EDITORIAL: Exclusivities – pros and cons
Written by: John Dade Thieriot


The reason these contractual agreements exist is so that large companies can control the distribution of specific wines, thereby creating less paperwork for the winery. The estate deals with only one importer per market as opposed to dozens of smaller companies. It is a wonderful arrangement for both parties, but the loser is inevitably the consumer, because the national importer takes a sizeable cut before selling it to a distributor, who in turn sells it to the retailer before the wine finally reaches the poor consumer. No wonder there is such a large difference between the winery’s original release price and the final shelf price, and if a particular importer decides to pad the fluctuating foreign exchange rates, then the final bottle price becomes even more inflated.


It’s really a one way street, with the importers and their exclusivities having the right of way. We at Dee Vine Wines are also importers now, as well as retailers, which makes it real simple – we buy the wine directly from the estate in Europe, convert the currency at a fair and reasonable exchange rate, mark it up (again reasonably) and offer it to our customers. It’s no wonder that our prices on German wines are the most consumer friendly of any outfit in the U.S. – there’s been one markup instead of the usual three or four!


As we have worked to fashion our current book of fine Rieslings, we’ve been accused of trying to break other companies’ exclusivities. In fact, all we’re really trying to do is make certain wines, which are artificially inflated by greedy importers, available to the public at a fair price. A classic example is the Robert Weil estate, whose wines are indeed expensive by comparison with most other Rheingaus, but whose “exclusive importer” was selling a ’98 Kiedricher Gräfenberg Beerenauslese wholesale for $140, while our retail was $100! The bottom line is that we are not interested in exclusivities because they’re against the whole free enterprise system. Besides which, they put a lot of pressure on the importer to guarantee sales every year regardless of whether the wines are up to standard or not. Believe me, no winery is infallible! We will never sell a wine that does not measure up to our high standards.


Please rest assured, dear customer, that at Dee Vine Wines we are looking out for your best interests. The importers claim that we are giving the wineries a bad image and name in America by selling their wines too cheaply, when the fact of the matter is these importers are the ones who are ruining their name by causing the prices to be artificially high. We’re not too cheap. They’re just too expensive. I have yet to see any kind of written contract or agreement, although they’ve been rumored to exist. Exclusivities may work for liquor and beer, but they are inappropriate in the fine wine industry. So as we continue to visit important estates several times yearly, we simply request an allocation, not a monopoly, and never exclusivity. We know that our customer’s best interests are thus served.