Good Grape Wine Company

March 10 2010

Field Notes from a Wine Life – In Situ Edition

…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.”

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