How were wine sales this holiday?

[Robin Garr]

The conventional wisdom suggests that Christmas/holiday spending in general was weak in 2007, amid a somewhat shaky economy and fears of a recession.

Does anyone in the business or out of it have a sense of whether this extended to wine sales, either bricks-and-mortar or Internet? Was it a good "vintage" or poor for wine retailers?

i did my part!

[Robin Garr]

i did my part!

Funny, but not substantive.

Hey, I thought I changed your forum name. Must have slipped through the holiday cracks. Remind me, did you want to be David or Dave?

david would be great

[Robin Garr]

david would be great

Okay, all set! Next time you log in, just use "David Creighton" in place of the old "creightond". No change in your password.

The conventional wisdom suggests that Christmas/holiday spending in general was weak in 2007, amid a somewhat shaky economy and fears of a recession.

Does anyone in the business or out of it have a sense of whether this extended to wine sales, either bricks-and-mortar or Internet? Was it a good "vintage" or poor for wine retailers?

I have a pretty good line on two local retailers in St. Petersburg, FL.
One complained of the worst year ever but frankly, the owner is becoming surely in his old age, and I suspect his customers are tired of it.
The other, where the folks are quite nice, did well; not world record well but ahead of last year.
Best, Jim

Robin, both of the retailers I deal with were slightly ahead of last year, which was a very good year.

This wine blog -- which I don't know -- claims wine sales were up 35% this year -- online I guess. link


There are November statistics on the home page: http://www.winespiritsdaily.com/

The folks I know say they're working on their best year ever, and the holiday sales haven't spoiled it.

Dave

[David M. Bueker]

I have no idea what this means but a freind in retail said he did $100,000 in business on Friday 12/21.

I am out here in Oregon and I work for a grocery chain that has 14 stores in the Portland metro area that have wine stewards in them. Each wine steard buys for their individual store. Looking at sales for each store, it looks like everyone beat their sales from last year. I have not done my final talley but I expect we are up about 8-10% over last year, which was our best. We still have New Years to go through.

I know the gross sales were up this year over last but it's difficult to figure out because of the steep price increases. Champagnes for an example were about 20% higher than this year. France, Italy, etc, the weak dollar has really shown up in the pricing of many wines.

We rocked. A lot of folks from Ontario vacation near our store and with the $ being low a lot came to see us. The local people seem to be coming out a lot more. Our plaza is growing by leaps and bounds (since last Christmas we've added a Marshals, Borders, PetSmart, Footlocker, Orvils) so there were a lot of factors in our favor.