Yes, I am spoiled. Even in a relatively small city like Sacramento, I can walk or cycle just a short distance to find an interesting wine for dinner. Some 15 farmers markets, grocery stores and wine shops are that close. They range from neighborhood corner stores heavily stocked with E&J Gallo brands to outlets like the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op, Taylors Market and Corti Brothers, where the selections are assembled with an eye to individuality, quality, variety and value.
Bacchus, the first social-media maven?
As a consequence, I don’t much shop for wine online. When I do, it is for something that has aroused my curiosity but isn’t stocked extensively by my usual sources. As an example, Gigondas. Then I go online, and have little difficulty finding several candidates. Online outlets that could fill my cart include Wine-Searcher.com, Vivino.com, Wine.com and klwines.com.
I was thinking that Pix.wine, a relatively new and ambitious online outlet, would be part of the mix, but after a high-profile launch about two years ago it looks to be fading. Lately, Pix laid off much of its crew, including the staff of its online wine magazine, The Drop.
In a lengthy analysis of the venture’s foundering, Alder Yarrow, a wine blogger (Vinography.com), contributor to JancisRobinson.com (where his essay appears), and member of Pix’s board of advisors, put much of the blame on what he sees as wine-industry reluctance to support financially such technologically sophisticated “ecosystems” as Pix.
Could be, but there might be other reasons why Pix stalled. One could be that name, suggestive of pixels, photography and dental picks more than wine.
Anyway, the inspiration for Pix, says Alder, was the seeming inability of existing online options to get wine consumers and wine producers to bond more helpfully and meaningfully. “It remains much more difficult than it should be for digital consumers to easily get their hands on a bottle of wine that they will love,” writes Alder.
He adds: “Online retailers, even the biggest ones, are limited in their selections, leaving them only able to offer recommendations to their customers of what they carry, which is a tiny slice of what the wine world has to offer.”
By and large, this is true, but I don’t see how Pix departed significantly from the existing model, at least up to the point when it folded. Wine sales either online or on terra firma involve a maze of complicated compliances imposed by local, state and national jurisdictions, as well as the archaic and monopolistic three-tier system of distribution, among other challenges. The people behind Pix may ultimately have been able to jump through those hoops, but ran out of funds before their aspirations could be realized.
Contrary to Alder’s take, on the other hand, neither wine consumers nor wine producers are especially aggravated about existing sources of wine, including online sources. Granted, online outlets can be clumsy in navigating and fulfilling a shopper’s hopes, but at least some of them continue to fill virtual carts.
Pix looks to have faltered for reasons other than the wine trade’s alleged indifference to technology. Wineries from the corporate to the boutique, after all, take advantage of the various bells and whistles that technology provides, though not always in a timely and friendly manner. Nonetheless, look how they used their own online platforms to capitalize on shipping wine direct to consumers before but especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. For both consumers and producers, that relationship looks to be enduring. And perhaps that experience taught producers that that is all the online presence they need, and that they don’t see any additional advantage to backing Pix.