One of the most asked questions by consumers within the wine industry has to do with wine selection. What kind of wine would I like? Is this particular wine good? What sort of price range should I be looking for to find a good wine? Is it ok to buy from online wine sites?
Choosing wines that are right for you is particularly personal. But how would I know what’s good? There are many options to taste wines before buying them. Many liquor stores have the option of trying wines within the store itself. Wine companies sometimes provide these stores with promotional stock to help sell their products.
This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t indulge in their free offerings, by all means, indulge. Most of the time, these promotional tastings are also accompanied with a sale of the product so good value can also be found.
A great way to try different wines and varieties is by visiting wineries. A “tasting fee†is beginning to be introduced among wineries, but the fee is small and is generally waived if purchases are made. There are many different options to visit wineries. You can either plan a trip yourself, or email or ring a winery in the particular region you wish to visit to help to plan your trip. You can also gather information from the internet to help you plan a trip.
Some of the best information you can obtain is from the wineries themselves as they are knowledgeable about wineries in their region. Winery tours run by companies is another great option if you don’t know a particular area or aren’t confident in planning a trip yourself. In the larger winery regions, you should be able to find a company that does this fairly easily.
There’s two great ways to try lots of different wines from different wineries all in the one location. Joining a local wine club is a good start. Most wine clubs have regular wine tastings and some are even sponsored so the cost can be minimal.
Online wine websites are great if you know what you are buying. Otherwise, read what they have to say. Many online wine websites have mixed dozens which can be purchased which will give you knowledge of certain regions and/or certain types of wine.
At the end of the day, its a personal choice. Somebody can’t tell you what you should like, but rather what you might like.
Wine can be a great shared experience, but above all else, an enjoyable personal experience.
With the increase in online shopping stores over the past ten years, so to has the online wine industry, albeit somewhat slower than some other industries. Skepticism behind buying wine from unknown sources has been the main driver behind the slow uptake of online stores.
Over time, there has been more people enter the market with better ideas and better ways to sell wine over the internet. The level and quality of wine being sold has improved as business models have improved. This is not to say that there still aren’t some bad ways to buy wine over the internet. One of the most dubious ways to buy wine over the net is through online wine auctions houses. Many great deals can be garnered by buying through the auction houses with many wineries and wine companies dumping stock that they cannot sell at bottomed out prices. There is nothing wrong with deals like this, although most of the wines are “cleanskins” (no official label) and are usually only labelled by type and wine region.
Cleanskins are always fraught with danger as you don’t know exactly what you’re getting, especially if you are unable to try them first. The varietal of wine matched with the region may seem like a great match and seen as a generally safe option, but this is not always the case. Why do you think that the wineries or companies are dumping this stock off to auction houses in the first place?”
The next thing to be aware of is how the wines have previously been stored. I have seen many examples of people buying a well known wine at a great value price to later find that most of the bottles are off because they have not been stored correctly. Its quite easy to see a bargain basement price for a $50 a bottle six pack of wine and buying it, only to find its been kept in somebody’s back shed during summer and all the wine is off.
“Affiliate” sites are also starting to creep into the online wine market. These wine stores look like a normal wine store stocking almost any wine you can think of. The bottom line is these stores don’t stock any wine at all. These sites basically take your order, pass them on to the wineries, wash their hands of it and take a percentage commission.
The easiest way to pick these types of web sites is by checking their Shipping/Delivery Information pages. Within these pages, that most will ask you to check the shipping costs either from the winery themselves or a special shipping page which shows the costs of delivery per winery. You are better off finding the wine you like and ordering it directly from the winery themselves as the service levels will be no different and you are supporting the winery directly. If they are smaller wineries, they will appreciate your patronage more so directly than paying an affiliate a commission.
During the last decade, the internet has pretty much become a part of our day to day lives.. We used to call people from our only phone in the house to catch up on recent events and news. Paper mail was used to send cards to wish people Happy Birthday or Merry Christmas. The local library used to be used as our reference point for studying and a place to go to borrow books to read up on topics we were interested in.
Shopping was all done on foot by physically walking into stores and browsing products, trying clothes on to see if they fit, taken the goods to the register to purchase and generally paying with cash. Some of things still remain part of our lives, but the internet has overwhelmed the ways we once used to do many day to day things. Could you now live without email for more than a week or two (and no, being on vacation doesn’t count!)?
One of the main things the Internet has bought us in online shopping, which allows us to purchase products while sitting in the comfort of our own homes. The wine industry is no different in this world of online shopping, although it has been a little slower to catch on than a lot of other industries.
The main difference between the wine industry and most other industries is the sheer volume of product choice. Walk in to a bottle shop and about 50% or more of the floor space is taken up by wine, such is the product range. This adds a certain complexity to the online wine world.
With this in mind, there are many choices of different online wine stores. There are literally hundreds of stores offering an almost exclusive range of wine, and some at a very exclusive price. So how do you know which stores are better than others?
Therein lies the ultimate question and one which could be asked of any industry on the internet. As with any online store, security is the most important thing. The most important part of any online store is what’s referred to as the digital certificate. This certificate encrypts (or digitally jumbles up) any information that is sent between the person buying and the store so that hackers cannot read the important information as its being sent across the internet.
How can you tell if an online wine store has a digital certificate? At the time of purchase (especially when you are entering credit card details), the web site address should change from http:// to https://. If you get to any screen on the internet that is asking for credit card details and the web site address doesn’t start with https://, do not buy from that store. Refuse to buy from that store as they are putting your private information at risk. It’s not that the store can’t be trusted, its other people on the net that take advantage of such stores that can’t be.
If you stick to that one golden rule in relation to security on the internet, you will be well on your way to enjoying your shopping experience with online wine stores without the worry of somebody “looking over your shoulder”.
