Issue link: http://winesandvines.uberflip.com/i/867389
8 WINES&VINES September 2017 A member of Wine Communications Group Inc. President & Publisher Chet Klingensmith Chairman Hugh Tietjen Publishing Consultant Ken Koppel Associate Publisher Tina Vierra Special Projects & Events Coordinator Johanna Rupp Publishing Assistant Ian Fadden EDITORIAL Editor Jim Gordon Managing Editor Kate Lavin Senior Editor Andrew Adams Contributing Editor Jane Firstenfeld Northwest Correspondent Peter Mitham Grapegrowing Columnist Glenn T. McGourty Contributing Writers Laurie Daniel, Richard Smart, Richard Carey, Jaime Lewis, Chris Stamp, Andrew Reynolds, Craig Root, Ray Pompilio, Andy Starr, Fritz Westover Practical Winery & Vineyard (PWV) Editor Don Neel Wine East Editor Linda Jones McKee DESIGN & PRODUCTION Graphic Designer Rebecca Arnn DATABASE DEVELOPMENT – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY Vice President — Data Management Lynne Skinner Project Manager Liesl Stevenson Database & Web Development James Rust, Peter Scarborough EDITOR'S LETTER THE CRUSH WILL BE WELL UNDERWAY WHEN YOU GET THIS ISSUE, and you'll be busy. But be sure to save your magazine if you don't have time to read it right away. Please don't pitch it into the recycling bin. This issue is a keeper. It contains the most ambitious special report that Wines & Vines has published in many years: Distributor Market 2017, a 25-page special section that names the top 10 wine distributors and examines the current challenges in distribution from multiple angles. Since Wines & Vines typically focuses on the production end of the wine business, why did we wade so deeply into the middle of the wine trade? Because distribution is a big, growing and ongoing challenge for thousands of our readers who own or work in wineries. Key surveys over the past year have asked owners and winemakers: What issues are most concerning to your business? The answers were water, labor and distributor consoli- dation. Of those three, distributor consolidation is the one that most directly affects their bottom lines. Not that this was a new revelation. In fact, for several years our company has been developing a data tool to help both wineries and distributors understand the many and varied state wholesale markets. Much of the information in this issue comes from what we've learned in compiling this tool, the Distributor Market Service. Our data team, Wines Vines Analytics, built the Dis- tributor Market Service to provide wineries visibility on distributors and their portfolios. Drawing on our compre- hensive winery and distributor databases, the DMS en- ables users to quickly analyze a state market to determine the active distributors and see their wine offerings. The service was designed to give winery clients a better understanding of where their brands could fit into a particular state and which wholesalers might be the most interested in representing their wines. Grounded in that kind of data, and supplemented by old-fashioned news reporting, we think the Distributor Market 2017 will become a "franchise" issue. It's a special report about the top U.S. wine distributor companies and the complexities of the channel itself. It will be an indispensable guide for growing wineries of all sizes that need a better understanding of the fast-changing second tier of the traditional three-tier distribution system. Senior editor Andrew Adams, contributing writer Ben Nara- sin and I did the reporting and writing based on dozens of interviews and gigabytes of data collected and crunched by our vice president of data management, Lynne Skinner, and her team at Wines Vines Analytics. One thing we heard time and time again from wineries was that they need distributors. They find the three-tier system indispensable—even when they also may sell wine directly to consumers. It means that even if the production tier and the wholesale tier are sometimes at odds, it's in the best interest of both tiers to work more closely together. We hope that this issue can help to encourage that kind of cooperation. —Jim Gordon Distributor Market 2017 is a special report about the top U.S. wine distributor companies and the complexities of the channel itself. CONTACT US SUBSCRIPTIONS Email: subs@winesandvines.com Online: winesandvines.com/subscribe Phone: (866) 453-9701 EDITORIAL Email: edit@winesandvines.com MAIL 65 Mitchell Blvd., Suite A San Rafael, CA 94903 CONNECT WITH US facebook.com/WinesandVines twitter.com/WinesandVines youtube.com/WinesandVines1919 Why We're Focusing on the Wholesale Tier