Page 154 - WINE DINE AND TRAVEL SUMMER 2019 PORTUGAL

From there, the California wine industry line. The offers are compelling (and sometimes
grew steadily in reputation and volume. Only a grossly over-written). For validity, the pitches
little dribbled through the import channels, often include great tasting notes, ratings by
and we always questioned the quality and mar- critics, showing how much the wine has been
keting integrity of producers from Spain, discounted versus the winery and other web
France, and Italy. Rightfully so. In one scandal sources, free shipping (based on the order
in Italy, authorities seized thousands of bar- size), and an urgent call to buy before the lim-
rels that contained alcoholic liquid called ited supply is gone.
‘wine’ that had no grape juice in it at all. In Each DTC site has its favorite array of
France, five wine professionals were found brands and wineries. Some have access to bet-
guilty of running an elaborate multimillion- ter values from certain countries, such as Italy
dollar fraud involved trucking hundreds of and France. Others succeed in finding limited
thousands of cases of cheap Spanish bulk wine bottlings from quality producers. On a typical
north to France, changing the official paper-
work to reflect a French origin, and bottling it
and selling it as more valuable Bordeaux ap-
pellations, including Margaux and Médoc.
With increased regulatory scrutiny world-
wide and online whistle-blowers poised to go
viral with any discovery of miscreants or
fraud, we can be more trusting in our search
for great values. The following covers my fa-
vorite sources and ones I encourage you to ex-
plore.
I like to start in person with different
Costco warehouses in my region. Their buyers
find exceptional deals as distributors move to
clear inventories (e.g., a respected California
Cabernet marked down from $40 to $25). Gro-
cery store chains are another excellent source.
For broader explorations, I searched through
the online inventories of the big chains in my
region (Total Wine, BevMo, Wine.com), which
offer free or discounted delivery. To expand
your horizons and enjoy sorting through many
daily offers, subscribe to newsletters and feeds
from online direct-to-consumer (DTC) mer-
chants.
The latter are sometimes called Flash Sale
sites. They issue hot offers more than once
daily, promoting their wines at discount
prices. The sales can be driven by a winery or a
distributor seeking to unload inventory when
new wines are starting to enter the sales pipe-

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