Emailing His Way to Wine Lovers' Hearts

[August. 8th, 2013] by Lettie Tag

It's a very good time for oenophiles, what with so many great wines being made all over the world and the fact that they're sold so many places as well. But it's both a good and a bad time to be a wine merchant (see points one and two). There's so much competition, it's become harder and harder for wine merchants to distinguish themselves.

Daniel Posner, the 36-year-old proprietor of Grapes The Wine Company in North White Plains, has made a name for himself via his daily emails. Each email contains a quirky and seemingly random mix of personal thoughts (about family, friends, the Jets, etc.) and professional musings (on 100-point wines, recent obscure finds, gripes about pricing and certain wine critics). At the end, he mentions a select group of wines for sale.

These emails have been a highly effective sales tool for Mr. Posner since 2003, though they weren't always very interesting reading. Mr. Posner said his wife Joy read his emails every day and complained that they were boring. She had a point. I saw an email he sent to his customers in 2003 that simply stated the wines he was selling: "I can offer ten cases of Ponsot Clos de la Roches Vielles Vignes." That was it. While the wine—a great Burgundy—might have been compelling, the writing definitely was not.

Mrs. Posner suggested that her husband make his emails a bit more personal—that he reveal more of his feelings and his own taste in wine. (I'm not sure whether she suggested incorporating his thoughts on the Jets.) Mr. Posner complied, and the new style was seen as an (almost) universal success. Mr. Posner received many compliments from his customers, he noted, though a few grumbled, saying they "just wanted to buy wine," he added.

An email titled "Napa from the Stone Ages!" sent in December 2011 is a good example of the Posner style. The first paragraph contains a semi-lengthy assessment of the New York sports teams from the 1990s: The Knicks, the Rangers, the Giants and the Jets (not to mention the Yankees, the Mets and the Islanders) are all briefly analyzed before Mr. Posner turns his attention to wine. The second paragraph features Mr. Posner's musings on the wine world during the same time, with various regions cited and wine trade figures taken to task: "Rhone become much more prominent on the American wine scene in the 1990s (no, 2007 had not been produced yet in Chateauneuf, and people were still buying). Bordeaux had 1990, 1995 and 1996 to cash their checks on. They even tried to rip people off on the poor 1997 vintage, but that failed. Spain was just coming of age outside of Rioja. Jorge Ordonez had a young company that the critics paid no attention to....Australia? Dan Phillips and the Yellowtail folks were not around to create oil tanks of cheap wine."

The third paragraph features the wines that Mr. Posner is selling. The wines are certainly choice, first-rate Napa wines from the 1980s and 1990s from producers like Beaulieu Vineyards, Harlan Estate, Bryant Family, Staglin and Ridge Vineyards at prices ranging from $35 up to $1,000 a bottle. I asked Mr. Posner how the wines fared and he said they sold out almost immediately. In fact, that was true of most wines that he offered via email, he added.

Although the emails are Mr. Posner's primary sales tool, he does have walk-in customers at the Grapes The Wine Company store, which is rather small but pretty close to the North White Plains train station. Is there a difference between the two types—the online customer and the walk-in buyer? "The person who walks into the store will be much more mainstream," said Mr. Posner. They also drink "a much higher percentage of domestic Chardonnay or Cabernet," he said. Nobody came in looking for German Riesling, he added, though he sells plenty of German Rieslings via email." His most recent walk-in customer, said Mr. Posner, was a woman looking for a bottle of Pinot Grigio.

Mr. Posner was a paralegal before he became a wine merchant; he was hired by the previous owners of Grapes in 2000 as the company's business administrator and became a partner two years later. In those days, the store was in Rye, N.Y. Mr. Posner bought out his two partners in 2004 and moved the store to its current location in 2008. The move was made possible, he said, by the emails, which lifted the store's dependence on in-store sales. They also affected the focus of the wines in the store.

"We had to shift our buying styles," Mr. Posner said. "We have a lot more wines under $15 than we had in Rye. In Rye, we couldn't sell anything under $10. If we had a wine for $7.99 in Rye, customers would say it couldn't be any good."

Other changes have taken place in the wine business itself. For example, a high score is no longer enough to ensure the sale of a wine. "We don't sell out of 98-point wines anymore," said Mr. Posner, who blamed "point inflation" by wine critics. There are now so many more high-scoring wines that the numbers have become less meaningful, he said: "I remember when I sold a Parker 92-point wine for $30 and it was a big deal. Now I can sell a 97-point wine for $25 and it won't sell out. The rating scale just got smaller and smaller."

What about those Robert Parker points? Mr. Posner has cited them in his emails and yet he has taken many wine critics to task, especially Mr. Parker. Mr. Posner replied that the citation was purely pragmatic. "If 99% of the wine merchants are offering wines with scores, we'll give them too," he said, but added that he does not buy a single wine simply because of its score; he has to taste and approve of it as well.

On the subject of approval, I wondered what his wife thought about his emails these days. Does she appreciate his change in style? "My wife works full time as a lawyer and has three small children," Mr. Posner replied. "She doesn't have time to read my emails anymore."

Write to Lettie Teague at lettie.teague@wsj.com