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the planet wine industry news negociant wine business monthly 2008 food & wine winemaker of the year eric asimov travel oregon jordan winery amy poehler wine micro sites umami chris phelps vegas wine qpr wines jimmy clausen winery hospitality 2007 forty-five north cabernet franc alpine for dummies 2008 honig sauvignon blanc journey three dollar koala pinot noir reviews chronicle wine ed mccarthy wine to relax erobertparker little zagreb wine magazines howard schultz paul mabray wine blogging ethics youtube cheap wine wine bard weds wine dj klinker brick maria thun bad wine mumm napa slate wine columnist wine pricing wine blog awards 2010 bottle shock movie sketches of spain red bicyclette court paul gregutt trefethen oak knoll cabernet sauvignon zinfandel reviews tasting note desciptors natural winemaking wine content petite sirah wine points the press-democrat oregon cuisinternship winner blog contests preakness stakes pork tenderloins wine & spirits restaurant poll 2010 eat me kenny 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September 17 2010
When I read a magazine, I often spend as much time looking at the advertising as I do reading the magazine. And, no, I’m not an advertiser’s dream; generally I’m examining the photography for tricks and scratching my chin ponderously wondering, “How did they do that?”
We’ve all seen the ads – the Big Mac that actually looks not just edible, but downright delicious, the bottle of beer with perfectly manicured bottle “sweat,” or the bowl of cereal that has the milked nestled in and on the flakes in a manner that my 2% cow juice can’t touch.
Perhaps I am the only one, but, with a lifelong interest in advertising and with “food porn” omnipresent in our food and wine culture, I have an interest in learning more of the whys and wherefores for how these lush product shots come about.
Enter a new book called Food Styling. Written by Delores Custer, who is something of a rock star in the little niche of food stylists, this book is a treasure trove of knowledge.
Admittedly, the book has limited usefulness for the layperson with its textbook-like focus on the business of being a food stylist, but man oh man the stuff you will learn by reading this book.
Have you ever wondered how food stylists ensure that the turkey in professional Thanksgiving photos look like George Hamilton’s spawn? A baste of Angostura bitters with Kitchen Bouquet seasoning sauce, yellow food color and a couple of drops of dishwashing detergent, that’s how.
Have you ever been curious about how the wafts of steam come up so alluringly from a burger photograph? A water soaked tampon (euphemistically called a T-28 in the biz) that is microwaved will provide, “localized steam” right behind the bun.
But, what about the “sweat” on the beer bottle that I mentioned? An application and buff of Turtle Wax car wax and hand applied water beads via a syringe does the trick.
The milk in a cereal shot? While many use Elmer’s glue, the author uses a combination of shortening and Wildroot hair grooming lotion to make the cereal tantalizingly float.
The perfect grill marks on the steak that Man has been measured against since time immemorial? Yeah, that’s placed with a metal skewer that has been heated over a gas flame.
Food Styling is full of dozens and dozens of other tips and tricks of the trade including how to fake a wine – if a food photograph needs a glass of wine and there is no wine on hand some Kitchen Bouquet diluted with water can approximate a hue from Pinot Grigio to Port.
I wish I wouldn’t have bought this book because I have zero use for it in the long-term, but for gleaning tips and tricks and developing knowledge that will help you deconstruct the food beauty shots that we see in food magazines, it’s a priceless and fun read and worth purchasing for the pearls of wisdom and factoids that you can drop in kitchen conversations in the future. Recommended to read, but check it out from the library.
Oldman’s Brave New World of Wine by Mark Oldman
Just when you think every possible nook and cranny of the wine 101 book category has been explored, out comes a book that takes a unique and valuable spin on the beginner to intermediate wine genre.
Oldman’s Brave New World of Wine is an evolution of sorts from Mark Oldman’s first title published in 2004. That book, Oldman’s Guide to Outsmarting Wine, is THE benchmark book for a wine introduction and a book I’ve recommended to friends over and over again. This time around, Oldman, a judge on the wine TV reality show The Winemakers, focuses on 46 under-appreciated varietals and puts his trademark accessibility spin on the varietals, hoping to expose the quirky to a wider audience.
The premise of the book originated at professional tastings that Oldman attended where fellow wine insiders would get excitable and passionate about an off-the-beaten path varietal. Taking this cue, Oldman’s book is focused on bringing these niche wines to larger awareness.
From the introduction:
“… Now you can trot the globe from the comfort of your own dinner table, sampling a new region or grape every night of the month if you so desire. The diversity of wines and their quality and affordability has never been greater … so my mandate crystallized: it was time to build a bridge of knowledge from the insiders to everyone else, revealing wines that so electrify me and my fellow wine pros – opening the curtain on what I call the ‘Brave New Pours’ …
For beginners and the experienced alike, “Brave New Pours” … provides escape hatches for enthusiasts caught in a Stockholm-Syndrome-like dependence on mainstream wine types.”
Mostly, Oldman nails it again. His writing voice is warm, down-to-earth and accessible and the book itself is peppered with short chapters on varietals like Txakoli, Moschofilero and Lambrusco – varietals that are widely available at good wine shops, but also mostly sitting under a layer of dust based on non-familiarity and our own ruts of wine drinking with the familiar.
With quotes from notable wine aficionados, tables and taste profile comparisons, the book is very thoughtfully laid out and a valuable read as a primer on varietals that even the most ardent wine enthusiast likely isn’t familiar with.
There are, however, some questionable misses in the book – is New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and Gewürztraminer that under-appreciated? Overall, the book lives up to its promise and over delivers in a breezy way while also including some nuggets that careful readers will notice, as in a quote from Master of Wine and Master Sommelier Doug Frost who says, “Left Foot Charley Pinot Blanc from Michigan is so compelling. I honestly can’t think of another Pinot Blanc that has gotten me this excited.”
Recommend reading and recommended for purchase.
September 14 2010
With the launch of the Connoisseurs’ Guide to California Wine (CGCW) online (well covered here, here and here), save for Ronn Weigand and his Restaurant Wine newsletter, every notable professional wine personality, writer, pundit and critic is now online in a meaningful way, alongside thousands of bloggers. This, of course, begs the question: Now What?
And, no, I’m not waxing hyperbolic, either. Literally, by far, the vast majority of wine luminaries—both bright and flickering—are practicing their craft online with some significance.
To wit, in addition to the launch of CGCW a week or so ago, I also just received notice that the finest global wine periodical on the planet – The World of Fine Wine – has launched a blog of sorts, as well – published once weekly on Friday’s. The TWoFW site will have contributions from several bright wine writers including Peter Liem and Bruce Schoenfeld.
Meanwhile, dozens of wine blogs are pushing the envelope of quality and blurring the lines of understanding about where exactly high quality wine writing can come from.
When Tom Wark from Fermentation says, “Wine lovers find themselves living and drinking in a ‘Golden Age’ of wine writing” he’s not kidding.
However, this “everybody’s in the pool” reality has given me pause to consider not the considerable depth of online wine writing, but, rather, the sheer breadth of commentary on wine and the fundamental question, “Who is reading all of this stuff?”
I cannot help but feel that wine writing, and by extension online wine writing, is entering into a phase of (pardon the hackneyed idiom), “Too many chiefs and not enough Indians.”
Online wine writing lives in the equivalent of a small town that has 19 four-star restaurants. Good food, not enough customers.
Quite simply, this might be a “Golden Age” like bebop jazz in the 40s, Beat literature in the 50s, or Laurel Canyon folk rock in the 70s, but online wine writing, unless I have a blind spot where I normally have 20/20 acuity, isn’t a movement and there won’t be a historical legacy that will be written, instead it will be a footnote denoting evolution.
What this means, unfortunately, is there is no glory to be found in hindsight infamy. And, therefore, the focus, everybody’s focus, in the here and now, should be on spreading the word about all of the fabulous wine writing online lest all of the toil live in ignominy.
Put another way, a who’s who of wine writer’s writing online is great, and it’s even better that its complemented by some truly talented pro-amateurs, but it sure feels like there aren’t enough wine enthusiasts who care, or read it – and, it’s everybody’s responsibility to help change that.
Now, I do need to be clear, this isn’t a rant about making wine more accessible, or less intimidating. It’s not a bromide against mainstream glossy wine magazines, either. Nor is this a straw man argument about mainstream media and online wine media and who “gets” what. This is more of a statement about the way we go about our information consuming lives and how we share that for the betterment of everybody.
Of all the wine blogs, wine web sites, and –essentially—the entire sum of my online web habits are sequestered in isolation between me and my browser. I don’t talk about it much—not with my Miller Light swilling buddy, my wife, or my wine tasting group.
I’m guessing you’re the same.
HuffPo, the contents of my RSS feedreader, the wine sites I am a visitor to, my pay subscriptions to Notre Dame football web sites, the digital marketing newsletters I read, all of my fairly routine information consumption habits happen in isolation. And, I’ve never had a conversation with anybody that comes close to approximating, “Hey, where do you get your wine information.”
No, I think each of us that live our wine enthusiasm online, either by writing or reading, do so without much sharing offline to our fellow wine enthusiastic friends and family.
This has to change.
It has to change because we are living in a “Golden Age” of wine writing, but only a very small percentage of people who are wine-interested pursue their interest online. And, lest the online wine scene, again, where every notable wine luminary is now present, wants to operate in the din of a small room instead of an amphitheater, the audience for all of this fabulous writing has to become larger.
So, here’s my challenge to every reader of this site: every garden starts with a seedling. We all know at least six people in our friends and family circle who are self-identified wine enthusiasts who read nary a word about wine online (or offline, for that matter). Do me a favor, and send them an email and say, “Bob, I know you like reds, you should really start checking out this site to keep current on the wine scene.”
Then, include the links for the wine section of Alltop and a link to John Gillespie’s weekly email newsletter highlighting wine columns.
Both of these services act as a fine gateway for deeper knowledge, an adjunct to Spectator and the Wine Advocate for which most are familiar. Of course, there will be plenty of opportunity to work on diving into the nuances of the online wine scene, RSS feeds, feed readers and assorted minutia, but for now, the focus has to be on casting a wider net to get the wine-interested into the online wine scene so all of this writing has a worthy audience.
So, please, I beg of thee, act now, send that email and the net result can be a wine information society that is healthy and growing instead of a niche, running parallel with the growth of wine consumption in America while democratizing wine in the process.
September 12 2010
When a flowing river faces an immoveable object like a rock, the water runs around it on either side. The wine business, in a subtle and growing development, is facing its own need to flow downstream and move around the immoveable object that is, “Market reality.”
The solution, of course, in free-flowing commerce around immoveable objects is sales, marketing, and a need to work with distributors in a way that is effective and cohesive, particularly when the challenges of the three-tier system cannot be solved in the short-term.
Simply put, I believe we’re seeing the dawn of a new type of wine business that addresses existing market challenges for small wineries in bringing their product to market effectively. Call it “Interstate Importing,” if you must call it something.
Of course, on this site, it’s not lost on me that I make declarations of fact based on circumstances. Trends are framed based on anecdotal evidence and then circumscribed. In the process of divining understanding out of opaqueness, sometimes the circumstantial and loose corroboration is the closest to fact that we can find until the alleged becomes accepted reality.
And, while I am not ready to declare a “trend” in regards to a growing shift in winery business models, let’s call it a, “Developing situation” that may have more to do with a winery being a part of a portfolio then trying to go it alone.
Most wine enthusiasts are well aware that the small domestic wineries that we love so much face a near impossible set of circumstances to growing their business, including:
• Downward pressure on price levels and demand for wines above $35
• Shifts in the three-tier system that has effectively shut down new opportunities for boutique vintners
Yet, when I did a sojourn in the wine business with a Napa-based ecommerce provider from late ’06 to ’08, the biggest barrier to growth for small wineries, as I saw it, was not price nor the three-tier system, it was sales and marketing planning and execution. Period. Exclamation point.
At that point, I did not see enough wherewithal from small wineries to even get to the place that price and market were an issue, not when basic organizational activity around the process of marketing and selling wine was an obstacle.
Now, to be fair, this statement isn’t an indictment on the level of business acumen on the part of small wineries. Then, as now, much of that segment of the business is agriculturally and production focused, as you would expect. However, it does speak to a potential truism that trends may be converging to the point where an agricultural and production focus is simply not going to cut it in the end, at least not where profits are concerned.
And, pragmatically speaking, if you look at starting a winery today, from a sales and marketing perspective, a disciplined business perspective, the reality is you probably wouldn’t follow today’s current, standard operating procedure. At least not if you wanted to be profitable. Nope, you would develop a business that is purpose-built, addressing the aforementioned downward pressure on price, shifts in the three-tier system and the small matter of marketing and selling the vino.
Given the market realities coupled with a dearth of small winery marketing and sales acumen, I think we are starting to see the development of shifts in the way wineries go about their sales activity that can have a lasting impact on the way we understand how a winery gets its wines into a market so we can buy it.
A scan of the Wine Business Monthly annual Top 30 Wine Companies list highlights a combination of two types of businesses – large corporations like Gallo, Constellation, Diageo, and Fosters AND smaller wineries or companies that have either:
• A portfolio of segmented labels for different markets and/or a collection of small wineries doing the same
Or
• Enough production to have a diversity of price points up and down segments, their own national marketing and a sales force that works with distributors on placement and marketing promotion management
What these top wine companies offer are the two things that distributors are looking for:
• Depth, breadth and a line-up of wines at various price points
• Marketing muscle that creates mindshare alleviating much of the sales function from the distributor allowing them to do what they do best – facilitate logistics.
With this as context, I’ve been keenly watching two developments:
• The launch of V2 Wine Group
• IBG’s development of their wine logistics services
V2, a new company, led by Dan and Katy Leese, formerly of Wine Business Top 30 wine company 585 Wine Partners, have already acquired a company in Steelhead Wines from Sonoma and have inked a deal to handle sales and marketing for Toad Hollow, as well.
In their words (excerpted for clarity):
“For V2 Wine Group, Steelhead Wines is a great anchor for what will become a strong international portfolio of exciting, highly differentiated wine products,” said Co-Founder Pete Kight.
“V2 is our collective vision to build a strong differentiated portfolio that effectively utilizes a consolidating three-tier system. We know we have the right tools and relationships to be effective,” commented V2 Wine Group General Manager Katy Leese.
V2 Wine Group is a wine production, marketing and sales organization dedicated to building strong wine brands in the North American marketplace.
Interesting.
When you couple V2 with IBG’s recent announcement that they have acquired a wine tele-sales company, to complement their direct-to-consumer services along with their existing framework for direct-to-trade sales that allows any winery access to 11 states for on-premise sales, you start to realize that the wine business is adapting to the fact that small wineries can’t sell their wine by themselves.
If you examine, as a complementary counterpoint, wine brands that HAVE been successful from launch over the last several years, you quickly realize that most wine(eries) that haven’t found success as a critical or allocated darling have found success by the dint of their own marketing muscle – companies like Vintage Point (specifically, the brand Layer Cake that Vintage Point represents), Oriel, Cameron Hughes, and Folio Fine Wine Partners.
What I think we are seeing with existing successful wine businesses, V2 and the shifts that IBG is making, is the development of a wine business model similar to a mutual fund or a portfolio of investments: an aggregation of individual assets (wineries) that mitigates risk across a portfolio, leverages strengths, and creates a return for all stakeholders – wineries, the portfolio manager, distribution and the consumer.
And, in so doing, this new breed of sales and marketing agency for wineries also alleviates the challenges in working within current realities by offering depth and scale to distributors along with cohesive marketing and mindshare building.
While this model is currently and largely proofed on a large scale with the wine companies represented in the Wine Business Monthly Top 30 Wine Companies, I think the future will hold that an emerging class of companies that will manage the sales and marketing presence for a wine, like an import house, just domestically, will develop. And they will be styled like V2, Vintage Point or IBG Wines (as a collection of customers leveraging ala carte services).
As I mentioned, don’t call it a, “Trend.” Perhaps, “Developing situation” is more apropos, but to me, the emergence of this new type of sales and marketing business serving the wine industry is becoming clearer than a freshly rinsed Riedel.
In the future a vintner discussion over eggs at the breakfast joint won’t just be, “How is this year’s crop looking?” The conversation will also include, “Whose portfolio are you a part of,” as well.
Companies mentioned for further reading:
VintagePoint
Folio Fine Wine Partners
Oriel Wines
V2
IBG
September 8 2010
Every foodie loves wine and every wine enthusiast loves food, but our comfort-level and expertise tends to lean left or right, as opposed to straight down the middle.
Not that it has to be this way, however. Wine enthusiasts should have a repertoire in the kitchen and foodies should have some pairings down pat. Or, if you’re like me, marry well to help offset deficiencies.
While I’m definitely more comfortable on the wine end of the spectrum, that doesn’t stop me from thinking about comestibles … foodstuffs. Stuff you make. Not stuff you buy.
With the myriad of micro food movements that are fomenting, many people have been getting in touch with a more rooted sensibility about food, harkening back to our Grandparent’s sensibility—before nearly everything could be bought in a package.
Speaking of our Grandparent’s sensibility, I saw a recent news report that said U.S. credit card debt has fallen to the lowest level since 2002. Another seven years to go, I suppose. 1995, with the birth of the Internet, is when our consumer culture seemed to go into overdrive, briefly slowed by the economic dip in ’02, incidentally. If we can just get to 1995 credit debt levels it’ll feel like life has normalized some, I think.
That said, in January of 2009, in the throes of some very bleak economic times, I wrote a post about ‘living well’ not necessarily meaning living beyond our means. As a sort of homage to that post, an acknowledgement that our consumer credit debt is going in the right direction and a nod to my wife who is excellent in the kitchen with a penchant for sharing recipes with girlfriends like she’s Martha Stewart’s Midwestern ombudsman, I give you a highly subjective list of nine things every wine lover should know how to do / make (and the bonus is they all make for a nice, unified spread for a wine party). Each of the links are to a representative book or recipe:
• Artisan bread
Much easier to do then you might think. Makes an excellent and tasty bread made tastier when it comes from your oven.
• Ricotta cheese
Stupid simple to make (actually many cheeses are easy to make at home). Drizzle cherry tomatoes with olive oil, roast in the oven at 225 for two hours, smear some ricotta on the artisan bread you just made, layer some roasted tomato’s on top and you’ll think you’re in the French countryside.
• Red / White Wine vinegar
This is also stupid simple. Buy a vinegar mother. Buy an ice tea jug with a spigot. Dump old wine with vinegar mother.
• Smoked salmon
Cheaper and tastier than what you can buy, goes great with crackers, cheese and a charcuterie plate
• Quick pickles
Speaking of charcuterie plate, I’m not at the level where I can recommend making salami at home with a straight face, but pickles are easy
• Condiments: Mustard, ketchup, mayo and hot sauce
The Saveur web site has excellent recipes for all manners of condiments including Worcestershire, and steak sauce, besides the mentioned mustards, et al
• Port wine jelly
Jams are a touch easier, but jellies are sexier. Is it time consuming? Yes? Slightly messy? Yes. Easy? Yes. Totally worth it? Yes. Some brie and port wine jelly and you’re ready to roll.
• Spice rub
Nothing ruins a backyard bbq buzz more than having to cop to using Montreal steak seasoning from a shaker. Man, make your own. Totally easy.
• Limoncello
You know that time at the get together when conviviality is flagging and you sense the call for either departure or ignition for another two hours is necessary? Pulling out some homemade limoncello and putting some Béla Fleck on the stereo will do the trick. Actually, any homemade liqueur will do the trick, but limoncello will kick you in the pants, and that’s always nice.
I only provided nine because I figured a reader would have a good suggestion for the 10th item that every wine lover should know how to make. I’m thinking more food making skill, not necessarily a recipe. Leave a comment and round out the list!
September 7 2010
… Odds and ends from a life lived through the prism of the wine glass …
Get your Chi in Check
10-years ago, it would have been a full-fledged fad and cultural phenomenon, a meteor heading to a flameout, with collateral damage occurring in its wake. In today’s Internet-driven world, you have to tune your radar and watch the slow burn ... too many competing interests nowadays. Nonetheless, there are many people that are buying and using these so-called “energy bracelets,” including unpaid college football players and professional athletes.
Going by brand names like, “PowerBalance,” “iRenew,” “Trion,” “Phiton” and “Deuce brand,” these bracelets generally, in one form or another, promise to positively affect a wearer’s energy. PowerBalance, with a hologram, claims to effect energy with energy waves at specific positive frequencies. The frequencies react with the wearer’s naturally occurring energy fields. Once the hologram encounters a user’s body, energy flow is then supposedly improved for the wearer and therefore improves balance, flexibility, and strength.
Uh-huh.
At around the cost of a nice bottle of wine—$25 or so – it’s a lot of “suspension of disbelief.”
The thing is, however, who is going to call bullshit on it? Even without a scientific claim, and a business predicated on eastern philosophy, some well-respected athletes are endorsing it (which probably also explains the unpaid trickle down to college athletes) – NBA center Shaquille O’Neal, NFL Quarterback Matthew Stafford, MLB baseball players and niche professional athletes in sports from surfing to volleyball.
And, with those endorsements, robust consumer sales aren’t likely too far away.
This sounds familiar right? Junk science, unsubstantiated claims, premium prices, and respected people doing it with correlating consumer interest … the difference is that Biodynamic wine isn’t going to be a fad. Nope. It’s here to stay as a trend with some endurance.
The only real difference between an “energy bracelet” and BioD however is the origination of the shtick … PowerBalance and the energy bracelets based on “eastern philosophy” and BioD based on an Austrian into progressive western philosophy.
Methinks that if BioD originated in eastern agricultural practices, or alongside the ancient art of acupuncture treatment, or a Tao of some sort, the backlash wouldn’t be as swift as it was against a twentieth century philosopher and esotericist, somebody who, allegedly, should have known better.
You see, precious few really understand eastern philosophy and our politically correct nature means we are not going to dump on an entire culture, NYC mosques notwithstanding. However, an ex-pat Austrian philosopher whose death in the twentieth century is within spitting distance of our contemporary cultural understanding is easy pickings for the naysayers.
There are literally thousands of things that humans do not fully understand, but it’s easier to take a dump on something if the dumper isn’t likely to get a backlash based on cultural insensitivity from the dumpee and dumpee sympathizers. BioD then is the perfect foil. Its assailants commit almost a victimless assault.
Meanwhile, while the ant-BioD folks duke it out, I’m going to wear my energy bracelet, find my chi, and hope it translates some life-force energy to a glass of wine.
360-degree Wine Reviews
Speaking of naysayers … the anti-point brigade doesn’t grow weary of the conversation, do they?
I have been paying attention to points of all kinds and I think it’s going to grow deeper before it goes away.
As an example of points (this time a 10-point scale), GoodGuide is a modern day Consumer Reports that provides proprietary analysis of everyday consumable items measured against the so-called “Triple bottom-line.” They measure a product based on a producing company’s performance against three criteria – health, green and social responsibility.
According to their web site:
GoodGuide is in business to provide authoritative information about the health, environmental and social performance of products and companies. Our mission is to help consumers make purchasing decisions that reflect their preferences and values. We believe that better information can transform the marketplace: as more consumers buy better products, retailers and manufacturers face compelling incentives to make products that are safe, environmentally sustainable and produced using ethical sourcing of raw materials and labor.
While GoodGuide does not feature any wine at this time, it’s probably a short leap before they start doing so. However, the thing is, wineries are already measured in a number of areas at present – product quality via mainstream media criticism, product quality via consumer criticism (CellarTracker), hospitality via Yelp.com, and a persistent drumbeat of popular opinion regarding their marketing efforts.
If you ladle in Wal-Mart’s attempt at a widely adopted sustainability index and you start to see how a confusing consumer culture can be governed by points of all kinds.
So, unfortunately, for the anti-points brigade, I think a future outcome is likely whereby wineries are measured against a point score for their wine from a mainstream critic (perhaps even touted based on aggregation from a service like Wine BlueBook), an aggregate score from consumers via CellarTracker, a hospitality score from Yelp.com, a score from a sustainability index AND a score against the Triple-bottom Line from a service like GoodGuide.
Points going away? I don’t think so. In fact, one could argue, that a winery who is proactive against developing and leveraging this scoring would be serving themselves well as most of these measurements are well within the positively achievable for the way most small-to-medium size wineries conduct their business.
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