I worked at this place. They used to be called "Jakob Gearheart"....they changed names because they had some heat on them, and had burned through all their leads.
I personally thought that the wine was pretty good. I hated that they made you drink wine all day while you were cold calling. I like wine, but 5 days a week, and during the day? Try hitting the gym at 6pm after a day of drinking 3 glasses of red wine....
They are really just a Negociant who buys odd lots of "this" and "that".... and then makes up a label name, a region, and a winery. So, yes it's highly unlikely that you will ever locate the winery on the label that they made up.
The Costco label "Cameron Huges" is the same thing, it's a Negociant. Except he is not trying to make up some story about "disovering" some small allocated batch of "family owned" wineries that happen to be outstanding but hard to find! Hey everyone loves a good story. In sales; facts tell, stories sell.
Is it a "scam"??...Depends upon your definition. Bernie Madoff took your money and you got nothing tangible in return.
With Montesquieu you get a tangible product, the conveinece of delivery, the excitement of some guy calling you with something "hot" and "special".
Is there a lot of mark up?
Yup, you bet cha!
They have to pay the phone bill for that many dials per day, pay for the leads, pay for the wine, the square footage for the phone room (in San Diego) and the square footage for the wine storage.
It was a great job before the internet. As a wine broker you controlled information on all your products, and cold calling was still a very accepted form of sales and business.
So are they legit? Yeah, as legit as any other outfit. Is the wine good? Well, wine is food, and food is subjective. Is it pricey? For me, yeah I'm not rich enough to have a wine "broker", and brag about my collection of rare finds at the country club---but some people like this.
My suggestion:
With costco, Bev Mo, and the internet do you really need anything else?
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