Why the Winery Allocation System Feels So Outdated Now

This story is from an installment of The Oeno Files, our weekly insider newsletter to the world of fine wine. Sign up here.

Imagine walking to the hostess stand at a nearly empty restaurant, requesting a table for two, and being asked if you have a reservation. As you look around at all the available tables and inform the hostess that you don’t, she scrolls through her tablet, makes a faint huffing noise, cranes her neck, peers into the practically unoccupied dining room, and then tells you that she may have something in 30 minutes if there is a no-show or cancellation. She takes your cell number and you and your companion reluctantly go to a nearby bar to wait for her call, or, more likely, have a drink and scroll through your phones looking for alternatives in the area.

This has happened to us, and we’re pretty sure that no matter who you are, it has happened to you as well. Since restaurants are not our regular beat, we are not here to delve into solutions to this problem but rather to an analogous situation in the world of wine: allocations and limited availability. It seems that more and more wineries that sell direct to consumer are still using an old-school technique to move bottles, forcing potential clients to sign up to join a list and being informed when a new vintage is ready for shipment. On an almost daily basis we are amazed at how many wine brands, even brand-new ones, employ this archaic tactic. In an attempt to create an aura of scarcity or exclusivity, it may put off potential customers who heard about a wine and simply want to buy a bottle rather than be “alerted when new bottles are in stock” or “notified when club memberships are available.”

We even had this experience in preparation for this article. To give you a little insight into our process, when sample wines are sent for potential inclusion in roundups, we blind-taste them as a group—say a few flights of Brunello di Montalcino or Napa Cabs from the Oakville AVA—and choose the top contenders for inclusion. After evaluating the wine and writing a tasting note based on our impressions, we check and see if the wine is available via an online retailer or the winery website so our readers can buy a bottle. We also receive wines for potential editorial consideration that do not fit neatly into a category we’re currently reviewing, like Ovid 2021 Hexameter from Napa Valley, a luscious Pritchard Hill Cabernet Franc that we tasted among a lineup of Cabernet Francs from around the globe. We were both bowled over by its combination of intensity and elegance and thought it would make a great “Wine of the Week” to run with The Oeno Files newsletter. One click on the “acquire” tab on the Ovid Napa Valley website was all it took to discover that to purchase a bottle one has to first join the list, buy wines from Ovid’s Experiment series, and then wait to become a tenured member before being granted access to Hexameter. For us and our Robb Report readers, that’s a no-go; in this fast-moving digital age there is no reason for us to write about a wine that our readers are unable to purchase on demand.

While we are certain that Ovid has found a large audience—it is, after all, a sister property to the Duncan family’s Silver Oak—this sort of gatekeeping is rampant in the wine world but especially so among high echelon brands in Napa Valley, Sonoma, and even Walla Walla. We have mentioned this before, but wine sales are down and are expected to continue their decline, so barriers to purchase just don’t make sense. According to data released in October by the Wine & Spirits Wholesalers Association (WSWA), wine sales for the 12 months through August 2024 decreased by 8 percent, with wine sales at the $100-plus level (the tier we mainly cover) falling by 8.5 percent. Younger people are drinking less or are consuming other beverages, and it just doesn’t make sense to have the digital equivalent to a night-club bouncer and red velvet rope on the homepage—or very close to it—of a winery website.

We understand that at a certain level, winery owners—especially those making small lots of Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon or red blends from legacy fruit with a superstar winemaker—want to exhibit an air of exclusivity and rarity. We also understand that among a small group of cult wines such as Screaming Eagle, Harlan, Bond, or Hundred Acre, a long-standing reputation, high demand, and limited quantities add up to a situation that requires selling almost all your bottles to existing customers and only adding new ones when older members drop out of the market. After all, the No. 1 spot on Promontory’s club list (along with one case a year for 10 years plus a few large format bottles) was bid up to $600,000 at Auction Napa Valley in 2014. So we get that being on these lists can be a status symbol, too.

But that said, there are a lot of seemingly under-the-radar producers who maintain an air of secrecy about their pricing and sales, as well as requiring a signup or membership to purchase bottles. We’ve seen it with brands that are fresh out of the gate, and while all the elements add up to there being potentially high demand, we think that maybe, just maybe, they would actually sell more wine if there were just a price and a “click here to buy” button rather than a complicated process and a wait list. If we want to buy a bottle—or a case—of wine right now, it’s highly likely that when one of us receives an email or a call in two weeks, or six months, or a year and a half, we may have fulfilled that desire elsewhere and not even want that particular bottle anymore. And as engaged consumers indicate a preference for across-the-board transparency in the businesses they patronize, it seems that maintaining a veil of secrecy and a barrier to entry is a risky proposition. Just sell them the bottle already!

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