Wines and SpiritsOnline Wine Stores - Building A Relationship
With the increase in online shopping stores over the past ten years, so to has the online wine industry, albeit somewhat slower than some other industries. Skepticism behind buying wine from unknown sources has been the main driver behind the slow uptake of online stores. However, over time more business have entered the market place and added a large variety of ideas about how to sell wine over the internet.
The level and quality of wine being sold has improved as business models have improved. But, there are still some bad ways to buy wine over the net. Online wine auction houses are one dubious way of buying wine of the internet. Many wineries and wine companies dump their stock to these online auction companies at a bottomed out price. There is nothing wrong with deals like this, although most of the wines are "cleanskins" (no official label) and are usually only labelled by type and wine region.
Cleanskins are always fraught with danger as you don"t know exactly what you"re getting, especially if you are unable to try them first. The varietal of wine matched with the region may seem like a great match and seen as a generally safe option, but this is not always the case. Why do you think that the wineries or companies are dumping this stock off to auction houses in the first place?"
The next thing to be aware of is how the wines have previously been stored. I have seen many examples of people buying a well known wine at a great value price to later find that most of the bottles are off because they have not been stored correctly. Its quite easy to see a bargain basement price for a $50 a bottle six pack of wine and buying it, only to find its been kept in somebody"s back shed during summer and all the wine is off.
Another type of online wine store to look out for is what is known as affiliate sites. These wine stores look like a normal wine store stocking almost any wine you can think of. The bottom line is these stores don"t stock any wine at all. They are on-sellers and just pass on your order to the originating wineries and take a commission for them. The best way to pick these types of web sites is by checking their Shipping/Delivery Information pages. Within these pages, that most will ask you to check the shipping costs either from the winery themselves or a special shipping page which highlights the costs within the site itself.
You are better off finding the wine you like and ordering it directly from the winery themselves as the service levels will be no different and you are supporting the winery directly. If the wine you"re after is from a smaller, boutique style winery, they will appreciate your patronage more so directly than paying an affiliate a commission.