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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.
Posted in, Wine: A Business Doing Pleasure. Permalink | Comments (8) | Print |
March 3 2010
… More flotsam and jetsam that doesn’t fit into a blog post by itself …
Required Reading
Please do me a favor and go to the sports blog Deadspin and read writer Will Leitch’s article on his relationship with movie critic Roger Ebert. Replace “Roger Ebert” with “Robert Parker” and you’ll have the same moral of the story.
Wine Cultural Voyeurism
With every bit of certainty I can muster, I’m pretty sure my unborn children will look at me with dramatic teenage disbelief because I am not bilingual and fluency wasn’t a requirement for my high school (or college) graduation.
The global village will have them doing internships in oui oui Paris.
The fact is, I would like to know a bit of French, some Italian and maybe even a bit of Spanglish. Though, I can still learn, and until I learn, I can skirt the edges using some tech savvy.
I’ve been having fun reading foreign language wine blogs lately—for the same reason that I like reading Savuer magazine and their food culture pieces. It feels like authentic armchair travel into a heretofore unknown culture.
Here’s my tip: Read – translated—foreign language wine blogs using a Firefox browser and download the Google Toolbar. Embedded into the toolbar is a pretty good translator for pretty much any language necessary. Or, use Google’s Chrome browser where it’s built in.
It’s a fun little trick.
One site I’ve been reading is a Russian wine blog. Or, go to wineblogger.info and check out their listing of foreign language wine blogs.
Wine and Air Travel
Speaking of international travel (armchair or otherwise), for all of the talk about how state fair wine competitions are a farce, by far the most worthless set of awards I’ve ever seen has to be “Cellars in the Sky Awards” that recognize, “The best business and first class wines served by airlines worldwide.” Sponsored by Business Traveller magazine, the winner is Quantas. American Airlines, US Air, and Delta were a part of the competition.
Methinks getting rid of baggage fees might be a good place to start for rewarding the customer.
Gallo
“Scumbag,” is what I thought. Gallo takes a lot of heat in the wine world for being a hulking behemoth of a company and the antithesis of what many wine lovers stand for in the world of wine.
Usually, I’m an Erin Brockovich sympathizer, but I can’t muster up any sympathy for the guy that filed a class action lawsuit against Gallo for the Red Bicyclette imbroglio. My skin crawls when I read quotes from class action lawyers in a truly victimless crime.
This isn’t melamine in the milk. It was Syrah instead of Pinot, and, apparently, an act of deception against Gallo. An argument can be made that Gallo should have tested composition of the wine based on the amount of production that was coming from a tertiary Pinot region, but, again, lawsuits should be reserved for truly injurious claims.
Said the lawyer, “It is important that when consumers enter a supermarket or a wine store they can be assured that they are getting bottles of wine from the region represented and that they are of the vintage represented. If not, winemakers will take advantage of an unsophisticated public especially in the $10 a bottle category where these bottles were priced.”
If Mark Keller of Los Angeles (the plaintiff) can produce a receipt for his purchase and prove that he was emotionally injured then I’ll be the first guy to buy him a case of wine. Otherwise, it’s a waste of taxpayer money in the court system.
Another Candidate for Worst Wine Press Release of the Year
$5 for anybody that can tell me what the point of this press release is.
It’s Safe to go back in the Water
I received a press release and subsequent research summary from Blackstone winery’s PR folks this week. Their outbound PR effort related to a commissioned study with Nielsen was first launched the second week of February. Contact with me (undoubtedly 4th tier outreach) represents a sustained effort at trying to get traction around their message of dispelling the “Sideways effect” of Merlot being generally insipid wine by proving that sales never wavered.
The research summary says, “Merlot never ‘died’ and remains immensely popular with U.S. red wine drinkers, registering solid sales growth every year for the past five years.”
The research summary goes on to show numerous facts, figures and graphs that dispel the myth that Merlot somehow was waylaid by the movie and lead character Miles’ disdainful exhortation, “No, if anyone orders Merlot, I’m leaving. I am NOT drinking any f*cking Merlot!”
This is really curious. First, the movie was released in time for the 2005 Oscars, in late 2004. Five full years ago. This smells like Blackstone, a value wine, is trying to woo favor – not from the consumer populace (who still apparently drink Merlot), but from the influencers in the wine media, Sommeliers, and wine retailers – the value-chain of influencers, who largely abandoned the varietal as a topic du jour.
I’ve talked about this in the past, I have a pet theory called the “derision decision” and that’s the point in time when the zeitgeist bites you back for being too popular. That’s exactly what happened with Merlot. The wines turned boring and uninteresting, the wine media lamented Merlot and then finally had a cultural touchstone (Sideways) to point to as broad validation for how much crap wine was being turned out.
The rest, as they say, is history. The influencer tide turned, even if sales didn’t.
Here’s the thing about Blackstone and Merlot – you only get one crack at cultural popularity and you either sustain it, or you don’t. Your next crack at it is with nostalgia, not facts and figures.
Blackstone would be better served by picking one segment of the population and doing stealth marketing – similar to what Pabst Blue Ribbon has done.
As I said, otherwise, they’ll have to wait their turn for nostalgia.
In other news, MC Hammer has 1.8 million followers on Twitter and The Who, fresh off their Super Bowl performance, may tour in the fall. Both bring fond memories of musical stages in my life … I have wine stages, too.
Posted in, News, Notes & Dusty Bottle Items. Permalink | Comments (2) | Print |
March 1 2010
… Flotsam and jetsam that doesn’t fit in a blog post by itself …
Open that Bottle Night
It was a reasonably quiet edition of Open that Bottle Night (OTBN) this past Saturday. An occasion started by the Dottie Gaither and John Brecher, former wine columnists for the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the event was started 11 years ago to celebrate drinking that special cellar bottle that needs an event that never seems to come.
If you want to read an interview ipso facto, head over to Palate Press for the 2010 exclusive with Dottie and John (who remain tight-lipped about their next move post WSJ –probably based on their severance agreement—look for their next move in 2011).
For my part, I opened a 2004 A. Rafanelli Zinfandel. It’s a huge wine, not quite off-putting Amazonian, but big nonetheless, with charm to spare, and it’s drinking beautifully right now.
Coming back from a work-related awards ceremony on Saturday night (the rubber chicken, kissing babies, slapping backs circuit), I couldn’t wait to get home, take off the sports coat and pour a glass. The A. Rafanelli did not disappoint.
To me, A. Rafanelli represents what is good about California wine – sublime vino, small, multi-generational and family-owned with enough down-to-earth cachet to keep it interesting. It’s expensive, yet fairly priced based on production. Plus, I was introduced to this by a good friend and completely cowed by Dave Rafanelli on a visit to the winery years ago. A. Rafanelli is quintessential.
On a side note, Open that Bottle Night is the first “wine holiday” of the year. In a humble effort to try and build momentum with a coalition of willing wine drinkers, I’d like to build some momentum around a calendar of wine events. Next up is “John James Dufour Day” on April 3, 2010 – intended to celebrate “bud break” and the man that many credit with starting the first successful winery in the U.S. in 1807.
Orange Wine
I’ve recently taken on a heavy interest in wine topics and story tracking. To me, it’s fascinating to watch topics emerge and stories break that build momentum over a period of time.
This is the sort of thing that helps wine writers develop their “bona fides” because there is so little hard news in the wine industry. Therefore, getting in front of an emerging trend helps build credibility as being witness to something that is now “esoteric,” but may shortly be “prevailing”—something that can be pointed to as a benchmark.
Undoubtedly, this is also the sort of thing that PR professionals do as they measure the success of their work.
I use Highbeam, Cruvee, Google alerts and good ol’ internet searching for research.
One of the topics I’ve been monitoring is “Orange” wine.
If you’re interested in getting caught up on a topic that has the wine writing cognoscenti aflutter, check out the following links:
Wikipedia – partial article aggregation for Eric Asimov and Jon Bonné
Eric Asimov (New York Times) II
Jon Bonne (San Francisco Chronicle) I
Jeremy Parzen from Do Bianchi I
Jeremy Parzen from Do Bianchi II
Alder Yarrow from Vinography I
Alder Yarrow from Vinography II
Feargus O’Sullivan (Financial Times)
What does this particular focus on “Orange” wine in the last eight or nine months mean? Likely that we’re going to see and hear more about it in throughout the year as thought-leadership trickles down.
Expect to see an article in a mainstream wine magazine (read: Wine Spectator) sometime this year.
Want to buy a Blog?
Speaking of Google Alerts … if you’re a wine information hound and you’re not subscribed to Google alerts around various wine subjects (red wine, white wine, wine blogs, winery press release) then you’re missing out on seeing some really weird and wacky stuff that may not always cross the radar otherwise.
In a two day span late last week, a Google alert flagged a mention of Good Grape at a site that valuates web sites – it pegged this site as being worth $230,501.
Elsewhere, I saw a web site auction listing for a blog called, “Grape in a Bottle.” The auction is now closed, but the site could have been yours for a mere $1500.
Ironically, the valuation web site said, “Grape in a Bottle” was worth $248,472.
For all of this talk about “monetization” it seems a bigger problem is something that is supposedly worth a lot of money can be had for .006% of the alleged value – that is, of course, if there any takers. If not, then it’s worth exactly what somebody is willing to pay—$0.
So, what does it all mean? Some people garden, some people refinish furniture, whatever the hobby is, the payment is in the process itself. The intrinsic value will always be higher than the monetary value for something you love.
At least that’s my $0.02 cents, which is probably worth less than that.
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