Every major metro area in the United States is seeing an explosion of new wine distributors. Most are small. Some are mid sized. All are passionate and carry wines that were usually not in that market before they came around.

The first to complain about this? The established distributors. “More competition! How can our market handle yet another distributor!”

The irony is that for many of the established distributors, the path to growth was though years of portfolio expansion. More wines in the book meant more sales.

So the question that needs to be asked is this: is the problem too many distributors or too many wines? And if the latter, does it make sense for an established distributor to complain about competition while they bring on more and more labels?

Or another way to ask the question: who is your biggest competition? Them? Or yourself?