Good Grape Wine Company

September 1 2009

Single Servings – Wine Quick Takes

187ml of wine thought …

Luxury Wine Market

How soft is the luxury wine market?  Very soft.  How do I know this?  I made the allocation offering for Harlan and the Maiden.  I’ve been on the list for two years.  If they’re getting to me that means they are throwing a very wide net to ensure a full allocation.  The ’07 Harlan Estate won’t be released until spring of 2011.  At $500 bucks a bottle, the aftermarket for Harlan will have recovered a bit where the upside outweighs the cash outlay ... maybe.  Wine-searcher indicates that the current average bottle price for the ’06 is $794.  That’s an excellent return on your investment, but at what cost when your money is being held for at least 20 months?

Sacre Bleu and Mommy Bloggers

Galen and Ashley from Sacre Bleu did a nice interview with me last week.  In that interview I was quoted as saying, in regard to blogging, “it’s much easier to personally say something interesting, than be a person of interest.”

The very next day I had lunch with a prominent “Mommy Blogger” who gave me a bunch of feedback.  I seek out unbiased feedback on my blog from people outside of the wine niche to get a better perspective on what I’m doing and how well the content resonates with somebody who may not be that wine savvy.  Since I’m in the belly of the beast, this helps me see the forest for the trees.

This “Mom Blogger” told me that my site lacked first person-personality and that I needed to inject more of my life into the site. 

Hmm …

Words with Meaning

I just finished reading a book by social media superstar Chris Brogan called, Trust Agents.  In it, he cites a statistic that indicates that 7% of our communication is words, 38% is vocal expression, 58% is body language.  The reason I don’t talk about my life to a great extent is because it’s 34% not that interesting.

Actually, the real reason is because I think first person narrative related to wine is deadly dull and only more interesting when it’s put into context, with a touch of research, framed anecdotally. 

Holy Sheep Shit

Natural wine has been getting a lot of mindshare lately.  Natural Wine Week in San Francisco took place last week and Reuters has a very nice article today on natural wines.  In the article, Helen Comoutos from Domaine Comoutos in Greece is quoted as saying, “Sheep manure is the secret ingredient.”

Note to Helen: in the U.S. market where virtually every store has sanitizing gel so you don’t have to touch the germ infested shopping cart without some sort of germicidal protection, calling sheep manure the secret ingredient to wine is probably going to turn off even the most ardent of natural wine lovers.

Thinking about Drinking

In the past two weeks it was reported that Diageo spent $690K lobbying the government on various issues in a 3-month period earlier this summer – some self-interested lobbying and other activities that are more altruistic in nature.

At the same time Brown-Forman launched a web site called, “Our Thinking about Drinking.”  It’s an issues related web site about underage drinking, binge drinking, health and marketing. 

Now, I understand why large beverage companies do this sort of thing, particularly when it’s around social responsibility, but somehow I can’t get away from the feeling that most of this is window-dressing at its best and mildly disingenuous at its worst.

Random Thoughts

Why does 93% of the wine industry sign off their emails with not a “Best Regards” or “Thanks” but a “Cheers?”

I would find this charming were it not for the preponderance of occurrence that marks it as completely unoriginal.

Airline Feel-Good

ReCORK America announced a relationship with American Airlines and their Admirals Club – the club will now recycle all wine corks.  While I love the notion of recycling cork for the sake of the environment, if they really wanted to do something that would engender goodwill they should rescind their checked baggage fee, a fee they just raised last month from $15 to $20 a bag.  That would take the bad taste out of my mouth, regardless of how good the wine may be in their Admirals Club.

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