Seems like a decade ago... a toast to wine.wooters
30@narfcake’s post remembering Pluto as a planet reminded me that 2006 was also the summer we launched wine.woot with David Studdert of Wine Country Connect. @JasonToon’s October announcement of the site coming out of beta is still live over there actually, as is our first beta offer back in May. David’s industry insight (and trustworthy style!) led to our collaboration to take advantage of a then-new supreme court ruling that was set to sweep the country and allow wine producers to directly ship their wines to consumers.
It was more than just the dot-woot site it appears today (amongst 6 or 8 or 10 others). For me and my team, it was a first key test of our horizontal growth strategy while keeping the daily deal model energy intact. For David and his team it was ground breaking innovation in an industry with a harsh outlook on online viability. David invented the first direct-to-retail portal for wine makers to participate in and I combined that into an event based platform people were familiar with. For us both it was a creative and energetic grass-roots movement that connected fans of wine within the woot audience directly to winemakers at the most progressive domestic wineries.
Here 10 years later, I’m of course proud of what we accomplished but also left feeling like there was more to achieve than we were able to. The daily deal model was again applied in a way that really makes me proud but we were attached at the hip and limited in many ways. Was the staffing efficiency and url-brand-connection to Woot the reason for Wine.Woot’s success or was it actually friction against success, complicating and slowing investment into what was groundbreaking on it’s own measure? It’s impossible to know for sure and, as usual, at least some of both is true.
Did you ever try wine.woot? Did you enjoy the rather distinct community that formed? If you did, you contributed to something mildly interesting in the wine and commerce industries, enjoyably successful to our companies, and absolutely pivotal in the lives of two guys. Cheers to you my friends.
/giphy cheers
- 36 comments, 38 replies
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Wine is the only thing I have ever bought on woot. I don’t check it as frequently at the moment (pretty well stocked), but when I do, I feel like a lot of the ‘magic’ is still there compared to woot at large.
@brhfl Agreed - even with them all mashed up on the dot-woot url system at least the shirt and wine communities stayed pretty independent feeling. As did deals.woot
never bought any wine, but i did get some sake that was pretty good.
/giphy good sake
i was going for something more like this:
but, i’ll take the first one as well.
@carl669 I remember getting like 3 bottles of sake from that event and finding out it was like 10 years worth for me. I’m a sake lightweight.
@snapster yep. i got 3 bottles as well. lasted me a good 5 years.
@carl669
Re: Neil deGrasse Tyson, killer of the sanctity of childhood innocence and the starry dreams of youth:
Did he just get bumped by planets?
Dwarf planets?
Implanets?
Dwarf implanets?
Did the impact knock him out of orbit?
Nice outfit. Is she wearing a Kuiper Belt or what?
@carl669 That gif speaks to me.
@carl669 I just dumped my remaining bottle of Sake-- it had turned into something terrible.
I don’t drink alcoholic beverages, but I remember well when Wine.Woot came out.
Way too easy to get too much for this particular life.
And don’t visit much now. But miss it a bit.
I made some purchases. But it took a while for Maryland to open its doors. Like any blind wine purchase, there were hits and misses. More hits though.
What finally made the wife say “stop ordering wine by mail” was the fact that every delivery required a signature, and even though my wife stayed home with kids at the time, the delivery never seemed to arrive while anyone was there, and attempts at re-delivery never seemed to pan out. So each delivery required a 30-minute-each-way trip to the depot to wait in line and pick up the package. At that point it wasn’t worth it.
@kevlar51 I think we ended up outright suggesting work delivery was better when possible (on the order form). Jeeze that’s a far away depot too.
@snapster it’s my fault for moving out into the middle of nowhere.
Work delivery would have been far more convenient, but my employer had a strict ban on alcohol on the premises.
@kevlar51 I’ve always had mine shipped to my father’s workplace (because walking a couple of miles and then sitting on a train for a couple of hours with a 6-pack of wine isn’t my idea of a great time)… They had more of a strict ‘must-share’ policy on the premises…
@brhfl but is there anything more satisfying than polishing off a 6-pack of wine on a train?
@kevlar51
, or perhaps 
.
Perhaps
But I ain’t sayin’ what I was “on” when I did the polishing.
/giphy leave it to the imagination
@kevlar51 A challenge I’m not sure I’m up to… Eh, hell, I can sleep on a bench at the station.
@snapster I have almost everything shipped to my job and wine is no exception. Is really the only way to go in NYC unless your building has a doorman or live-in person. (Packages left on the sidewalk are not likely to stay for long, plus the whole adult signature thing, at least for wine.)
If it weren’t for the fact that three of the people in our central receiving dept. are unable to drink, I’d have ordered a case addressed to them at the holidays every year to thank them for dealing with my weekly or more often orders (not all of wine). Somehow, boxes of cookies and other things like that just don’t seem as appreciative to me.
@kevlar51 I used my local UPS Store, until I bought so much I needed an off-site storage locker! Luckily, they accept wine shipments. Unfortunately, I now have a walk-in Wine Locker there!
@MarkDaSpark
My local commercial mailbox place accepts pallets, truck shipments, wine, whatever. Nothing gets stolen.
Don’t get any ideas about the pallets, Meh. I have no way to get them home.
Of my 225 woots, probably 3/4 is wine. That’s all I buy from woot now.
I got my wine education from the forums. It is so cool to be able to ask questions and get responses from the winemakers! I haven’t bought wine at a store in years. Wine.Woot is a sure thing for me because of the labrats and winemaker input and lively conversations. I wouldn’t be addicted to Petite Sirah without wine.woot
I took a trip to Napa/Sonoma and had to stop at Wellington. Chatted with Peter for over an hour - that was awesome. Too bad he is retiring. Now I am buying all his offerings as they come up.
@bluebeatpete The Wellington offerings were the bottles I’d stop my wife from serving to guests. No guest is that special. They were truly my private reserve.
@JerseyFrank I agree
@bluebeatpete Peter is the best. He helped me set up my first tasting party and gave lots of good pairing advice to a fellow veg.
I loved wine.woot. NJ shipping was always iffy, but when offered, I often took advantage of it. It was like a wine tasting club for people who hate people, especially people who are members of wine tasting clubs. But the lasting impression it really made was with its fancy foods. I love me some gourmet foods. The enthusiasm & following that some products garnered was contagious. I even met one of the founders of Brandini Toffee… like, in real life, at their store in Palm Springs, CA.
@JerseyFrank I’ve heard good things about this Toffee but somehow have never tried it. I’ll have to track some down and skip dinner to try a piece someday.
Never used wine.woot but I always thought you guys were boss for taking advantage of that law so quickly.
@DrunkCat thanks - credit David’s initiative there. What’s weird is how much time that ruling has taken to overturn state law. I guess those working government jobs wouldn’t be surprised but I thought when the Supreme Court said what you were doing was unconstitutional you had to stop pretty quick. Not “we’ll look at that for a few years and then issue a compliance opinion and then not enforce the laws on the books and then maybe someday change the stupid law”
@snapster Well, the whole refusing to issue marriage license thing resolved pretty quickly, because: government employees. Non-compliance meant losing their jobs. Not quite so much pressure in the private sector, perhaps.
@compunaut you’re probably right on the lack of pressure but both are state government issues. I’d rather have pressure on the government to enforce marriage freedom vs wine shipments though.
@snapster Media was most likely the difference. There was a lot of negative press with regards those denying marriage equality.
@snapster I was never as vocal on Woot as I am on Meh but I also wanted to add that I gave wine.woot a pass because of it; because yeah, someone at woot certainly started feeding the domain after midnight.
@narfcake I think it’s highly dependent on the legal ramifications on taking an oath of office to uphold the Constitution of the United States, and the Supreme Court’s ruling on the issue.
The press might have provided extra exposure, but marriage licenses simply don’t provide loopholes to hide in for govt employees to refuse issuance.
They don’t ship to Virginia. Oh yeah, I don’t like wine anyway.
/giphy high five miss
@sammydog01 Shame, you’ve got some decent wineries over that way. And your very own native grape!
I always felt that the association to Woot was a key component of the success of Wine.Woot. The Woot model translated really well to wine. I enjoyed seeing the increased diversity and cross pollination in the Woot community. Overall, it really was groundbreaking and really exciting to see everything unfold.
If there were unlimited resources and Wine.Woot launched as a standalone brand, would it have been more successful? Absolutely. However, resources are scarce. Also, what would the opportunity cost have been to the Woot community at that critical time in it’s development?
One thing is for sure, none of it would have happened at all without Snapster, Winedavid39 et. al pulling the trigger and getting it going…and you can bet the shirt.woot on your back on it. 10 years, that’s pretty awesome. Cheers!
I really loved Wine dot Woot. I only quit buying when they switched to forcing purchases through Amazon (I have always gone out of my way to keep those accounts separate, including using different browsers). I was introduced to some wines that I might not have known about otherwise.
The last wine I bought was in May, 2014. I’m still sad about losing it as a resource. I’ve ordered directly from a couple of the wineries, but it’s not quite as much fun. I live in the middle of wine country (in eastern WA, not in CA), and I’m lucky, but I still miss Wine.woot.
I’m a fairly high-end shopper, and most of woot has always been purchases for entertainment (I bought the first leak frogs for cuteness, and the next ones because WHY DIDN’T I ALWAYS HAVE THOSE). Wine.woot kept me visiting woot long after the romance was over.
(P.S. Chocolates with wine in them are delicious, as is the Brandini.)
@Shrdlu I held out as long as I could on AP, but then the next Woot Cellars wine (Revelry) came up. And since I was one of the Wooters that came up with the winning blend (during the 2014 RPM Tour) I had to buy!
But yes, Brandini … crack Toffee!
If anyone here ever wanted to make a go at *.meh, I would vote for Wine. Poss risky business, in terms of site integrity, but prob All Good as long as it’s wine.
Meh drinks wine beer port mead ect
@CaptAmehrican I meant meh should have meh drinks instead of wine woot. That could mean beer liquor whatever.
@CaptAmehrican
Excesses.meh.com?
I could get with that.
Living in Pennsylvania, I pretty much ignored wine.woot as out antiquated liquor laws wouldn’t allow shipping here. Our illustrious and progressive new Governor Wolf has finally updated some laws, not only allowing wine to now be shipped in but also allowing me to run to the market down the street to buy some wine,. Ahh, progress at last.
@cinoclav I know your pain. I live here too. I always thought our rules for alcohol were always backwards. The first time I traveled out of state I was so confused by regular groceries selling beer, until I found out that’s how it is for almost every other state…
I never bought wine from wine.woot. But I bought many other things - coffee, tea, candy, cheese, etc.
Trying new foods that way was very nice and I enjoyed it a lot. Some of those makers I still buy from today.
I would like to thank you for wine.woot as it was always my go to for gifts for my wino parents. I got a great deal, they had their horizons broadened from the normal $3 bottle of merlot, and I got to drink half of it anyway.
@snapster, I pretty much learned to drink wine with wine.woot. My biggest purchases were the nine cases of 2009 Copa del Rey Cabernet Sauvignon, of which I have less than a dozen bottles left. We’ve been rationing them, as it is my girlfriend’s favorite wine, but I expect to be out by year’s end (except for a single bottle that I’ll gift her on her b’day in 2017).
While the Copa was her favorite and a great wine, I’ve tried so many decent and better wines as a direct result of wine.woot and the community around it. Being able to read comments and tasting notes led to a number of purchases that amounted to experiments (as well as the need for a 220 bottle refrigerated cabinet). Meeting some of those people at a tasting at Cesare’s house was one of the highlights of that Summer and it was great (and interesting) to put faces and voices to many of the posts I’d been reading for years.
All in all, wine.woot was (is) a great thing and I thank you for it.
September 5th, 2013…
Woot Cellars Phat Goose With Shirt (12) Woot Cellars Phat Goose With Shirt Case
Loved that wine.
@connorbush I still got 1 left in the box…waiting to be enjoyed.
i was not even aware till 2013, that woot even existed… long past when @snapster was still there… lived way out in the sticks with only frontier internet… took 27 minutes to connect to anything, so did not browse much! lol moved in 2012, got fast internet, like a whole new world!!
i’ve bought some stuff off of wine woot. foodie stuff, 3 cases of wine… which are laid sideways in a closet, hoping these are the kinds of wine that need to sit for awhile…? i don’t even like wine! but the wine woot folks sometimes would get so excited about some wine!! they made we want to buy it! so i did!!! lol great wine community, enjoy their thread!! i’m going to put my beer down now… i need to go check on my wine!
I always wanted to try some but it seemed so often like the offerings were for multiple bottles at a price point that kept me from pulling the trigger. I enjoy occasional wine but not enough to drop ~$60 on 3 bottles. I drink like 1 bottle a year so that would have been way too much.
That said, it was a really phenomenal idea that I always wished i had come up with.
Early participant in WW. Lived in New York in wine country. Learned a lot about west coast wine from the wine makers. Peter, of course, But there were others very active in those olden times. And very willing to spill the beans about the industry and about wine. It was cute to watch David come out of his salesman shell and begin to be a helpful person. Woot’s own labels were always a very good buy. Even though the one I ratted was a year from being drinkable. Of course, I never ratted again.
I learned from that.
I chose to retire to Virginia so that I could continue buying from WW. BUT, the Falwell folks found out that some of us were having fun and changed Virginia’s wine laws a couple months after I moved. Too far from the border for effective bootlegging - I got frustrated and stopped keeping up with the community. And soon stopped keeping up with any of the Woot communities.
@Lighter I remember when you visited our house in Buffalo for a wine tasting. You’ve been missed.
Pennsylvania.
No wine for me.
@ACraigL We can now! Or at least soon-ish! The new bill went into effect this month. Now we just have to wait for the stores to make some changes.
What’s up with all these eastern states sucking so much on finding legal loopholes? Entrenched vintner/distributer/retailer lobbies?
@f00l Mostly distributor lobbies, with some entrenched state bureaucracy (see Pennsylvania). NY State caused a whole bunch of problems with their rulings regarding 3rd party shippers, when they really were after Wine Library in NJ. Many states had similar laws to NYS, and the Mothership (Amazon) panicked by reducing the Ship-To states. And then added the requirement to use Amazon Payments on the WW section, even for food!
@MarkDaSpark
If I got back to Woot to purchase wine, perhaps I’ll just do a special account for it that matches Amazon. Never actually bought from Wine.Woot, split w a friend who bought on that account; my Woot and Amazon never got linked, AFAIK. Diff emails.
I don’t want my regular Woot and Amazon accounts linked. No big reason, as Amazon already Knows All. Just, the whole situation makes me want to protest. So I have to find a tiny meaningless gesture.
I have drunk all the wine but still have some primo balsamic vinegar around… Or should I call it balsamic syrup?
Swinging by to say hi.
@Ignorant
/giphy swing low, sweet @ignorant
I found my way to Woot in 2008 after a random mention on some board (“I bought it refurbed on Woot”), then lurked for several weeks until my first Woot purchase, the Woot Cellars Toothstejnn. (Oh, and my second woot was a Sansa. How perfect.) I have bought a ton of wine from them since then, and I can only echo the thanks for creating the site and the community. Not only have I met fellow Wooters (having split orders with several random strangers and attended a local wine-wooter get-together), but I became better friends with a few colleagues, who could be depended upon to split orders, and occasionally crack open a bottle after work, using a corkscrew we bought on Woot, but glasses we bought on Meh. (We’re very evenhanded). Another NYer who gets the boxes delivered at work.
It was completely ridiculous in the early months, I was buying way more than I could reasonably anticipate using, but since I started sharing, it’s been slightly less ridiculous. I still have way too much wine stashed here in the office. Lugging it home on the subway, a bottle or two at a time, it’s slow going. But I can’t complain.
So now my friends and family think I actually know something about wine (I’ll cop to knowing a lot more than I used to, but I’ve still got a lot to learn), I have a greater appreciation for what makes a bottle of wine worth drinking, I was turned on to some terrific wineries whose Woot prices are great values, considering how wonderful the wine is (Wellington, for sure, and WineSmith, I’ll add Scott Harvey to those two and make it a Wine Woot trifecta), I have a great stash of tasty, tasty wine that I hope will last me for years to come, and I have friends real and virtual to enjoy it with and learn from. That’s a lot to be thankful for. So thanks!
The woot branded wine was the best. Averaged out to be about 10 bucks for a bottle, and it was worth at least 15.
Really? 10 years?
Old, I’m getting old.
I guess I’m a little behind schedule in staining the wooden boxes the woot wine came in.
I was going to hang one on the wall.
I do still have them.
Once a week was good for the wine offers. If it sold out quickly enough (Wellington, Scott Harvey), there might be another offer, sometimes from the same winery. If I ordered on Sunday (West Coast), I got it by Friday! Plus there was always the fun guess the new offer hints from David!
Then it went to 2x per week. Not bad, still time to review the LabRat posts, Winery participation was helpful, and jwhite6114 would post the deal info. Cheron98 clustered the LabRat posts into one easy thread. Good times.
Then 3x a week … Monday, Wednesday, & Friday. At least the Friday offer was over the weekend. Got me to black (better than others) square status faster.
Then … the horror! Every weekday! … the Horror!
And we won’t discuss the “troubles” aka every website “upgrade” from Woot to Woot 2.0 to Woot 3.0 to the Neverending Story.
I blame Corrado, of course!
Corrando! Wow! That will separate out the posers.
Wine.woot provided more than wine to me. Thanks to Judy Fox we started a wine woot Facebook page, then proceeded to follow each others lives for years. We’ve shared romances, marriages, children’s births, family deaths and more. The sharing and caring was the best part.
But the wine. The wine. I bought cases of everything. My poor UPS guy was getting a hernia and bad back just from my deliveries, so I gifted him a case of assorted wines. We became friends and still exchange vacation postcards and Christmas cards!
Thanks, wooter friends for 10 great years!
Grammiedaboss
LOVE WINE.WOOT, spend a few more dollars there than I should. It is my go-to place for good wine and often interesting wine. Love my Marilyn Merlot!!
I frequented that when I was in TX. Then I moved to PA, which just recently officially started allowing wine shipments… But oddly, other sites have been shipping wine to PA for years without issues. IDEK how. Wine.woot still doesn’t, alas. But the fancy balsamic I discovered on there is still a go to even at full price~
/image RIP
Wine.woot still won’t ship to PA as @Jamileigh17 mentioned above. Even when asked, I was told that they would as soon as they could legally comply.
@snapster, In college, 2006-2009 time frame, 5-6 of us kids lived off campus together in Rochester, NY, and decided that a family that Woots together stays together… We bought a LOT of Woot items, and Woot offs were great events for us including projecting them on the wall, tons of fun. We were also a bunch of college kids that had never really bought or consumed Wine before, but we loved buying stuff on Woot, so we figured Why Not?!
We’d typically check out the week’s offering, wait for your early testers, and the decide if we were in (as a “family”) or not. We probably bought 2-3 dozen offerings over a few years.
I then moved to Maryland, and there was a period that we couldn’t get things delivered (since resolved), but somewhere in that timeframe my wife started brewing beer, so I stopped buying alcohol in favor of her wonderful creations.
However, I’ve still got some Humbug, Don’t Spill Le’ Black, Twas a right Jolly red, and one or two other ‘Woot’ offerings. I’ve also amused many; gifting the obscure bottles to folks over the years, effectively sharing your writers’ talents on our house visits.
My favorite wine.woots were from TyCaton. I’m not sure why, but it seemed every time they came up, I was in. Taking a trip down to the cellar, I found a 2008 Petite Sirah, 2008 Ty’s Red,2009 Cab Sauv, 2009 Carlton Brooke, and a 2003 TyTanium.
I’m a big fan of your projects; I love what you’ve done over the years. Of course, back at Woot, I was one of the first to leave when things started changing, I felt betrayed the way Amazon wrecked that place, particularly when my past comments and typically helpful info about Woots was being used to sell more things… (recall I was the one that was going back and editing hundreds of my forum comments in protest/boycott, perhaps even the reason you don’t allow editing here on meh?
)
Anyway-- How about this… Back up a Brinks truck for WineDavid and open an actual winery… “A Mediocre Winery”. No more guessing on the private label stuff, it’ll be your own, and with mediocre expectations, and a lovely fan base… It’ll be like Mecca for us out-of- staters to come visit.
Cheers!