Vinicultured: A Wine Blog

The skies aren’t as friendly as they used to be.

I remember one time when I was flying home to Los Angeles to Berkeley right after the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) instituted its rather draconian “3-1-1 Rule.”  This was sometime in 2006, and I was still in college.  I was trying to bring a nice bottle of wine with me to share with the family, but when I got to the ticket counter the woman working the counter informed me that my bottle would be a problem.

Basically, the 3-1-1 Rule provides that you may not carry onto an airplane any container of liquid or gel with more than three ounces of whatever in it.  It doesn’t matter if it’s a twenty-ounce bottle of soda with only three ounces left; if it’s marked with a volume of anything greater than three ounces, it’s out.

The only way to save your beloved fluid from the trash is to check it (this option wasn’t available to this poor man).  But that is a rather risky proposition.  I am loathe to transport glass bottles of highly staining liquid in a suitcase with my clothes and other knick-knacks, especially if said suitcase is going through the travails of baggage handling.

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You’ve been to a Costco, right?

If you’ve ever been to a Costco and purchased two industrial-sized jugs of mayonnaise, or a hundred pack of tacquitos, or ten pounds of boneless chicken breast, you’ve experienced first-hand the advantage of buying in bulk. It is a truism that you will save money by buying bulk quantities of nearly anything.

Just as it’s true for condiments and delicious Mexican finger foods, it’s true for wine.

Nearly every wine retailer offers case discounts. For instance, if you were to purchase one bottle of wine, that bottle could cost $50. If, however, you were to buy a case of that same wine, most retailers would give you a 10-15% discount off the whole case. At a 10% discount a case of wine would be $540 (versus $600), or $45 per bottle. Unfortunately, most people don’t have $540 to drop on a case of wine, even if it is a discounted rate. Even if they did, most of those people wouldn’t be able to get through twelve bottles, or would not have the proper storage facilities.

Hence, the power of a wine collective.

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