U.S. Wines Topped January Flash Sales

WinesVinesDATA shows 63% of wines offered by flash websites were domestic

San Rafael, Calif.—The research team at Wines & Vines found that 63% of wines offered by the six leading U.S. flash wine sales sites in January were made in the United States. Out of 635 total wines offered, 398 came from the United States. France was the second most popular source with 122, followed by Italy, Spain, Australia and other import countries, according to WinesVinesDATA.
 
 
The Flash Report in the March print issue of Wines & Vines further breaks down the January offers by counties within the U.S. Napa and Sonoma counties in California, the two places that dominate high-priced wine production in the U.S., clearly led all flash offers by county. Since the flash sites have made their marks by selling expensive wines at deep discounts, using usually one-day-only offers, it’s no surprise that wines from Napa Valley and various parts of Sonoma County were of special interest.

From the table on “Leading Flash Sites Compared,” it’s easy to see that Wines Til Sold Out offered the most wines (129) of the six leading sites. It also offered wines with the highest average winery retail price, and tallied the overall biggest discount of 52%.

In the realm of website traffic, three of the flash sites—Lot 18, The Wine Spies and Wines Til Sold Out—more than doubled their pageviews in January over December, according to Compete.com. Wine Woot and Wines Til Sold Out received the same number of pageviews, when rounded.
 
 
Deep discount darlings
As Paul Franson’s article in the February issue of Wines & Vines noted, flash websites that sell wines at deep discounts for short times have become the darlings of many wine lovers, and they’ve attracted fans among wineries, too. The wine hobbyist’s interest is clear: Get wines at attractive prices and also have the thrill of the chase to acquire something special.

For wineries, however, the primary appeal is to unload unsold wine quickly without seeming to compromise the usual pricing among regular customers. Some wineries also believe that flash sites allow them to reach new wine drinkers—who, they hope, will return for more, preferably at the regular prices.

Because of wineries’ interests in this new direct sales channel, Wines & Vines has initiated a major program to monitor and evaluate these sites and their successes as well as record everything in WinesVinesDATA. This program will include monthly coverage of the channel in the print magazine, reporting the number of wines offered, prices, discount percentages, typical wines offered, etc. Greater depth will be available online to subscribers only at winesandvines.com/flash.

What is a flash site?
A flash wine sales website is a web-based business whose main service is online direct-to-consumer wine sales or marketing with a prominent discount component, a time-urgency component and a limited-quantity component. Flash sites can either sell wine directly with their own retail licenses and ship them, or they can solely market wine for unrelated wineries that take the sale and ship the wine.