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Default Opening a Wine Store - any store owners out there to share theexperience?

On Jan 31, 10:42�am, Mark Lipton > wrote:
> Wine For Newbies wrote:
> > My main idea is to allow customers to taste every single wine
> > available at the store. I do believe not tasting the wine keeps people
> > from buying whatever they don't know.
> > Thanks for the tip.

>
> Andre,
> � � I am not a retailer, but as a consumer I can tell you that you'd
> have to invest in a large-scale wine preservation system to do what you
> want. �It makes no sense to taste all your wines if they are going to
> oxidize quickly and not show well after a day or two (and too expensive
> to open up a new bottle of each wine every day). �I like the idea,
> though. �I've been to several retailers that have "stations" that
> dispense wine scattered throughout the sto you purchase a card that
> then can be placed in the station to dispense a small pour of wine into
> your glass. �It's a very flexible system, but rather impersonal.
>
> Mark Lipton
>
> --
> alt.food.wine FAQ: �http://winefaq.hostexcellence.com


Good point Mark. Additionally if you don't charge for the tasting you
will be increasing an already burdensome overhead. I think that these
plans always sound good on paper but when it's your capital at risk it
gets harder and harder to justify the expense of opening even $25
bottles just for the casual taster. The reality is that high end wine
sales have been relegated to the few old time retailers around the
country with the track record, cash flow and sales to garner a supply
of high end wines since most of them are now extremely allocated and
come with very large strings attatched to boatloads of plonk. The
business model for many of the US winemakers is to only allow
distribution to restaurants forcing the consumer to purchase wines
directly from the winery. The harsh reality is that wine is a
comodity no different from widgets, gadgets or any other consumer
product and when you stop thinking about it as such and start getting
esoteric and artsy about it, you will probably end up very unhappy
(and possibly broke) with the wine business. It's about volume and
velocity and relationships and those are all hard things to control at
times.