Welcome to the Wine Buying Guide

As a wine enthusiast living in the San Francisco Bay area, I have the luxury of being able to head off to local wineries at a moments notice to taste or buy wines. As a result, my wine collection is a mixture of wine club offerings and limited release wines that I've picked up at the wineries and are usually available only at those wineries. I realize, however, that not everyone has that opportunity. Their source of wines is typically the local grocery or package store where they either buy an old standard, look for a recommended wine, or employ a hit or miss strategy for trying new wines. With the growth of the internet, online wine purchasing opportunities are now plentiful. The question, though, is what to buy. Yes, just about all of the wineries now offer their products through internet sales, but which of those wines are worth the effort and shipping costs? This blog is dedicated to providing information for wine lovers to assist them in their online buying decisions. As I visit local wineries, I will relate my findings through the blog to give readers an idea of what wines I find that I'd recommend to others. These are usually wines that I buy myself, or wish I could buy if I had an unlimited budget for wine purchases. Each entry will provide information about the location of the winery, varietals with which the winery specializes, the costs of the wines, website links, and my own recommendations. If they have had their wines rated by some of the better known reviewers, such as Robert Parker, I will mention that also, as well as the winery's own tasting notes, if they are particularly helpful or entertaining. To give you a sense of my tastes, I tend toward Pinot Noirs and Zinfandels. I've run across numerous other varietals that I enjoy, but I'm always particularly interested in Pinots and Zins. A good Cabernet Sauvigon or Chardonnay hits the spot, too. Favorites include Kunde Century Vines Zinfandel, Sonoma-Cutrer The Cutrer Chardonnay, La Crema Anderson Valley Pinot Noir, and Valley of the Moon Old Vine Zin. The trouble here is, unless you've visited the winery, you've probably not tasted these wines. There are many wonderful, small production wines out there and I hope to pass on my favorites through this forum.

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Discount Online Wine Sources

There are three websites that I routinely watch for bargains on wine.  One I've mentioned before, http://www.wine.woot.com/.  The others are http://www.wtso.com/ and http://www.lot18.com/.  Each has its specialties and they all offer wines at pretty fair discounts off retail.  I have purchased wines from all three without any delivery or service problems.

Wine woot, as I've mentioned before, typically offers one wine, or speciality item, each day.  Occasionally, woot has what they call a "woot off" where all the backlog of items are sold off in a single day (or two days).  It appears to me that the wine woot off sometimes has new stock, items that were not offered before.  It can be a pretty exciting day, watching all the great buys go by.  Shipping on all purchases is $5, whether it's a single bottle of wine or a case...or a 52 inch flat screen TV.  There is a woot app for iPhones (I'd assume for other smart phones as well, but I only know about the iPhone).

WTSO is "wines till sold out".  As the name suggests, WTSO offers one wine at a time until they sell the entire stock of that wine, then they move on to another wine.  They can have several wines each day.  Their prices are typically about 50 percent off retail.  WTSO always offer free shipping with a minimum purchase, usually three or four bottles, depending on the price of the wine.  Sometimes one bottle qualifies for free shipping.  There is also an app for WTSO as well.

Lot 18, the third site, offers a number of wines at any one time.  Prices are lower than retail, but not quite half off retail.  Shipping is free with a minimum purchase much of the time.  Lot 18 has buyers around the world, so their items can vary quite a bit.  There are times when you see a number of wines from the Willmanette Valley or Sonoma, and others when you see imports more.  Lot 18 requires an invitation to join.  You can use this link https://www.lot18.com/i/Douglas157752 as  your invitation, or just go to the site and follow their directions.  They will send you one to your email address.

As with wine clubs, these websites have advantages and disadvantages.  One advantage is the price.  All three have pretty good prices compared to retail.  This is based on my knowledge of some of the wines I've seen go across the sites, including some I've purchased or comparisons I've made to the wineries' websites.  Shipping is usually lower than the wineries' shipping costs, with a minimum purchase.  Also, they often offer wines that you're not likely to have heard of before, small lots from obscure (or not so obscure) wineries, so you have an opportunity to try wines with a reduced risk (money spent) if you buy something you don't like.

The disadvantage primarily lies in not always knowing the wines that you are buying.  Occasionally, a wine will be posted that I know.  For instance, WTSO has recently sold BV's Tapestry and George La Tour.  Both were offered at good prices, with shipping included for free with a minimum order.  Woot occasionally offers Ty Caton's wines and those of Michael Muscardini, his tasting room partner.  But I usually don't know most of the wines that I see on any of the sites.  I have gone out on a limb and purchased some that I don't know and have been pleased, but more often I've been disappointed.  They were a decent buy for the price, but not as good as I had hoped based on their retail price.  So stepping out of your knowledge base can be a crap shoot.

Sometimes, though you run across something good at a good price, and that keeps you coming back for more.  Last night we opened a bottle of Sequoia Grove from a Lot 18 purchase.  I bought three bottles of the 2006 Rutherford Bench Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon for $99.  If I remember right, shipping was included in the price.  Checking the winery's website, I found the 2007 currently on sale for $65 a bottle.  So it was a wonderful deal and the wine was fruity and smooth and paired well with the shrimp tacos I had for dinner. 

The thing is, though, I knew Sequoia Grove pretty well already, had other bottles in my cabinet, and felt pretty sure that I was buying a good wine.  There have been other purchases where I haven't been as lucky, always with wines that I did not previously know.  Even basing a purchase on someone else's ratings doesn't always work.  Just as you might not agree with my assessment of a particular wine, my tastes don't always jive with Robert Parker's.  Not that Parker is wrong...just different preferences.  So my advice...bookmark the sites and keep an eye on them.  Buy what you know and what you know to be a good deal, with an occasional splurge into something that really intrigues you.  These sources can be a wine buyers friend, if you use them correctly.
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