Who assumes the risk of corked bottles?

V

VLM

VLM
When buying a wine at retail there has long been a model that the end consumer does not incur the risk of a bottle being flawed.

The consumer sent it back to the retailer, who sent it back to the distributor (or received credit), who sent it back to the importer (or received credit), who received credit from the producer.

This was always the model when I was coming up in retail and the store where I was mostly formed had a policy of accepting all returns. We were a large store and one of the largest buyers for almost all our suppliers, so in many ways they didn't have a choice but to refund or replace bad bottles.

The assumption here is that a cushion for bad bottles is built into the pricing model to hedge against this risk.

A lot of people in the industry don't think that this model is fair.

Are consumers willing to take on that risk? Should they? If they do, what should they expect in return?*

I think we can all agree on the general pricinple that everyone has the right to make a living. So, starting from there how can we apportion risk so that it seems like a more just system?

In a restaurant France it is almost impossible to get someone to admit a bottle is flawed and to replace it, even though wine mark-ups there make the US look positively restrained. That model seems to place all the risk on the consumer.

* Oswaldo, strictly speaking, this is the kind of post that could be seen as a troll, but I propose it with a genuine interest and an open mind.
 
Should the model change to place more risk in the hands of the consumer, that would tip the balance in my mind toward buying only wines sealed with screwcaps, DIAM, Vino-Lok or suchlike. As has been pointed out endlessly, no other industry accepts a failure rate of [insert percentage of choice here]. Any change in the risk apportioned would drastically increase the pressure on producers to move away from cork.

Mark Lipton
 
corked is a very specific defect and has very specific causes. IMHO, not only don't many consumers understand this, many ITB do not either. I had a long argument with a SoCal based ITB person (I think he was a distributor) on another board quite some time ago. Basically, he could not mentally divorce corked from cooked. He kept on about my storage conditions being possibly responsible so he was not (responsible). I marked that discussion up as educational (for me) since it did not seem possible that it would be educational for him.
 
this may not really answer your question but, i return corked bottles rarely and only ones i purchased within a couple of weeks of consuming. i have strong relationships with the retailers i do business with and they give me good discounts and let me drink for free whenever i am in the store. so i figure it all evens out.

the last couple years i have started buying heavily online and don't know protocal for dealing with corked bottles shipped to me. it's such a low percentage i just take the risk.
 
Corked is the easiest case because it starts at the winery, but is essentially a random process. The producer has no idea that the cork is bad.

Other flaws have more obvious answers.

Whoever cooks the wine is responsible.

Bacterial flaws would logically be the responsibility of the producer.
 
Changing the title from "corked" to flawed certainly changes things, since many flaws besides cork taint have much more to do with specific actions on the parts of many of the players in the supply chain. I have mixed feelings about when a bottle is corked, since it is so random it seems unfair to stick anyone with the cost. In the case that a bottle has been mistreated somewhere along the way or the flaw can be attributed to poor cellar procedures, the consumer should not have to bear the cost. This is all rather idealistic, since tracking what went wrong is next to impossible.
 
originally posted by VLM:
The producer has no idea that the cork is bad.
Click to expand...
Yes, but responsible producers screen for taint. The cork producers then sell the rejected corks to other, less careful producers.

Richard Posner would tell you that the cost should be borne by the party who can affect the outcome.

Producers don't feel our pain as much as they should.
 
Some comments:

- I think retailers do themselves a favor by offering returns on corked bottles. Even a 50% return says to the consumer, 'hey, we care about our product'.

- That said, I never even bother to tell internet retailers that their wine was flawed/corked, let alone ask for a refund. It seems too much somehow and they have no way of verifying. However, this has caused me also to be pickier about who I order from: Chambers and Crush for example have given me no or almost no flawed bottles, so I tend to feel more comfortable ordering from them than from certain other NYC stores where my success rate has been lower - even though surely none of my numbers from any of these stores except perhaps CSW are high enough to be remotely statistically meaningful.

- There are some states, such as Michigan, where you can't return alcohol as a matter of law. I don't know if this affects their corked bottle return policies but I suspect it does - if they do it I think they have to do it under the table as it were.
 
First, I have successfully had restaurants in France replace corked bottles the couple of times I have had them. Also domaines and the Caveau in Gigondas (somewhere between a store and a domaine), so I don't know that in France the consumer bears all the risk. And mark-ups near where I stay are about 2-3X ex cave, so hardly more than the US. Paris may be different.

Second, I as a consumer in the US mostly already bear the risk. If I have bought the bottle in the last month or so, from a DC store and I find it corked, I return it, generally without problem. But this is a vanishingly low percentage of wines that I open that turn out to be corked.
 
originally posted by VLM:
Whoever cooks the wine is responsible.
Click to expand...

The problem is transparency - how does one know where in the process was the wine exposed to high temperatures?

But on your question, I could completely see a model where the consumer bears the entire cost of the corked wine, iff the label on the back provides information about risk - in past vintages the percentage of corked wines from this producer has been between 15 and 20. In order to correctly price risk you need to know what the risk actually is.
 
originally posted by VLM:
* Oswaldo, strictly speaking, this is the kind of post that could be seen as a troll, but I propose it with a genuine interest and an open mind.
Click to expand...

Gotcha. I basically understand it to mean "provocation." "Troll" was the only verb I could think of to replace "toll" from the original poem, and since you have this presently unwarranted but historically attributed reputation for ferocity, the homage came under the rubric of poetic licence. Sigh, at the end of the day, newbs just wanna have fun (even if they are intent on destroying everyone's else's Morgon drinking pleasure, out of sheer spite).
 
The name on the bottle's label.
From the point of view of the winemaker, it is a difficult problem. But if I choose VLM cork Co. and I get bad corks, I won't choose them again (unless the make it right).
As a consumer, I would expect the same reaction; if the guy whose name is on the label won't make it right, I won't choose his wine again.
Best, Jim
 
I would of course try to get a replacement wine in a restaurant if a bottle is corked, but I haven't tried to do the same with a bottle bought at retail in a decade.

Do retail stores really get credits for returned bottles from the tier above them in the distribution chain? Does that vary by state and distribution model?
 
originally posted by Cristian Dezso:

But on your question, I could completely see a model where the consumer bears the entire cost of the corked wine, iff the label on the back provides information about risk - in past vintages the percentage of corked wines from this producer has been between 15 and 20. In order to correctly price risk you need to know what the risk actually is.
Click to expand...
What a nightmare. Can you see that on the back of the bottle it says 1/20 bottles is corked and the customer comes back claiming fraud because he or she got two in a row or two out of six?
 
I agree with SFJoe here: the problem with the current model is that the producers are not punished directly and visibly enough. Well, "punished" is a strong word. But it's not the retailer's/restaurant's/distributor's/importer's* fault that a closure was employed that ruined the wine. I strongly believe that if producers had been bearing this cost -- directly -- all this time, we'd have seen attempted solutions from the cork producers a lot sooner, because the producers (as the market for corks) could have exerted direct pressure of their own. The same would hold were we talking about synthetics and their quick seal failure, or screwcaps and the oxtrans/reduction problems with certain liners. While the burden is borne primarily by the customer/retailer/restaurant/(maybe distributor), as it is now, inertia will dominate.

* Asterisk because some importers do insist on one closure or another for their market.
 
Precisely because transparency of cooked wines is a practical non-starter and because of the other practical headaches involved, I think it might be that the best way to do it is for the consumer to take all the risk.

In exchange for taking all the risk, I think we should receive a 5-10% decrease in price from everyone in the chain down to the retailer.

I think a good move for the restaurant would be to split the difference with the consumer.

That would add up to substantial savings for the consumer and alleviate headaches for everyone upstream.
 
originally posted by VLM:
Other flaws
Corked is the easiest case because it starts at the winery, but is essentially a random process. The producer has no idea that the cork is bad.

Other flaws have more obvious answers.

Whoever cooks the wine is responsible.

Bacterial flaws would logically be the responsibility of the producer.
Click to expand...
Of course not all corked wine comes from the cork but on the basis that most undoubtedly does IMO the producer still has a key responsibility for a. choosing the supplier and b. putting the cork in the bottle.

And c. if he has a significant problem [I'm assuming that the people he supplies will let him know and even expect reimbursement] there are things [tests and ultimately supplier changes] he could do to mitigate the problem.

However even though I think that the producer is the key actor re corked wine IMO the retailer should accept a corked wine means he sold a defective product and his business model should allow for returns.
However aren't there certain US State rules that prevent the return of an opened bottle?

In the UK the problem is covered under a retailer's legal obligation to supply a product 'fit for purpose'. Of course the fact that most wine drinkers cannot identify a 'corked' fault as such means that most are not returned and even when someone who can does complain there is always the question of proof - and then one is into good and poor retailers. The good ones here will replace or credit a corked bottle.

As you say other flaws have a natural 'location' too.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top