Good Grape Wine Company

March 3 2010

News, Notes and Dusty Bottle Items – By a Thread Edition

… 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.

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