I personally struggle with this but have landed on the side of purchasing as much wine locally as I can. In a place like Tulsa, OK we have a good retail selection for a city of 1M and a state of 3.9M people. I believe if I keep buying the smaller production wines from local retail they will keep bringing them in and hopefully others will catch on and I can send friends to go get good wines at retail. It’s hard to recommend wines that people have to order and it takes weeks for them to arrive. We also have several good broker/distributors here in Oklahoma that work hard to bring in good wines and bring winemakers to the state for dinners and tastings.
That said, I know the producers take a haircut to get their wines into the three/four tier system. I know a few wineries don’t take much of a haircut (Williams Selyem takes none) so at retail it’s more expensive than direct purchase even with shipping. I certainly want to support my favorite wineries as best I can and not hurt them by buying retail.
My strategy is to make an attempt to determine which wines are available at retail and try to avoid buying those direct except to fill out cases. Who knows if that is correct strategy.
I have talked to a couple producers that have told me if I don’t buy from them they’d prefer I buy from local retail even if it means asking them to special order. They would prefer I not buy from internet retailers. Not sure that reasoning.
Arnot Roberts is one in which I choose to buy locally because they have a okay selection (I don’t believe Cabernet is available) and the local broker has been good about promoting it.
I’ve probably thought about this more than I should. But, I have friends that work in all tiers of the system that have fed my love of wine so I try to help them all out best I can.
Loving all the AR whites lately, I’m a buyer of them each year.
That’s a fair price, I think it was $26 or $28 directly if I recall. K&L has it for that. Price seems to have gone up since last year. I got the 2017 for $22 from Astor Wines.
Hey Maureen. It’s a favorite of mine as well… I can tell you that the new vintage hit the Texas retail market last week, so you might want to keep an eye out locally.