The winery distributor shuffle

Every year between December and January a "dance" goes on between wineries and distributors resulting from successes and failures of distributors in selling wine. At times distributors will drop winery brands from their "books" that have not sold well but more frequently wineries change their distributors to increase sales of their wines in an area. This annual exercise takes on more ferocity when we have a tough wine market with a lot of extra juice to be sold. Sometimes it works sometimes not so much, but it can have real effects on the wine consumer.

Idaho liquor law requires that all wine sold in the state be purchased from a distributor or an in state Idaho winery. While this does add some cost and inefficiencies to the chain of sales from wineries to retailers to consumers, we are fortunate here in North Idaho to have a great group of distributors with great selections.

So how then does this shuffle affect you as a wine consumer and more importantly what should you watch for? First the positive, a new distributor will attempt to get the new winery they have picked up to get a foot hold in the market, this means many times they will price the wine at compelling values, work to do tastings of the wines in retail outlets, and work to support the retailers. This gives you the consumer the chance to try the wines before you buy them and further find some great bargains.

You may also start to see more sought after wines that haven't been distributed previously or were with a distributor that wasn't as good at selling the brand.

Now for the not so good, while changes in distributors many times can help a winery achieve its goals, the times when it doesn't work are the result of scale issues. Distributors like most things in life and business have certain things they do better. The larger distributors do a better job stocking large grocery and big box stores with wines that come in large enough quantities to satisfy the demand are priced accordingly, and are not very hard to get. Smaller distributors more often deal with smaller wineries that produce higher quality wines, in small lots, in short the really good stuff.

Problems however develop when you have a small boutique winery move to a large distributor to sell a lot of wine quickly. The result is that you will no longer find the wine anywhere in the market as it is too expensive and not attainable in large enough quantities to make it on a grocery store shelf, and the distributor is too large to get it around to the smaller shops to try. Here at the dinner party we taste nearly every bottle we put on our shelf, it has to meet our standards and we have to be able to talk about the wine from the experience of trying it first.

Another problem occurs when you have a winery that may produce half a million or million cases of wine annually with a small distributor. This results in the wine being literally everywhere in a market as the distributor struggles to keep the sales numbers up pushing wine in to more locations than the market can bear.

So what to watch for as a consumer, first and perhaps most importantly watch for old vintages. While many wines benefit from bottle age not all do and when a winery leaves one distributor for another the new distributor many times will end up with back vintages that did not sell. These wines get marked down to move the old vintages, which can create real value for the consumer or you could end up getting some wine that is past its prime and not worth drinking regardless of how inexpensive it may appear.

Also watch for wine brands that all of a sudden disappear from the market. Ask your wine professional to get the wine for you if it is with any distributor in Idaho we can get it, however we may not be stocking it as the new distributor does not give us the opportunity to taste before we buy. Similarly let your wine shop owner know when you really like something and intend to continue buying it. When this feedback is passed on to a distributor it may be enough to keep that brand in the market and viable.

The most important fact for you to be aware of is the occurrence of this annual exercise so you can ensure yourself of continued access to your favorites, while also guarding against getting stuck with older or inferior wine that has gotten lost in the winery distributor shuffle.

If there is a topic you would like to read about or questions on wine you can email George@thedinnerpartyshop.com or make suggestions by contacting the Healthy Community section at the Coeur d'Alene Press.

George Balling is co-owner with his wife Mary Lancaster of the dinner party a wine and table top decor shop in Coeur d'Alene by Costco. George is also the managing judge of The North Idaho Wine Rodeo. www.thedinnerpartyshop.com