Power to the People! The DC Wine Buyers Collective

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.

If you were to get twelve friends together to purchase a case of the wine, each person would only pay $45 a bottle and have only as much wine as he or she could properly use. And, while a $5 savings is not much, it can lead to significant savings for the individual over a number of purchases.

Eventually, if the collective were to become big enough and influential enough, it would be able to procure even greater discounts and perhaps even special deals with retailers, distributors, and producers.

This is the goal of the DC Wine Buyers Collective, which was started this past weekend.

It’s something I’ve done on an informal basis for the past few years for co-workers and classmates. I’ve purchased cases of sparkling wine for Obama’s inauguration, and cases of wine for tastings. I thought it might be cool to have something a bit more fixed, something more tangible… and something that would still make me absolutely no money.

What’s in store for the DC Wine Buyers Collective? Perhaps a website, perhaps better ways to get wine to the masses. One thing’s for sure: we’ll be buying—and drinking—a whole lot of nice wine!  (Maybe even the wine below, about whose merits I’ve previously rhapsodized.)

IF YOU LIVE IN THE DC METRO AREA and would like to join the DC Wine Buyers Collective, please click this link. Please also feel free to contact me at joon [at] vinicultured.com if you have any questions!