REVISITING ON-PREMISE WINES

Today, I had the rare occasion of actually being called out on a blog post. Dennis Cakebread, Director of Sales at Cakebread Cellars, called me in regard to my recent post about on-premise wines, in which I used Cakebread as an example of an exasperating item customers ask for that I cannot get. Dennis assured me that Cakebread was not entirely on-premise (they actually sell 30% of their production to retail) but they designate allocations state-by-state using per capita wine consumption. Obviously, us folks in Kentucky rank pretty low on the totem pole due to the vast majority of our landscape here in the Commonwealth is “dry.”

It wasn’t a harsh conversation though, and I have spoken to Dennis once before on this matter. He tells me that it is left up to the distributors in each state to decide who gets what, but I was quick to point out our geographical proximity to Cincinnati and that the majority of our customers come from the Ohio side of the river. It’s difficult to explain to every person from Ohio that comes into our store that wines that are available just two minutes across the bridge are not available here. That’s the beauty of working in a “Bridge” store – it might as well be another country.

We both laughed about it, and he left the conversation thanking me for mentioning Cakebread. I only wish I could have wrangled a bit of product out of him.