Last week, Wine Business broke the sad news that uber-retailer Amazon is ending their push into the online wine retailing space. This comes on the heels of the much quieter news that Costco.com is ending their online wine sales.

These two companies, Amazon and Costco, total $92 billion in revenue per year. They know how to sell. Both do huge volumes of sales online, have gigantic customer bases, and have the shipping logistics in place to tackle almost anything.

Except wine.

So what makes wine so hard to deal with? Why would two gigantic retailers decide that the online wine market just isn’t worth it?

Wine is kind of a pain to keep in inventory. Wine isn’t like a book. When you sell books, you enter the titles, the ISBNs, and the quantity of each that you own into your system and you’re off and running with your inventory system. If you sell patio furniture, likewise. If you run out of books, you call the publisher and get more books. If it is out of print, you scour the used book market.

Wine doesn’t work like that. Retailers have much smaller quantities to deal with, often into the single digits, leading to much faster turnover of products. Each wine is specific to the year and size of the bottle meaning that Opus One is not just Opus One, it is the 2004 Opus One and cannot be confused with the 2005 Opus One. Wine is an international product and can’t be relied upon to have a UPC attached. Retail stock must be under some sort of climate control in your stock is going to be sitting for any length of time.

All the headaches of slinging wine means that real time inventory in online wine sales is kind of a big deal. Even in this day of unprecedented ease of use in developing web applications, real time inventory is a feat few have accomplished.

I hear you saying:

C’mon, Amazon had a net income of over half a billion dollars last year. They couldn’t get this figured out?

Granted, it isn’t rocket science. In Amazon’s case, they were met with two other major factors that contributed to their decision.

They lost a major fulfillment partner. New Vine Logistics went bust earlier this year. and for some time their future was very much in doubt. I had worked with New Vine Logistics in the past, and they were among the best in the business when it came to receiving, storing, and fulfilling wine to customers. The loss of this major partner must have been crippling to Amazon.

Interstate shipping laws are just too much of a pain in the ass to deal with. The stick-in-the-mud legislators and wine distributors will ruin anyone’s day who dares try to end-around on them. Wine can currently be shipped to about 35 states but within that club there are many different variations. Some have limits on the volume, some limit the number of bottles, some limit the retail value. You read this blog, you read others that cover wine shipping, you know it is insane.

Amazon quitting in the face of all this is scary. It means that Superman stared down Lex Luthor and decided “Nah, not fighting this guy.” Sherlock Holmes did not get his man. The inmates have taken over the asylum.

So, where to now? Wine consumers have lost what could have been a major retailer using their immense size to deliver good wines, high availability, and possibly lower prices. They lose a gigantic company who may have acted like an ally in the fight to get the disaster of wine shipping laws cleared up. The liquor distributors shovel millions of dollars to make wine shipping difficult for retailers. It will take millions to defeat them. Those millions will not come from Amazon. If you’re local, you can volunteer for Marylanders for Better Beer and Wine Laws and contact your state representatives to get their take on direct wine shipping.

Many things in this world are much better when experienced at the source. Guinness is better in Ireland, pizza is better in Italy, and Shiraz is better down under in Australia. I never thought much of Gruner Veltliner as a marquee grape until I went to Austria and drank the juice from where the grape is well known. Most Gruner is made to be served very young in Heurigers, bar/restaurants that sort of double as social drinking halls. Unlike a typical bar, Heurigers serve only their own wine.

Plenty of Gruner Veltliner, though, is made to last. The less-expensive examples come off very springy and spritzy, almost like a cheap Prosecco even though Gruner’s aren’t made to be sparkling. At it’s best, the wine is full bodied and deep, like a top-flight Viognier. My favorite Gruners carry a weight that is uncommon in white wines, all without blowing oak up your nose or butter in your gullet.

This was the last Gruner we brought back from that trip and it was really impressive.

Pale yellow straw color. Thick and oily. The bottle was too cold out of the gate so I didn’t get much in my nose besides some forest and petrol. The taste was lively, acidic, and just okay. As the wine warmed, though, it took on weight and balance. By the end of the bottle it was really singing. Grapefruit, floral flavors, and that mid-European airport-like petrol feel to it. Great finish, long, lingering and nice.

The interesting thing about this note…

Very light straw color. Cold steely nose. Spritzy and zesty palette. 74.

…was that it doesn’t sound negative at all. The score wasn’t even all that bad either (74) but somehow it all came together to inspire me to take the picture to the right.

Elsewhere, the local wine fun continued.

Great up front. Pale straw color. Floral aromas, especially honeysuckle. Great palette with lots of steel acidity and even some rocky, gravelly mouth feel. The finish just fell apart though. Violent and unpleasant, I kept trying and hoping for improvement until I eventually gave up on it. 70.

Awarding a 70 sounds downright benevolent after that note. The funny thing is that this was a wine I’d sampled in the tasting room and liked enough to buy and bring home. Two months later, things were clearly different.

On to the good stuff, Elk Run had two of my favorites for this year:

2007 Elk Run Viognier. Nice. Springy apple and peach. Lots of acidity. 82.

Like I always say, I am nothing if not brief.

Still the leader in the clubhouse in Maryland is the 2007 Elk Run Gewurztraminer Cold Friday Vineyard

The first sniff gave me the same sort of I-don’t-know that I get in a lot of Maryland wines. I don’t quite know what it is (Old Bay?) but MD wines, both red and white, but it’s a little sulfuric, sharp… not particularly unpleasant but just distinct. The mystery aroma blew off after a few minutes. Past that, there was apple and beach, mostly round, full aromas. The wine had a Juicy Fruit, honeyed taste initially, very layered. Good acidity. The whole thing was almost a little wild. A nice, dry, light caramel finish followed. The wine changed for the better over several hours, giving out more fruit and maturing into complexity. On open, the wine was more of a New World style and after some time it developed a hint of minerality and Old World Characteristics, like something Alsacian. 88.

Eighty eight! Take that, more-well-known wine regions!

If you’re into more local stuff, go check out drinkocalwine.com and click through to some of the posts Dave McIntyre has called out this week. Happy local drinking!

Adegga.com made a push to correct this madness with AVIN, something that was well intentioned but it too much of a hassle to get widely accepted. Without Dashboard widgets and Wordpress plugins, we bloggers are just too lazy to adopt a standard. If it isn’t involved in some Tweetup, it gets ignored by Wino Nation.

Enter Wine.com. Last month, Wine.com released an API out into the wild. Having been founded in Web 1.0 dot-bomb era, Wine.com is the most venerable of all online wine retailers. The brand has failed and changed hands several times since inception as new management constantly struggled to find profits in shipping cheap wine to consumers.

Now, though, their API may solve the problem of “Which Wine Is It Anyway?” Given an authoritative reference on lengthy wine names, the people can finally be clear on what we’re talking about. There’s a lot of other great stuff in there too. Juicy API calls like

/catalog/?search=mondavi+cab&size=5&offset=10&apikey=key

Will give you a rundown on Mondavi Cabernet. They built in powerful filtering too, giving you the ability to do stuff like

filter=categories(7155+124)+rating(85|100)

Pretty cool. I’m looking forward to what sorts of applications can come out of this. Price matching, automatic scraping of wine names, Greasemonkey plugin to automatically retrieve review scores for wines displayed on a page…

API docs
Coverage on TechCrunch

A seminar, wine tasting, and cheese tasting with proceeds to benefit a cause near-and-dear, Maryland direct wine shipping. More info.

October 8 – 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Drink Local: MD & VA Wine Seminar and Tasting ($49)
Whittemore House (WNDC) – Metro: Dupont Circle
1526 New Hampshire Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20036

Edit: Oops, that was today. Post scheduling fail.

Boordy Vineyards Sundays in October Oct 11, 18, 25, 1pm

Bands, food, wine, and (hopefully) nice Maryland fall weather. Always a strong play on a nice Sunday afternoon.

Link

Old Town Food and Wine Festival – October 10-11, 11am

Lots of wineries showing up for this one, as well as plenty of seminars to keep you busy.

Looks like a strong lineup as $30 gets you unlimited tastings and into all the seminars.

This wine festival will feature the best of Virginia’s wines. What’s more, the Viking Culinary Stage is packed on Saturday and Sunday with amazing programs. All are included in the price of admission. Oh, did I mention, unlimited wine tastings too!

Website

2009 Federal Hill Wine Festival – October 25, Noon

Take a good look at the poster to the right. The golden sun, the rolling hills, the picture-esque vineyard… you won’t be seeing any of that at the Federal Hill Wine Festival. Our experience was documented last year and was best described as “Slamming champagne in the middle of the street.” It was as if we paid admission simply to avoid arrest.

A fun time, recommended if you’re in the area but only if you’re down to pay $25 for 12 sampling tickets AND pay extra for the premium samples that will be gone by 2pm. Website, directions, etc…

Domaine Du Pegau is located in the Southern Rhone. Unlike their counterparts in the Northern Rhone, who are permitted only to grow Syrah, Southern Rhone vinters can use any combination of thirteen grapes. Like many in the South, Pegau uses this latitude to make blends of considerable power and intensity.

My note…

Decanted for one hour. Glassy ruby red, a little brickish as it came out of the bottle. Aromas of some sort of floral arrangement, anise, lots of menthol. On the palette was chocolate, tobacco, ash, and plenty more alcohol. Berry fruit in the back, blackberry and cherry. Solid, drying tannins on the finish, decent length. Overall, not bad for what is considered to be an off vintage of this wine.

The wine goes for $20-$30, a considerable discount over the $100+ that you’ll be charged for a 2003 vintage. If you can find it, it is a nice introduction to wines of the Southern Rhone.

Running Diary from the 2009 Maryland Wine Festival on Sunday, September 20.

12:45 – Arrive to the festival. It’s already pretty crowded for an event that started at noon. Lines to get in were epic, so noted to come earlier next year. Marylanders for Better Beer and Wine Laws are out in force, getting mailing list signups from people in line.

1:00 – We make camp and I go off to pick up our tasting glasses. On the way back, I try the Elk Run Malbec, a favorite from previous years. Still holds up.

1:10 – Back at camp, The Wife says I should go taste a bit while she tends to everything. She’s hardly surprised to learn that I have already begun

1:30 – The Wife returns from her first tasting excursion with two tasting sheets, one of which simply has NO (underlined twice) written across all the wines. I guess we won’t be taking any of those bottles home.

1:40 – Out on the first tasting swing. I’m all spitting, all the time today. I frequently spit when I’m out tasting. I can taste the wines better, and on the plus side I don’t get buzzed and start writing glowing notes on all the wines I’m tasting. There are hardly any spit buckets at the festival, so I do my best to discreetly spit onto the ground and not hit anyone.

1:45 – Realize a disturbing trend: that wineries are charging $1 for tastes of their premium wines.

1:46 – Pay $1 for a taste of a Nebbiolo from newcomer Mark Cascia Vineyards. It’s my second Nebbiolo from the East Coast (the first was from Breaux Vineyards) and this one wasn’t half bad. Nice color, good little orangish-tinge up around the rim. The problem with Nebbiolo is that wineries seem intent to charge tons of money for it. I realize that Nebbiolo is a money grape that produces some serious Italian wine, but is there something else about it that forces the price up? Do the grapes actually need a credit card inserted into the vines in order to grow?

2:00 – My first spitting accident of the day. A nice woman was moving in behind me just as I turned to spit out my Fiore Chardonnay and catches some shrapnel. Sadly, she’s collateral damage. “Did I get you? I’m so sorry,” I apologize, and she replies with a “Oh just a touch on the ankles.” Nice work, wine blogger. Setting our people back years.

2:09 – Fiore has a pleasing, well-priced lineup as usual. We pick up an ice-cold bottle of Vidal Blanc for $12 to take back to camp and cool off.

2:12 – Man, there are a lot of wineries in Maryland. My Maryland and Virginia Winery Map is hopelessly out of date. Need to get back on that.

2:40 – There are two tasting notes in my notebook from 2:40.

Rose: Not bad
Pinot Noir: Bad

No winery name is attached to the note. Probably for the best. They might stop sending me all those samples that I’m not getting.

2:45 – One of our group proclaims that “[She] paid $25 to get in and will not pay another dollar to taste wines” Somehow, this only hardens my resolve to pay the $1 vig to taste the best that Maryland has to offer. She’s right, it’s audacious to expect someone with a $25 ticket to pay $1 to taste your $30 bottle of wine that is only $30 because you said so. Also, offering your lineup to taste and reserving one wine or two for a premium $1 tasting is one thing, but coming to the festival and charging a $1 for everything in your lineup is another.

3:00 – Black Ankle Vineyards hiked the price on their Crumbling Rock from $40 to $47. What could be the reason? Lower yields? Higher quality? 2005 Bordeaux-style run up of demand? I shell out three dollars for samples of their Leaf Stone Syrah 2007, Crumbling Rock 2006, and Crumbling Rock 2007.

3:05 – Someone asks why Black Ankle puts the year after the wine name instead of before like other wineries. For example:

Everyone else in Maryland: 1999 Chardonnay Reserve

Black Ankle: Chardonnay Reserve 1999

Just a matter of taste, no? I feel like the year going second is more formal, almost statesmanlike. I demand to be called “Gary 1978” for the rest of the day.

3:17 – I tasted Terrapin Station wines at Wine In The Woods last summer. The wine was disappointing then, but the Shiraz isn’t half bad now. They’re still sticking with the box thing in that you can’t buy a bottle of wine from Terrapin Station, only a box that is 1.5 liters in size. It doesn’t bug me at all but I bet the French are pissed to see this coming. A friend buys a box (equal to two bottles) to take home.

3:25 – Pick up a Sweet Tea, pulled pork sandwich, and a cheese plate to nibble on back at camp. Thumbs up for the food offerings at this year’s festival. Can you believe there are people in the world who can’t get Sweet Tea? The UN is meeting this week in New York and I hope they do something about this.

3:30 – Black Ankle’s price hike is explained as they announce the winners of the 2009 Maryland Governor’s Cup. The 2007 Blank Ankle Crumbling Rock wins Best In Show. Have you seen the list for the Governor’s Cup winners? Look how many wines came out winners of something. How does that work? Does every wine receive a medal? Is it like how everyone got a trophy in T-Ball?

3:55 – I spit out what must be my hundredth crappy Chambourcin of the day. Maryland, it’s time to punt on Chambourcin. Pull it up and plant Chardonnay.

4:15 – There were signs all over the place (pictured, right) asking festival goers if they knew that it was a felony to ship wine to Maryland. At one booth, a couple next to me says that they, in fact, did not know that it was a felony to have wine shipped to them in Maryland. Clearly, they don’t read my blog.

4:30 – As we peel through the crowd, the band announces the score of the Ravens game in progress: Ravens – 7, Chargers – 7. Chargers Running Back Darren Sproles already has a touchdown. I’m nowhere near a computer, but I can hear the anguished cries of my fantasy football team just fine.

4:40 – Just in case you were looking for more $40 Maryland wines, Galloping Goose has answered your prayers. I drop another few bucks to get in on the premium tasting action. I’ve spent something like $8 on premium samples today. I am a man determined to taste the best of Maryland.

5:30 – On the walk to the car we pass all the artisans and crafts that we didn’t see throughout the course of the day. Too focused, I guess. Good wine festival, Maryland. The music was awesome from the Blue Moon Big Band. The weather was great. It wasn’t too crowded to the point where you couldn’t get any wine. Looking forward to next year.

Another problem facing owners is that the Arlington crowd has cast aside rail drinks in favor of Patron and Grey Goose. Premium liquors are great sales for restaurants who charge top-dollar for it. The problem is that for every top shelf martini they sell, they need to sell more food to keep the ratio in balance. If they don’t sling more cheeseburgers, they get fined. Good intentions fail.

Rising liquor costs have gotten small bar and restaurant owners to pester the Virgina ABC enough to start a pilot program to re-examine the issue. Washington Business Journal has the story.

To better balance the 45-to-55 food-to-liquor ratio, [Clarendon Grill owner Peter] Pflug and 11 other Virginia restaurant operators have joined ABC’s two-year pilot project to test an alternative way to calculate the ratio for mixed beverage licensees.

It gets better, wait for it…

Rather than comparing the percentage of food sales to mixed-beverage sales, the pilot is based on alcohol volume. Participating licensees can sell $350 of food per one gallon of alcohol bought from ABC. Beer and wine aren’t included in either equation.

Hey, that’s some help. While I doubt that Virginia will pass legislation that will effectively legalize “bars” as the rest of the country knows it, it looks like the grip might come loose just a little. Leaving wine sales out of the food-to-liquor calculation allows an establishment to serve a few glasses of wine to a customer without having to push a chain-restaurant menu full of overpriced Chicken Fingers (I like mine with buffalo sauce). Before you know it, Virginians, you may have a wine bar opening up down the street.

Link to Washington Business Journal article.

The path of the wine collector is littered with cases of remorse and magnums of regret. These missteps pile up in a subterranean warehouse in San Francisco and sit in the friendly confines of perfect storage conditions. Neglect comes from many factors: case purchases that weren’t as good as advertised, mailing list buys “just to keep my spot on the list”, piles of Aussie Shiraz waiting quietly for the boom in prices that will never come. The solution is unclear; the owner is torn. He is paying storage fees on wine, but getting unwanted wine shipped to him is hardly worth the shipping fees that FedEx will gladly charge.

Enter Vinfolio Marketplace. You, dear reader, can now buy this regret at a steep discount. Personally, I like to pair remorse with a Ribeye steak or some cola-braised Lamb Shank.

What is Vinfolio Marketplace? First, some background.

Traditional wine purchasing goes like so

winery -> distributor -> retailer -> you

This works fine, but the price you’re paying has been marked up along the way. Plus, it is hard to find old bottles, rare bottles, and straggler bottles.

The secondary market

wine owner -> stuffy auction house -> random bidding war -> you

This works fine too, if you’re the type that can drop $5,000 on a case at Sotheby’s. I’m not there yet. Plus, you’re at the mercy of what is offered. Looking for that one vintage of Latour to plug up your vertical? You have to scan the catalogs looking for it until one comes up, then you’re competing with everyone else on auction day.

Vinfolio Marketplace

wine owner -> (Vinfolio Inspection) -> you

The path of least resistance is here! At Vinfolio Marketplace, people list their wines for sale. You browse the site and buy those wines. Vinfolio serves as the intermediary of a person to person transaction (the actual legal definitions are, I’m sure, phenomenally complicated). You can search for some rare bottles, some stuff you had five years ago and really liked but can no longer find, or go bargain hunting and try to shore up your cellar with values. Some people haven’t found much success, though, with bids being mostly ignored by would-be sellers.

There are several critical tips that make this easier. Using them will help you score finished sales and better prices on your wines.

Search for wines marked for sale. This may be obvious to you, but it isn’t obvious that “Marketplace” encompasses all wines in the Vinfolio user universe. These wines may not exist, may not truly be for sale, may not be anything. If they’ve been marked for sale, at least you know you’re working with someone who wants to play ball.

Filter/sort on wines with where the seller has specified an asking price. Sellers don’t need to list an asking price, but if they do, it’s a further clue to you about their willingness to sell should you make an offer. Plus, making an offer on a wine without an asking price just feels like a lowball move.

Filter for wines already in Vinfolio storage (Location -> In Vinfolio Storage). Inertia is in your favor. Here’s the workflow for a purchase of a wine from a seller’s personal storage.

Accept bid -> go through personal storage and find the bottle(s) -> rummage around and find a box to ship the wine in -> Pack the wine -> Go to FedEx and ship the wine -> EDIT: See comment thread about shipping costs when selling through the marketplace -> Wait around for Vinfolio to receive and inspect the wine -> Finally get paid.

Lame. Let’s see what happens if the wine is in the owner’s storage account.

Accept bid -> Vinfolio inspection -> Receive payment

Hey! That’s super easy! If you were a seller, which is easier for you? Easier for the seller means cheaper for the buyer. I’m glossing over the nitty-gritty mostly because VInfolio has done a good job of putting up tutorials, blog posts, and FAQs surrounding the Marketplace.

For a few weeks now, I have been taking advantage of the Marketplace and scored some good wines at killer prices. I get to drink some old stuff that isn’t available in wine stores, and the owners get to unload unwanted wines out of their storage account. Winners all around!

I waited to write this blog post lest more buyers enter the pool and drive the market up. But, my buying spree is tapering off, and my readership isn’t yet (ever?) broad enough to create a Tulip craze. Go get dirty in the Marketplace and search for some wines that you may have thought were previously out of your reach. Good luck!

If you’re in sales or marketing, wine industry or not, you’ll probably enjoy this YouTube video posted by MrWineguy101. The automated voices and blocky cartoons just make it funnier. There is some colorful language, so don’t watch if you’re not into that sort of thing. Headphones advised at the office.