Let me start this off on a POSITIVE note, so that all my blogs don’t seem like insane industry rants. I love working in the wine business. It truly is so much fun…and the people are great. I am proud to be part of a family business and I love drinking the fruits of our labors.

With that said, there are a number of things in this business that just kill me. To name a few:

-People that come to our winery for a picnic and bring a bottle of wine—from another winery. And then get angry at us when we tell them that they have to drink our wine at our winery. Ummm, not a public park people.

-The fact that I am going to Boston for an event at Harvard and I can’t ship my wine directly to the hotel or where I am speaking. It is illegal to ship wine into Massachusetts (for now, it will soon be legal, thanks to www.freethegrapes.org).  So I have to ship it to myself in New Hampshire (fortunately my relatives live there) and then schlep it down to Boston.

-TCA and corked wine. I want to go to screw cap with our Hummingbird Series reds for that exact reason. But the market won’t really accept it yet (at least that’s what the distributors advise us…and if a distributor doesn’t like something about a product then it will not sell.)

-The 100 people that have emailed, me Facebooked me, Twittered me, texted me or told me in person that they saw one of our wines in Trader Joe’s for $4.99. More on this….

I freaking love Trader Joe’s. I go there almost once a week for a lot of staples in my house. They have these simmer sauces that I use in my crock pot with lamb and chicken. Their tri tips are awesome, cheese, yogurts and cereal. My kids love the Turkey meatballs and frozen brown rice—genius for a busy working mom that doesn’t have 45 minutes to make rice on the stove after work.

And I now love them even more because they bought over 3K cases of one of our wines. The wine they purchased was one of our most popular in restaurants around the country, especially by the glass. But the economy went to crap 18 months ago. And the restaurant business was hit hard. Off by about 40-50% I hear. Well, guess what, our sales in for the now a Trader Joe’s “deal of the century” wine were off by about 50% as well. Leaving me with….you guessed it….3,000 cases when it was time to move to the next vintage.

Let me tell you something about wine that doesn’t sell. It has to be stored. And it costs money to store it. And then it costs more money to store the next vintage that is being held up because sales of the previous vintage are sluggish. 

Despite making a huge sale and potentially getting a new customer in Trader Joe’s, the $4.99 price absolutely kills me to see. That wine is a deal at $18, which is what we retail it for here at the winery (although it’s gone now, since TJ’s took the rest of it).  As a consumer, it makes me feel really good about shopping at Trader Joe’s…because they find amazing deals for their customers. But it hurts me as a brand manager because people see that price, they get excited and stock up. And remember that price. But then they see our wines again for the regular, higher price—well, their perception has changed.

This is the way things are right now. Closeouts in retail locations are the nature of the wine industry these days. It’s tough out there people. It’s not something I would choose to do…sell our wine at a discount to move inventory. The wine is good and if the economy was normal, no problem, business as usual. But we have to keep the lights on here at the winery, pay the staff and prune the vines. All of that costs money. Money that I got from Trader Joes for buying 3,000 cases.

So, the moral to this story. If you are my friend and have seen our wine for $4.99 at Trader Joe’s (only in California), don’t mention it to me…but buy a TON of it. If you are not my friend  and you are in California, buy it anyways, cause it’s a screaming deal. And get some of the Marsala simmer sauces with those turkey meatballs to go with it.