Living in the land of opportunity. It’s a Calamity! Getting a product to market. It seems so simple for the end consumer. For a wine, you pop down to your local Wine Warehouse store, the wine is then boxed up, carried to your car and enjoyed when you get home. However, there are many unseen hurdles that need to be cleared for the juice of crushed and fermented grapes to make it to your dinner table. From grape to glass there are a number of mouths to feed in the food chain of wine. The ability to become more efficient with these various costs is what we strive to do and what we base our model upon at the Wine Warehouse. This efficiency is how we bring value to you the consumer and the reason why shopping at the Wine Warehouse means that you will ‘never pay retail again.’

As the Wine Warehouse is currently at 19 stores with expansion plans for 2007 and beyond, we have reached a volume level to be able to receive extremely favorable prices. As with most things in the business world, volume equals lower prices. Our 50,000 square foot temperature controlled warehouse is equipped to handle volume purchases while assuring that your wine stays in top condition.

Have you ever wondered how we at Wine Warehouse are always below the prices of the ‘big box’ retailers? It is by working the wine efficiency model as best we know how. We do this without having a PR machine beat its chests with the claim of being the largest seller of wine in the US or by taking out full page ads in the paper with a smattering of branded items at enticing prices (though still not as low as ours) and then try and switch you to brands that you have never heard of and which represent no real value at all. Our stores are locally owned and operated, convenient to your homes and are run by a staff of people who have a passion for wine.

Let me hit you with some knowledge! The fixed costs from grape to glass are the taxes. Federal tax is just over $3 per 9 liter case, Florida state tax is $5.35 and then there is your local tax at the register. The variables begin with the cost that the case of wine leaves the winery at, the freight charges and the clearing fees by a wholesaler. The ‘food chain’ of wine can be as cumbersome as going from the grape-grower to the winery, then through an agent or importer, then to a wholesaler and then through a retailer or a restaurant. When the variable costs go down, the landed cost will be less and thus there will be a lower price to the ultimate consumer.

One might think that buying direct from a winery is the most efficient way to purchase wine. This is not necessarily so. How does wine get priced by its producers? On the winery front, a friend of mine who is the comptroller for a group of Australian wineries gave me the return on investment that they will receive from the various forms of getting wine to market. They will sell at various prices to their various methods of distribution with the hope of keeping similar end pricing. They would sell less expensively to export markets where there was an importer involved, a little higher to local wholesalers, a little higher to direct mail order specialists and higher again to their own tasting rooms. The returns on each sale were similar based on the costs involved. The tasting room had labor and rent expenses with relatively low volumes sold. The mail order business had higher volumes balanced against the costs of marketing and packing and shipping the wines. The wholesale volumes were higher again but there was a level of support needed for promotions and in the field help. Export markets combined for the largest volumes with most costs being absorbed by the various importers. Our model looks to get our base costs down to the importers price while minimizing the variable costs to bring a product in. This is one of the ways that we bring you the best prices everyday. Wine Warehouse has taken the next step as we are now working directly with the source.

So what does this have to do with Calamity and why the wine is named Calamity? A friend of ours in Napa called our founder, Tom Dorn, one day and alerted him about an opportunity to purchase some Cabernet Sauvignon from a top boutique producer. The only stipulation was that it had to be labeled with no reference to its source and that we could not say where the wine came from. Apparently the supply and demand curve chart of selling a $60 Cabernet was broken out and it was felt that there around 1000 gallons of top quality wine was not going to be sold based on the previous years sales. Tom felt that based upon the quality of the juice and the reputation of the winery, that this situation was a real calamity. Hence, we find the name Calamity on a wine label.

Each Calamity wine has its own story and origin. The common thread that runs through all the Calamity wines is the combination of fine quality at a fantastic value.