Wine Futures Problem

Dec 24, 2003 27 Replies

It explicitly states that they will in fact refund. That does no good if you want the wine, though. I wouldn't hold my breath expecting a market price refund. The wording says "your payment" will be refunded to you, not that a market price refund will be made.

Of course, and also how much they value your business. If you buy futures every year and/or a lot of them then they are more likely to want to please you. They have no obligation to do so, however, at least under the terms of the futures contracts I have seen.

Retailers do this to protect themselves in case the person whose allocation they bought does in fact go bankrupt, commits fraud, or similar.

Think of the recent earthquake in Paso Robles. There are wineries there that sell allocations. It is entirely possible that those allocations may not now be filled in whole or in part. If, say, the allocations are only filled in part and thus the resulting market price of the wine is much higher than predicted you are crazy if you think that you will get a refund at the current market price for the part of your allocation that they were unable to deliver to you. You will get some of your allocation and your money back for the unfulfilled part. That's all, unless someone likes you and/or is feeling generous.

Dimitri

My contract is a bill of sale, dated in 2001, for Chateau La Mission Haut Brion, 6 bottles, delivery 2003. Period.

You say that the merchant does not wish to deliver the wine. What was his explanation and did he offer a refund?

Dimitri

In addition to the AG's office, I think you ought to call the local prosecutor's office in case they have a consumer protection office. I'd also put a call into the Texas Beverage Control office (or whatever is the name of the state entity that licenses stores that sell alcohol)

not a bad idea.

Local Prosecutors handle fraud all the time.

Did he refuse to refund your money?

A frustrating situation for me occured when I bought '00 Pavillon Rouge from Bevmo on futures. They received the '00 into the store and were selling it ($20 over my price) and could not deliver my futures. Apparently, they air shipped a bunch of stuff in to be the first to have it in the stores. My stuff came by swallow (no, not European, African...). When the 'boat' arrived a month later, I got my wine.

For the stuff I buy on future, I'm generally getting 30-40% discount off the release price. Better than the stock market if you can pick em.

My recommendation to people: only buy futures if you're in the game and can play the numbers. I have never been burned, but if it happened, I've more than made up for it in the long run. I had a friend buy '00 Mouton futures at $300 and I got it at release for $278 from Costco. It's hard to be sure.

Better than futures, get yourself on mailing lists for the wineries. (Not junk, the premium stuff).

Good luck on your recovery.

(P.S. Do you mind if I ask what you paid? It is a RP100)

Usually by contract he has the ability to give you your money back and no wine.

You also assume that "he" can lose money on a series of business deals he meant to make a small profit margin on. Not everyone is well capitalized, not everyone plans on making mistakes or misjudging a market. One would hope they dealt with someone who would come through on a bad deal, but it's just not going to happen all the time. If it costs more to go through a long established house for futures, then that extra money is insurance against getting screwed on the back end of the deal.

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