January 2010:  During the holiday period there have been a few more bargains to be had and I've bought a heap of reds (and some whites) to keep my friends stocked up with quaffers.  The new 30 day guarantee and customer service appear to be working well now, I struck a couple of faulty wines and one not as described (different region entirely) and they quickly responded with refunds on the faulty wines and a 50% discount on the mis-described wine.

6 September 2009:  I seldom look at Gray's any more, every time I do the wines are uninteresting and/or prices are more than I want to pay, so this page will probably not be updated much in future.

26 April 2009:  Gray's have been advertising on TV, prominently featuring wine auctions.  Unfortunately it seems to be working and new mug punters who don't bother to do a basic search for information are paying more for the wines on offer.  I've not bought much over the last month or so other than a few whites for friends as I choose not to pay higher prices and there hasn't been much new that is exciting in the reds.  Even for those few, it's taken quite a few tries until I managed to score the wines at the price I want to pay.  Depending on what you are after, there are probably still some bargains if you are careful and patient.
Especially beware of the "regional" and "varietal" themed auctions, people seem too bid higher on these than on the same wines in the general auctions.  "People" are strange!  And I seldom have any success on lots where there is only one case on offer, although eventually I sometimes get lucky once the initial demand has passed.
 

This article will describe my experiences with Gray's, warts and all, and list the wines I've bought with my personal assessment of them in terms of quality and value.

My first foray wasn't too successful and it took me a while to go back after that, but the next experience wasn't much better.  This was despite a fair amount of pre-buying research. 

My first purchase in about September 2006 was a 6-pack of Cathcart Ridge Reserve Shiraz 2004 for $21pb delivered, this was a fairly nice wine - underneath what I considered to be a dose of brett that was fairly mild in absolute terms, but too much for me, so the remaining 4 went off to auction, I hope the buyer enjoyed them more than I did.  This wine still appears fairly regularly on Gray's and is still on sale at a couple of merchants, avoid if your are a brett-nazi like me.

My second purchase was a 6-pack of Giant Steps Sexton Jones Block McLarenVale Shiraz 2004 (March 2007), blessed with a positive James Halliday Review and under screwcap, it looked a good deal.  Unfortunately the bottle I tried didn't match the glowing description and again seemed to me to have some brett.  My assessment was strongly denied by Phil Sexton, who even had a bottle from his stock tested to prove there was no brett.  I decided to test the 30-day money-back guarantee (on wines sourced direct from wineries/distributors rather than investment/private cellars).  The conditions on this are pretty daunting though, Gray's will pay the freight back to them and assess the wine, but if they don't agree the wine is faulty or doesn't match the sale description they will send it back to you and you pay the freight both ways.  "On receipt by Graysonline of your returned item - they will be inspected and tested to determine the condition and, if the item is to be found in good working order and as per the sale/lot description, your claim is found to be invalid, the goods will be returned to you and you will be charged all freight charges incurred by us in relation to the return and re-return of the goods, and in taking these steps you hereby authorise to charge your credit card with any expenses incurred by us."  After failing to negotiate on that aspect I returned the wine anyway and eventually received a full refund.

On this note, Gray's occasionally have special auctions of "returned wine".  By their rules for returning wine, it must be faulty or at least much different/lesser quality than the auction lot description, so are they knowingly selling returned faulty or mis-described wine?  Or maybe they are more generous at times with returns than their returns policy suggests?

After those experiences it took until June 2007 to try again, when the Heritage Fine Wines liquidator held a series of wine auctions via Gray's.  These must have been regarded as a huge success, there was some good free publicity in the press and anything with a well-known name went for ridiculous prices.  There were however some lesser-known wineries with some good wines that were going at a reasonable price.  I secured funding from some friends and set out to get a few bargains.  This is what I got over the series of ex-HFW auctions:

Buoyed by the relative success of these buys, they were all quite drinkable and reasonable value if not all half-price super-bargains, I kept watching the daily rotation of auctions and decided to have a few more punts.

One feature of Gray's listings is the use of the term Original Retail Price (ORP) when quoting a putative value of some wines offered.  They do however disclaim any responsibility for the accuracy of this quotation: "In certain circumstances, an item for sale on the site may display the manufacturers Original Retail Price (ORP). All ORPs are prices supplied by the manufacturer (or retailer) of the item at the time of the items original sale, and therefore such ORPs may not be current at the time of the online auction of the item. Graysonline takes no responsibility for the display of ORPs on any item it offers for sale at an online auction on its site, and hereby advises all bidders to satisfy themselves as to the value of the item being auctioned."  A cop-out if ever I saw one, especially if it's exclusive to Gray's they should be able to check the bona fides of the claims. 

They do sometimes list RRP, particularly against the wines exclusive to Grays, especially the Block 24 series.  It's a bit of mystery to me how a wine that is made especially for them (by Cheviot Bridge) and is offered exclusively via auction and not at normal retail can have an RRP, but I guess it's legal.  They have been quoted in the press as being happy that one of the wines averaged $8-$9pb at auction against a quoted RRP of $20 (or was it $30?) and the currently listed Block 24 Coonawarra Cabernet 2003 sold recently for $99-$104/12 with a quoted RRP of $360, make of that what you will.

Undeterred by the mixed results with imports, I returned to watching the Australia reds from reputable makers and have made quite a few more buys to share with friends:

In summary then, it is possible to secure a bargain or two buying wine at Graysonline, but you need to be very careful with your research and bidding.  Most of my purchases have been to share with friends, it's a good way to spread both the risk and the rewards. My advice is to do the research, decide what delivered price you are willing to pay (never more than 50% of RRP) and start with a bid 2-3 increments below that.  Be patient, some wines appear day after day and there is sometimes a lull after initial interest and before the wines are delivered and repeat buyers come back.  My failed bid list is several times longer than my win list.  Never get into a last minute bidding war during the "going-going-gone" period.  If you are a subscriber to RBG I might be able to help with the research if you can't find anything, but I expect you to have tried first.

To make sure I always know the final per bottle delivered price I have a table of the bids and final prices for 6-packs and dozen lots (at $10/case freight, make up your own with your freight rate):