The Trinity of Wine Sale

Have you ever wondered why your local wine shop or liquor store has some wines in stock, but not others? Why at one place they seem to lean toward big robust reds, and at a place down the street they have a lot of sweet whites?

Well, the wine doesn’t just magically show up fully pressed, aged, and ready to drink at their doorstep! (Although… dream world, right?)

It takes a three-tiered system to get your wine from an international wine region all the way to that corner store in the midwest. All the folks in this system play important roles, and they’re doing it well if you never have to pay attention to them.

BUT, sneaky tip: if you do pay attention, your wine buying life might just get a little bit easier!

The Main Players

Excluding the consumer and winery itself, this is a three-person play, and the actors are as follows: the importer, the distributor, and the retailer.

This system was defined right after the repeal of prohibition in the U.S., in 1933. Individual states were put in charge of alcohol distribution, and most of them outlawed the ownership of the entire chain by a sole entity.

This makes it somewhat confusing, because in some states importers can be their own distributors, but in most states they can’t be.

For the sake of education, let’s look at each of the three tiers separately.

The Importer

This is by far the most interesting line in the chain to me, and the backbone of that sneaky tip from above.

Wine importers are specialists who work with wineries and governments of another country to be able to sell that wine in their own country. Ex. A New York-based wine importer works directly with a small winery in France - plus the French and American Governments - to import bottles of Champagne into the U.S for distribution and consumption.

When I say they work directly with the wineries, I really mean they do the leg work. Importers often travel around different wine regions, tasting wine and building relationships face-to-face with viticulturists and enologists. Sounds like just a horrible job, huh?

And this is the interesting bit: importers are the folks who pick and choose which wines to bring into the U.S., based on their tastes and relationships. Kermit Lynch, a famous wine importer and author, says he only ever sells wines he himself has “tasted or approved.” This means every wine you purchase has first been tasted and chosen, not only be the winemaker, but then also by an importer. You are trusting your palate to the palate of a person you don’t know, and probably didn’t know existed until now!

What’s really cool is that an importer’s name is almost always on the wine label. If you particularly like a bottle of wine, you can take note of who imported it, because that person liked it enough too to do the work to import it into the U.S.

Lynch put it perfectly when he said, “The name of the importer, in a lot of cases, is a reflection of that person’s palate.” So if you keep track of the importers on bottles you like, you could start seeing a trend. Your palate might match up with a particular importer’s palate. Then the next time you’re looking for a bottle of wine and not sure what to get, just buy by importer!

The Distributor

A distributor walks into a bar…

Definitely a set up for a joke somewhere in there, but to be accurate we’d have to say “a distributor walks into a local bar”. Due to those guidelines set up in 1933, liquor laws vary and work at the state level, and thus distributors do as well.

So while importers are the country-to-country wine connection, distributors are the country-to-state connection. They purchase wine from importers and then sell directly to restaurants and bars.

What’s important to note here is that the distributors don’t necessarily have a relationship directly with the wineries and don’t choose which wines to import from them. The distributors can choose which importer to work with, so if one importer’s tastes do not match with what the distributor thinks will sell, then they probably won’t choose to purchase from them.

What makes this particularly interesting to me, is that if a particular bottle opened at a restaurant turns out to be “corked” (i.e. the wine has gone bad) it’s the distributor that takes the hit. The restaurant can return corked bottles for a full or percentage-based refund, and it’s the distributor - not the importer or winery - that takes this financial hit.

Final fun fact here: you can google your state’s wine/beer/spirit distributors and read up on them, if you’d like. Websites like Beverage Trade Network keep track of all current distributors in each states.

The Retailer

This one is the easiest to understand, since this is the tier we as consumers interact with on a daily/weekly/monthly basis.

This is the small wine shop on Main Street, the local bar on the corner, or the upscale new restaurant that just opened downtown. This is where you as the consumer can say “I’ll have a glass of the house red, please.”

Retailers can decide which distributors to work with, and what products from those distributors they actually want to serve. In most states however, they can’t work directly with the importers to get a special bottle of so-and-so, or interact directly with the international winery to get special prices.

The tiered system was put in place so no monopolies or price-jacking could take place… and so the states and federal government could tax the sale at each stage of the process, of course.

Weekly Adventure

This week’s task is to pay attention! Next time you open a new bottle of wine, check the label and take note of who the importer is. Then decide whether or not you liked the wine. If you did, maybe right that importers name down and look for another bottle from them, to see if you tastes continue to align.

Cheers,

Molly

References

https://professionaldrinking.com/2017/07/13/how-does-the-wine-distribution-system-work/

https://www.winemag.com/2021/12/14/wine-importer-guide/

https://viaswine.com/website/faqs/another-frequently-asked-question/

https://beveragetradenetwork.com/en/wisconsin-wine-distributors-407.htm

https://www.connelllawoffices.com/so-you-want-to-be-a-wine-importer-what-should-you-know/