Scarcity. It is possibly the greatest marketing tool for luxury products that exists in the toolbox of the luxury retailer. I may not look like a peddler of luxury goods, but in reality I am just that. All of the wines I sell fit the definition of a luxury product. And scarcity is at the center of what defines the wines I sell.
There are two different general expressions of scarcity: deliberate, fabricated scarcity, and actual scarcity. For the former, think limited edition mintings of coins. We've all seen the late night commercials: "Get your commemorative Barack Obama half dollar for only...." This is a deliberate, fabricated scarcity, used as a marketing strategy to convince people to impulse buy. A different expression of scarcity of this type is responsible for the prohibitive prices of Louis Vuitton bags, Ferraris and Rolex watches. None of these products need necessarily be scarce. They are made in relatively limited quantities, and sell for exorbitant prices as a deliberate marketing/branding strategy. More of them could be made, and for a lot less money...all while maintaining the level of quality.
But, when one considers premium imported wine, the second type of scarcity is the only type that applies. 90 percent of the wine produced in the world is high-production. The business model is as follows: 10,000 cases and above equals profitability. Anything less and you're in the red. The wines that I carry operate on a completely antithetical model. To produce great wine, one must first and foremost keep crop yields very low. Two tons an acre seems to be the mean. Great vineyard sites is also another necessity. Bad grapes will never make good wine. Good vineyard, good grapes, low-yields equals tenuous profitability. In other words, an almost anti-business commitment to quality is a necessity for the production of good wine.
The producers that I carry generally let the bottom line take a back seat to quality. An insane business philosophy to most. And this is why wines of this ilk generally represent about 10% of total commercial wine production by volume on the planet.
But there is something to be said for being crazy for quality. In this over-commercialized world of ours, many of us are waking up to the idea that quality is important, and is possibly the greatest surviving means of real, authentic pleasure.
