Thoughts about online wine purchasing?

Apologies if I’m asking a question that has been asked and answered before - still getting the hang of searching for earlier threads on the boards…

I’ve been wondering lately about the upside and downsides of ordering wine online (as opposed to purchasing locally). Some of the wine sites offer a curated wine shopping experience - and I’ve been interested in trying some of the wines they offer in their newsletters and email blasts. While I’m tempted to buy the wines recommended by a well-known wine merchant or a panel of wine buyers, wine sales are a business - and I’m skeptical about being coerced into spending my wine dollars helping someone unload some of their slower-moving inventory!

Curious what your experiences have been? Do most of you buy locally - or do you shop online as well? Is the added cost (and risk) of shipping worth the convenience (and access to wines less readily available in your area)?

On a related topic…what about wines offered by smaller importers who sell directly to consumers? We won a wine-tasting in an auction few months back and had a great in-home tasting with some friends - and predictably, we all bought some wine. Naturally, these folks are trying to sell the wines they import - how do these types of importers compare to a reputable wine store in terms of quality and variety? Can you pick up real gems from them…or are they just unloading wines they got at a good price to consumers who don’t know any better (we liked the wine, by the way)? Would love your thoughts…

Finally…would love to know where my fellow LA members buy their wine locally, whether from importers or wine shops.

Regards,

Doug Besterman

At the Vineyard (mailing lists for hard to get) & on line & auctions are the best for me, period .

If I lived in NY, LA, or SF, I’d buy a lot of wine locally. Maybe Chicago or DC as well. But by searching around (e.g., with wine-searcher pro), I can usually find the best pricing and availability online, and the vast majority (almost all) of the wine I purchase is from retailers online (aside form winery direct purchases). If you stick to good shipping windows, it’s a painless process. If you’re looking more for someone to educate you about wines and suggest wines as well as sell them to you, it’s hard to beat the in-store experience. But the problem is, you need the right store. Most people are clueless. Certain online retailers fulfill that function as well. For example, by reading emails from Crush, Chambers Street, and (to a lesser extent) Envoyer, you can learn a fair bit about interesting wines and regions.

I have purchased from at least 10 different online retailers. If you count retail brick-and-mortar shops that post to Wine-searcher, that number probably doubles.

I have never had any problem with “online” purchases at all. Most of the vendors offer great customer service. Even if they didn’t, I would feel protected by my credit card company.

As the previous poster mentioned, online purchases provide a way to easily find otherwise difficult to source bottles at the best prices in the country

Doug - it is a good question. I would personally only use online resources for wines I had already tried and knew I wanted to purchase. Buying wines based on what the retailer wants to offer is more of a crap shoot and depending on the retailer you may well end up with wines they are trying to offload. If you are still in the process of figuring out what wines you want to buy, nothing is more important than doing as much tasting as you can to see what you like, and finding a local retailer that hosts a lot of tastings and doing business with them is the best way to get started.

if you do know what wines you want to buy, a search of the board here will give you some good info from the members about their experience with most of the big online purveyors, as there is a thread on most major retailers.

Good luck with the exploration - it is a fun journey!

Just popped on to say thanks for the responses. Jud, I’m on the mailing lists for a few local LA vendors who host wine tastings, and I know that will be a good way to broaden my horizons. I’ve already done a bit of online ordering, and I’m not particularly concerned about fraud (any more than I am from any other retailer) - more concerned about whether I’m getting good advice from the online vendors in terms of what to buy - caveat emptor, as they say. I’ll look into the threads about the major retailers - will be a good way to get some basic info - many thanks again.

There are some very good resellers / consignment sites on the internet. Hart Davis Hart, Benchmark Wine Group, and K&L have all been very good when I’ve ordered from them. I did get a corked bottle from BWG but they took care of me on the next purchase.

If you shop locally, try to talk to the wine manager of the store(s) you go to. In a short time you’ll find out who gives you good recommendations and who doesn’t. Even though I pass at least 2 dozen liquor stores on the way, I drive 20 minutes to Wine Works because Charlie has always done me solid.

Wineworks is my favorite brick and mortar wine store too. I was there yesterday, in fact. And I agree that Charlie Beatty is a good guy. I got to know him when he was across Route 70 at Canal’s Bottlestop for many years.

To the OP, I haven’t bought a bottle of wine at retail in the state of Ohio in years due to their archaic three tier system and their “state minimum pricing” b.s. With the exception of occasional bottle or three from Wineworks, all of my domestic wine purchases are through direct mailers and everything else is from on-line purchases such as Wine Library, Vinopolis et al. Wine Searcher Pro is a gem. My favorite source in recent years has been Rob Panzer’s Down to Earth.

I do not purchase via auction. I purchase almost 100% online from either the winemaker or reputable online wine merchants from all over the country and overseas.

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I buy locally (NW Louisiana) and direct from the winery websites. I used K&L once recently, and they were fast and reliable.

K&L has some pretty crazy prices. Never bought from them, but nice to see someone say they’re fast and reliable.

If it’s an out of stock wine, I think there might be some games going on with lowering the price to make them appear dirt cheap when an internet search is done. It is possible to pay to up your placement in a Google search. Other than that, I buy from them relatively often because their prices are decent but not crazy low.

I was very apprehensive about buying wine online, but now it’s how I buy most of my wine. Except for several mailing lists where I buy directly from the winery, I find buying online is a great way to get those bottles I can’t get at a local retailer.

I highly recommend Wine Searcher Pro. I don’t know of any other way to get the best price for any given wine.

And most importantly, the wine I’ve ordered online has been in excellent shape. At first my concern was that some retailer somewhere else in the country wouldn’t care if they sent me a skunked or otherwise flawed bottle. With Wine Searcher, these guys now have a national presence and therefore a national reputation to maintain. My experience is that retailers are doing an excellent job of selling wines in great shape.

That makes more sense.

Doug,

Retailers are in the business to sell wine. Look at LastBottle. Every wine they sell is a “knockout”, “gem”, “fantastic”, “incredible”, “highly recommended”, “don’t miss out”, “going to sell out fast”, “don’t hesitate” wine. The marketing hype needs to be taken with a few grains of salt. You need to know what you like stylistically, varietally and purchase basepd on that rather than someone else’s hype.

I think the biggest thing is to not feel the need to build a cellar too quickly or you end up with a bunch of duds and/or wines who, by the time you open them, are not in your wheelhouse any longer. That’s where buying back vintages at auction or retail from reputable sources comes in handy. Patience is rewarded.

Don’t underestimate as well how many sources you’ll learn about just by reading here. I am quite new to buying wine beyond picking up bottles at the local shop but from WB discussions, I’ve discovered a number of wines I never would find locally - Matthiasson Vermouth and Rose, Bill Hooper’s new Paetra Riesling, so many during the Wine Beserkers sale this year. I now only go to my local shop for tastings.

So, I checked out Jack’s Sliders and Sushi’s wine menu out of curiosity. They have a total of 12 bottles on their menu. Nothing interesting. And, everything is substantially more expensive than K&L (e.g. Hess Chardonnay for $40, which is 4x retail).

What am I missing? Are you the owner or connected to the business?

I purchase mostly based on pricing. As a result I buy from all over. I like my local stores Flatiron , Chambers Street and Crush but when I am searching for a bottle-producer and or vintage wine-searcherpro fills an important need.

or and ignore jacksreacher10 he is a spamster for Jacks Sushi and Sliders and the wineberserkers moderators have done nothing about him.

I too have bought online for years…K&L and JJ Buckley. No problems with either. JJ Buckley will hold your purchase free for 6 months if it’s summer or winter. That is a nice option when you live in the Northeast like me.

Smaller importers selling direct to consumer…They may have good wines, but they seem to be very limited not only in quantity but from vintage to vintage. They’ll have a wine one year and not the next. I say if you find something they like buy a few bottles and don’t count on seeing it again.

Online wine purchasing is good. I will recommend to purchase red wine.