They say the Internet is a reflection of the real world. You get the chaos, the rubbish, the quality: the lot. Perfectly correct. And there’s no better example of this than Internet-based wine sales, a jungle inhabited by a wide range of grazers, browsers and predators; some large, some small; some more genetically advanced, while others already appear to be facing certain extinction. There’s almost a new Australian Internet wine site born every day which claims to have the answer to every buyer’s prayers. Wine Planet wasn’t the first, but its extensive promotion and flashy ‘front end’ have made it the largest-selling wine site in Australia. There’s also Australian Vintage Direct, the Australian Wine Centre, Liquorlink Australia, Wine2Go, Vintage Cellars, Philip Murphy, Cellarmasters, WinePool, Wine Life, Liquorlink and a host of others. Unsatisfied by these, you can also bid for wine at Australian Wine Auction, Richardson’s Wine Auctions, Sterling Auctioneers, Winebid and Vines Premium. It’s endless. Some Internet wine retailers actually have premises, walls and floors. Others are basically virtual, existing only as a presence on a screen. Some use cheap prices to lure their customers, others attempt to seduce with interactive content, newsletters, hints and reviews. Some use the names of well-credentialled wine journalists to write their catalogue material and reviews; while others appear to hide behind a veil of anonymity, apparently content to let their prices do the talking. Wine Planet has established a strong jump on other wine sales sites. It packs a lot of wine content, prepared by writers like Max Allen and Tim White to help sell the wines it wishes to feature. It features some rather dubious ‘Wine TV’ in which tasters rather jerkily take you through the paces with different wine themes, a news section, chat room, accessories store, wine articles and an enthusiast’s club. It has a pricing policy to be $6 per case cheaper than its competitors and offers free delivery throughout most capital cities. Australian Vintage Direct was perhaps the first of the Internet wine sales sites, promoting itself in its early days to the educational community. Today its reach is far broader audience, offering a broad spectrum of wines for sale in a well-presented site. The layout used means it does take rather a long time to browse through a category of wine. The Australian Wine Centre offers a wine learning facility and even provides users with the chance to get their wine questions answered by e-mail. It has a particularly active wine forum and a separate chat site to which some people appear to spend their time permanently attached, plus a range of service facilities which do offer genuine assistance from a genuine human being. A great deal of work has gone into the rear end of Wine2Go to provide accurate background material on the hundreds of wineries featured at the site, although it stretches a point a little to call itself a ‘directory’ of the industry. It’s actually a shop and an easily navigable one at that, with very detailed notes about the wines it features. In the absence of a ‘name’ writer, one would assume that the notes have been prepared by the operators of the site. The site operated by Australia’s largest quality national retail chain, Vintage Cellars, is shortly due for overhaul, but is one of the easiest of all sites to browse when simply wishing to cast an eye over a large number of wines and prices. Customers can sign up into one of the best rewards-based retail clubs in the business. It will be interesting to see what happens to the Cellarmasters site now that its owners, Fosters Brewing Ltd, have taken a 25% in Wine Planet. Cellarmasters is handsomely Australia’s most successful direct wine sales merchant and, frankly, what it offers on the Net is presently rather disappointing and streets behind the Internet specialists, like Wine Planet. Melbourne retailer Philip Murphy, who is expected to expand his business into NSW shortly, has a thoroughly competent retail site. It doesn’t attempt to provide magazine-style content, but does enable customers to join its very effective Advantage Club rewards system. Although Wine Life is based in South Melbourne and produces a very dry newsletter for its visitors by editor Troy Martin, it doesn’t give very much away about who’s behind it (even its ‘About Us’ page has a picture of three gentlemen without a caption). Its wine reviews are strongly influenced by the Adelaide-based Winestate magazine. Liquorlink is an uncomplicated wine site without the depth of search facilities offered by other sites. It offers information on some but not all of the wines it offers, sometimes from the maker, sometimes from the media (usually Winestate) and some from what it calls its ‘Independant’ source. Its newsletter, Vince’s Vine, is fresh and enthusiastic. The virtual wine auction market is about to move up a notch with the opening of the Sydney office of Winebid, the world’s largest online wine auction house. With other bases in the USA and UK, it’s likely to throw the cat amongst the pigeons in the rapidly expanding online Australian secondary market for wine and is likely to accelerate the rate at which our more sought-after wine leaves the country. But the site that will surely turn the entire business of Internet wine sales upsidedown is WineRobot, a site which could spell the end for the content-driven Internet sales site. WineRobot, whose growth in terms of hits has been little short of phenomenal, is a highly sophisticated search mechanism which rapidly scans through wine sales sites, listing wines being searched for by availability and price. It doesn’t sell wine, but in an instant equips the visitor with a price comparison across the different sales competitors. No more chasing through the Favourites folder, opening site after site to compare prices; it’s all done in a flash. If money means anything to you and you intend to buy wine over the Net, you would be foolish not to make WineRobot your first port of call. The implications of WineRobot’s likely success are interesting. Why bother selling wine over the Net unless you’re the cheapest or have the widest range? Will it affect the imminent and long-awaited launch of Winepros? Winepros is another Internet site designed to profit through a seamless link to a wine retailer and whose content-driven front end is currently provided by James Halliday at www.jameshalliday.com.au. As I began, there is no bigger jungle than the Internet and there appears to be no more competitive microcosm of this theory than in the battle for the online wine dollar. Where it will end is anybody’s guess. And given that the Internet’s only been around for about five minutes, nobody’s had much of a chance for fire anything more than a warning shot. Buying Australian Wine on the Internet Australian Vintage Direct www.sofcom.com.au/Nicks Australian Wine Auction www.australianwineauction.com Australian Wine Centre www.auswine.com.au Cellarmasters www.cellarmasters.com.au Liquorlink www.liquorlink.com.au Philip Murphy www.pmwine.com.au) Richardson’s Wine Auctions www.erauctions.com.au Sterling Auctions www.sterlingauctions.com.au Vines Premium www.vines.netauctions.net.au Vintage Cellars www.vintagecellars.com.au) Wine Life www.winelife.com.au Wine Planet www.wineplanet.com.au Wine2Go www.wine2go.com.au Winebid www.winebid.com WineRobot www.winerobot.com)
