For The Love Of Port

Posted: Sun Jul 29, 2007 11:02 pm Post subject:

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Hi Santa

I'd like to see a database of prices paid for ports. I know it would be hard to compare, but if you included parameters like country, purchase form (restaurant, auction, retail etc) buy month/year and standardized the currency to e.g. USD it could be quite usefull. You could make a form all users could input data into whenever they felt like sharing a buy with others. I think it'd be cool to lookup some prices before I buy port for comparison. It would also be nice to know what to go for if you're on vacation somewhere else.

-Lars

My response:

I like this idea, although differentiation between a price database specifically for Ports would be very beneficial, I would think that if we were to embrace the idea, it would have to include Douro wines and Madeira as well.

Beyond the specific venue chosen to purchase the 3 wine types, I need you (and others of course) to explain to me what you view as the primary benefits over using winesearcher.com or other price referenced databases.

In fact, I will start a seperate thread for this purpose.

Great suggestion, so let's now explore the upside first and then what specific parameters folks would like it to have, then we will work on production.

It is ideas like this that will keep the FTLOP in the forefront and I very much appreciate your new suggestion. Please email me your mailing address.

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As you can tell, I am very enthusiastic about this project. So, if you provide your own insights to the questions raised above, we will find a way to do this well. Have at it, please ... right here in this thread!


Thank you,

Roy

I don't know what we can do better than winesearcher. I know 2 guys in Montreal who developped a website similar to winesearcher over the last 2 years. It is a pain. Just think about all the possibilities a wine can be named by every merchant, I'm sure Stewart will like to process that manually with the database

What about an interface that wine merchant could by themelves or trough files they send you update their inventory directly on your website. A file that is sent trough FTP or something like this and you could run a script that take those files once per day and update the inventory.

We could browse the data online, receive emails on specific data(like send me an email if a taylor 1970 goes under 100$). This may also be a good idea to do something specific with the region of your member too. You don't want to send emails to someone in Russia about specials in USA.

Just my 2 cents, I don't think its worth inventing the wheel again. Get some trust and partership that is good for both the business and you.

It would be nice to have historical prices included, which wine searcher can't do.

-Lars

Lars,

Actually, winesearcher CAN and does dc historical prices, within reason. I have not checked this function lately, but I have used it in the past.

Roy Hersh wrote:Lars,

Actually, winesearcher CAN and does dc historical prices, within reason. I have not checked this function lately, but I have used it in the past.

I never new this until now...and I've been a subscriber of Winesearcher for over a year now. OK, no more learning for me, one thing a day is all I can handle

Hi,

This year I have started a wine search engine (Free Wine Searcher) that may come in handy. I created an overview that shows the lowest price in our database for each port we have listed. You can find the list here. For now, we are only indexing European retailers.

Recognizing a wine from descriptions of different merchants is a real pain and it is absolutely necessary for producing a meaningful list. I'm sure the list is not yet 100%, if you find mistakes like a ruby being listed as a vintage port or the other way around let me know.

BTW any tips about retailers in Europe that should be listed are welcome.

I hope this helps.

Jasper

Thanks Jasper.

Actually, I have been in discussions with a fantastic resource for making this a reality. It is one the docket at this point as some of the bells and whistles that will be developed for FTLOP are very cool. This is not going to happen this summer, but you'll all remember this thread as being the catalyst when we launch later this year.

Wine-searcher.com is the best way, but...

Be careful. Some companies advertise cheap prices, but then hit you on the backend with extra fees for shipping and handling, etc.

You'll end up paying more in some cases.