Smaller wineries need direct-to-consumer sales

Why direct-to-consumer sales are so important to wineries if many of the smaller, family-owned wineries are to survive: They need to sell a large percentage of their wine directly to the consumer either at the winery or through wine clubs. There is no other way. Over the last 25-30 years there has been a great consolidation of wine distributors coinciding with a tremendous expansion in the number of wineries. In fact there are only two remaining giant, national distributors and a small number of regional ones.