Mionetto "Sergio"

[Botafogo]

This may not be possible in your somewhat controlled market but what I am REALLY talking about is scooping up the stuff that you and I (and our customers) would like but that the suits at giant liquor companies have no interest in selling and we get it for LESS then they PAID for it. Why does this happen?

Winery makes three wines, a so so Pinot Grigio, a delicious Tocai and an outrageous Schioppettino which cost the supplier $3, $5 and $8 respecitively. The winery makes them take some of all of them, the distributor buys as much Pinot Grigio as possible (like a container with 1200 cases) and as little of the other two as possible (a pallet or two of each) because they have NO imagination or inclination to actually sell something interesting. They then price the Pinot Grigio at $8 wholesale which has us pissing on ourselves with laughter but price the Tocai at $6 and the Schioppettino at $9. We KNOW they will never sell them and wait until the next vintage arives and then offer them $3 and $4 respectively and THEY TAKE IT! We then offer the wines at LESS than their normal wholesale and consumers dance in the streets. As an added bonus, we wait to buy the liquor that we can only get from these idiots until we make this deal and thus do our part to make sure they lose money on every transaction they do with us.

Makes me proud to be an American, Roberto

As to the Mionetto, we only buy the Sergio for precisely the reasons you cite and we and a huge cross section of our knowledgeable consumers think the Sergio IS worth $17.99 when compared to what is availlable. We have over 250 choices of fizz, took in ten cases of Sergio last Monday and it is almost gone already on mostly case sales...