Divorce and Children: Wine Loves ?Transparency? Until it doesn?t:  An Ethical Debate

Friday, August 12, 2011

Wine Loves ?Transparency? Until it doesn?t:  An Ethical Debate

The domestic wine world loves authenticity and transparency – especially consumers. This is a common refrain albeit more ideal than reality.

This point has been underscored for me recently with David Darlington’s new book, An Ideal Wine: One Generation’s Pursuit of Perfection – And Profit – in California. Darlington spends much of the book elucidating the use of technology tools in the wine business. These tools are principally from service providers like Enologix and Vinovation.

While many vintners are quoted (and seemingly forthright) in the book, the reality is that both companies have cloaked client lists and the respective businesses operate on the margins of the industry with precious few of their clients willing to go on record about their use of analytical and corrective wine tools.

Transparent? When it comes to the production side of the business, not so much.

There’s another area where wine isn’t exactly transparent, and that’s on the pricing side of the equation in between distribution and retail.

Wine media members can secure a subscription to the Beverage Media price list magazine in their geography (used as a retail reference) and see monthly wholesale pricing, comparing that pricing to the actual prices on local store shelves, or even restaurants.

Who is gouging who? Who offers legitimate deals? The information is available.

I’ve always had a slight desire to re-publish wholesale pricing, comparing it against actual store pricing, shining a light on a couple of retailers in my town who are less than magnanimous in the alleged “deals” they are offering. Yet, societal mores have precluded me from doing so. I’d probably bear the wrath of enough people to earn a Scarlet Letter. Or, worse, I would violate some Beverage Media terms and conditions that I wasn’t aware of. At the least, I would break an unspoken rule in the gentlemanly sport of business – similar to the unspoken baseball rule that says you shouldn’t break up a double play AND use your cleats as a weapon whilst doing so.

Well, in the Netherlands, an online wine shop lacks the compunction that I possess and for the better. At least I think it’s for the better. Anything that can blunt the criminal blow that is restaurant wine pricing the world over should at least deserve an, “Atta boy.”

Sterwijnen Thuis, a Dutch wine web site, loosely translated as “Home of Star Wine,” has taken wine list selections from the top 60 Dutch restaurants, and they then sell some 350 - 400 of the same labels online for considerably less, listing the name of the restaurant where the wine is featured. In doing so, the spread of margin in between what Sterwijnen Thuis sells the wine for versus the restaurant pricing becomes glaringly obvious.

As you might imagine, not everybody is happy about this, especially the restaurants.

The Dutch Alliance Gastronomique is conferring with restaurateurs and some are talking lawsuit.

Sterwijnen Thuis, reflexively perhaps, indicates that they are simply making publicly available information, well, publicly available. It’s not their fault if they can sell the same wines as a restaurant for much less money.

Ahem.

Unfortunately, in order to follow this story you’ll need to use an auto-translation tool in your browser (I use Google’s Chrome browser), and you can find the story here and here. An English-language blurb can be found here.

I open this up to readers. Is Sterwijnen Thuis within their right to baseline their inventory against the gloss of very reputable restaurants while showing cost savings in the process? Is all fair in love and war?

Or, is this an egregious lack of decorum worthy of brush back pitch to the chin in the top of the inning as recompense?