wonder if Wine Library purchases are also recorded under Cinderella.
Uh, yeah. This is insight to the CT user base, which has very little correlation with the general wine buying public or even the much smaller market for Super Premium/Luxury wines (using CPG terms).
Interesting. Do you know how we could get our hands on some more recent stats?
You can run the searches!
Here’s the current top stores
Unknown 55.2% Bottles purchased (63,895,647) / Remaining (39,940,351)
Winery 4.9% Bottles purchased (5,679,860) / Remaining (2,681,958)
Garagiste 0.7% Bottles purchased (832,775) / Remaining (380,360)
Costco 0.7% Bottles purchased (777,545) / Remaining (251,273)
Vineyard 0.5% Bottles purchased (581,928) / Remaining (316,500)
WTSO 0.5% Bottles purchased (566,635) / Remaining (221,400)
Wine Club 0.5% Bottles purchased (521,729) / Remaining (240,806)
Total Wine 0.4% Bottles purchased (442,775) / Remaining (163,869)
Wine Library 0.4% Bottles purchased (434,956) / Remaining (178,262)
JJ Buckley 0.4% Bottles purchased (418,990) / Remaining (264,706)
Gift 0.4% Bottles purchased (416,568) / Remaining (164,339)
Note that “Winery”, "Vineyard, and “Wine Club” all are probably direct, as are the “stores” further down the list, such as “Winery Direct”, “Direct from Winery”, “Cellar Door”, “Mailing List”, “Producer”, “Tasting Room”, “From Winery” and so on.
Kind of a remarkable increase in the number of entries where the user didn’t bother entering the store.
This is pretty interesting. I don’t have anything profound to say in response. But like others, I’m pretty surprised by the implied volume of Garagiste’s sales. Given how much they move from relatively obscure places like the Jura, the Loire, etc, it seems to me that Garagiste probably does a lot to diversify U.S. wine consumption. I think you’d have to assume that the wine market (or the 50 wine markets) are incredibly adaptable not believe it, no?
Unknown 55.2% Bottles purchased (63,895,647) / Remaining (39,940,351)
Unknown Wine Shop! Number one shop in the US. I think the domain name is available.
I had no clue Garagiste was so huge! Even if there is a NW bias, that’s a lot of wine.
this thread is still interesting even with the old stats… and especially old vs new. I am gonna venture a guess that this has very little correlation to the actual stats for wine purchases in the country as a whole though… my guess is as soon as someone even searches for a site like cellar tracker, it puts them in a certain top percentage of wine buyers just by thinking they may have a need of the product.
Very interesting, thanks for the effort to analyze all the data. I started dabbling in CT before I really got into wine so I went with the individual Winery as the store instead of what now seems like a much better option to use a more generic description.
I’m somewhat surprised people would spend the time to track inventory and consumption of Ménage à Trois.
For the Costco stats, those are definitely the common wines I have seen for years in the stores in the Chicagoland area, less Pontet-Canet.
I tried to see which wineries were the most popular, but CT crashed on me (i.e., timed out). Seems unable to handle summarizing over 1m bottles (could do it for Garagiste)
You should see their warehouse. It is massive. It is Texas sized. Doesn’t surprise me at all.
I know that Garagiste introduced me to wines that I would never have purchased otherwise, for better or worse. Many I would have not bought otherwise.
Of the top ten listed, I ended up with every one except the Terreno Chianti.
On the other hand, the only wine in the Costco list I have purchased over the last ten years is Pontet-Canet.
If you go back farther than ten years, I purchased at least one of every single one listed, except for Menage a Trois. I’ve had one sip of that in my life, which I spit out.
Here are my top seven retailers…
Winery 40.6% Bottles purchased (772) / Remaining (481)
Garagiste 5.2% Bottles purchased (99) / Remaining (53)
Full Pull 3.5% Bottles purchased (66) / Remaining (39)
Wine Exchange 2.2% Bottles purchased (41) / Remaining (31)
WineBid 0.6% Bottles purchased (12)
Costco 1.6% Bottles purchased (31) / Remaining (22)
Unknown 45.2% Bottles purchased (860) / Remaining (285)
Unknown is #1.
I’ll play. I’m seemingly much more disciplined in entering in my data than most!
Wine.com 45.2% Bottles purchased (911) / Remaining (889)
Winery 16.9% Bottles purchased (341) / Remaining (286)
K&L Wines 7.0% Bottles purchased (142) / Remaining (136)
K&L Auction 5.9% Bottles purchased (119) / Remaining (66)
LastBottle 5.1% Bottles purchased (103) / Remaining (96)
Costco 3.7% Bottles purchased (75) / Remaining (74)
Sotheby 3.6% Bottles purchased (72)
Full Pull 2.2% Bottles purchased (45) / Remaining (37)
Collectible Fine Wine 1.3% Bottles purchased (26) / Remaining (12)
Millésima 1.4% Bottles purchased (28)
Somewhat similar for me and, I think, a lot of other people. Basically, if Costco had never existed, my wine drinking career would not have been appreciably different. But if garagiste hadn’t existed, it would have been.
Differently put, the total amount of Pinot/trousseau blend consumed in this country—while certainly not that big—would be proportionately much smaller in a world without garagiste. It’s just hard to imagine another operation that would do what they do on the same scale.
Having mostly figured out what I like and what I don’t, I dont order much from them any more (plus the emails are unbearable), but every once in a while I’m still surprised by something obscure I get through them.
One of the interesting things for me is the change: which retailer seem to be gaining market share.
Here are the top retailers, by bottles purchased, sorted by biggest change. Looks to me like Total Wine and JJ Buckley are taking market share from Wine Library.
… 2017… 2020…Change
Total Wine…N/A…442,775…N/A
JJ Buckley…277,846 …418,990…51%
Costco…533,389 … 777,545…46%
Garagiste…622,893 …832,775…34%
WTSO…445,711 … 566,635…27%
Wine Library…369,700 … 434,956…18%
I have consolidated my purchases a lot the few couple of years as I have cut down wine purchases. Most of my purchases have come from Envoyer and MacArthur Liquors or from Burgundy.
In 2018, when I last visited Burgundy, 40% of my purchases came from my trip - from either a winery, the Caveau de Chassagne Montrachet, CPH or Athenaeum. Another 42% came from Envoyer, MacArthurs and Weygandt Wines.
In 2019, when I did not go to Burgundy, 82% came from Envoyer or MacArthur Liquors. By contrast, in 2015 when I was still working and buying a lot more wine, even without going to wineries, while Envoyer and MacArthur were still the two stores I purchased the most from, they only accounted for 47% of my purchases.
So far this year, I have not bought that much but my biggest purchase has been from the Caveau de Chassagne Montrachet - even though I did not go to Burgundy.
Woohoo. This thread inspired me to reduce the number of purchases from store “Unknown”. Got it down by 5%, which ranks it now below second-rate operations such as “K&L,” “Wine House,” “Wally’s,” and “Winery.”
I question the validity of the “Winery” category. When I buy direct, I enter the name of the specific winery (e.g. Ridge, Montelena). Never “Winery.” I wonder how many others do that.
When I first started using CellarTracker I only used the iPhone app. I entered winery for the store. When I began using the website more and I realized the reports I could pull I switched to the name of the specific winery as the store. I went back and completed an edit as well.