Which e-commerce site and which CRM for a winery?

The website and the CRM are two linked decisions

An estate that wants to sell direct almost always asks two questions in a row: which online store, and then which tool to keep track of customers. The two choices are connected. A store that doesn't talk to the customer file forces you to retype orders, and a CRM that doesn't know what sells online doesn't know whom to write to.

This guide won't tell you which software to buy. It gives you the criteria to choose, for your own situation, between the main families of solutions.

What a winery store needs to handle

Selling wine online is not like selling T-shirts. Before comparing tools, list what your store will have to manage.

Mixed cases. Your customers want to build a case of 6 or 12 with several wines. The store must count by bottle and by case, and calculate shipping accordingly.

Shipping tiers. Shipping costs depend on the number of bottles, the destination and sometimes a free-shipping threshold. You need to be able to set these tiers yourself, without a developer.

VAT and excise. Wine carries excise duties on top of VAT. When selling to a consumer in another European Union country, the rules of the destination country generally apply. At a minimum, the store must distinguish between delivery zones and display correct prices.

Évin law notices. Alcohol advertising is regulated in France. The site must display the mandatory health warning and stick to informational content: origin, terroir, grape varieties, winemaking method, taste.

Age verification. Selling alcohol to minors is prohibited. Age confirmation when entering the site and at checkout is the minimum expected.

A specialized carrier. Glass breaks, wine doesn't like heat, and not every carrier accepts alcohol. The store must connect to a carrier used to shipping wine and pass on the right packaging information.

Separate trade prices. Wine shops, restaurants and importers don't buy at the same prices or on the same terms as consumers. You need a dedicated area or price list, hidden from the general public.

The four options for your store

The marketplace

You list your wines on a platform that already has traffic. It's the fastest way to start selling. In return, the platform sets the rules, takes a commission and keeps the customer relationship: you rarely know who bought, and you can't freely contact them again. It's a supplementary channel, not a store.

The general-purpose e-commerce platform

Shopify, WooCommerce and their equivalents are proven, well documented and supported by many service providers. Their limit is the wine trade itself: mixed cases, excise, age checks, trade prices or a connection to a wine ERP often rely on add-on modules stacked on top of each other. Each module has its own logic and its own updates, and the whole setup becomes fragile.

The wine-specialized solution

Some vendors have designed their store specifically for estates. The industry's constraints are built in from the start, which saves time. On the other hand, you're bound by the vendor's choices: layout, content, SEO, exporting your data. Check what you can change and what you get back if you leave.

Custom-built

The site is built for your estate, around your workflows. It's the option that requires the most scoping up front. It's also the only one where every building block (store, content, customer file, ERP) is designed to work with the others, and where the estate owns everything.

What the CRM needs to do

An estate's CRM doesn't need a hundred features. It needs five, done well.

A single customer record. The same customer buys at the cellar door, leaves a card at a wine fair, orders online and sometimes discovers you through export. If they exist in four files, you know neither what they're worth nor what they like. Everything must converge into a single record.

Subscriptions and the wine club. If you offer a club or regular shipments, the CRM must track members, renewal dates and preferences.

Follow-ups at the right time. Three triggers cover the essentials: a new vintage release, the anniversary of an order (when last year's case has probably been drunk) and the abandoned cart. These follow-ups should go out on their own.

Segmentation. A wine lover, a wine shop and an influencer don't get the same message. The CRM must be able to tell them apart.

GDPR consent. Every contact must have a traceable source and consent, especially those collected at a fair or at the cellar door. Without that, the file can't be used for email prospecting.

Off-the-shelf CRM or custom CRM

Off-the-shelf CRMs are comprehensive and quick to get started with. They become the wrong choice in two cases.

The first: licenses are expensive relative to actual use. You pay for features the team never opens, and the bill grows with the number of users or contacts.

The second: the trade is specific. Vintages, wines, club, trade prices, cellar door sales: a generic tool can be configured, but the team ends up working around what it can't do.

Outside the wine world, this was exactly the situation of a dermo-cosmetics brand distributed through pharmacies. It was facing excessive licensing costs related to HubSpot, and its field teams needed a business-specific interface rather than a complex tool. We designed a proprietary CRM centered on its point-of-sale indicators, which displays the key figures upon login and eliminates monthly licensing fees. The same reasoning applies to an estate: a tool built for the trade rather than a generic tool to work around.

The Château Cazebonne example

At Château Cazebonne, the store and the CRM were built together.

Manual CSV exports were replaced by two-way synchronization with the Baqio wine ERP: orders, product sheets and stock levels are updated on the site with no re-entry.

Contacts are automatically categorized (individuals, professionals, prospects) based on their interactions and their answers to the estate's wine quizzes, and this segmentation is synchronized with the marketing tools.

The CRM schedules relationship scenarios: a message on the customer's birthday, a post-purchase follow-up to collect a certified review, an alert when a new vintage is released. An admin console lets the team oversee every send and control commercial pressure. Email deliverability was carefully configured (SPF, DKIM, DMARC).

On the store side, customers log in to their account without a password, via a magic link, and checks prevent a promo code from being applied to an incompatible or out-of-stock product. The team is autonomous on 95% of day-to-day operations.

How to choose: the checklist

Before you sign, check these points:

1. Mixed cases and shipping tiers you can set without a developer.
2. Excise, VAT and delivery zones handled properly, validated by your accountant.
3. Évin law notices and age verification built in.
4. Trade prices kept separate from consumer prices.
5. Two-way connection with your wine ERP, with no manual exports.
6. A single customer record for the cellar door, fairs, the web and export.
7. Automated follow-ups: vintage release, order anniversary, abandoned cart.
8. Traceable GDPR consent for every contact.
9. Data ownership: you can export everything, at any time.
10. Team autonomy on day-to-day operations.

Where to start

If you're torn between several options, or if your store and your customer file don't talk to each other, start with an assessment. We carry out an audit starting at €1,000 excl. VAT, followed by applicative customization starting at €2,000 excl. VAT. The estate keeps ownership of its data, its customer file and its content. Details of how we support estates are on our Wine estates page.

Frequently asked questions

Should I leave a general-purpose e-commerce platform to sell wine?

Not necessarily. If your store already handles mixed cases, shipping tiers, age verification and trade prices, and it's connected to your ERP, it's often better to connect it to the CRM than to rebuild everything. A switch makes sense when the add-on modules become unmanageable or when re-entry persists.

Does a custom CRM cost more than an off-the-shelf CRM?

Getting started requires more scoping. On the other hand, there's no monthly per-user license, and the tool contains only what the estate needs. The comparison should be made over several years and on actual use, not on the starting price alone.

Can contacts from the cellar door and wine fairs go into the same file as the website's?

Yes, provided each contact has a recorded source and consent. It's actually the first step to take: a single customer file is what makes automated follow-ups and segmentation possible.