From a comment on Tom Wark’s most recent post ($50,000,000).
The last thing this world needs is a presumptuous prick like you telling everyone else that a system thats worked great for 70 years is corrupt.
You think you’ve got this figured out don’t you. If there weren’t any wholesalers you and your faggy California vintners would be up shit creeke.
You think drinkers and your precious SWRA will win against distributors then think again. You don’t stand a chance and it’s not cause of few mllion doallars. Its because no one wants to buy 100 dollar bottles of wine ovr the Internet. And it’s because states don’t want kids ordering booze.
Why don’t you take your shitty blog, your shitty SWRA and leave the work to the big boys.
Aren’t you glad these guys are protecting us from the scourge of underage drinking?
I take particular umbrage with this quote:
If there weren’t any wholesalers you and your faggy California vintners would be up shit creeke.
Silly wholesalers. Everybody and their mamma knows Shit Creek isn’t spelled with an “e”. But I understand, you’ve got other things on your mind. Like bribery. And extortion.
But never mind all that. You stay classy Wholesalers!
HI Josh, I also loved the use of the extra “e” in “creeke.” As in, Ye Olde Shit Creek. The ranting lunatic who posted that comment on Tom’s site is really showing WSWA’s true colors–and it ain’t pretty.
Josh,
It comes as no surprise to me that this kind of response would be elicited over the internet. Have you read the comments threads on digg.com? What is amazing to me is that people, in all arguments, use the “its worked for XXX years, who are you to say its wrong.” Apartheid, segregation, slavery… need I continue?
I think that as a winery, if you are good enough at attracting customers to get people to buy direct, you deserve it. It’s not easy for a small winery to do it, I’m sure.
Anyway, thanks for bringing this to our attention.
I have a bottle of our wine for you to try; I still want to come up to RRV to visit.
Greg
The system has worked for 70 years?
Worked for who? No one except the wholesalers themselves.
It sounds to me like this fellow just got the wife’s Credit Card bills from her Holiday spending rampage and his daughters BMW broke
down because she was late to college and he forgot to teach her how to check the oil. Furthermore, the difference in buying
a $100.00 bottle of wine from the winery direct where you know it was kept in a controlled environment rather than in some distributors
warehouse in south Arizona on a pallet next to the open roll up door facing South where all the $7.00 employees gather in their lawn chairs to bask
in the sun and smoke, is just that! At least I know the winery wants to make sure their product is properly stored and handle so the customer gets
it in good condition. Wow, maybe he should take care of the leak in his cellar and hide the key or better yet implement a program
on his computer to prevent his 15 year old boy from ordering that 1990 Chateau Margaux from XXX liquor barn. Underage drinking starts with you, you set
the example and teach them. Wake up Jack Ass, you and your buddies are just money grubbing fools who keep buying up each other so you can have a monopoly.
“All hail the grape” Share the wealth!!
haha, beautifully put! What a jerk.
The only point made here is that grammar needs to be taught. Somewhere. Anywhere?!
There is a saying that “a drunk man’s words are a sober man’s thoughts.” In this case it shows that a drunk man’s insane is a sober man’s lobbyist.
Also, I would like to point out that his affable fella’ has his dates wrong. Like many folk dealing with retardation he thinks that it is closer to 2000 than 2010. Alas, he is wrong, and the prohibition inspired system we have is now closer to 80 years old (one can find this in Thomas Pinney’s excellent book on the American wine industry, or, perhaps through a look at Wikipedia (gasp!)).
Like many things that are old and/or dead, such as Senator Byrd, the Model T, and the Spears family sense of propriety (it must have died at least a few generations ago), the current “system” of wine distribution is a terrible relic barely kept in check by a poorly woven morass of legal state-federal clusterfucking.
God forbid that people actually interact with the folks making the wine. There is something nice as a winemaker knowing that I could put something into a package, send it off knowing how it is to be shipped, and know that the product consumed on the other end of the line is how I intended it to be and that, hopefully, is how someone will enjoy it. If they ordered from the winery, they know exactly where to go if they did or did not enjoy it. Plus, both the price and profit has the potential to be better for the consumer and the winemaker.