Wine is in crisis. What we need is community. Cohesion. That's why I created wein.plus over 25 years ago. Today, many of us would not be able to survive without Business Premium Membership. What do we do differently?
Electricity, shipping costs, packaging, bottles, rents, insurance, craftsmen—everything is becoming more expensive. But we find it difficult to offset these increases with more turnover. Where is it supposed to come from? Germany is drinking and buying less wine. Austria too. Italy, France and Spain too. And that affects us all. I've been hearing about insolvencies, austerity programmes and a lack of confidence for three years now. When I founded wein.plus over 25 years ago, one aspect was so important to me that still characterises us today—and has become so important for you right now: community and cohesion. wein.plus is part of what we call wine community. We share a passion, feel connected, have similar problems and are shaping an industry that works differently to the one next door.
This gave rise to a simple but powerful idea: What happens if we face the challenges of our time together? For example, a wine merchant or winemaker is too small to negotiate decent discounts with mail order companies, even with good sales. But if 500, 1,000 or 2,000 of them join forces, doors open. This idea has become a reality. The result? Thanks to our framework agreements with UPS, DPD, and logistics companies, our Premium members save up to 70 per cent on shipping costs.
Favourable shipping costs are a decisive factor in the wine scene. wein.plus ensures particularly low prices.
UPSHow do we achieve this? With a lot of work. The negotiations take weeks, sometimes months, often with changing contacts, discussions about footnotes and promises with a short life period. But we enjoy negotiating and are passionate about it, because I know that it helps us all. It gets us further. Every euro we save is a euro we don't have to spend. And many Premium members save thousands of euros a month through our framework agreements—many times more than the cost of membership. Especially in these times: low costs ensure survival.
There is so much more that saves us money, helps us with annoying problems and keeps us moving forward, even in times of crisis. Packaging has become expensive. What have we done? We got together and achieved top conditions because we need a lot of packages together. And another example: almost no wine merchant can avoid organic certification. But what if it only cost half as much? No one is safe from warning letters: What if, in an emergency, I could quickly speak to a specialised lawyer whose initial consultation is free—and who I can afford when things get serious?
How about appearing high up in Google searches without spending thousands of euros on SEO marketing? Anyone who spends time online every day knows what I mean. Together with experts, we optimise our website for you every day. And have been doing so for many years. And why? So that your webshops linked to us are at the top of the list. Without having to spend a single extra euro. We now work with 22 external partners who offer you top discounts, provide you with personalised advice and offer very useful services for your business.
So that we know what's really good: Marcus Hofschuster and Kim Schreiber evaluate exclusively blind under the same tasting conditions.
wein.plusBut wein.plus is so much more than just a buying syndicate. Our tasters Marcus Hofschuster and Kim Schreiber evaluate wines blindly under identical conditions, in several rounds, independently and transparently. Never at the winery, never at trade fairs. So that private fans, professionals, retailers, and winemakers know which wines are very good and not so good. To be able to do this, we need complex logistics with top organisation and a large storage area. This costs us a lot of money—but for Premium members, unlike other wine media, sending in wine is free of charge. And why? Because we do it for you. Just as an aside: we take professional photographs of the bottles of every wine sent in for tasting and make the images available to our Premium members. Free of charge. But why don't we make a business out of it? Because we want you to have one less annoying and expensive problem.
Our editorial team headed by Uwe Kauss produces daily, independent news and in-depth stories on all aspects of the wine world. So that you know what's going on, what's coming, what's going, what's relevant, and where the industry is heading. You will also find useful and entertaining information, travel destinations, tips, and tests. Our specially prepared newsletter is one of the largest and widest-reaching wine newsletters in Europe. Twice a year, we also arrive in your letterbox as a classic, pleasantly old-fashioned magazine. To browse through, read, delve into, experience, and understand. Who else can offer you all this? Not many. But I think our community has a right to experience all of this.
Finally, one thing is missing: wine community brings together more knowledge and expertise from different industries and scientific disciplines than almost anywhere else. Geology, geography, and business administration, history, politics, and botany, medicine, sociology, physics, and chemistry—who is supposed to know their stuff? Well, we do! Our Premium members have free access to the world's largest wine lexicon. Editor Norbert Tischelmayer from Vienna designed it and developed it into the international standard in the world of wine with over 26,000 technical terms. He liaises with scientists, associations, wineries, and universities to ensure that no grape variety, no technical term, no matter how rare, is missing. He works with a passion that is rare—and perhaps unique to us. For our community.