The French discovered the solution to these problems in 1885 and the Americans followed suit in 1901 when they started to make bottles that held 375 ml. of wine and were thus were well suited to those who felt that a standard or full bottle was simply …

I think gift certificates are good to allow the wine geek to go pick his own, but I agree with everyone that Champagne is a good gift. But I am hesitant to give it as I gave my Brother and his new bride a Champagne gift set of Perrier-Jouet Champagne Fleur de Champagne with two painted champagne glasses. Three years later, I was helping them move to their new house and found the bottle unopened stored above the cabinets, close to the air register. I wept inside.

Neal

Just came across your site from your RSS feed. Great site with some excellent ideas.

Special wine gifts are sometimes difficult. In 2004 I went online to order a case of wine to use as gifts for the Christmas Holidays, but unfortunately it appears that the particular vineyard I was interested in has closed.

I do make a habbit of giving a bottle of wine whenever visiting someone’s home. It always makes for a welcome gift.

George

The airlines have over-allocated seats for years, but my seat is guaranteed as long as I arrive before a SPECIFIED time.

So how could they deal with the problem of not selling all their wine? Simply send out 2 sets of offers at the same time. The first set would cover the allocated people; the second set would say “Please lets us know how many you would like in the unlikely event wines become available”. This would have the ADDED advantage of the winery to keep track of interest from people waiting for wine. If needed, tell the first group that if they do not place their order by X date, their allocation will be released to others. This way, I am guaranteed to get the allocation as long as I act within the allocated time. Their way, at no point is the wine truly allocated to me.

Tell me how they can estimate my demand for the wine if I never get the opportunity to even request the wine because it is sold out?

Your point about them selling all the wine is short sighted. The way their system is structured, long term customers are given little consideration. This does not build brand loyalty which may not me an issue now, but get some bad scores and the demand could vanish.

I was trying to make a statement by not buying the wine that I wanted. I do admire their willingness to try to make me happy. However, what happens to all the others that did not take the time to contact them and complain? The point I was trying to make is that their system in inherently flawed and it could easily be fixed at no additional cost to them. I wanted them to recognize that fixing their system was more important to me than the wine. If they are willing to change their system, I have no intention of bypassing the system just because I am pain in the ass complainer.

I admire your willingness to challenge me (in a friendly way), on my opinions. So you follow your own advice, speak your mind!

jay,
i feel your pain. wineries allocating wine on a first come, first serve basis?? and then loosing your allocation! it happens to me as well, what a pain… however, you have to look at the wineries’ side. they are trying to estimate demand and they have a limited supply. ideally they would like to sell through all of their wine with one offering – thereby making their lives easier. if they allocated you 10 bottles (for example) and held those bottles specifically for you, and you decided to only buy 5 of them, they would have to do a secondary offering to sell those additional 5 bottles. based on the same scenario, they could allocate those 5 to some other customer, who could them only buy 3, and then they have a 3rd offering… and so on.

obviously no system is perfect. you can not please all the people all the time…

if you are that upset, and it sounded like you were, it seems your only recourse is to use your wine dollars to buy other juice (yellowtail, anyone?) as you stated in the podcast. however, unfortunately i do not think it will do anything to change the winery’s behavior (and personally i’m not sure that what they did was per se bad/wrong). if the product is good, and the supply is limited, they will sell through the wine whether you buy it or not. the quality of the wine gets to be the only thing that counts.

in the podcast, i believe you questioned whether it was fair for you to complain to the winery. of course! freedom of speech! its protected by one of those old documents… by all means, express yourself.

but now, here is where i find your behavior odd (and i say that with love in my heart). the winery wanted to help you out and get you some wine (which obviously you wanted) and you did not think it was fair to take that wine as it went against their system. forgive me, but that is the system. they allocated you some wine, they sold it, you complained, they offered you a part of your allocation, you said no, i do not feel right taking it now… i do not get it. if you had said, this is jay from graperadio.com and you screwed me out of my allocation, and i want my wine or else i will bad mouth you on my podcast, then i could understand not taking any wine. but if you represented yourself as the rest of us (mere wine geeks), then i’m not really sure what the problem would be accepting the wine they offered. they are a business trying to make a living in an industry that despite its romance, can be very difficult to make money. as a businessman, i would hope that you could see their point…

no judgement… (i think)

btw old barolo makes great gifts to paul….

Leigh

Leigh

Another point: in your discussion of gifts you seemed to break the potential down the giftees into either wine geeks or people who aren’t into wine. How about people who fall somewhere in between, like people who have just started their journey into wine?

I’m loving the show, guys, and my obsession with wine which has just begun is now growing (just ask my poor wife who is now pregnant and can’t join in.)

Jay

I’m subscribed through iTunes on a mac. For some reason, the last show itunes downloades was Yellowtail pt.1. There’s a little exclamation point next to GrapeRadio and it doesn’t appear to even check for updates. I’ve tried unsubscribing and resubscribing and I’m still not getting your updates. Any ideas???

Love the show.
Brian

Jay

I guess I could soak the label off, and print my own to pretend it was Rat-crafted.

alan

Regards

Alvin

Jay

P.S My b-day is this month (hint hint).