Dan,
Can’t speak for others, but the wineries I know do NOT build anything into their system to account for a certain percentage of ‘off’ bottles and therefore do not set aside bottles as replacements. They will set them aside for library wines, either for their own use (educational more than anything else) or to re-release at some time.
Cheers.
This may be true for ‘cooked’ wine issues, but when it comes to TCA, storage conditions do not matter. The same could be said for brett as well - yep, perhaps the wine was stored too warm and the wine ‘bloomed’, but to me, that’s the fault of the winery as well - because there will be no brett developed after bottling unless there were at least traces present AT bottling.
Cheers.
Larry - I was thinking more about the economics/business factors involved and not as much about maintaining a higher level of library wines. Though I am in fact surprised that there wouldn’t be some level of additional library wines maintained to cover some small degree of issues within a short time after release (maybe a year or two after release - even though it doesn’t really cover corked wines in out years at least it covers near term issues), I would be quite surprised to learn that wineries do not take into account these types of issues in how they run their business, price their wines, set their budgets, etc. Maybe they don’t take into account marketing, travel, samples, etc. either or future forecasts for when equipment has to be replaced or other capital reserves - maybe for many its more of a seat of your pants type operation…
Though, it seems tough to effectively manage a business without appropriate acknowledgement of the true expenses of the business and budgeting for them…
I own a business, not wine related, but we make a custom product. While we mange our warranty work as much as possible and do what we can on the front end to not have warranty issues, they do happen. You can’t forecast it, it varies and to “load” every other item we produce with a cost for warranty would put us in a non competitive situation and make every customer have a cost burden related to unpredictable events. In the end the cost comes out of your bottom line and you move on.
I once had a shop (a supermarket) who denied they had sold me a corked bottle as the win in question was not in their database, but they found a store at the other end of the country that sold it so they refunded me anyway!
Thanks Randy, you are a helper.
The Tasting Room Manager is in the wrong line of work.
In addition to everything that’s been said above, telling a winery about a TCA-infected bottle of wine is one way of determining how good their customer service is. If a winery wants to give me a tough time returning a defective bottle of wine, then that’s useful information to have when I decide which winery relationships to maintain. If a $20 bottle of wine is defective, then I suppose you can shrug your shoulders. But if a $100+ bottle of wine is corked and the winery doesn’t want to deal with the problem they created, then that’s useful information to have when I decide whether to keep buying wine from them…
Bruce
I just came across this thread. Surprised so many posts before someone slightly less clueless than the manager stepped in.
Timing as doing the right thing are both issues.
That’s a point but maybe the wine maker has better things to do than most of us!
Now if when you had purchased it, the winemaker had said that you are purchasing this ‘as is’ and that he or she will not ‘guarantee’ it, well, then I guess that would be different . . .
I don’t know. It still seems weird for a guy to sell you something that can only be defective because of what he did, and then deny responsibility.
If I made a cabinet and the door fell off because I forgot to put all the screws into the hinges, it’s not the customer’s fault.
If Brian bought it from the owner pulled from cold storage, that may explain why the tasting room manager would have no record of the sale. And if it were a shiner, the tasting room manager might not know that the wine was even theirs. In either case, he seems like less of a dolt.
Nonetheless, if Brian has a good enough relationship with the winery that they’ll sell him such a bottle, it’s more than just a business transaction, it’s a transaction with a special customer/acquaintance/friend. If that’s the case, and I’m just speculating, it makes it even more egregious because implicitly they’d be suggesting that Brian was dishonest.
In the above case though, I’m not sure I’d “out” the winery.
I recently had a similar situation happen with a well loved brand here. I purchased several bottles of a white blend on release and stored them all in my home cellar. All bottles were great, except the most recent…we didn’t even finish our glasses. There was no evidence of TCA, but there certainly was a flaw of some sort as his bottle was very inconsistent with my previous experiences (from the same cellar) and tasting notes on CT as well. We are still well within the drinking window on the winery’s website as well.
So, I emailed the winery the next morning explaining the situation outlined above and received a speedy response from the owner. In this initial response, it sounded like a “too bad for you” deal. I asked if he wanted me to send the bottle back to him to see what was going on. He stated that it would not be worth the time, effort, or expense to do so. I do agree that it would have likely oxidized. However, based on the reputation of this winery, I was expecting something more than a “too bad for you” response. I am not sure if that means a replacement or not…just something.
The overall experience has left me feeling less than satisfied with the situation. So, in these situations, are you to directly ask for some resolution? Do I out them here and cross my fingers? The winery receives countless accolades here and the owner is a member here, although I do not think he participates often.
What is a overthinking wine nerd to do?
I would certainly take that into account when it comes time to order again. I had a “weird” email once from a board darling that pissed me off for awhile. I cut back on my ordering from that producer. In hindsight
it helped be branch out a bit. There is plenty of good wine out there.
Even setting aside the wrongness of it, this is just idiotic customer relations.
Someone had been a customer of yours seven years, you have an opportunity at very little cost (sending out a replacement bottle doesn’t “cost” the winery the retail price of the wine unless they would have sold every bottle direct) to make a great impression and develop loyalty and make your customer comfortable buying from you in the future.
Or you could piss him off, lose a customer, probably have him tell others.
I will say, the times something like this has happened to me, I almost kind of like it, since like pretty much all of you, I buy too much wine from too many producers. When one gives you an excuse to cut them out, it’s kind of a good thing.
Some small wineries can’t afford to set anything aside. No library, no bottles to sample with age. Just selling the stuff is a bitch, so if a distributor offers to take all of something, they do it.
But, there are many ways to make a customer happy, depending on the customer and the situation. It’s the gesture of concern. We see all these threads of some problem being handled well and it instills a greater loyalty and goodwill. If you get treated like crap, you won’t feel inclined to continue as a customer.
Wes, that is definitely a key point…and, given all of the alternative sources and wineries out there to buy from, once a customer feels off about a buying experience, they are likely to stop buying and move on to other wineries and once they stop buying they are likely gone for good.
Bingo!
The reply here is my favorite part so far. I just want to see if I can grasp the line of thought here by the TR Manager.
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Tasting Room Manager is saying that you didn’t purchase it from the winery in question
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Where did this purchase take place as a private sale if they aren’t believing you purchased directly from the winemaker in question?
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Is this “fake news” ?
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Sorry Brian, I hope you get it straightened out. I really want to know the winery as well but respect that you don’t want to put their name out there. Maybe we can find via some Wikileaks hacking.
Nick
Just an amazing attitude.
If they don’t sort this out quick, I would indeed ‘out’ them. They’ve had chances and the last one rests with the winemaker.
The tasting room manager does need a career change.
Wow the tasting room manager’s response is blowing my mind, they’re missing the forest for the trees here big-time.