People Power, the Internet and Dud Bottles

In the past few years I have written a number of Winestar Journals and many internet posts criticising the returns’ policies and procedures of various wine companies for returning defective wines to wineries; the biggest serves were invariably dished out to Southcorp and Hardy’s.

These criticisms related to two main points. Firstly the difficulty the customer had to undergo returning a bottle and the way people were frequently made to feel like it was their fault the wine was defective. Secondly, the irrational and inefficient procedures the wine companies were using for verification. Clearly the attitude, procedures and efficiency have changed dramatically in many wineries recently so it’s appropriate to review the situation.

Of the four big producers Orlando was never a problem in replacing dud bottles so no mention will be made of them. Beringer Blass initially was the easiest of the rest to get replacements and handled things pretty efficiently. One person handled the whole returns procedure for the group but as I don’t have a huge amount of their wines in my cellar I don’t have a great deal of contact with them but when I have, it’s been good.

Hardy woke up reasonably quickly to the issue and was happy to replace a defective bottle but initially the procedure was hopelessly slow and extremely painful for the consumer. The greatest issue was the time it took to get a bottle replaced. You had to return the defective bottle to them; they would send it off for testing and when the understaffed department finally got time, many weeks later a replacement finally arrived. This same slow system also pervaded through to labels like Leasingham.

Things are better at Hardy’s. Now, if the bottle is corked, all they want is some information from the customer and the cork returned so it can be tested. The customer posts off the defective cork, the cork is tested and a replacement is received in about a week. The new bottle arrives with an explanatory letter confirming the problem and probable cause.

Is this just me that’s getting good service? The answer is no. When I was in South Australia I opened a 1997 Eileen Hardy that I had shipped over and it was rank with bacterial aromas and a metallic taste. The next day I got my mate John ‘Pie King’ Davis to take the bottle back to the McLaren Vale Cellar Door to see what sort of reaction he received (they know me). They apologised for the problem and replaced it on the spot with a 1999 without even pulling the cork to test the wine that he was returning. They also asked for an email address so they could report the cause of the problem to him. Well done and good service Hardy’s.

Southcorp also used to be a pain to deal with! If you had a defective $12 bottle of wine they insisted on getting it back from the customer (in case you were trying to rip them off) and once it had been received by them it was replaced. Finally they saw the economic stupidity of paying a small fortune in postage and inconveniencing every customer with this system to potentially save a few dollars on the occasional customer trying to fleece them of a bottle.

The returns’ system is now vastly improved. The customer makes contact via the phone or email. If it’s an expensive bottle they may want it back to get it tested; for the lower cost bottles it’s painless. The customer service representative obtains certain details from the customer and arranges a replacement. The wine arrives a few days later with a covering letter explaining the cause of the problem. If it’s TCA for example, there will be an explanation about TCA and why they are embracing the use of alternative closures.

It’s not just me receiving this service; there are regular reports on the wine forums indicating this is now standard procedure. Well done Southcorp.

In the case of older wines, the wineries are also trying to be understanding. Many send two bottles of the current vintage to make up for the disappointment. I recently had a corked bottle of 1992 Jasper Hill Georgia and the winery replaced it with two bottles of the current vintage. A friend of mine received two bottles of 1999 Wynns Cabernet Sauvignon for a corked 1991. Petaluma (and some others) have museum stock and are able to replace with the original wine which is even better. Last week I opened a 1991 Wynns Centenary Reserve and it was badly corked. Although Southcorp have a "replace current vintage policy" in light of the fact this was a one off special wine it took them twenty four hours to find a replacement from their museum stock. And a second well done Southcorp.

However all is not rosy in every garden. Recently I had a corked bottle of a nameless wine from a small winery where I am well known as I have been a mailing list customer for some years. They have always received favourable reviews when I visit the winery. A bottle of their 1998 Shiraz was reported as corked by email. After no response for a week a second email was sent. The response from the proprietor and winemaker was “We are sorry to here that you have corked wine, but unfortunately there is not a lot we can do.  Makes a good argument for using stelvin closures. If you are ever in Cellar Door, we will be happy to give you a bottle of something else.”

Needless to say I was not happy with the response and was not going to let it pass. However a few days later I received a very apologetic email from the next most senior person in the winery. He stated he had been overseas and he was normally the person to handle these matters and that of course they would replace the wine.

The point here is that the owner of the winery doesn’t see the need to do the morally right thing by the customer, let alone fulfil a legal requirement. Unfortunately, this attitude is not isolated and whilst many of the wineries are getting far better at replacing defective wines, especially at the big end of town, some of the smaller ones need to extract a digit.

For the past two years I have been keeping track of most bottles of wine that have been opened by me or in my presence. Out of 1104 bottles 6.9% were suffering from a cork related fault, TCA oxidised etc, and 3.1% were suffering from other faults. The numbers within wineries are starting to show some interesting results. The vast majority are within the bounds of the norm. A couple are not. Here are the results from the biggies and one other that is way out of the norm.

Beringer Blass – 14 bottles ~ 0 duds (low sample rate).

Orlando – 18 bottles ~ 0 duds (low sample rate).

Southcorp (group but excluding Rosemount) – 82 bottles ~7 cork failure and 3 with other problems (within the bounds of the average norm).

BRLH (group) – 126 bottles ~ 11 cork failure and 2 with other problems (a statically average normal result).

Rosemount – 44 bottles ~ 4 with cork failure and 5 with other problems.

Chapel Hill – 36 bottles ~ 8 with cork failure and 3 with other problems.

When I compiled the Rosemount statistics and came up with a 20% failure rate I was quite surprised at the result. It’s possible, but not highly likely, that it’s a statistical aberration. The wines are all from the Tradition level and up, three them Balmoral. Many of them have been bacterial problems and this fault had been an issue for me with some of their wine prior to keeping track of individual bottles.

The Chapel Hill situation is a different matter with my experienced 30% failure rate. The winery has ignored my last two requests for comments despite having been sent this information. Almost all the wines were from their 1994 and 1996 vintages. For the record, on most occasions I returned the wine to a friendly retailer and asked him to try the wine totally masked to get his reaction. In all cases he agreed the wines were not right. In some cases I even had a second bottle open to compare. (I often take masked good wine in to him and ask what he thinks because he may want to stock it.)

From the majority of the information I have read, Australia appears to have a very high level of dud bottles and in all honesty I have no idea why. There are three possible reasons that I can think of-:

1. We have become better educated at picking the offending bottles
2. The Portuguese are sending us lesser quality corks
3. The environmental factors in Australia play a part (why do we have the highest rate of Asthma in the world?)   

Whatever the reason, the problems are unlikely to go away quickly and the consumer and wine industry will be stuck with these problems for some time to come. Many of the small and medi

Whatever the reason, the problems are unlikely to go away quickly and the consumer and wine industry will be stuck with these problems for some time to come. Many of the small and medium sized wineries are now doing a good job in replacing defective bottles, just like the big four. Let’s hope the recalcitrant ones step up to their responsibilities too.