Dealers Acquiring Taste for New Wine Exchange

There are stock exchanges, commodity exchanges, precious metals exchanges, a cocoa exchange, among many. Now, there is a wine exchange, reports a management information systems journal.

The wine exchange, headquartered here, links more than 125 wine-and-brandy producing, selling, buying and shipping companies in 56 countries handling thousands of transactions a day, according to MIS Week.

A computerized system provides members with access to a central data bank, where they can determine immediately what wines are available on the international market and then sell or track orders as they are shipped.

Sellers list their wines in the database, which records thousands of wines by vintage, location, price, packaging and terms of sales.

When a sale is completed, wines are automatically deducted from inventory, confirmed purchase orders printed at each dealer’s terminal and shipping instructions listed. The network also provides sellers, buyers and shippers up-to-the-minute information on their transaction, a procedure that formerly took months of paper work.

And how are the pioneers in this tradition-bound industry--who want to taste the wine and discuss it as part of the negotiations--taking this innovation?

There was resistance at first but it has faded into a feeling that automation is great, the publication says, adding that some brokers continue to deal with others on a one-to-one basis and use the exchange to improve the procedures of purchasing and shipping the product.