There is a little bit of me that hopes the end result is less shelf-talkers quoting points / trophies ‘awarded’. That would be a wonderful outcome.
Tangent here, but this woman would prefer a 2011 cab over a 2012? And she needs a shelf-talker to steer her towards the 2011 cab that was amazing, doesn’t want the 2012 of the same wine?
“You know I’m reading the description and it’s a great bottle of cab, a 2011, and then I go to grab it, if I don’t notice it’s a 2012 and I get home, the year matters,” she said. “And if it’s not right, then you kinda feel like you’ve been swindled a little bit.”
I know of a few 2011 Cabs I’d rather have than the 2012 version. Outpost True Vineyard, Hill Family Estate Atlas Peak, Lokoya Mt. Veeder… all high elevation vineyards that are too powerful in “good” vintages.
And they should be sued for putting too much ice in the bottles of white zin ![[wow.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/7/7d450e9830889c8943b674446a21b7254cad657e.gif "wow"){kind=small}
Damages are misleading and false advertising. At worst an injunction and statutory attorney fees. The chances are a vast majority of wine will not have the same scores year to year.
Talking just in terms of honesty and fair dealing, and not about the legality of it, the dividing line for me is whether the shop is cherry picking good vintages, or whether either (a) they are showing you ratings over several vintages for you to see them or (b) they just can’t keep up with changing shelf talkers for new vintages all the time.
Over many years, I’ve tended to think Costco is in the former category. Say you have a 2002 CdP on the shelves that got the following scores:
1999 WA 95
2000 WA 90
2001 WA 94
2002 WA 82
1999 WS 92
2000 WS 92
2001 WS 93
2002 WS 84
And the shelf talker for the 2002s reads:
1999 WA 95
2000 WS 92
2001 WA 94
While the information is literally correct, it’s a deliberate attempt to make you think this wine from the washout 2002 vintage is a low to mid 90s caliber wine. I personally consider that to be misleading and unethical (if not necessarily something that should be legally actionable).
On the other hand, if they’ve just put the 2014 Prisoner on the shelf and the 2013 shelf talker is still there, or the 2014 is on the shelf, the score isn’t out yet, but they have the last three years of scores on there, I don’t think there is anything much to that. That isn’t an intent to deceive anyone.
Misleading and false advertising doesn’t necessarily produce economic harm. That’s my point. If these shelf-talkers were for industrial-quantity wine that is very uniform year to year, it’s a bit of a stretch to say the consumer was harmed.
my first reaction to this story was that BevMo folks are not always the sharpest wine people you can find and would chalk this up to incompetence before malicious activity.
Managing several thousand skus and the data labels for each is no easy task. And I am far from a BevMo apologist.
Frankly, before I read the article I thought it was going to be about BevMo’s infamous $.05 sale
Don’t expect knowledgeable employees at BevMo. Some wines they always carry, so a given employee might not notice or care or understand the significance of a vintage change. Many wines they just always have. I remember a few times waaaaaaay back when I shopped there when there were two vintages of a wine on the shelf - like, someone front loaded a new vintage from a new case, with some bottles of the previous vintage behind.
Shelf takers not matching the vintage is so common, it seems like something consumers quickly learn to double-check. I’m sure intent, negligence and indifference are all factors.
A few months ago, I wanted so badly to start a similar thread regarding Total Wine, but it was around the time of the Premier Cru blow-up, so relatively speaking, Total Wine advertising wrong wines/scores paled in comparison. Still, I have written Total Wine so many times complaining of inaccurate advertsing on their website, and I’ll list some examples below from looking back in my old emails. I can understand if a shelf talker talks about 90 some points for a 2012, but only the 2013 is on the shelf. For so long, TW was advertising a 2010 score for Gramercy Cab when they only had the 2011 for over a year. Honest mistake, perhaps. Or laziness. Actually the subject line of one of my emails was “Incompetent or Fraudulent?”
What irks me most is when they advertise on their website something like “Carriage House Dubrul” for ~$60, 94 points, when in fact the the Cote Bonneville Dubrul vineyard wine costs twice as much. And, the 94 points was from the cab that year, not the Carriage House Red Blend (which received 93 points). One point, big deal, yeah yeah, still. Or when they advertised 94 points for the Tensley Santa Barbara Syrah, when it was the Colson Canyon Syrah that earned that score.
Here’s the text from one of my emails: "Tonight I’m going to cross state lines to purchase some Ross Andrew Syrah at your Vancouver store. You list the 2009 Wine Advocate score for the 2009 Boushey Vineyard Syrah as 94 points. Which issue did this score come from? Are you, once again, falsely marketing scores actually attributed to different versions/years of the wine? I can’t find the 94 point Wine Advocate score anywhere. There is an OLD BLOCK 2009 Ross Andrew Syrah that received 94 points from Wine Enthusiast, but that bottle costs ~75 dollars.
I feel like you’re either purposefully luring customers with false advertising, or your luring customers with your incompetence. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve purchased wines based on your advertising, only to find out later your advertising was incorrect.
I swear some day when I win the lottery I’m going to find some lawyer to look into whether you’re violating some interstate commerce clause. Some class action lawsuit seems in order."
I’ll be sad if someone doesn’t insult me for purchasing wine based on scores.
If someone has an ax to grind with Total Wine, I’ll share with you every email I can find, I think there are at least a couple more examples of their BS if I didn’t delete them
Look at my post upthread. Completely different wine above shelf taker. I pointed it out to the biggest dear in the headlights you can imagine.
Well, far be it from me to let you down, you score whore. ![[snort.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/b/bdc3944606213c4dca6c1169cf0a166c8bc4f8c9.gif "snort.gif"){kind=small}
Bill, my issues were always with the website, I go into TW having a list of wines I wanted after browsing their website, but it looks like you have great proof of equally inaccurate shelf talkers. Not merely outdated shelf talkers, but wholly inaccurate ones. So we have two folks now with proof for the lawsuit, right?
I worked wine retail as the in-house buyer and default “expert” (haw haw).
We were told by more than one liquor rep that an out of date shelf talker was illegal.
I just told them all to buzz off, and I took over writing and updating my own tasting notes on the wine racks.
Drew Goin in Chinese is pronounced “Wilfred Wong,” by the way.
That’s what I thought it was going to be too. As I recalled, all the radio and TV ads made it sound like every wine in the store was get the second bottle free. Well, a BevMo opened in Napa two months ago and their first ad in the newspaper had a headline of second bottle for 5 cents* Grand Opening. Below, next an “*” was a list of swill offered at twice the “small store” retail price with the second bottle for 5 cents. Now it made sense, but I couldn’t shake the feeling the radio/TV ads sounded like there was a special day to get any wine on that deal.
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Yip. Costco has been the most up front and honest about reviews of any major retailer I’ve seen. They may list past vintages but they also list the one they are selling. Even if it has no rating yet.
In the state of GA, the “Winery direct” that you see on the website and in the stores, is factually incorrect. Legally, there is no such thing as “winery direct”. It just burns me when big retailers do things like allow incorrect shelf talkers or such.
I thought there was a previous lawsuit in CA that addressed this very point several years ago?