What is a De Négoce Wine Future?

A “Future” is how we’re able to make some of the world’s greatest wines affordable: We negotiate deals with the best producers in the country, and then offer those wines under the De Négoce label for a tiny fraction of what the source winery label is priced at. You commit to a full case (12 bottles) or a 6-pack about a month before the wine is relabeled, and we ship it directly to you at the lowest price it will ever be offered!

What is a Wine Future?

In France, en primeur, or “wine futures” are wines sold before bottling, usually tasted out of barrels or tanks, from prestigious European appellations that can potentially gain value in time. This model comes with a bit of a gamble, as not all bottlings or vintages will accrue value over time, or equally from one vintage to the next, and unfortunately in some rare cases, they actually lose value. What makes it worth the risk? Buying in this fashion secures your inventory, as wines from these producers will sell out. Added bonus: the wine is usually cheaper when purchased in the wine futures window. 

Wine futures are purchased a year or more before bottling – the buyer tastes an approximate blend, or a single barrel from a multi-barrel production, however with the final blend being a year or more out. Considering barrel aging during that time period, and other internal and external factors, the final product that’s delivered will most likely be different than what you taste at the time of purchase. This en primeur process is usually reserved for very high-end wines like Red Bordeaux, Red Burgundy, and Ports where strong levels of trust exist between the consumer and the producer.

Now, why would a high-end winery want to engage in this practice? Cash flow – wineries are expensive to operate. Vineyard costs, insurance, staffing, fancy tasting rooms, Chateau or Manor on the property and subsequent upkeep, cellars, production facility, etc. They’ll cut you a deal to buy early to offset a chunk of what they owe the bank from one vintage to the next, and get the inventory effectively off their hands.

Why is Wine so Expensive?

The key to understanding what “Wine Futures” are in de Négoce’s world resides in the understanding of what a regular bottle of wine you purchase at a tasting room, or retail store, has gone through, and how that’s affected the cost of the bottle you’re paying for at the register. 

Almost all bottles of wine are produced in much the same manner. Yes, some glass shapes and weights cost a bit more, and some grapes fetch a higher price than others, but nothing that wildly swings the scales of the final price at this stage of a wine bottle’s life.

Moving forward from the point of bottling, costs begin to add up quickly:

• Cellaring and associated on-site costs that can run anywhere from a few months to a few years
• Staffing markups if bought from a tasting room with property overhead costs and marketing costs
• Distributor markups if bought through the usual distribution channels, like retail stores or wine shops, then of course those shop’s markups as well
• And, we haven’t even mentioned the trucking between all these places and the markups that come from those channels too.

Consumers usually buy a bottle of this, two bottles of that, and all the onesie-twosie purchases have markups incorporated too (ever wonder why every retail store will give you an everyday discount if you mix 6? Better discount on 12?).

Added cost, on added cost, on added cost…you can pretty easily see how quickly a $35 bottle of wine becomes a $125 bottle of wine – every hand it touches has a mouth to feed. 

How We Save You Money

With our Wine Futures, you’re buying the wine roughly a month before we bottle and ship it to you in some bulk-like fashion (commitment up front to a 6-pack, or a 12-bottle full case) not unlike the traditional en primeur ecosystem discussed above, but without the hurdle of waiting a year or more for your finished goods. There are no additional cellaring markups as once we bottle a wine, it’s shipped directly to you. 

This is where we begin to save you the big bucks:

• No additional winery markups as we don’t own a winery
• We purchase finished wine from wineries in barrel or tank and bottle it ourselves at our state-of-the-art production facility, saving any additional production costs or markups of bottling it elsewhere
• We only sell direct to consumers online, so no distributor markups, and no traditional retail markups.

Literally the best price by buying up front, shipped direct to yourself. 

Taking the savings of our Wine Futures one step further, we almost always declassify single-vineyard sources (aka we don’t print the vineyard name on the label). A great example of this is a number of our Napa Valley-sourced Cabernet Sauvignons. Had we printed the source vineyard name on the label, we’d have to, by contractual obligation, sell them for no less than $125/bottle to keep the source and the other wineries who source from that vineyard’s prestige (and market pricing) up.

All this to say, we’re in the game of enjoying great wines in their drinking windows, not creating a trophy shelf with a decade-minimum to fiscal maturity, and as such, there’s no long term financial gamble with our Wine Futures model like the traditional en primeur model. 

“Tranche 1” is our first release of a wine, offered as a Future – the lowest price it will ever be sold at. If any is remaining after the Futures window, it returns later at the higher Bottle Shop price, however these markups are minimal as we don’t own a winery, vineyards, caves, cellars, tasting rooms, etc, and maintaining a website is astronomically cheaper than a winery with all in tow.

How We Make This a Reality

How is this all possible?

First, a collective 50+ years from our team in this industry and the deeply established industry ties and relationships.

Second, helping wineries offset over supply (can’t force a vine to grow an exact amount of grapes each year, and you can’t go from only having 300 cases of some $125/bottle stunner one year to 1000 cases the next year – it kills your exclusivity). We also provide the source winery necessary cashflow – in a way, we buy en primeur to help the source winery, then pass those savings directly to you, also en primeur.

Basically, we’re your personal sommelier and wine buyer.

And finally, you’ll do the aging at home. 

We’ll offer a deep dive article on this subject separately; how to cellar wines at home.