Sunday, September 28, 2008

You can buy our wine...



...but YOU can't.Yesterday I took a ride out to the Hamptons (South Fork) to watch my daughter run a race to benefit Leukemia research. Since opportunity seemed to be knocking, on the way back to the city I stopped at _______ Estates (I won't name names) to sample, and perhaps purchase some of their wine. I asked for a quick rundown of their line and heard a disturbing bit of information: unless you're a club member, only a limited selection of wines is available for purchase. So I promptly did an about face, drove a little further down the road, and stopped at Duck Walk Vineyards where I discovered a beautiful tasting room as well as a full selection of wines to choose from...the vintners were friendly and graciously accommodating, and I was able to find a nice 06 Cabernet. I don't know about you, but I believe this kind of exclusionary marketing can only hurt the wine business, especially in this economy. What do you think?

Top photo: Grapes on the vine from Duck Walk Vineyards, bottom photo: Duck Walk Vineyards

2008 ©copyright Dave Trieger

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The only wines that you can't buy at Wolffer are those limited-production Anniversary wines. You can still buy everything else.

Almost every winery has "wine club-only" wines. It's really not that big a deal.

Dave Trieger said...

I don't know about every winery, but I just called them and Duck Walk makes ALL their wines available to ANYONE.

To me that's a big deal.