the retail market would be in severe disarray without importers and wholesalers (or at very least importers who also double as wholesalers). Most small retailers could not afford the time to deal with all the hassles of keeping track of wine shipments and distribution. What you describe might work for in-demand wines that essentially need no “selling”; but that’s a small fraction of total wine sales.
In general, I don’t find wines at retail in London to be cheaper than in the US. To the contrary, like virtually everything else in the UK, prices generally seem quite steep. Sounds like this may be a special case.
Also, I wonder when the wine was purchased? At the moment the euro is quite low ($1.08) and the pound is well off its lows last summer ($1.28 vs $1.20 in August), so if the wine over there was purchased recently and the US wine was purchased last summer, that could account for some of the difference.
It’d be $300-$400 in Canada thanks to 100% government mark-ups.
As the Chair of the New York State Bar Association Business Law Section Wine, Beer and Spirits Law Committee, I can tell you that we are looking into tilting at this windmill. The problem is that Southern has a lot of clout and there are a lot of small middle men who claim that they are the only reason that many small producers have traction in NY. I am considering doing a survey on behalf of the Committee to collect opinions from smaller wineries.
AND by the way - Clos de Goisses can select their own importer and find someone with a more reasonable mark up because they have plenty of clout, but they choose not to do so.
You mean Lanson-BCC the corporate owner and CEO Charles Philipponnat…but your point is the same.
RT
Mark, what is involved in making this purchase abroad? How much was shipping/duties/taxes/whatever? Do you have to deal with multiple entities or do you just buy on line and it shows up at your door? Very curious.
This is exactly why we have decided to lessen our energy expended on the US market and focus on the loyal mail order customers (including those in the US) that can buy from us directly at a lower cost. With higher priced wines that don’t have the volume to justify constant sales calls and samples being poured you are getting almost zero traction in the market anyway.