01/09/2025
Today I anticipated introducing you to the first Golden Hour Wine Club releases of 2025, but instead I am unfortunately writing to share that both club releases have been delayed a week, due to uncontrollable circumstances on our end.
Given said circumstances, I figured I would use this as an opportunity to share a bit about the process of how wine gets from a winemaker to you.
It would be lovely if I could just order wine directly from a winemaker and then the winemaker would ship the wines directly to Golden Hour. This would give the shop a lot more control of the ebb and flow of wines. Then again, it would also be a logistical nightmare, horrible for the environment, and simply not an efficient way to do business. If we were in France and working with French winemakers that is essentially how it would work, but getting wine to the US from France or anywhere else that way would be incredibly challenging, and also illegal.
In a nutshell, here's how it does work.
1) A winemaker and an importer (based in the United States) enter into a partnership. The importer buys wine from the producer in bulk (pallets, which are 56-60 cases each) and fills a shipping container with pallets from multiple winemakers they import (8-20 pallets depending on the size of the container). That container then ships overseas via container ship, and this whole process can vary between 2 weeks to 6 weeks depending on port delays. Once the wines arrive to the US, typically that importer has the exclusive "rights" to sell the winemaker's wines in the United States. Legally, though, an importer cannot sell direct to consumer, or even direct to retailer/bar/restaurant.
For reference, some importers that Golden Hour proudly represents include Selection Massale, vom Boden, Louis Dressner and Super Glou.
2) As mentioned above, importers generally do not sell directly to retail shops, restaurants and bars. There are some exceptions in states like New York and California, where importers have a little more wiggle room to self-distribute. Instead, the importer forms partnerships with a distributor in each state. The distributor purchases wine in bulk from the importer (again, typically by the pallet, though instead of a single pallet of a single wine, or a single producer, this pallet may be 5 or 10 or 15 different wines, from different producers). The distributor must then pay a freight company to send a refrigerated freight truck to pick up the pallet (typically in NY/NJ or CA), and bring it to the state. Then the distributor sells wines by the case or bottle, wholesale, to shops, restaurants etc, in their state. At Golden Hour we focus on working with small distributors, who work with small importers, and small wineries. Distributors that we work with, and some of you may be familiar with, include DF Rosati, Nada, and Honest Makers.
3) Once the distributors deliver to Golden Hour or any shop/bar/restaurant, we can sell the wine to you. This is the legal process. It is the 3-tier system, implemented after prohibition, wherein the importer pays taxes, the distributor pays taxes, the retailer pays taxes, and the consumer pays taxes. This is why wine is so much more expensive in the US than in Europe.
So, getting wine into your glass is a PROCESS and if there is a breakdown or delay at any point in the process, then the wine doesn't make it to us here in Florida. It becomes particularly tricky with a shop like Golden Hour because most of the wine we work with is "special ordered". I don't sell very much wine that is sitting in "open inventory", distributed en masse in Florida for anyone in the state to purchase. Wine club wines are ALWAYS special orders.
For January's clubs I had a small distributor order from two different importers, and can you believe there were issues with both orders!? During the exchange of wine from a national importer to state distributor every wine needs to be registered with the state (another fee). The registration needs to take place before the wine can come to the state legally. Well, one of the wines I special ordered for wine club wasn't registered yet and when the importer was emailed about the registration he missed the email. Because he missed the email the warehouse never put the wine together for pickup, and therefore the wine didn't make it on the truck that goes from New York to Florida. That was situation one. Situation two was with another importer. This importer works with a logistics company and when the importer emailed the logistics company our distributor's purchase order, they put the wrong pick-up date on the order - instead of a pick-up on January 2nd, they listed January 7th. So instead of getting picked up from NY last week, it just got picked up this week and won't arrive to Orlando until next week.
All of this to say, I am very sorry for the delay, but I hope the above details do provide some insight into what goes into getting the wines to Florida so that we can offer you something truly unique and special. I promise we are always working hard to bring you wines that we think are important and delicious. I will follow-up next week with the email you expected to receive today.
Thank you and don't hesitate to reach out to me with any questions.
Best,
Heather
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A woman-owned neighborhood wine shop located in Baldwin Park, Orlando, Florida. Selecting and sharin
