Originally published on .July 5, 2008
DI = Direct Import.
Normally, a winery will sell a certain amount of wine to an importer who will ship it to the US. The importers sell it to various distributors across the country who then sell it to stores and restaurants and then we sell it to you, the lucky end drinker aka the consumer. Each link in the chain buys a certain amount and hopes they’ll be able to sell it without being stuck with a bunch of unwanted or slow-moving inventory.
Not so with Direct Import. With the DI system, wines are pre-sold. So the chain moves in the opposite direction – I’m given a list of wines and tell my distributor how much I want of what. They place the order with the importer who places it with the winery. So nobody buys any more than they think they’ll sell. If you’re an established shop with a well-developed customer list, you can even pre-sell the wine on your own – just put out a list of what’s available and only buy what your customers have committed too.
Fantastic – you’re only spending money that you know you’ll get back! Limited risk for anyone!
My problem – I’m a new shop, so the I’m still developing my customer list and don’t have the funds to place a bet as to what I’ll actually be able to sell in a few months when the wines arrive. So I can only buy so much.
My real problem – these pre-sell wines typically include a lot of fabulous higher-end stuff which I want to keep and drink myself. And the annual DI lists are the only times they’re available. So pouring over these DI lists, it’s like Christmas for adults. I make out my list which usually includes about 5X more than I can actually buy, whittle it down in a fit of depression, and realize that I can’t actually keep all the bottles to myself.
The list I was going over last night – Terry Theise’s 2008 German wine catalogue. I love German wines, but don’t know as much about this as I should. And Terry’s write-ups make everything sound simply fabulous so I want to buy just everything. And these wines last forever, so I want to buy some for now, for a little later, for a little after that, for much much later, etc etc etc. And that’s just what I want – let alone what I want for the store. To make it even more difficult, Frankly Wines is located not too far away from Chambers Street Wines which is pretty much Mecca for the Riesling-crazed, so absolutely no sense in trying to become Mecca #2 (I guess that would actually be Medina). Bottom line – I’ll be getting a little mini-shipment of goodies come October, and if you’re really nice, you might even convince me to actually sell them.
Anyhow, enough about buying wine…next post will actually be about drinking wine!!