STEP 4: CHECK THEIR REPUTATION AND THEIR CLIENT REFERENCES

At this point, you should only have three to five finalists left, for two spots. Now it’s time to dig into the details of their business.

A good broker should be able to give you very good references when you ask. And not other people in the industry. They should be actual clients, people like you.

Furthermore, you should check each broker’s reputation online. This takes a little detective work, but it’s not difficult. There are a lot of forums that have information about wine brokers. For example, we would start with Wine Berserkers or Wine Spectator, which are the two forum authorities.

Go into the “buying and selling” parts of the forum. You can search for the wine brokers’ names and see what other people have said about them in the past. Or you can sign up and basically post something asking, “I’m thinking of doing business with this person. Have you done business with this person before, and would you give this person a good rating?” If somebody does not think that person has a good reputation, that person will definitely get flagged and you will know.

Those two forums are where you can immediately go and check, and you’re going to get some response. If you get no response, then maybe you just have to do a little bit more digging, or maybe that person is not very established in the business.