@RiotDemon Yeah - woot dot wine is gone. That’s why I brought it up as its own thread. Snapster did it once - eleven years is really a good run. Now, snapster and WD have another opportunity.
@Lighter I brought it up in case you didn’t see that @snapster already acknowledged that it was gone, and he’s not interested in wine.meh. They’ve already sold wine as you can see above.
@therealjrn Not my thing. I’m a solid follower. Not a leader. I started this topic to get a sense of meh/snapster reaction to the end of woot dot wine. I’ve gotten a lot of clarity about that. Not even having to read between many lines!
The woot wine forum community won’t survive if it is ripped away from its roots. The internet hardly needs yet another general wine forum floating around out there. I took the snapster suggestion and submitted my email to Wine Country Connect. I’m guessing that there are wheels spinning in lots of places.
To be clear, I always say no dot-mehs sound good to me. I’m talking about the naming convention we thankfully escaped at woot.
I’m always open to ideas for verticals that provide exclusive events a community can form around. There’s a case to be made that exists still with wine.
@f00l You’re a smart fellow and I get the gist; rebelling against Bezos with one raised fist. The Mediocre portal can be made to exist, but not the folk and aficionado on the email list.
You’re a smart fellow and I get the gist;
rebelling against Bezos with one raised fist.
The Mediocre portal can be made to exist,
but not the folk and aficionado on the email list.
I’m in awe.
I would really like this to happen.
I wasn’t thinking about Bezos. I mean, Amazon is Amazon. They will be Amazon, like the weather will be the weather.
But the right personalized wine portal and good community ought to have a decent audience and consumer base.
I think “they” will find whatever you might create. I think it would be great.
I bet Cesare and Peter and many others would bring their own connections.
Are alcohol license legalities why Amazon started forcing wine.woot purchases thru an Amazon login?
Why didn’t Amazon just push wine.woot sales thru the Whole Foods brand/license instead of shutting it down? Legalities?
@RiotDemon the morning crowd more likely drinks it in tea cups to be able to delude themselves (or at least others) that their “morning constitutional” is actually tea. Selling it as an alcohol based imitation tea might sell (grin) - especially if sold in teacups that are colored in such as way inside to make it appear that the is actually apple juice or tea or…
@f00l yes, poetic license on reducing it to Bezos’ fault. It is Amazon ruining wine.woot but it’s like an elephant stepping on a cricket by accident.
Re: legalities
I have a dangerous amount of old information on the wine industry, so don’t trust this completely but here’s a sequence of events that present the model and breakdown:
Prohibition was not repealed but rather ammended and states have control over distributor and retail licenses to resell alcohol. Most use a forced 3-tier system.
However, states do allow wineries to sell consumers wine they make, like in tasting rooms or selling bottles or cases. In many states this wine can be shipped to you by the winery. In most states, the winery can even ship it to you across state boundaries to another state you live in. Many times the amounts are limited per winery or per year per winery or per consumer. Special producer licensing is often required.
In 2006 the Supreme Court ruled that if a state allows their own wineries to export wine to consumers in other states, they must reciprocate and allow other state wineries to import to consumers in their state. Importantly, this is as #2 sales above and is not an extension of the 3-tier manufacturer/distributor/retailer system.
Wine.woot was started by myself and David Studdert in response to this Supreme Court ruling anticipating an expanding reciprocal state marketplace for wineries.
Our innovations operating as a portal and with logistics that are extensions of the winery has been validated and Amazon Wines even made use of this.
Unscrupulous locally-licensed retailers of wine used the cloak of expanding producer rights to ship 3-tier wine shipments across state lines to consumers they weren’t licensed to sell to. Many grew large and continue to navigate tricky landscape of legalities in this area. States are worried about this and the nuances of fighting this vs producer direct shipments is often lost on them.
One thing a 3-tier retailer cannot ever do and retain their license is skip the 2nd distributor tier. In fact, no affiliate entity of a retailer may accept any value in consideration of sales from any producer of alcohol (skipping the distributor). These are called “tied-house” laws and they work to close loopholes that could otherwise collapse the 3-tier state-installed systems across the country.
(7b a wine portal has no such obligation as it has no alcohol license at all)
By purchasing Whole Foods, Amazon may have decided they had gone too far into tied-house territory and were fighting a losing battle to operate a Wine Producer portal that accepted payment from wineries while retaining Whole Foods and other state liquor licenses. They shut their own portal and announced it weeks ago, ignoring wine.woot as a forgotten player until yesterday’s follow on announcement.
Deals like those at Amazon Wine and Wine.Woot were exclusive because they were producer direct. You can’t add back in another middle man and continue the same value proposition. You’d be forced into unscrupulous techniques others have used to misrepresent street prices of wine in order to show discounts. Your economy of scale would also be tougher with different state licenses to navigate.
@f00l definitely need lawyers to design, review and adjust something like this over time. Breaking the law becomes a matter of such great confusion that states even have “ask us anonymous questions about whether we think something is legal” procedures.
An attorney or even a more well-aquainted industry person would find many faults with my simplification above I’m sure.
@snapster for the record I just want you and @dave to know that I just got done putting together a 162 bottle wine rack which is only about 1/3 full and I doubt Woot will be able to fill it before they shutter Wine.Woot.
@snapster you curated the list when you opened this. We wine folk have been keeping an eye on you and we can’t wait to jump ship. Well, maybe not jump, we’re old and frequently inebriated. Maybe a gangplank. With rails?
@bhodilee In posting this weekend, I realized that better than 1 in 8 of my friends on Facebook are from being part of the wine.woot community. Tagging 100+ people takes a long time! We may need to make some amendments to http://winechurch.com/
What about booze.meh? Why limit it to wine?
Or just own it and be Gourmet.meh. Frankly the only thing I’ve bought from wine.woot in the last 5 years was the truffle butter/duck fat combos, salted caramel chocolate, and that crack balsamic that otherwise is like $60.
@Jamileigh17 No, I like that meh is just meh and largely sticking to the original, successful woot.com model.
Now, having said that, spinning up an entirely new domain based on this/that premise, but maintain a figurative firewall between the two would great. @Snapster and @WineDavid39 have a decade of data to determine what level of business can be supported, about half of that representing the magic that can happen without The Eye of Bezos over you.
https://meh.com/forum/topics/rip-2017-thread#5a060ab923d3740dd0337a01
@RiotDemon Yeah - woot dot wine is gone. That’s why I brought it up as its own thread. Snapster did it once - eleven years is really a good run. Now, snapster and WD have another opportunity.
@Lighter I brought it up in case you didn’t see that @snapster already acknowledged that it was gone, and he’s not interested in wine.meh. They’ve already sold wine as you can see above.
@RiotDemon I don’t get it. It’s looks like wine dot woot is still there when I look today (Sunday, 11/12).
@cengland0
It’s closing December 31st.
https://wine.woot.com/forums/viewpost.aspx?postid=7268481
@gumtreertmug Ah, that makes sense now. Thanks.
I still think they need meh box wine
Hey @Lighter? It does sound ripe for fruition. Why not YOU start the new lighter.wine forum?
@therealjrn Not my thing. I’m a solid follower. Not a leader. I started this topic to get a sense of meh/snapster reaction to the end of woot dot wine. I’ve gotten a lot of clarity about that. Not even having to read between many lines!
The woot wine forum community won’t survive if it is ripped away from its roots. The internet hardly needs yet another general wine forum floating around out there. I took the snapster suggestion and submitted my email to Wine Country Connect. I’m guessing that there are wheels spinning in lots of places.
I would be happy if this happened.
But I fear it’s unlikely. @snapster doesn’t seem interested.
And with Amazon attempting to dominate the “internet shopping for edibles and drinkables” space, it would be a tough area to enter.
(Tho the internet wine market would seem to a plausible one for some boutique operations.)
No!
Selling wine as the daily deal is one thing, starting more meh subsites is bad news.
To be clear, I always say no dot-mehs sound good to me. I’m talking about the naming convention we thankfully escaped at woot.
I’m always open to ideas for verticals that provide exclusive events a community can form around. There’s a case to be made that exists still with wine.
@snapster what about afternoonsave.com or eveningsave.com?
@RiotDemon
@snapster I’m honestly surprised you don’t sell wine on morning save yet. Seems like the people that watch those shows would be drinking wine.
@RiotDemon technically I’ve never sold wine. The innovation was the winery sells it and the site becomes an advertising portal.
Sadly, this innovative setup is what forced Amazon to shut down the wine.woot site post acquisition of Whole Foods, a licensed retailer of alcohol.
@snapster
I think you could gather the folk and aficionado in, if you set up a 2.0 portal, of the Mediocre varietal.
/giphy "If you build it, he will come"
@f00l
@f00l You’re a smart fellow and I get the gist; rebelling against Bezos with one raised fist. The Mediocre portal can be made to exist, but not the folk and aficionado on the email list.
@snapster
I’m in awe.
I would really like this to happen.
I wasn’t thinking about Bezos. I mean, Amazon is Amazon. They will be Amazon, like the weather will be the weather.
But the right personalized wine portal and good community ought to have a decent audience and consumer base.
I think “they” will find whatever you might create. I think it would be great.
I bet Cesare and Peter and many others would bring their own connections.
Are alcohol license legalities why Amazon started forcing wine.woot purchases thru an Amazon login?
Why didn’t Amazon just push wine.woot sales thru the Whole Foods brand/license instead of shutting it down? Legalities?
@RiotDemon Or savetheevening.com LOL
@RiotDemon the morning crowd more likely drinks it in tea cups to be able to delude themselves (or at least others) that their “morning constitutional” is actually tea. Selling it as an alcohol based imitation tea might sell (grin) - especially if sold in teacups that are colored in such as way inside to make it appear that the is actually apple juice or tea or…
@f00l yes, poetic license on reducing it to Bezos’ fault. It is Amazon ruining wine.woot but it’s like an elephant stepping on a cricket by accident.
Re: legalities
I have a dangerous amount of old information on the wine industry, so don’t trust this completely but here’s a sequence of events that present the model and breakdown:
Prohibition was not repealed but rather ammended and states have control over distributor and retail licenses to resell alcohol. Most use a forced 3-tier system.
However, states do allow wineries to sell consumers wine they make, like in tasting rooms or selling bottles or cases. In many states this wine can be shipped to you by the winery. In most states, the winery can even ship it to you across state boundaries to another state you live in. Many times the amounts are limited per winery or per year per winery or per consumer. Special producer licensing is often required.
In 2006 the Supreme Court ruled that if a state allows their own wineries to export wine to consumers in other states, they must reciprocate and allow other state wineries to import to consumers in their state. Importantly, this is as #2 sales above and is not an extension of the 3-tier manufacturer/distributor/retailer system.
Wine.woot was started by myself and David Studdert in response to this Supreme Court ruling anticipating an expanding reciprocal state marketplace for wineries.
Our innovations operating as a portal and with logistics that are extensions of the winery has been validated and Amazon Wines even made use of this.
Unscrupulous locally-licensed retailers of wine used the cloak of expanding producer rights to ship 3-tier wine shipments across state lines to consumers they weren’t licensed to sell to. Many grew large and continue to navigate tricky landscape of legalities in this area. States are worried about this and the nuances of fighting this vs producer direct shipments is often lost on them.
One thing a 3-tier retailer cannot ever do and retain their license is skip the 2nd distributor tier. In fact, no affiliate entity of a retailer may accept any value in consideration of sales from any producer of alcohol (skipping the distributor). These are called “tied-house” laws and they work to close loopholes that could otherwise collapse the 3-tier state-installed systems across the country.
(7b a wine portal has no such obligation as it has no alcohol license at all)
By purchasing Whole Foods, Amazon may have decided they had gone too far into tied-house territory and were fighting a losing battle to operate a Wine Producer portal that accepted payment from wineries while retaining Whole Foods and other state liquor licenses. They shut their own portal and announced it weeks ago, ignoring wine.woot as a forgotten player until yesterday’s follow on announcement.
Deals like those at Amazon Wine and Wine.Woot were exclusive because they were producer direct. You can’t add back in another middle man and continue the same value proposition. You’d be forced into unscrupulous techniques others have used to misrepresent street prices of wine in order to show discounts. Your economy of scale would also be tougher with different state licenses to navigate.
@snapster
Damn.
I trust you had some lawyers handy when you did all this.
Salud!
@f00l That, or @snapster just knows all this from experience with wine.woot.
@narfcake
Oh I think he knows all this.
Just, I think in this area you also want some lawyers.
Official “from-lawyer” letters and inquiries have their uses.
@f00l definitely need lawyers to design, review and adjust something like this over time. Breaking the law becomes a matter of such great confusion that states even have “ask us anonymous questions about whether we think something is legal” procedures.
An attorney or even a more well-aquainted industry person would find many faults with my simplification above I’m sure.
@snapster
/giphy I see what you did there
/giphy case, ur, cask of Amontillado
@stinks are you giving me the stink eye?
@snapster for the record I just want you and @dave to know that I just got done putting together a 162 bottle wine rack which is only about 1/3 full and I doubt Woot will be able to fill it before they shutter Wine.Woot.
I’ve built it…
@snapster Just sell grapes and call 'em “Pre-Wine.” Most of meh.com’s customers have their expectations appropriately managed.
Bundle them with a speakerdock or some candycorn.
/giphy wine! Wine! Wine!
The 1st thing I do when looking at wine on Woot is scroll down to see if it can be sold in my state.
@snapster you curated the list when you opened this. We wine folk have been keeping an eye on you and we can’t wait to jump ship. Well, maybe not jump, we’re old and frequently inebriated. Maybe a gangplank. With rails?
@bhodilee Ha. Following the ADA gangplank guidelines of course. Sounds like a Monty Python skit.
Sign up with Wine Country Connect. They deserve to control the destiny of the community they’ve worked so hard to maintain.
https://www.winecountryconnect.com
@bhodilee @snapster Handrails at 36", 36" minimum clear between the handrails, maximum 1:12 slope on the plank.
@narfcake and a net under it just in case
@snapster, did that long ago. Plus we’ve been Facebook friends for years. We’ll follow where they go.
@bhodilee In posting this weekend, I realized that better than 1 in 8 of my friends on Facebook are from being part of the wine.woot community. Tagging 100+ people takes a long time! We may need to make some amendments to http://winechurch.com/
Calling @winecountryconnect!
Please speak up!
Whine wine Yeah Baby!
What about booze.meh? Why limit it to wine?
Or just own it and be Gourmet.meh. Frankly the only thing I’ve bought from wine.woot in the last 5 years was the truffle butter/duck fat combos, salted caramel chocolate, and that crack balsamic that otherwise is like $60.
@Jamileigh17 No, I like that meh is just meh and largely sticking to the original, successful woot.com model.
Now, having said that, spinning up an entirely new domain based on this/that premise, but maintain a figurative firewall between the two would great. @Snapster and @WineDavid39 have a decade of data to determine what level of business can be supported, about half of that representing the magic that can happen without The Eye of Bezos over you.
How about some
/image night train wine?
/youtube Night Train Guns N Roses