I would love to "overpay" for some of his library releases, and am running low on 1997 Tradition. One thought could be to see if LDM could request preorders from the retailers through the distributors, with each tier taking lower markups since the wines are already "sold" and they won't have the financial burden of sitting on unsold stock. Price them at retail at the level they would be if each tier charged full markups, or with a reasonable premium over that, and more money gets into Pinon's hands without requiring too much sacrifice at any level.
I suspect that many of the LDM retail outlets are similar to Le Caveau in Atlanta, CSW, and Cave Taureau that have strong relationships with their customers and whose customers feel like we have a relationship with producers like Pinon even though we may not have met them, which makes this more feasible than it would be for more commodity brands. I'm willing to pay a premium to help producers I love, particularly when the wines are such great values at their normal pricing, but I'd like to know that the premium is for the producer's benefit. I don't expect the importer, distributor, or retailer to lose money on the deal, but if I'm paying a premium to help the producer, I don't want a huge part of the premium getting stripped off at those levels for full markups either.
