The Future of Buying and Selling Wine is Online

Just think about how much of a hassle it used to be to source a good bottle of Italian wine before the internet existed.

Let’s say that you lived in the UK and want a good bottle of wine. You could have checked out the supermarket but you knew that you’d never going to find truly prestigious vintages there. That’s not to say the wines weren’t any good.

They’re just not what you wanted.

So you had to go a specialty wine distributor. Of course, this assumes that you could find such a distributor in your location. If there wasn’t one, you’d have to travel a fair distance to find somebody. And even then, they’d only have a limited amount of stock. If they didn’t have the Italian wine that you wanted, you’d have to order it in.

And that meant waiting for an even longer amount of time. And when the wine arrived, you’d have to travel again just to go and pick it up.

The point we’re making is that the advent of the web changed everything about buying Italian wine. We claimed in the title that buying and selling wine is the future.

But really, it’s the present too!

The future is already here and these are the reasons why.

Reason #1 – Convenience is King

We’ve pretty much outlined all of the hassle that you’d have to go through back in the day to source a good bottle of Italian wine. It was a full-on mission! And while that may have given you a certain sense of satisfaction once you finally got your wine, it’s not something that most would want to do every day.

But now?

All you have to do is boot up a computer, phone or tablet, and jump online. Let’s say you come across the Xtrawine website during your search. In the space of a couple of clicks or taps, you could have an Italian wine ordered and on its way to you. It takes seconds and you can do it from almost anywhere.

That’s convenience in action and it’s a huge reason why buying and selling online has become so popular.

Reason #2 – More Stock

We highlighted another issue with the old way of doing things in our intro. Before the days of the web, you had to hope that your wine merchant had the vintage that you wanted in stock. If they didn’t, you needed to wait for them to source it and order it in. And if they didn’t deliver, you’d have to spend even more time going to pick it up!

That’s not an issue when buying online.

And again, you can use the Xtrawine website as a perfect example.

We stock thousands of wines from all over the world, ranging from common vintages through to some of the most exclusive around. You can see them and order them at any time. And because we’re not limited to the confines of a physical store, we will always have something in stock that suits your tastes.

That’s a huge benefit of buying and selling wine online. The limitations disappear and variety is the result.

Reason #3 – Greater Access to Producers

Let’s go back to the old days again.

Back then, it was pretty hard to learn about smaller wine producers. Sure, the magazines would cover the major players. But smaller producers were stuck to distributing domestically because they just couldn’t get the exposure that they needed.

Of course, this affected sellers. With no exposure, they’d always have limits put on their businesses.

But it also affects buyers. It meant that you’d potentially miss out on some amazing wines simply because you’d never heard of them.

Again, the web changed everything.

Thanks to the internet, any wine producer can create a website and make their products available on websites like ours. This means that they have all of the tools that they need to build their reputations and establish an international presence.

As a buyer, you have more choice than ever before. You could spend hours falling into a black hole of wine as you search for producers that you’ve never heard of before. And when you emerge, we’re certain that you’ll come bearing a wine that you’d have never found before the advent of the web.

Reason #4 – It’s the Best Option for the Current Situation

We couldn’t write this article without confronting the coronavirus situation again. And while many countries, Italy included, are starting to slowly reopen, this pandemic has taught us a lot about the state of the wine industry.

Many a producer still relies on traditional channels to market and sell their wines. Perhaps it’s not surprise that these producers struggled over the last few months. With no sales channels available to them, they’ve had to sit around and wait.

Or at least, most of them have.

Others have taken the initiative and gotten their products online. And this means they’ve managed to make some sales, even if it’s not at the volume they’d normally have.

In the future, it’s the producers who embrace the web who’ll benefit the most. The current situation demonstrates this perfectly as it shows how many sellers just aren’t prepared for the future.

In the years to come, more people will want to buy online, which means sellers need to go where the market is.

The Final Word

We’ve talked about all of the reason to buy wine online in the past, so we won’t go into them again here in too much detail. Just check out our catalogue and pick a wine. You’ll see all of the benefits for yourself.

But we also have a message for producers and other retailers…

The web is the way to go. It offers you another sales channel that’s future-proof. It also allows you to gain exposure in parts of the world that would otherwise never hear about you.

Whether you’re buying or selling, the web is the way to go when it comes to Italian wine.