DouxVin’s Promise—P2R2: Provenance, Price, Reputation and Reliability.

• Provenance is paramount. Knowing specifically where your wines came from protects you from fraud—a big issue in the high-end wine market (read this Forbes article by Maureen Downey, the world’s leading expert on fake wines). Poor transportation and/or storage is also a major issue as the volume of wine moving across oceans and continents is not always maintained in optimal conditions and often exposed to searing heat or freezing cold in shipping containers, delivery trucks, on loading docks or within poor storage facilities at retailers or collectors. 

• Price is material. Obviously the cost of wine is an important factor. None of us wants to pay more than we have to for anything. With cost transparency through internet pricing, it seems there is always a lower price. However, many retailers advertising wines at what seem to be too-low-to-believe prices, are just that. Often they have never bought the wine, don’t plan to and offer alternatives when you discover they’re “out of stock” or offer refunds after using your money as “float”. 

• Reputation is everything. Do you trust the company, from which you are about to order a case of Burgundy or Brunello for, potentially, thousands of dollars? Do you know where to find them when your wine doesn’t show up?

• Reliability is the best predictor. Do you know from whom you’re buying? Have they delivered on past orders, especially rare and hard to find wines, or those that are highly allocated with sometimes only a handful of cases available?