Richard Kinssies

The owner of Seattle’s Wine Outlet stores has been around the proverbial block and then some. After it all, the only thing he wants to do is sell you good wine at the best price.

By Josh LaRosee

Richard Kinssies has been somewhat of a polarizing figure in the Washington wine industry, partly because he’s been around long enough to help shape the retail side of the business. He started back in 1973 as a store manager for one of the few retailers in the region and worked his way up as a writer for various local publications, including the now defunct Seattle P-I. He was also the wine steward that helped shape the way wine is sold via large outlets such as Safeway. Now, he runs two outlet stores of his own in Seattle, aptly named Wine Outlet, where he buys wines below wholesale and passes the savings on to his patrons.

WINO: When did you decide to open up your first Wine Outlet?

Richard: When I was at Safeway, back in 1980, there were over forty distributors in King County. I was every one of them’s best customer. Excuse me…

[Takes a moment to playfully ask the woman behind us if she’d planned the way her purple suede jacket matched the chair she had just gotten up from.]

Richard: Nicely done! So anyway, these guys would come to me to sell wine. They would, when that work was done, they would pull a bottle of wine. “Richard, you gotta help me out here. XYZ winery left me for that SOB down the street, good riddance, but left me with thirty-seven cases of wine. I don’t want to build his brand, so I just want out of this thing.” And I’d say, “That looks like a $15 cabernet,” which would have gone for wholesale at, say, $10.50. I’d say, “I guess I’d buy it for seven bucks.” It kept happening. Pretty soon, I was getting all this stuff and grew to understand that wine is a commodity, just like anything else. People have this reverence for wine, and if they think it’s a good product, it will always sell and at a good price, which is so much pucky, because in any commodity, there’s a reason anything has to be moved and has to be moved now.

In 2004, I had some life changes, and I wanted to do this [outlet] project. I went to all the people I knew in the wholesale wine industry and asked them, “Why won’t this work?” Nobody could tell me why it wouldn’t work. The concept is, when there are these wines that need a home, and someone needs to sell them now—maybe the wine is still in tank, maybe it’s imported for a grocery chain and the buyer goes, “Not so much, I don’t’ like that wine”—what are you going to do, sue them so they pay? “No,” you say, “I’ll just call Richard.” So, I opened the first store, and then I started buying wine. It was a success the first day I opened the store. And, a year and a half later, I bought a building to open the second store.

WINO: Speaking of the second store, which is your favorite? I suppose it’s a bit like having children, you love them equally, but you have to pick a favorite.

Richard: [Laughs] No, I don’t! But, I’ll tell you the difference, and you can say, or the readers can say which they like best. The SoDo store, you know, is the “first born.” But also, I lost my lease there, such as it was, and I moved one block south. I opened that store on Thanksgiving.

WINO: I drove by the other day and saw that the sign was gone, and I wondered whether you were still open. I called and asked if the first store (SoDo) was still open and they said, “Yeah!” and I thought I must have been imagining things.

Richard: I moved one block south into the PaperZone building. I share it. It’s a great building. It’s bigger, prettier. And, the signage is good, everything… The original store, people didn’t know it was open to the public. I fought that everyday. And the new store, it’s more inviting. People who live and work around there, they say, “Well, I never went into your other store. I never knew it was open!” So, in the Elliot store, since I own the building, I have my wine school, which I founded in 1982. Upstairs, I have a 700-square-foot dedicated wine school. I need to hire someone to run it. Also, that store is large enough to have events, and I’m opening a wine bar there in a couple months. So, it will be sort of a destination.

WINO: Is part of the idea that your stores are destination stores that you have a constant influx of different kinds of wine? You don’t carry certain brands.

Richard: I do not build brands. That’s contrary to the way retail operates. I am the opposite of that. I tell people, “Don’t fall in love with anything here, because it won’t be here!” I want to see everything disappear. When I look at my inventory, I say it’s kind of like looking at a kaleidoscope; it’s always changing and will never be the same, but it’s always cool.

WINO: How often do you get Washington wines coming through your stores?

Richard: All the time I get stuff, depending on how I get it. I’ve had dozens and dozens of the labels that you know come through the store. Everything from Canoe Ridge, Latitude 46, Grande Ronde, Bridgman, Apex, Abbey Page… these are just some that I can pick off the top of my head. The cool thing about my store, I think, is that everything is a good deal at a bargain price. I have wines that used to sell for $600 that will sell for $300, and wines that sell for $300 at $199. These are great deals, far below what retailers can buy at wholesale. And I don’t chase Two Buck Chuck, I’m not trying to be the cheapest guy in town. Good wines, good prices, whatever they are.

WINO: Have you ever had a chance to make your own wine?

Richard: Yes, in fact, I have a bottle at the store. I’m reprising the label for a private brand for the stores. I’m going to négociant wine because I don’t have a license to make and sell it.

WINO: When the P-I goes the way of the ghost, what’s next for you as far as writing goes?

Richard: I don’t know. They are keeping everything close to their vest. Whatever content they generate will be done, I’m sure, by freelancers. But, I still write for the Wine News covering the Northwest. [Editor’s note: Kinssies is now a part of the group that will contribute content to the P.I.’s online effort.]

WINO: What are some of the favorite ideas about Northwest wines?

Richard: That they are local! That we have this thing here. When I started in the wine industry, there were, I don’t know, maybe a dozen wineries. It’s huge.

WINO: When you drink a bottle of wine, what region, anywhere in the world, do you go to for that bottle?

Richard: Anywhere in the world? There’s a circle I draw around the Mediterranean Basin that includes Italy, Spain, Portugal, Southern France, and then to include Germany. That’s where my heart is. Those are the wines that move me. I like the wines of Washington State as I like the wines of Oregon as I like the wines of California. A good wine is a good wine is a good wine. I like to support local wineries though, because I know these guys.

WINO: Are there any producers here in Washington that stand out for you, that do things differently? Maybe they harken back to the Old Style.

Richard: A little bit. One of them is the Seven Hills Winery. Their philosophy is about structure, not fruit, which turns on its head what “they” are usually going for. Usually it’s about fruit and getting as much of it as you can. As a result, you get excess alcohols, I call it. I don’t like all that alcohol, and I don’t like all that fruit. I got in trouble by the Washington Wine Commission a few years back for writing a feature for Wine News, and in it, I wasn’t referring to anybody, but I said that there is a danger that in Washington, winemakers are going to produce a generation of high-quality Stepford wines. They wanted to kill the whole story. It’s the cover story! Of course, the publication said no. But, this isn’t a Washington problem.

WINO: It’s the Parker Problem.

Richard: Yeah. All in all, I don’t have any big complaints. We don’t create jug wine here, for the most part, and very little high-volume wine. We have two wineries that produce eighty-plus percent of the wine in the state. It’s been that way for fifteen years. I wrote a piece for the P-I called “The Washington Wine Bubble.” Like, everyone getting into the tech market, the housing market, and everyone getting into the wine biz. In fact, there are wines from a winery I’m negotiating on right now, just today I made an offer, these guys opened a winery and are in the real estate business and now, “Ah!” they don’t have the money to continue. But, if you’re only making 300 cases, and your friends buy fifty, and you’re on the Internet and you have a wine club, you can sell 300. But, when you move to 800, it gets a little tougher. The death knell is when you sell the 800, and then you sell the 1,000, and you say, “I’m going to 2,000,” now there’s the economics of scale. Now, you can’t move it all through your tasting room. You can move 1,200 cases and still have 800. Ok, you can get a distributor. That’s cool. You’re not going to sell it to them at retail price, that’s going to cut into the margin. Ok, you’re gonna wholesale it yourself. You’re gonna hire someone to drive a van and schlep wine all over the place. Five bottles here, a case there, five times a month, that gets old quick. Giving the wholesalers that margin starts to look pretty good. And then, you might not sell any anyway! So you’re left with 800 cases, or 500. And you call Richard! [Laughs] I’m here for you!

WINO: [Laughs] You are in a good position.

Richard: And I get it all the time.