This winemaker

I will offer a slightly tortured analogy for our bankster friend from the equities world.

Many of us have been selling wine like convertibles in the '60s and '70s; most of the value derives from the coupon, and there's some poorly understood and quanitifed upside from the optionality. Post-Parker and internet retailing, it's now easier than ever to value the option (even if 'incorrectly'), and as such wine pricing will become increasingly commoditised both within (cf. Comrade Hanes) and across markets (e.g. many people in HK and Singapore now purchase directly from brokers in London, Bordeaux and Paris). The bid-ask, my friend, is narrowing, even for Baudry. So it's either volume or relationships.

We're not going to become a 'flow monster', and I would like to remain independent. Hence we've always looked to merchant banks as examples - hard underwriting, concomitant balance sheet discipline, close selection of and relationships with clients (both institutional and private). It does mean more modest salaries than at a bulge bracket, of course.
 
originally posted by kirk wallace:
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
Provincial FranceOr this picture (via Justin Chearno) from a pizza place in M“con.

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I can imagine that the pizza is very poor, but, also, who cares, with those wines on offer. I do recall a very nice clam pizza in the wilds, about 500m from the beaucastel vineyards with a bottle of reyas, back in the late '90s.
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Ha, I do believe I've been there, actually. We indeed ordered that 05 Rougeard (very fine) and Metras (nice) as well. They were apparently fresh out of the Overnoy, imagine that. I don't think we had pizza though. A bunch of bottles were opened, that kinda obscured my memory of the food but I think it was decent bistro type stuff.
 
Yixin and Marc,

I hear you both.

SMPG seems like the outer limit of the spectrum--vast volumes, universal advertising, and so on.

Overnoy vin jaune would probably be the other end--not even anecdotal volumes, sold quietly out the back door. I speak hypothetically, I've never bought a bottle in the US.

But wine-searcher works on Baudry, too, I suppose.

David and Jamie had best start buying a few state senators.

Separately, of course, the European brokers aren't limiting themselves to Bordeaux anymore. We'll see ever more efficient markets, more disintermediation, and tighter margins to everyone.

So, Yixin, this is what you had in mind when you started your new biz?
 
ooh ooh I can do this too.

Selling SMPG = broking AAPL. Ever shrinking margins, only viable business model is lower cost, greatest economies of scale.

Selling Baudry off a website for lowest cost with an undifferentiated customer service = broking on-the-run investment grade debt. Still some margin, but eventually you'll go the way of the SMPG seller.

Handselling Baudry to someone who came in looking for (insert name of prestige branded wine here) = Selling high quality equity research - people will pay for it for a while, but eventually the internet disintermediates some of that knowledge. You can't go looking through a bunch of old Moody's or ValueLine books for long ideas anymore because I can fire up a financial data provider and find every name trading at less than net current assets globally in ten minutes. Strikes me as viable, but you need to provide some combination of low enough price/customer service/new producers to keep your customer base/volumes from going to internet guy.

Selling Overnoy Vin Jaune or other hard to find rarities and offering an implicit guarantee of quality = broking distressed debt. Should be quite profitable, can't really be disintermediated, but the end market probably isn't very big and your ability to find inventory is difficult and probably a function of personal relationships rather than financial heft. I don't know if you could build a viable bricks and mortar business in a high cost location (AKA NYC) - just doing this given what I suspect volumes would be.

at least that's my impression as a customer and a finance douchebag.
 
So, Slicker, did you mean that wars have started over more serious issues or did you mean they had started over less serious issues? I admit to thinking that those are two different claims. If you are arguing that they are not two different claims, are you also arguing that they are two different claims?

There is, by the way, an article in today's Review section of the NY Times written just for you.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
So, Slicker, ...
There is, by the way, an article in today's Review section of the NY Times written just for you.
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I suspect him of not being a virgin.
 
originally posted by SFJoe:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
So, Slicker, ...
There is, by the way, an article in today's Review section of the NY Times written just for you.
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I suspect him of not being a virgin.
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Well, maybe not that one. Also not the one about how the Catholic Church has gotten better and better every day in every way.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
I admit to thinking that those are two different claims.
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me too. thing is, either of them can be expressed by the same form of words in both instances.

fb.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:


There is, by the way, an article in today's Review section of the NY Times written just for you.
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eh, sticks and stones, what?

r slicker.
 
originally posted by richard slicker:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
I admit to thinking that those are two different claims.
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me too. thing is, either of them can be expressed by the same form of words in both instances.

fb.
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This is alas true with regard to the phrases "could care less" and "couldn't care less." It's probably true that I don't get out enough (or I do get out enough), but I wasn't aware that the semantic loss had extended to "less trivial" and "more trivial." Should it ever extend "more pleasurable" and "less pleasurable" (or not extend to that) please keep me out of the loop--or in the loop, as the case may be.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:

This is alas true with regard to the phrases "could care less" and "couldn't care less." It's probably true that I don't get out enough (or I do get out enough), but I wasn't aware that the semantic loss had extended to "less trivial" and "more trivial." Should it ever extend "more pleasurable" and "less pleasurable" (or not extend to that) please keep me out of the loop--or in the loop, as the case may be.
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semi seriously: i don't think you should fear for "more pleasurable" and "less pleasurable." i think that the problem, as with "couldn't care less," is that trivial is semantically negative (in that more trivial = more less important), and that, cognitively, english speakers struggle with negation (hence, i think, the "too trivial to ignore" canard).

i have sometimes wondered whether speakers of languages that have agreement for negations (ne... pas) do a better job. maybe i'll see if can't get someone to look into it one day.

fb.
 
originally posted by richard slicker:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:

This is alas true with regard to the phrases "could care less" and "couldn't care less." It's probably true that I don't get out enough (or I do get out enough), but I wasn't aware that the semantic loss had extended to "less trivial" and "more trivial." Should it ever extend "more pleasurable" and "less pleasurable" (or not extend to that) please keep me out of the loop--or in the loop, as the case may be.
Click to expand...

semi seriously: i don't think you should fear for "more pleasurable" and "less pleasurable." i think that the problem, as with "couldn't care less," is that trivial is semantically negative (in that more trivial = more less important), and that, cognitively, english speakers struggle with negation (hence, i think, the "too trivial to ignore" canard).

i have sometimes wondered whether speakers of languages that have agreement for negations (ne... pas) do a better job. maybe i'll see if can't get someone to look into it one day.

fb.
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Seriously, an interesting theory. I don't think it justifies the usage, but it does explain it.

On the other hand, to quote Mortimer Adler, in response to the claim that there is no language in which a triple positive forms a negative: "Yeah, yeah, yeah."
 
originally posted by SFJoe:
So, Yixin, this is what you had in mind when you started your new biz?
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I thought it was moving this way. It'll be like Big Bang in London, with all those nice names being bought by brokers. Look, capital is more liquid and commoditised than wine, so the disintermediation is far more drastic, but increasingly there's going to be very little space for sub-scale chains/merchants.

Some specialised broker-dealers will survive (Maison Sichel, Cousin et Compagnie), there'll be a few bulge brackets (Bordeaux Index, perhaps BBR with their new acquisitions), some state champions (LCBO, the Nordic buyers), a few boiler room types (Acker, Christie's), and of course merchant banks. We fully intend to be in that last category - we're incorporated as a partnership and we've had to recapitalise once already (thank you, freight agents!).
 
originally posted by Tom Glasgow:
In PA, the governor seeks to privatize liquor and wine sales. Hopefully this will not lead to a worse selection.
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really? i havent been following this issue lately but i thought the privatization of alcohol sales in PA was never going to happen.
 
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