Talking of wine clubs, more and more wineries are either establishing their own or vamping up their mailing list and internet options.
For a start, if you’re a two thousand case small winery and you end up with four hundred club members who take a pre-ordered dozen bottles a year that’s 20% of your production out the door without much trouble with every chance individual customers will reorder things they like.
Under those circumstances, of course, the consumer’s usually paying RRP minus a club discount which may or may not include free freight or at least a substantial subsidy and those sales would go into the winery’s forward planning.
Another avenue medium-scale operations are turning to is, of course, the internet, and anyone who visits their favourite winery’s website would be well advised to make sure they’re signed up for whatever email updates the establishment offers.
Two examples:
At the end of 2006 we visited Tahbilk and, in the course of tasting whatever was on offer (and there’s a substantial range) discovered that their wine club offers freight-free delivery along the eastern seaboard and South Oz and signed up.
Now, admittedly, we signed up for the snail mail newsletter, so it’s costing Tahbilk to send the monthly mag out, but the first issue revealed the existence of the wine club Everyday Drinking label, with the result that over the past two and a bit years there haven’t been too many occasions when we’ve been without something sourced from that range.
At $59.40 freight free for a dozen of the 2004 Everyday Drinking Cabernets you can probably see why Hughesy doesn’t buy many cleanskins. Need half a bottle of red for a hearty winter casserole? No prizes for guessing where I’ll be heading, because the rest of the bottle will be quite pleasant quaffing while the broth’s bubbling away.
When I went to reorder for about the twelfth time a week and a half ago I noted a no label clean skin 2008 Classic Dry White on special for $45. They’re pretty quick when it comes to deliveries as well, and when the cartons arrived on Tuesday afternoon the envelope with the credit card chit also contained a slip advising of a Museum Release special offer - 1994 Cabernet Sauvignon $210/dozen.
I haven’t ordered a dozen yet.
I was reminded of the benefit of signing up for the email version of a winery’s newsletter earlier this week when my in-box contained an update from Jim Barry Wines in Clare.
The price on the Watervale Riesling ($100/dozen) wasn’t as good as the Boxing Day Sale price ($84) but there’s none of that left. They only had seventy cases in stock and I suspect I’d find I’m too late if I were to call. They’ve still got the 2004 Lodge Hill Shiraz at a tenner a bottle for a wine where the RRP would be much closer to twenty.
Those are only two examples of the value on offer if you’re looking for something more up market than a cleanskin, and I’m sure to be expounding further in future entries.
