I don't see why any retailer would agree to this.
Agreed. I also don't see how it might work.
Lets assume the retailer buys the wine through an agent/importer. The winery would have to inform their local agent to tell the retailer to hand over the bottles to the client who paid the winery. So far so good. Now lets look at the payment side.
The buyer pays for the wine at the winery presumably at cellar door prices. Surely they cannot charge the buyer either the importers wholesale price (their margin) nor the retail price as there are likely a number of retailers with their own markups, as it is likely to be unknown to the winery. So what we have is a cellar door payment that needs to get to the retailer and I'm hard pressed to figure out how it would work.
Generally speaking cellar doors sell wines at or near retail price, at least local retail, so as not to compromise the local retailer margins. They sell to the wholesale trade for a lot less, particularly if there are middlemen agents/exporters. Sometimes wineries offer exporters considerably bigger discounts in order to foster foreign sales. Therefore retail prices overseas may be higher or lower than cellar door prices depending on the wholesale price offered by the winery. Now if the wine costs the same or less in the UK market there would be no point in buying the wines at cellar door. If it costs more in the UK, then who makes up the difference? Paying cellar door prices therefore amounts to a discount even if the winery processes the payment received at cellar door through the agent/importer and onto the retailer.
Any way I look at it I can't see how this might work unless the winery ships directly to the retailer and can deduct the cellar door sale from future deliveries.
Mahmoud.
[Edited for clarity and typos]
