I am not referring to over researching, there are few steps can make you enjoy wine at a reasonable price.
Approach 1: Loyalty
Vineyards / Wine shop loves return customers. You anyway won't have sufficient storage at home, no point to buy in bulls and extend your expense on storage. En primeur is another story.
Once you get along well with the people at the shop, vineyard owners or even email online, you can start bargain for discount. You can also self volunteer as the promoter (influencer) of their wines. You might get a discount of 10%-15% per purchase.
Approach 2: Groupon
I am not referring to clicking online coupons on Groupon that sells $80 Bordeaux blend.
Common group interest will bring bulk purchase discount benefit.
Be proactive, volunteer to be the organizer of wine tasting / wine dinners that when you made participants interested in the same wine, then you can bargain for discount. That's Asian culture, learn from them.
Approach 3: Direct Shipment
If somehow you like boutique vineyards of specific region, you can arrange group shipment by consolidating them under one logistics company. Make sure they have license to export alcholic items. Then arrange local logistics company to receive and deliver to your home. This requires some connections to logistics company and slight research on licensing if needed.
Approach 4: Attention to details
When wine shop / website highlights to you on a discount. That may not be true. That's marked up and discount. Go for low season such as July, August, where (except rosé) price sensitive wines in general are cheaper. If you have beloved
Brands, monitor whole year price fluctuation and you manage to fine the best time.
Another attention is the once in a blue moon opportunity:
someone enters a wrong price.
When the price is unreasonably low, check if bad quality, otherwise quickly buy few cases. Remember screencap offers, transactions for proof. Don't care about them saying transactions invalid. When they earn by offering higher price accidentally they won't say that.
Hope you all have the chance to get reasonable price for your wine. Most important of all is to know what are your favourite wines that you should be keeping track of the price. Cheers~
