Cameron Hughes founded his company with a simple mission: offer great wines at affordable prices to everyone.
There are two challenges customers face when buying wine:
- High-end wine is expensive. The average price of a Napa Cabernet scoring 90+ points in Wine Spectator magazine is over $150/bottle, and typically passes through distributor and retailer hands before ever reaching the customer.
- Buying wine is confusing. Most folks stand in the wine aisle, stare at a huge wall of bottles, and eventually settle on a label that’s interesting enough at an acceptable price and hope they aren’t disappointed.
Cameron Hughes Wine aims to make these problems a thing of the past.
As a négociant (wine trader), they don’t own vineyards or a winery – their focus is purely on finding the best wines and negotiating the best price for our customers. Cameron has worked in the wine industry his entire life, and through deep connections built over decades, has access to top wineries and producers all over the world. They look in every cellar and barrel room, and peek behind every door that says “Employees Only.” Sometimes they buy wine still in the barrel, and other times they buy “shiners” (wine already in a bottle with no label). Regardless of how they get it, the mission is simple: buy the best possible wine at the best possible price.
These deals are made discreetly, and typically protected by an agreement to keep the source winery undisclosed to protect their brand. These wines are also only available online, direct to you – this means no distributor and retailer markups. The result? They’re able to offer $100+ Napa Cabernets for a third of the price, or a $60 bottle of Pinot for under $20 (yes, the exact same wine sold under the original winery label).
Each wine acquired is given a Lot number and sold under the Cameron Hughes label, beginning over a decade ago with Lot 1.
Think of them as your personal sommelier – they curate their store to constantly showcase a wide range of some of the world’s best styles and winegrowing regions, and promise that every wine offered is a benchmark expression of the style and winegrowing region reflected on the label, at the best prices on the market.
Anybody can put wine in a bottle, slap a label on it, and sell it online. But Cameron Hughes Wine strictly does high-end wine at the best price, period. The label is a guarantee of quality for every wine offered.
