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March 15 2010
When I get an email from a friend saying, “You should check this out” it tends to pique my interest, especially when the subject is wine preservation.
First, I should say I’m an avowed Vacu Vin user. With a wife that’s nearly a teetotaler, and a constant flux of six to eight bottles of opened wine in the fridge, a Vacu Vin and a wine crock started with a vinegar mother is de rigueur for any self-respecting wine taster, as important as having a corkscrew, and especially important if you’re a wine taster that likes to play the field across a number of different bottles, similar to fiddling with your iPod to match your mood.
Pouring a week old wine into crocks (before the bottle hits the recycling bin or gets upcycled into drinking glasses) that turn the bottle remnants into wine vinegar (red and white) definitely soothes any anxiety from watching a wine circle the drain, the Vacu Vin notwithstanding.
So, when the tip came for the Platypus “PlatyPreserve” wine preserver I took heed.
The Platypus, familiar to campers and outdoorsman, is a reputable water carrier noted for its durability, it’s malleability in your pack, and the fact that it doesn’t pick up or throw off scents—meaning that the container that carries orange juice today can carry water tomorrow without cross-flavor contamination.
For its part, the PlatyPreserve is a wine-centric brand extension from the Platypus water carrier and technology. Made in the U.S. and just slightly bigger than a 750ml bottle of wine, the wine preserver has received rave consumer reviews on Amazon.com and other outlets. And, at $9.95 for one, it pays for itself for the wine enthusiast who winces with reticence at willfully pouring leftover wine into a vinegar crock or down the drain.
Likewise, if you’re an outdoor enthusiast, the PlatyPreserve could make a willing companion for some vino at the end of the day, when a proper bottle may be cumbersome to carry in pack or, at the least, from hither and yon.
One user at Amazon.com said of the PlatyPreserve, “I have used every form of wine preserving system out there: vacuum pumps, nitrogen tanks/taps etc. etc. This one beats them all cheaply and simply, by doing better what they all attempt to do, that is, prevent contact between wine and oxygen as much as possible.”
I decided to take the test myself.
I picked up five bottles of an inexpensive red wine – the Beringer Stone Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon, found for $4.99 a bottle. I suppose if I wanted to be thematically correct I could have chosen the Redwood Creek, positioned as an outdoorsman wine, but when $5 bottles are the game I don’t get choosy.
I placed one full bottle into a PlatyPreserve, a half bottle into a second PlatyPreserve, a half bottle under Vacu Vin, and a half bottle under regular cork and put it into the fridge for seven days to see what would happen.
I blind tasted each of the wines against a control bottle that was freshly opened.
The results of the blind tasting were somewhat of a surprise: a wine under Vacu Vin was the only bottle I guessed correctly, but the results also indicated optimism for the PlatyPreserve.
My notes said:
Control bottle (freshly opened): Bright cherry, blackberry, candied nose – Dr. Pepper flavors, bubblegum cotton candy, vanilla Stoli vodka and brown sugar. A fruit and oak wine, sweet, manipulated with an artificial finish. Drinkable at the end of the night.
Wine #1 (Under Vacu Vin): Nose is reductive with stewed flavors. Wine is starting to unravel with fruit minimized and acid coming to the front. Still drinkable and inoffensive.
Wine #2 (Full PlatyPreserve): Closest to control. Nose minimized slightly. Palate is still together and pleasant.
Wine #3 (Beringer under cork): Nose is gone, reductive and stewed. Oxidized.
Wine #4 (1/2 full PlatyPreserve): Nose is gone, alcohol and wood with faint blackberry. Oxidized.
Lessons learned: The wine under cork and the ½ full PlatyPreserve had virtually identical flavor profiles—both wines were shot. The full PlatyPreserve was in good shape and the wine under a Vacu Vin was in reasonably good shape. Given this, the natural comparison needs to be made with the Vacu Vin versus the ½ full PlatyPreserve and on that count the Vacu Vin wins handily.
And, of course, if you’re at home drinking, I can’t imagine why you would need to store a full bottle in a PlatyPreserve.
My overall recommendation: Use a Vacu Vin for home purposes while the PlatyPreserve makes a suitable airtight companion for day hikes, short overnight camping trips and when lugging a glass bottle is impractical.
Posted in, The Week in Wine. Permalink | Comments (16) | Print |
March 12 2010
…Flotsam and jetsam that doesn’t fit into a regular blog post…
Wall Street Journal and Wine
A very interesting (and lengthy) profile on Wall Street Journal (WSJ) owner Rupert Murdoch in the March 8th issue of New York magazine (a far more interesting and diverse read than the New Yorker in my opinion, even if it doesn’t earn you faux intelligentsia status).
The article isn’t about wine, but it is about Ahab’s Murdoch’s pursuit of Moby Dick defeating the New York Times.
The article is worth the read. If nothing else it offers some circumstantial insight into the abrupt disappearance of former WSJ wine writers Dottie Gaither and John Brecher and their subsequent replacement by Jay McInerney.
When winning is your goal, money is no object and you have the temerity to battle Google even, jettisoning everyman wine writers for somebody that is a New York society scenester who can figuratively hold down the other end of the wine bar against Eric Asimov at the New York Times begins to make some sense.
Garagiste
If the definition of persuasive charm is getting somebody to agree to do something before thinking about it, then I give Jon Rimmerman my Claude C. Hopkins Lifetime Achievement Award for his incredible (sales copy) writing at Garagiste.
Secondarily, for the contrarians who have marked Parker for dethronement, the news of his untimely demise is still awaiting coincidence with market realities.
Finally, for wineries who say they don’t kneel at the altar of Parker, they are only talking about the wines that DON’T get reviewed.
Take, for example, a recent Garagiste offer for Chardonnay that had me pulling my wallet from my back pocket before consumer jurisprudence took hold (quoting Rimmerman in a Garagiste offer):
A few weeks ago, I was offered this wine for what now appears to be among the best price/value ratios in a number of years. At the time, the wine was floundering around without much market demand and the prospect of the 2008 vintage right around the corner. I found the wine to be quite agreeable, even very fine (for domestic Chardonnay) and was surprised that it was not in greater demand. While I would rather not be known as a domestic Chardonnay specialist, the wine was quite surprising and I knew a number of you would be happy to enjoy it. I secured the wine (at a great price) and had it scheduled for the first week of April. That was two weeks ago.
Last week, the new Wine Advocate was released and Parker gave this the highest score in the last 5-10 years for a domestic Chardonnay in this price range (maybe the highest score in the last 15 years). For arguably the most influential voice of California wine, that is a major statement indeed. Let the market frenzy ensue…
The offer was for the 2007 Chateau St. Jean Belle Terre Vineyard Chardonnay, a wine that was going into “deal” (read: priced to move) mode at $16.99 from Garagiste before Parker gave his review (a 93 score).
According to Rimmerman in his email newsletter, “…we can only have one shipment at the deal price – if we re-order, it’s at a “corrected” tariff that accommodates for the WA93.”
The “corrected tariff” means in winery parlance, “The bluebird of happiness of just shit on our desk and we’re no longer going to ‘fire sale’ this wine.”
These are interesting times we live in ... related to the wine world, I sometimes feel like it’s the ultimate game of bluff poker.
Personally speaking, I’d go to my local bottle shop and buy two bottles of the Snoqualmie Chardonnay (wooded or unleaded) and call it a day.
File in: Free content
Speaking of Claude C. Hopkins, he’s the forefather of advertising sales copy. He wrote a seminal book called “Scientific Advertising” that is as relevant today as when it was first published in 1923. The book is in the public domain and can be found at Scribd, a content sharing site.
Check out Scribd for a bunch of other interesting wine-related content, too. Recent wine books include:
• A History of Wine in America by Thomas Pinney
• Wine and Philosophy edited by Fritz Allhoff
• A Taste for Wine - 20 Key Tastings to Unlock Your Personal Wine Style by Vincent Gasnier
Winemaker Extraordinaire
In the fall, I highlighted a wine game called, “Wine Tycoon” that had an hour’s worth of notice in the wine world news cycle. And, I also just recently tripped across another game called, “Winemaker Extraordinaire” which is surprisingly well-reviewed and inexpensive ($6.99), compared to $19.99 for “Wine Tycoon.”
Released in the spring of last year, “Winemaker Extraordinaire” follows a Peter Mayle-like plotline:
When Maria Bellaventura finds out that she has inherited an Italian winery, she must leave her stress-filled life as a corporate lawyer to take over the family business.
I have downloaded the game and will do a head to head analysis between it and Wine Tycoon. If you’re the gaming sort, “Winemaker Extraordinaire” is worth a look.
Posted in, News, Notes & Dusty Bottle Items. Permalink | Comments (1) | Print |
March 10 2010
…Odds and ends from a life lived through the prism of the wine glass…
ISO Wine Tasting Glasses
We’re all somewhat familiar with the small tasting glasses that are de rigueur in tasting rooms and juried, comparative wine competitions across the country, but I would hazard a guess that few consumers have them in their possession save for the keeper glass that was purchased at a winery tasting. This is too bad given that these glasses have scientifically been found to be the best wine tasting glass for concentrating aromas in a technical evaluation.
And, while I find the book The Wine Trials to be interesting if just a bit disingenuous, author Robin Goldstein absolutely nails one thing that is positively correct –finding International Standards Organization (ISO)-certified wine tasting glasses in the U.S. is near impossible.
Using ISO glasses for his blind-tasting experiments, Goldstein is also prepping to sell the small, elongated egg-shaped wine tasting glasses on his site. And, frankly, it’ll probably become the immediate go-to source for consumers interested in tasting (not drinking) from the correct vessel for home wine evaluation.
With my interest piqued about these hard to find glasses, I went on an Internet search for my own set of ISO wine tasting / evaluation glasses and came up nearly empty. Amazon.com doesn’t have them. Amazon.com in the U.K. doesn’t ship them here, and there are precious few other resources here in the states. I suppose, there is a winery supplier that would sell in small quantities to consumers, but I didn’t find them. Ultimately, while I came up empty on the ISO glasses, I did find a web site that sells L’institut National des Appelations d’origine (I.N.A.O.) certified wine tasting glasses that are essentially the same glass shape and size.
If interested in evaluating wine at home with the *correct* glass (Riedel need not apply), check out this site, or wait for inventory to arrive at The Wine Trials site.
Wine Loves Glass
A couple weeks ago Alder at Vinography wrote something of a scathing indictment against a new web site that launched in February called, “Wine Loves Glass.”
Like much of Alder’s writing, his analysis of the web site and PR campaign (developed by Owens-Illinois), the world’s largest container glass manufacturer, is reasoned and reasonably air tight, giving indication that not only was he probably debate team captain in high school, but he might have also gone undefeated in match play.
He summarizes a well-substantiated piece by saying:
“This web site is a complete waste of money in my opinion, no matter how much fun some PR firm and design agency had making it. A huge swath of wine consumers would never buy wine in alternative packaging because none of the wines they want to drink come in such containers. A whole other segment of the population have tried wines in alternative packaging and come to the justified conclusion that 99% of the wines that come in such packaging are positively awful. And then there are the rest of the folks that are content to buy wine in boxes and bags and cans, half of whose minds can’t be changed and the other half of whom Fred Franzia’s Two Buck Chuck convinced to switch to wine in glass bottles anyway because they feel all “upscale” while doing it …
… this is yet another example of an industry thinking defensively instead of creatively.”
Playing devil’s advocate, over the course of the last couple of years, one of the lessons I’ve learned is that while many say “content” is king, I believe that “content” rides shotgun to “context” in the Internet realm. What I mean is, there is simply too much available information. Taking something at face value (or as presented in the form of a press release and a web site) is foolhardy, particularly when “transparency” really means that motives are available to tap into. Therefore, free content is great, but it really means very little without enough context to place it into a frame of understanding or meaning.
In this situation, with Owens-Illinois (O-I), the context is that the marketers did a bunch of research, both business-to-business and consumer (and available with journalistic query), and they found that every generation except for Gen.Y had set packaging preferences.
From the research:
“The most significant difference in packaging option consideration by age group is that the millennial age group (21-34) are more apt to consider using alternative package types.”
Quoting an email dialogue with Kelley Yoder, Wine Marketing Manager at O-I:
Millennials continue to surface as an audience with very high wine consumption levels. Industry data has shown that Millennials favor wine over beer and spirits close to 25% more than the average U.S. consumer. O-I’s 2009 consumer research showed that while 86 percent of consumers tend to purchase wine in glass bottles, Millennials are more open to considering alternative packaging and are intrigued by new shapes, labels and brands. We wanted to share the benefits of glass packaging with Millennials and we chose to do this through social media—the medium they are most
comfortable with. Thus WineLovesGlass.com was born.
So, while the “Wine Loves Glass” web site may be “dumb” the fact of the matter is that it was born out of research, addresses a perceived need and is tactically the right fit for the goals.
As a consumer and a business person I can’t shoot the messenger for something that, at deeper examination, seems to have been created for the “right” business reasons, regardless of opinion without full context.
And, on a side note (but related issue), I’ve been obsessed with doing trend analysis in the wine space – trying to identify the things that become accepted reality over a period of time, but may not capture the in situ “zeitgeist” of mindshare.
Related to glass packaging and wine, we’re all familiar with plastic bottles, bag-in-a-box and other glass alternatives, but one area that seems to be growing momentum in stealth mode is wine kegs for on-premise.
Pay attention to this:
* As discussed circumstantially at NY Cork Report
* Mentioned in a Sonoma Wine Co. press release
* Lengthy discussion at the Wine Business Network group at LinkedIN
* Reference to a recent TTB approval for “Free Flow Wines”
A Google search of “wine kegs” will yield much more – a movement that seems significantly greater than its “awareness.”
Posted in, Free Run: Field Notes From a Wine Life. Permalink | Comments (3) | Print |
March 8 2010
The joke goes, “Wine is good for everything, including curing cancer” and there’s a shred of truth to it with the pile of medical research that would cast wine as a magical elixir ala snake oil circa 1850.
For all of the virtuous health benefits that wine has been purported to promote, one distinct aspect has been missing – an appeal to the now-now, of-the-moment narcissism in all of us. We all have a desire for preventative medicine, but we’re also interested in vanity, today.
With interest then do I read a recent and vast research study that concluded that drinking wine may prevent obesity in women. The study, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, indicates:
19,220 American women aged 39 or older with a healthy body weight (were asked) to describe their drinking habits in a questionnaire. About 38% drank no alcohol.
Over the next 13 years the researchers found that all the women tended to gain weight but the non-drinkers gained the most. The women’s overall weight gain decreased as alcohol intake increased.
There was also a difference according to the type of alcohol: red wine was associated with the lowest weight gain; beer and spirits were linked to the highest weight gain.
Now, you take the above coupled with the notion that red wine can aid digestion, and you’re getting to something that everybody can get down with – indulgence and waistline.
Posted in, Good Grape Daily: Pomace & Lees. Permalink | Comments (5) | Print |
March 6 2010
For reasons I can’t explain (particularly given that I’m based in Indianapolis), I get an email or a phone call a couple of times of year from different wine entrepreneurs who are interested in receiving feedback on wine-related business plans or concepts.
I always meet up with these optimistic would-be wine titans in person or on the phone. Six years ago, pre-blog, I was the earnest entrepreneur seeking feedback and I was always pleasantly surprised by the willingness of wine-related people to lend a helping or a gentle guiding hand. It only makes sense to return the gesture in-kind while hoping these entrepreneurs find the fortitude to move forward that I couldn’t muster.
Now, that said, the message I give isn’t always so precious or fuzzy.
There are two key things that are very important to remember in business planning of any sort:
1) What does the total market opportunity look like?
2) How will you address a need or appeal to a specific sub-section of that market?
It doesn’t sound complex, but we’re all guilty of losing sight of the forest for the trees, particularly in the wine world, and especially when facing the realities of business and creating an ongoing concern that addresses a need or a market.
In addition, the blind spots in wine industry research are abundant.
The reality of wine industry research, from the following three different resources should act as a calibrating compass:
1) Barbara Insel, CEO of Stonebridge Research Group (Macro marketplace)
2) Nielsen sales data / Wine Business Monthly (Sell-thru data)
3) John Gillespie, Wine Market Council (Who and how many drink wine)
(As excerpted from Barbara Insel’s comments at the Vino2010 panel discussion on the, “Future of Luxury Wine,” as transcribed by Alder Yarrow at Vinography):
“By best recokoning there about 250,000 wines for sale in America. These wines are sold by producers to less than 700 distributors, which are then responsible for getting them to at least 431,150 places that sell wine. These outlets include approximately 143,864 off premise outlets (i.e. retailers), and 287,286 independent on premise outlets (e.g. restaurants, hotels, etc.).”
“These distributors are (a) very narrow, and shrinking, funnel that all wine must pass through. In the last 20 years the number of wholesalers/distributors has declined from roughly 7000 to 700 outlets. These remaining wholesalers are under intense pressure to stay profitable, and this results in primarily one thing: the reduction of inventory. Everyone is trying to unload slow moving inventory. Most wholesalers report dropping about 15% of their brands, and smaller wholesalers are going out of business because they can’t move their stocks fast enough.”
Eek. 250,000 wines for sale going through a funnel of 700 distributors, enough to give pause to anybody.
Nielsen sales data (presented monthly in wine industry magazine Wine Business Monthly) with the occasional review of table wine price tiers:
The specific graph data isn’t as important as the overall point: 88.7% of the wines they track are under $14.99
Also excerpted from the, “Future of Luxury wine” presentation and Barbara Insel:
“One of the problems those of us who track the trends in the wine industry have is that the primary source of sales data, Nielsen, doesn’t track what’s happening in the off-premise space (i.e. retailers), and it only covers the lowest 20% of the pricing spectrum, so we don’t really have industry-wide sales data on luxury wine.”
According to Jay Wright from Constellations, paraphrased in Wine Business Monthly:
“…the $20 and above category represents just 3 percent of total wine sales volume and 6 percent of the total dollars in the wine business.”
So, what we know so far is the following:
• There is one wine for every 1.7 places to sell that wine
• The predominant majority of wine is flowing through a declining number of 700 distributors
• The over $20 wine segment represents 3% of volume and 6% of dollars in the domestic wine business
Now, as we get to the consumer aspect of industry macro economics, the story doesn’t get much prettier. Excerpted from John Gillespie and the Wine Market Council:
Core wine drinkers (defined as somebody who drinks wine at least once a week) represents about 16% of the population, but they drive anywhere from 80-90% + of the wine market).
To make matters worse, the recession has caused marginal drinkers (defined as somebody who drinks wine at least monthly) to decline in numbers.
The net of the Wine Market Council is that wine drinkers represent a growing, but small percentage of the population and the wine business is highly leveraged against a small band of consumers with Millenials and Generation X representing the growth engine of the future.
At this point, a wine entrepreneur, before she has even gotten to actual marketing, might be very discouraged and that leads to the next decision path that needs to be tackled—strategic intent or pragmatic reality – and the difference between the two is significant.
Simply, developing a business with strategic intent means you envision a future and create a path towards a future that doesn’t exist; this then drives all of your decision-making for product and market – Cameron Hughes Wine and Crushpad both represent this kind of thinking. Or, alternatively, you can develop around a pragmatic reality by trying to fit within the existing market realities—virtually everybody else fits into this category.
Even if working within existing market realities, I always recommend identifying a specific market, understanding that market, and creating tactics specifically for that audience.
Take Millenials for example. It’s been a frothy topic in wine for at least six years and continues to be a hot topic – how to address Millenials.
Tools to help do so include:
• Claritas Prizm Segmentation System
• Pew Internet Research (Millenials)
• Growth Panel marketing planning tools
Even if an entrepreneur gets to this point, there continues to be a slew of additional knowledge that is required – the least of which is additional macro information as provided by Adams Beverage Group or even compliance information as provided by Six88, not to mention technology-related information and enough funding to see you through the law of the thirds which says everything costs 1/3 more and takes 1/3 more time than anticipated.
There is no magic wand in the wine business and the money would seem to be better spent on lottery tickets, but the business continues to hold allure for many. My take-away message is always to research until you create self-doubt, plan until you go cross-eyed, account for the worst, and please give me a trade discount on your first case.
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