Article in today’s San Francisco Chronicle on this matter:
double digit sales growth this year? that’s funny stuff.
Wont be hard if the previous year left an artificial gap in sales from the fires of 2017… no idea of their release schedule though so its complete speculation.
their forthcoming release is 2017. 2016 scored well, but that was 2016. i don’t see how a brand who has been on the downswing for years, new winemaker, with bad PR, selling a down vintage wine, get’s an additional 10% in sales.
they clearly have a special site and are looking to put out world class wines. i hope they can keep their winemaker for the long term like their neighbor colgin. i just think they need a different model long term rather than living off of their reputation which was built on wines costing a lot less and were made with a winemaker with a great track record.
While reading the Lauren Ridenhour lawsuit against Bettina and Donald Bryant Jr (Bryant Family Vineyards) the following allegation immediately caught my attention. “The winery has suffered from excessive back inventory as of July 2018 of over $14 million in prior vintages, and an approximate 40% decline in sales over the last three years”
This got me thinking, are things really this dire at the revered Pritchard Hill Estate? I subsequently placed a phone call and the folks at Bryant would certainly beg to differ. I was informed that they currently have a “2 year waiting list to purchase wine”.
Wait a minute, a two year waiting list, and $14 million in unsold wine, do not correlate whatsoever!
Someone isn’t telling the truth.
There are 3 sides to every story.
A two year waiting list…and somehow large amounts of Bryant make their way to the ultra exclusive retailer known as Total Wine?
But how much is going into the DB4 and how much are they making of the other two? Pretty sure they’re not making 3000 cases of their flagship. Probably 750-1000 cases of their top 2 wines at most.
+1
Yep.
“Emblem” anybody?
Tough business.
This got me thinking, are things really this dire at the revered Pritchard Hill Estate? I subsequently placed a phone call and the folks at Bryant would certainly beg to differ. I was informed that they currently have a “2 year waiting list to purchase wine”.
Wait a minute, a two year waiting list, and $14 million in unsold wine, do not correlate whatsoever!
That’s great stuff Chris. I guess it depends on exactly what it is you’re trying to sell.
And to whom.
![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
Mel tangentially touched on this issue, but I think there is a bigger issue of generational shift than most people realize. Let’s look at the history. Bryant / Dalla Valle / Colgin / Harlan / Abreu / Araujo / Grace (with the notable exception of SE) all rode the cult wave of the 90’s. While I wasn’t buying back then, I believe that most of those wines sold for between $75 - $150/ Bottle in their very early days. Let’s say you were getting into wine in the mid 90s and you were 35 when you had the means and the desire to join many of these aforementioned lists. Today, that person is now 60 years old. That is probably the youngest person of that wine generation. Many are probably now well into their 60s and 70s. As these buyers have grown older, let’s assume they increased their financial ability and position and were able to continue buying these wines as they raised their prices to $300 then $400 and even $500 (and what for Harlan, like $800??) a bottle.
Let’s say you’re that same 35 - 40 year old today. It’s a lot harder to jump into $400 and $500 bottles of wine when there are plenty of stellar wines in the $100-$250/bottle range. If you’re one of those wineries I mentioned earlier, you’re going to have a much harder time finding people willing to pay list price when most of those wines are now readily available in most high-end retail shops and many supermarkets (at least the nicer ones here in Texas).
My point is simply there is no way that it is going to be possible for those wineries to replace their ageing list members with younger buyers willing to dive in at that price point. Since there is no one (to my knowledge) who has ever lowered their price (Dominus doesn’t count and neither does Kapcsandy’s 10% range variation) things are really starting to prime themselves for more wineries like Bryant that simply can’t continue to do business the way that they have.
Have you met our friend Alan?
I follow your train of thought Alex…
Alex you nailed it! I am exactly that demographic you referenced, in my early thirties in the mid nineties and I was told by Harvey Bushbinder at Marin Wine Cellar to go get Bryant Family and Harlan Estate. I paid only $85 for 1993 Harlan at retail. I was first offered the 1995 Bryant which was only $50 a bottle, made by Helen Turley, and absolutely dynamite. By 2000 demand was so strong for these two producers that Harvey would offer me double what I paid at release, so half my allocation went to him, and we were drinking the other half essentially for free. These were the real waiting lists and Parker loved them. The party lasted for about 5 years and then release prices began to soar during the 2003-2006 vintages ending the modern Cult Wine Era 1996-2008.
At the end of all this, between the legal fees and brand damage, the Bryants will likely wish they had just paid their loan ‘consultant’ the fees requested. But it seems they have a habit of continually wandering into legal tar pits…
With luck, they didn’t go too heavy on Peter Max [suicide.gif]
I once shot an interview with Louis Vuitton’s CEO in Paris. He said something that I will always remember in regards to luxury brands: “You will never see a Louis Vuitton sale and you’ll never see LV sold at a retailer”. He seems to be right - when you license or use retailers, you lose control and saturate and that’s when it all goes downhill. Armani is another brand that has walked down the same aisle. Now you see cheap Armani watches in airport shops. It dilutes.
As for Bryant, if they’re sitting on lots of stock, they’re in a real kind of LV-type scenario pickle: If they lower their prices they will damage brand. If they don’t, they might go under. Thing is, even rich people get sick of signing big checks eventually. My guess is that’s what’s happened with all this highway robbery pricing. And I can’t feel sorry for all these ex-Wall St bankers that bought their way into prestige in Napa (name one top 10 cult Napa winemaker that wasn’t started or bought by someone who was already a multi-millionaire in some other field?) and jacking up prices. Maybe they deserve to go under. Companies that are not competitive should go under, right? That’s how capitalism self-regulates and innovates.
Great parable above. I guess the strategy of sole distribution works if you have a real monopoly product, one with a moat that cannot be broached. At one point, Bose products were sold that way. Maybe today Tesla is a comparable (or at least they think they are in that category).
But fermented grape juice? I’ve always been of the longstanding view that this is an agricultural commodity product more than the value chain likes to admit to outsiders.
Bryant could simply re-brand unsold stock on the QT as needed to pay the bills without diluting the brand. Happens all the time.