Bringing Great Wine to the Masses: A Chat With Cameron Hughes

You could call Cameron Hughes a liberator of great wine. Born and bred in the wine business, Hughes is wiping away the traditional -and grossly inefficient- customs that govern the wine industry by embracing his passion. That passion? Sourcing great wine under the Cameron Hughes label and selling it -at an affordable price- direct to the consumer. No middle men driving up the price. Just great wine sourced from the best suppliers on the planet and delivered to the consumer at an extreme value. IntoWine.com recently caught up with Cameron Hughes and chatted about his wine as well as his role as a "Ralph Nader for the wine consumer".

You produce and market wine under what you describe as a "Lot" program. Tell us more about this:

I envisioned the Lot program as the best way to deliver exceptional value as a negociant or virtual wine company. The bulk market has many small lots of high-end wine that are most often back-blended into a larger quantity of lesser quality wine. The Lot program was designed to rescue these lots by assigning each particular wine a Lot # and then plugging them into an “in-and-out”, rock-bottom priced sales model all under one brand name, Cameron Hughes.

The key to the program is our close relationship with the world’s largest wine retailer, Costco. They buy the wines direct in CA and through clearing wholesalers in the rest of the US. Now, wines does not cost a lot to make (your average $30 cab costs about $5-6 to make) so by selling direct we are usually able to chop about 50-70% off what you would pay for the same juice under other labels.

Where do you find the super premium wine you use in your lots?

Wineries usually make more wine than they actually sell under their labels.