The Distributor Market Service was developed by Wines Vines Analytics to provide visibility about distributors and their portfolios to wineries. Drawing on the comprehensive Wines Vines Analytics winery and distributor databases, the Distributor Market Service enables 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 in a particular state and which wholesalers might be the most interested in representing their wines.

Launched in 2015, the web-based subscription service is maintained by a team of researchers that survey wine distributors throughout the year to collect contact information and current portfolios.

“With the Distributor Market Service (DMS), we see the opportunity to supply the wine industry with a resource that will help small to mid-size wineries expand their portfolios into the three-tier system,” said Wines & Vines president and publisher Chet Klingensmith. “The DMS allows wineries to analyze the wholesale marketplace, see what competitors are doing and find where their brand fits in key markets.”

Users can search for distributors by name or market, and they can review a distributor’s portfolio for criteria such as winery region, winery average bottle price and varietals. 

A market-specific search will provide all relevant distributor data for a particular state. If a winery is interested in expanding into a new state, such as Texas, a user can filter the data to see which wineries are currently distributed there and by which wholesalers.

In addition to searching by distributor, the Distributor Market Service enables users to search by winery. Users may search for wineries that meet certain criteria including winery region, size and price point. This allows a winery to focus on its peer group competing in a specific market.

The distributors operating in the state can also be searched by the same criteria. So a Russian River Valley winery producing Pinot Noir for $60 per bottle can determine which other Pinot Noir producers at the same price point are getting distributed in a given region. A winery market search can be limited to region, state or county.

Such in-depth information about wholesalers provides users a path to find opportunities in markets where their wines would stand out or with wholesalers that would be more likely to add those specific regional wines at certain price points.

“The DMS is unique in that it provides the most comprehensive database of distributors linked to U.S wineries,” said project manager Jacqueline Wood. “The service not only allows wineries to identify distributors and expand into new markets, it also provides competitive market-research tools through geographic, volume, bottle price and IRI sales data analysis.”

The Distributor Market Service is accessible via the Wines & Vines website at winesandvines.com/dms.
For a demonstration of the DMS, contact Jacqueline Wood at jacqueline@winesandvines.com.