good grape daily: pomace & lees free run: field notes from a wine life around the wine blogosphere wine: a business doing pleasure good grape wine reviews new world influences red wine wine white wine wine blog news wine bloggers robert parker notes & dusty bottle items wine sediments wine business wine blogs historical wine book excerpts tasting safari: wines you can buy online cluetrain manifesto revisited winecast: a year in collaboration wine spectator wine blogger robert mondavi wine marketing indy food & wine vinography vin de napkin appellation watch: midwest regional review new vine logistics wine blogging alice feiring dr. vino tom wark natural wine gary vaynerchuk luxury wine wine critics wine reviews wine books cameron hughes american wine blog awards a really goode job california wine robert mondavi day penner-ash oregon pinot noir fermentation blog wine ratings tyler colman steve heimoff best wine blogs fred franzia wine research wall street journal wine robert mondavi winery best wine bloggers wine writers slender wine the wine makers tv terry theise direct-to-trade inertia beverage group notre dame football dan berger gourmet magazine wine news bordeaux rodney strong inniskillin wine advertising wine and the economy wine trends wine review wine advocate reading between the wines wine ethics wine and spirits daily three dolla koala zinfandel rockaway wine market council hr 5034 wine online winery marketing wine technology wine enthusiast jim laube oregon bounty sparkling wine good grape hugh macleod wine distribution crushpad wine matt kramer cellartracker stormhoek biodynamics open that bottle night 100-pt scale southern wine & spirits trader joe's wine grape stories church wine wine & spirits magazine mike steinberger vintank rockaway vineyards allocated wine lynn penner-ash appellation america champagne wine.com amazon.com sonoma pinot noir murphy-goode winery wine tasting notes pinot noir silver oak sommelier journal biodynamic wine augmented reality oregon cuisinternship indiana wine klinker brick dr. oz jr. jon bonne wine blogging wednesday clif winery agency nil hourglass wine a very goode job wine trading down trefethen generation y and wine hailey trefethen california zinfandel wine tasting journal wine competitions pinot noir reviews wine industry peru wine trip doug frost the winemakers tv the grateful palate fantesca resveratrol judgment of paris women in wine oregon pinot gris thomas pellechia carmenere woot wine purpose-idea rose wine vincellar russian river valley triple bottom line negociant wine business monthly celia masyczek bottle shock pinot jordan winery amy poehler wine micro sites umami chris phelps disney wine program the wine blue book winery hospitality 2007 forty-five north cabernet franc for dummies 2008 honig sauvignon blanc sherry three dollar koala clary ranch chronicle wine mary ewing-mulligan wine to relax erobertparker wine spectator restaurant awards zig ziglar italian wine merchant wine humor youtube cheap wine john hughes wine dj zinfandel producers maria thun firestone contest bad wine lonely island au revoir to all that radiohead wine blog awards 2010 french paradox sketches of spain red bicyclette court paul gregutt trefethen family vineyards sonoma county tasting note desciptors natural winemaking wine authors wine laws wine evaluation petite sirah korbel wine and sense of smell blog contests jim koch pork tenderloins wine & spirits restaurant poll 2010 guinness advertising amazon kindle wine politics the vintners art new zealand wine vinexpo good wine under 20 paste magazine patz & hall sonoma coast pinot noir notes on a cellar book oak alternatives kelly fleming interview the pour scott becker chronicle wines whyte horse winery darwinism mirror wine joe roberts e-myth revisited bennett lane winery the traveling vineyard schotts micellany marco capelli music + wine cooper's hawk winery tim hanni hunningbird wine best wine blog san francisco chronicle wine ice wine clif bar wine wine magazines hourglass cabernet chateau thomas wine parker defamation dependable wine trefethen fallow obama 2009 auction napa valley bruce reizenman vino chapeau san francisco wine competition petaluma pinot tamari torrontes dirty south wine chacha whuffie factor eryn supple formula business ordinance duane hoff paul blart: mall cop woman in wine organic wineries oregon wine snobs wine is the new black will hoge wineshopper gapingvoid rose summer wine lindsay ronga foppoli wines iphone wine mobile apps winery promotions expensive wine trends spike your juice cabernet main street winery obama wine next generation apple the fifth taste dominus bellagio wine qpr wines jimmy clausen winery customer service the pioneer woman alpine for dummies wine collection the business of wine secret sherry society wine video game westside road wine appellations ed mccarthy kurt andersen randall grahm party of five theme song wine lists wine star awards howard schultz drvino.com wine direct shipping vineyard church altar wine good wine mark squires texas liberty school cabernet sauvignon scheurebe cluetrain manifesto discoveries pathfinder wine health research jackson-triggs vidal ice wine di arie rose priceline.com rick mirer bottle shock movie lewis perdue napa valley auction rancho zabaco zinfandel wine intelligence research wall street journal wine columnists clark smith publishing trends dark & delicious wine expedition fat tire beer mothervine supplements tim mondavi jess jackson 500 things to eat before it's too late wine & spirits eat me kenny shopsin 2007 stoneleigh pinot noir wine public relations facebook + wine australian wine millenials and wine recession wine deb harkness cowboy mouth 2006 hess collection monterey chardonnay whole foods wine jim gordon kelly fleming cabernet the new yorker travel oregon mike hengehold vignoles rick mirer wine wine blogging strategies wine certification adobe road the the lost symbol wine criticism wine 2.0 a history of wine words karen macneil alloutwine indianapolis paul clary blog sweet wines clos lachance wine branding beaux freres us wine sales dessert wine c.g. di arie drew bledsoe amazon wine constellation wine washington wine wine bard weds '47 cheval blanc planet bordeaux santasti kevin zraly top chef hardy wallace burger wine where the hell is matt australia wine jamie oliver indiana miss america dark side of the rainbow rockaway wine gallo topps augmented reality expensive wine wine spectator top 100 2009 wine spies patio wine corkd dominic foppoli vintage of the decade markham mark of distinction adler fels home winemaking 2008 food & wine winemaker of the year texas bbq wine pairing oregon food and wine trinchero iphone wine apps. viktor frankl chateau petrus barack obama + wine sanford pinot noir conundrum digital marketing obama inauguration noble pig wine spectator wine reviews karadeci shorttrack ceo oh wine tycoon video game healdsburg terroir california wine for dummies global wine partners wine terroir little zagreb adam strum tinybottles generation y. wine communion wine livingston cellars wine and music german wine zap wine biodynamic yellow tail wine unified symposium 2007 waters crest "night watch" late harvest wine climber white name your own price napa cab. napa cabernet amazon.com wine california cabernet the wine line core wine drinkers john trefethen park avenue catering luxury wine marketing "frankenwine" nbwa the hold steady sensory evaluation wine trivia alpana singh dos equis commercials wine label design continuum boston beer company prince's hot chicken king estate a year in wine 2006 brancott pinot noir wine pr wineamerica wine wisdom lewin's equation 1winedude 1% for the planet wine social media wines and vines kelly fleming the best pinot noir ted lemon traminette wine tasting rooms palate press swanson vineyards vegas wine rombauer wine and art jason kroman alloutwine.com wine mou paul clary gracianna wine wine economy non-profits and wine moms who need wine ted jansen doubleback wine paul mabray blackstone wine dip keep walking chateau latour french wine marketing steve perry argentina wine firestone wine contest barolo santana dvx slate wine columnist wine pricing food revolution indiana gourmet food brigitte armenier red bicyclette social media ge smart grid augmented reality zinfandel reviews wine heist the new frugality deck wine wine content bryan q. miller andy warhol quotes fermentation wine blobbers oregon travel first blush juice consumer shopping research rachel alexandra food & wine magazine kenny shopsin digital signage wine retail man's search for meaning st. helena catholic church sanford chardonnay penner ash lettie teague nba liquor advertising michael ruhlman award of excellence ericca robinson journey cult wines wine tycoon game russian river valley pinot alan goldfarb economy "old world wine southern wine and spirits wine columns macari vineyards sette 7 tastingroom.com bruliam wine 100 point system champagne sales april fool's day wine snooth randy caparoso music and wine german riesling old vine zinfandel down under by crane lake jon fredrikson the wine case climber red cheap wines mirror wine company sugar free wine allocated cabernet paso robles pbs wine sales janet trefethen elliot essman fine wine marketing wine wipes wine medal winners national beer wholesalers association the gaslight anthem zephyr adventures wine bar bets robert parker's bitch wine reality show southern gothic wine heidi barrett john james dufour america eats willamette valley three-tier wines of chile specialty wine retailers association judd's hill rose wine sales wine & spirits daily hess collection wine industry news sonoma wine company wines & vines cult cabernet eric asimov dan cederquist parks and recreation wine mobile applications wine umami swanson alexis cabernet professional culinary institute value wines brand butlers american wine blogs forty-five north winery hugh johnson wine press release hong kong u.s. wine sherry wine aussie wine glut clary ranch pinot noir john tyler wine wine cartoons fusebox wine ebob bodeans mitch schwartz charlie weis murphy-goode wine blogging ethics sutter home videos inexpensive wine jay miller johnnie walker wines that rock bordeaux reconquest ani difranco firestone vineyards barbaresco mumm napa michael steinberger value wine .wine geocaching phillip armenier red bicyclette pinot noir wine blogosphere trefethen oak knoll cabernet sauvignon sonoma county wine cinderella wine aspirational marketing steroids in baseball wine book publishing batgirl wine sylvester pinot noir the press-democrat anthony dias blue oregon cuisinternship winner tokalon winery not-for-profit preakness stakes massale selection wine & spirits magazines guinness beer apple iphone the psychology of wine what is terroir wine purchasing wine nose jay mcinerney julie and julia james laube chimney rock elevage cornell enology wine tycoon stavin kelly fleming wine national wine & spirits reset " "new world wine" poseurs 2007 sean minor four bears pinot noir wine blogging tips sunbox eleven wine winery sponsorship champagne and business wine stories cork'd 2008 vina mar reserva sauvignon blanc persimmon creek vineyards wine + music midwest wine culture
August 22 2010
Nestled between Olive Garden’s populist promotion of wine, the explosion of wine bars across the country, the resurgence of restaurant and micro brewery concepts and emerging trends like community hubs that make wine (City Winery in New York), is a growing restaurant concept that has its eyes set on importing wine country culture to the heartland.
A rising tide raises all ships; the more that a pragmatic wine culture is understood as comfortable, and not the province of the elite, the better.
Related to this, I was talking with family friends recently who are keen wine lovers (of the ‘normal’ buy and drink variety), who are aware of my total immersion in matters of the grape. They asked, “Is it hard for you to find a wine culture here?” “Here” being Indianapolis, IN, the Crossroads of America. My answer was something along the lines of, “You have to work at it. It would be easier if I were on the East Coast and living in a place that has a legacy, euro-centric wine culture and wine bars or the West Coast that has the embedded wine sensibility from production.”
Yet, slowly, but surely, the Midwest is chipping away.
Local wines and the quality thereof are making inroads across the country. New York State, Michigan, Virginia, Texas, Missouri and other states all make wine that can hold their own against West Coast wineries if only perception met reality in a favorable way…
Taking a slightly different twist on what it means to be a winery while borrowing heavily from the aforementioned restaurant and microbrewery concept is Cooper’s Hawk winery and restaurant based in the ‘burbs of Chicago.
Founded by entrepreneur Tim McEnery in 2005, Cooper’s Hawk is the Midwest’s first winery and restaurant concept under one roof. The name, an homage to both the art of barrel making and the Cooper’s Hawk, a bird of prey found in the Midwest, is a clever and catchy take on the rootedness that denotes most winery names. And, the concept is a mash-up of familiar, but uniquely combined elements that has created a new category of restaurant.
Plus, there is a little bit of genius involved in the concept, as well. Given that upscale restaurants rely on their wine and beverage program to fuel profits, there is something simple and smart about cutting out the middleman to make all of your own wine and then have that wine program be simpatico with the restaurant concept.
Making their own wine akin to an on-premise microbrewery and restaurant, using the wine sampling concept that is de rigueur at Olive Garden, while creating an atmosphere that is super-charged winery tasting room and direct-to-consumer marketing program with a casual upscale restaurant attached, Cooper’s Hawk is poised for growth.
With four existing locations blanketing Chicagoland, the “don’t call it a chain and please call it a winery before restaurant” (my reference) is venturing out of state for the first time and opening a winery and restaurant in Indianapolis with additional expansion plans for two to three additional locations in 2011, with Missouri, Minnesota and Ohio potential destinations.
With a full winery production facility in Countryside, Illinois, and using varietal grapes from the west coast as appropriate, Cooper’s Hawk makes approximately 10,000 cases (50,000 gallons) of wine served in their casual upscale restaurants and via sales to their wine club.
According to Melanie Pierce, Director of Marketing at Cooper’s Hawk, “We really have a wide demographic range, mostly 21-65. Our menu is designed to have something for everyone and part of our success is attributed to our broad appeal.”
She continued, “The restaurant drives most of our sales revenue, but the wine club is instrumental in the growth of the restaurant.”
Sarah Stukas, a Psychotherapist from Darien, IL commenting on the comfortable nature of the restaurant concept said, “The vibe at Cooper’s Hawk is lively and there is a lot going on at a time. On a typical Saturday night you will find a small group having a tasting party in the front of the restaurant, people in the bar watching a game or listening to the piano player, a private gathering in the barrel room and a dining room full of patrons. It’s a fun place with attentive, professional service and consistently good food.”
She continued, “One of the great things about Cooper’s Hawk is that there’s something for everyone. While you will often see singles and couples in the bar or wine-tasting areas, the dining room is filled with groups, families or couples out for a romantic evening. We never feel out of place dining with our two children (8 & 11 - who actually order from the adult menu), but we’ve also enjoyed it quite a bit out with other couples.”
A scan of Yelp.com for Cooper’s Hawk yields similar exuberantly positive feedback with the occasional grumble bunny mixed in.
Of course, being based in the Midwest, it wouldn’t be an appropriate winery concept if there weren’t wines to suit all types of wine drinkers. Their wine list is an eclectic mix of sweet fruit wines, White Zinfandel, and varietal wines that cover the gamut of tastes and entry points for wine lovers across the spectrum of education. And, this might, ironically, explain why Cooper’s Hawk has both a Shiraz and a Syrah at the same price on their wine list.
According to Pierce, Riesling is their number one selling wine.
Overall, I’m somewhat ambivalent that a non-native restaurant is moving into Indianapolis, the capital of the free world for concept restaurants. Yet, at the same time, I’m excited that the place is well reviewed, planning to grow in other parts of the Midwest and, most importantly, that they’re bringing a higher level of mindshare and acceptance to a wine tasting room environment coupled with high quality food that pairs well with their wines.
As I mentioned, a rising tide raises all ships and the tradeoff of exported culture (or imported based on your geography) seems to be a reasonable one if it brings a greater level of appreciation for wine to the province of cultural morass, truly bringing the U.S. into a wine culture from sea to shining sea and not just the coasts.
Posted in, Free Run: Field Notes From a Wine Life. Permalink | Comments (1) | Print |
June 20 2010
… Odds and ends from a life lived through the prism of the wine glass …
Keeping the Knife Sharp, so to Speak
To perform at their peak, an athlete treats his/her body with respect, like a finely tuned instrument coaxed to peak performance. Likewise, a guitarist gives a similar type of respect to the sweet wood, the tool of their trade, tuning it and according it special treatment. The list goes on and on regarding a professional taking care of their moneymaker.
In the realm of serious wine enthusiasm and professional wine acumen, the tool of the trade is the palate. Just the mention of it sounds like a disembodied body part, a possession—“My Palate.” The list of no-no’s for palate acuity is short – don’t smoke. Yet, what isn’t mentioned is, “Avoid seasonal allergies at all costs.” I should know.
Specifically, “My Palate” has been suffering from a long, miserable allergy season.
According to experts, 2010 is one of the worst allergy seasons ever recorded.
Tell me about it. Waking up in the morning with allergies is a daily exercise in feeling hung-over without the fun memories from the previous night; natch it’s all the bad and none of the good.
And, I almost feel naughty admitting it, like I’m a musical artist lip synching in concert, so unspoken is the fallibility of somebody’s palate amongst hardcore wine enthusiasts.
Fortunately, I only do wine reviews for very a slight fraction of what I taste, but given that roughly 1 in 6 Americans suffer from seasonal allergies, I know that a good number of other professional and online wine writers are also affected by a dulling of senses that comes with scratchy, watering eyes, sneezing, and general fatigue brought on by environmental factors.
I’m not a doctor, so I won’t get into the homeopathic, prescriptive, and over-the-counter ways of countering allergies, but I’ve tried them all and have found a combination that works for me.
More importantly, however, beyond the neti pot, when it comes to wine tasting, I’ve found a combination that helps me achieve Zen-like clarity for wine tasting – this I can opine on…
First, I’ll assume that by the point in the day when it’s time for your Gary Vee-like, “Sniffy-Sniff” that whatever could move in your sniffer is stationary or removed as an obstruction. Ahem.
Now, here’s the first part of the two-part simple secret. Coffee beans. Have you been to the cologne or perfume counter at a department store and they had coffee beans in a bowl or a glass spice shaker to clear your olfactory senses between smelling perfumes?
The same thing works for wine. Taking a deep whiff of coffee beans is the same for your nose as wiping out freshman year of college is for your brain; it’s a restorative clean slate, almost like picking up 5 IQ points.
So, pick up a bag of whole bean coffee, put a few tablespoons (unground) into a Parmesan shaker, give a deep whiff and you’re through part one.
The second part is more traditional – SanTasti, a palate cleansing beverage.
I’m the worst kind of contradiction – I’m an Alpha Consumer, but deeply skeptical. I assume the worst and hope for the best, at least when it comes to proactively trying new consumer goods and seeking results. So it was for SanTasti, the palate cleansing beverage that purports to cleanse your palate for wine tasting.
Yet, son of a gun, it works like crazy. I first tried it after a piece of cheesecake for dessert, my mouth coated with the sweet finale to the meal, but an unfinished glass of Pinot begged for the respectful conclusion.
Out came the SanTasti for a swish, gargle and swallow.
I try not to get too bullish about wine gadgets and such, but SanTasti is like the Magic Eraser for your mouth – it refreshes, enlivens and wipes clean your mouth allowing for a refreshed wine drinking experience.
Oyster crackers in baskets at tasting rooms across the country should be nervous.
Without too much hyperbole, SanTasti is the most exciting wine accessory I’ve seen in the last decade, and that includes all of the aeration, decanting and associated schwag that has come out.
SanTasti is the single best wine accessory on the market today next to the corkscrew, all because it wipes the detritus that is aftertaste from your mouth. Brilliant.
Regardless of your allergy levels, give coffee beans and a swig of SanTasti a try before you take notes on your next wine.
Foraging?
Food & Wine magazine mentions wild food foraging several times in the current issue of the magazine. F&W is usually on point and very trend forward, so I expect that wild, foraged food will start showing up on white table cloth restaurant menus with regularity over the course of the next year (perhaps joining natural wine in a campfire mash-up of Kumbaya and a rendition of ‘American Pie’).
Aside from my Depression-era grandparents and chokecherry pie, I first came across the notion of cattails, dandelion greens and wild comestibles in a homesteading book a couple of years ago – it’s the very far left of the current green movement.
Do me a favor, if you get into wild food foraging, there are a bunch of books on the subject, go old school with Euell Gibbons. Every generation wants to think they invented this stuff, even if Red Rover has been around since Methuselah was a young lad. Gibbons wrote the book (several, actually) on wild foraging. His work is worth seeking out as the forefather of the movement (before it was cool) some 40 years ago. Just saying …
Posted in, Free Run: Field Notes From a Wine Life. Permalink | Comments (5) | Print |
May 19 2010
The market size for erudite and philosophical wine books has to be a very small sub-set of wine lovers, resonating with the odd librarian who nestles in with a couple of cats that offer familiarity with her glass of Sauvignon Blanc and, perhaps, the unrequited liberal arts major that pines for a lover with an equally exhausting love for the Socratic Method.
At least that’s what you might think if you didn’t know three quasi-philosophical wine-related books have published in the last year, joining two other titles published in 2007.
And, while I’m neither a spinster librarian nor a Kierkegaard-toting hipster looking for a verbal joust, I do read these well-intentioned wino philosophical books.
The Psychology of Wine, Wine Drinking for Inspired Thinking and Use Wine to Make Sense of the World join the pantheon of thinking man’s wine books on the shelf next to Wine and Philosophy: A Symposium on Thinking and Questions of Taste: The Philosophy of Wine. And, each of the three recent titles takes their own tact on the thinking man’s pursuit of the grape … with mixed results.
Let’s start with the good first: Use Wine to Make Sense of the World by Elliot Essman. Using wine as the crucible for viewing the intrinsic elements of the human condition, Essman manages to be at once smart, glib, personal, and accessible in a first person narrative weaving insight and anecdotes into a coherent whole– no easy feat, particularly when the book could have easily leaned preachy and boorish in lesser hands.
Notably, Essman nails this genre of book correctly in the introduction (ensuring that readers who dig into the balance of the briskly paced 153 pages won’t be disappointed) when he says, “Wine involves science, nature, history, geography, language, business, culture, law, government, sensuality, and sense. Wine involves people. Wine involves questions of aesthetic taste. Wine weaves a path through our entire civilized life.” In those 32 words he manages to encapsulate the very different, but uniquely binding ties that bring people together around the good grape.
If the book has a flaw it’s that it’s too brief without a level of research that pushes it beyond the entertaining first person monologue. He is missing an editor that could stretch him into new directions, and challenge his table of contents, helping him build this book into a peer of other broad-based, modern day classic wine books like Lawrence Osborne’s The Accidental Connoisseur.
Regardless, If Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people” she might have been referring to Essman and his ideas that transcend not only events and people, but wine, as well. A recommended read.
Less notably, and frankly pretty bad is: Wine Drinking for Inspired Thinking: Uncork Your Creative Juices by Michael J. Gelb.
Gelb, author of a business bestseller in the 90s called, How to Think like Leonardo da Vinci swings and misses by a Venetian mile on this effort (while bordering on the fraudulent based on the title and premise of the book), making me wonder what kind of pictures he has of Parker in order to get the Emperor to provide a book jacket starburst quote that says, “Highly Recommended.”
What is “highly recommended” isn’t clear. Perhaps the portion of the quote left out is, “to use as kindling.”
The premise is based on Gelb’s creativity consulting practice in which he leads seminars and corporate training sessions and uses one creative session tactic where he has participants drink wine and write poetry. Thus a book was born. Bad idea. The problem is that one consultant exercise does not a book make. Therefore, the unsuspecting reader is left with a grab bag of content geared towards the complete novice with pearls of wisdom on how to give a toast, complete fluff on wine and philosophy, wine and music and wine and art, and finally 52 pages of glossaries, recommended reading, acknowledgements and blank pages for notes.
Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg, authors of the twin classics, What to Drink with What you Eat and The Flavor Bible, offer in the book Forward, “…Wine Drinking for Inspired Thinking is destined to take its place as a classic for thoughtful readers in search of wisdom and insight into the art of living.” Um, not so much. But credit to Gelb for getting Parker, Zraly, Natalie MacLean, Page and Dorenburg, as well as Vaynerchuk to give jacket blurbs for this completely misleading, total dog of a book. Paybacks are a bitch Michael J. Gelb.
Finally, in the “ugly” category is The Psychology of Wine: Truth and Beauty in the Glass by Evan Mitchell and Brian Mitchell.
Where to start on this book? It’s like reading the CliffsNotes to The Iliad and still having no clue what is going on.
William Faulkner is notorious to college students for being a virtually impenetrable author. Indeed, Faulkner has nothing on the father and son Mitchell team.
Perhaps the most telling quote for the authorly expectations of this book is, “Wine, more than any other organism, aesthetic object, or experience, reflects what it means to be human.”
Ahem, I love wine, certainly as much, if not more than the next guy, but to place wine on a higher plane than, say, childbirth is a bit of ridiculous hubris.
The text of the book, chock full of scholarly analogies, isn’t so much a look into the Psychology of wine, as much as it’s like a liberal arts Ph.D with wine as your principal area of study. To me, it’s virtually unreadable for anybody except east coast bluebloods, or, alternatively, the type of person who keeps a quarter bag of Mendo Purple Haze on hand for the water bong.
It’s not all bad, a couple of chapters do shine – notably chapter 4 on points scoring and chapter 25 on the Judgment of Paris. Each have a crisp, understandable lucidity, but the balance of the book is tedious, full of obscure, scholarly reference points and a point-of-view that alienates even the most learned of readers.
Overall, my peek into these wine and philosophically leaning books was a very mixed bag. Perhaps the best advice related to these types of books comes from 19th century scientist and wine lover Louis Pastuer when he said, “A bottle of wine contains more philosophy than all the books in the world.” Good advice. My recommendation is to drink a bottle of wine quiet with your thoughts instead of spending any time with two out of three of these books.
Posted in, Free Run: Field Notes From a Wine Life. Permalink | Comments (4) | Print |
March 31 2010
For Immediate Release
Contact: Sister Mary Elephant
Sisters of St. Francis of Perpetual Adoration
574-555-1212
melephant - at - sspfa.org
Award Winning Wine Blog Announces New Online Wine Retail Outlet Bringing the Very Best Church Wines to the Public
Indianapolis, IN - April 1, 2010 - Not content with the slightly less than mediocre success he’s earned from writing over 1000 considered and researched blog posts over the last four years, while winning awards for the design of his site for which he simply wrote a check, Jeff Lefevere announced the pending launch of a new venture in the wine business: http://www.churchchug.com. The site is being developed to provide redemption in two forms—stroke his deflated ego by throwing good money into another questionable sinkhole and provide a market for an oversupply of altar wines.
Churchchug.com, launching on April 15th, will be the premiere eCommerce destination online for wine lovers to find and buy the very best in altar wines, a quickly developing, but currently overlooked niche in the wine business.
Said Lefevere, “The decision to start ‘Church Chug’ was easy. First, can you imagine how kick-ass the t-shirts are going to be? I mean nobody starts a business without thinking about what the t-shirt will look like. Second, ‘Orange’ wines are very trendy right now with those in the know. I couldn’t find anything that rhymed with orange, so I kept brainstorming ...”
He continued, “I always said that I would eventually head back to the Catholic Church after the guilt from 12 years of Catholic school dissipated. After almost 20 years away from the Church and after marrying a Jewish girl, I figured my hosanna to heaven should be around one of the few things I do worship—wine. What could be better than to start a business in THE LAST AVAILABLE NICHE left in the wine business and bring the beautiful altar wines that are served on Sundays around the country to your dinner table? Plus, you can already buy Manischewitz at the grocery store so that’s not so unique. And, well, with the priest problems the Catholics are having and with H1N1 cutting down on the number of people taking wine at communion there’s actually a pretty good supply of altar wine available cheap.”
The online wine store will begin with a curated selection of church wines. Said Lefevere, “It’s important that we build our reputation in two forms—first, based on my palate. Like any wine expert, I’ll tell you what’s good and what’s not—the reality is there’s a lot of plonk in the church wine market so I sift through the good and the bad and give the very best to my customers—soon to be recognized brands like Onehda, Cribari, Mont La Salle, and Guasti are all delicious wines that deserve more than a sip and and some backwash into the chalice. I’m going to make sure of that. In addition, we have to start letting these wines earn notice from notable critics, which is already starting to happen.”
Church Wine Wins Critical Acclaim
Renowned 4th tier Wine Critic Steven Blanzer, critic for the Global Wine Cellar, awards one of the church wines soon to be available at Churchchug.com 96 points.
Said Blanzer, “I travel and dedicate all of my time to wine, so I know what I’m talking about, I’m not some amateur who does this part time. When I taste a non-vintage field blend from Fresno that inspires me like the Cribari, I know I’ve seen something that can be very, very special. Plus, as a former altar boy, I have memories of preparing altar wine in the vestibule before mass.”
His tasting notes on the Cribari Burgunday noted, “Incense, Olivewood, Jovan Musk, and Ether.”
Churchchug.com plans to offer a complement of gourmet, artisan foods to pair with the church wines in the late summer of 2010. Lefevere offered, “Have you ever had those wafers they give out at communion? They taste like the concrete floor of a basement after a college kegger. For the love of God and all things holy, we’re going to provide some tasty pairings for these wines to show the way they were meant to be shown.”
About Churchchug.com
Founded by Jeff Lefevere who is Owner, CEO, President, and Chairman of the Board, Churchchug.com is his attempt at relevancy in the competitive world of wine. Destined to become the #1 source for church wines for consumers, the site launches April 15th.
###
Posted in, Free Run: Field Notes From a Wine Life. Permalink | Comments (3) | 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 |
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License
Design by The Blog Studio
