The Barossa wine merchant tradition continues as Glug Wines keeps finding small parcels of great wine to offer at bargain prices. This time it is another Clare Cabernet we offer at $14.50 a bottle which is a third the price originally offered for the same wine by the maker. The Glug Limited Release Batch 12A Clare Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 2021 is some of the best value we have ever offered.
It is the kind of offering that made the business of the famous Australian wine merchants like P.B.Burgoyne.
There used to be plenty of such merchants using their expertise to pick and choose the best barrels from those that small wine makers found were surplus to what they could sell to their own customers.
Not many left these days. When we started Glug back in the early 2000s such purchases were an important starting point for us as we waited for the wines we made ourselves to mature in barrels. That was a time when supply was generally much greater than demand.
We were able to find some really great wines from small wine makers.
Things changed a little as interest in wine grew and boutique wineries had more success in selling direct to their own local customers and to Chinese importers. Finding small lots of great wines grew more difficult for maker/merchants like ourselves.
But wine has proved to be a cyclical industry and surpluses have now made things tougher again for producers. With there now being 2500 producers Australia wide, many of them find they cannot sell their total production at the prices they had become accustomed to. We discussed this problem recently in our post “If my neighbour’s selling his shiraz for $50″
So we are very much back in the wine merchant business with plenty of work for our own little bottling plant.
The Glug Limited Release Batch 12A Clare Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 2021 is but one recent example.
Two others we like are the Village Belle Barossa Valley Grenache 2022 and Parawatta Eden Valley Riesling 2022. We do have insider knowledge as we know the winery price of these wines and recommend them with complete confidence.
