Welcome to the Daily Kos Wine Lovers Group. I'd like to share some great wine resources with you.
The first, of course, is the best wine magazine anywhere, Palate Press: The online wine magazine. It has great wine stories, international writers, and daily wine reviews. Every weekend there is a Palate Press Wine of the Week poll for you, too. Oh, and did I mention that I'm the publisher?
But that's not really what I wanted to tell you about. Are you familiar with flash sales? These are sites that have "buy it until it's gone" sales, then they put up another bottle. With the economy down, and absolute OCEANS of great wine going unsold, the bargains are astounding. Take the leap and I'll share some with you. If you know of others, add them in the comments.
Flash sites exist because wineries are sitting on case after case of wine, and they need to get rid of last year's vintage to sell this years on the retail market. The best example is the 2006-2008 Bordeaux wines. The Bordelais kept the 2006 wines at the 2005 prices, even the '05 was truly a vintage of the century. Now the '09s are clocking in at scores just as good, and they are practically giving away the older stuff before the '09 is released, scared older vintages will drag prices down.
Okay, so here are some sites.
Wines 'Til Sold Out - Sign up for the email. The average mark-down is over 60%, and wines range from $12 wines for $5 to $300 wines for $75. I will let you in on one secret, though. The in-house reviewer, Johnathan Newman, "(JN)" in the tasting notes, does QPR (quality-to-price-ratio) scoring, meaning something that would be 85 points at $50 might be 95 points at $10. It's a bullshit way of scoring, and given that they have low prices, even the worst plonk gets a 90.
The Wine Spies. Their bargains aren't quite as good, but they offer some pretty good wine. They have a "spy" gimmick that gets a bit tiresome. They aren't discovering anything. They're just clearing out wine for customers. Ignore their reviews. Check the wine out elsewhere. If there is a review in Palate Press , you can rely on it. It is one of the few sites that runs negative reviews. If there's nothing there, try the group-knowledge of Cellar Tracker.
Benchmark Wine Group. This is a horse of a different color. They don't do flash sales. They do cellar sales. They buy up fine wine cellars (hopefully from destitute bank and insurance executives) and sell them via the website and email. There are some great bargains here, and some amazing wines.
Garagiste. A great site, addictive, and far too easy to buy wine. The guy who writes it and owns it seem to tromp around Europe discovering incredible unknown wines, then getting them for terrific prices. He also a wonderful writer. Be careful and learn to read between the lines, because you will want to buy everything. That said, if he says something is amazing, it is. I have followed his palate for years, and almost always agreed with his every word.
Wine.Woot! was one of the first flash sale sites and they have great deals. They rely on major print publication scores, so if your palate tracks Robert Parker's or Steve Heimoff's, you can rely on the wines.
Vinfolio has a flash site of their own. The prices aren't as good as some of the other sites, but the wines are usually upscale.
Cinderella Wine is the flash site of Gary Veynerchuck's Wine Library store. Prices are good. Gary's hype machine is pretty amazing, so if you sign up, get ready for the "a great sale is coming tomorrow ... a great sale is coming at noon ... a great sale is coming in an hour" emails.
One other resource, not a flash site, is Cellar Tracker. I mentioned it above. It's a good site for cellar management, but it is also becoming a go-to site for wine reviews.
That's what I've got.
How about you?