February 10 2009
Two wine-related items that are really bouncing around with a startling amount of re-occurrence are the incessant holiday-centric wine events with the no-brainer wine pairings and this Obama wine thing that is quickly making its way through the corridors of gossip to become stated fact.
First, the wine and holiday thing. If I am a winery, why would I do all of my events AT THE EXACT SAME TIME AS EVERYBODY ELSE? I can almost set my watch based on the activity and emails I see related to Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Easter, and Fourth of July barbecue with either a winery event or a piece of content about food and wine matching.
If I’m in charge of a winery and marketing, I would go exactly upstream, in through the out door, and do none of that. How about something original? If I am an Editor of anything that prints anything, I would call a moratorium on inspid “wine with chocolate” articles.
On another curmudgeonly note—it has now become true. A non-wine drinker asked me if I knew that Obama had a 1000 bottle wine cellar and was a wine aficionado.
Ahem, it can only be a matter of time before this Obama and wine thing turns up on Urbanlegends.com. As far as I know, an article mentioned he had room in a cellar (that probably pre-existed him living in the house) for a 1000 bottles and he was photographed for People magazine with a bottle of Kendall-Jackson Chardonnay in the background. Circumstantial evidence does not make a case, even if it would be nice if he was a wine lover!
Finally, I left the third Vin de Napkin open for the second caption. Leave a comment with a suggestion and I’ll print the best one—remember Vin de Napkin is more social commentary then comic, so humorously clever works great!
Posted in, Vin de Napkin. Permalink | Comments (6) |
“Let’s hope one of them actually makes wine, so the other one can blog about it.”
“What if those two wine lovers had a strange affinity for MD ‘Mad Dog’ 20/20?”
They better get busy before all of that Pinot Noir goes bad!
Most wineries are caught up in getting the biggest piece of the pie that holiday wine sales present. Wine sales do spike at celebratory times—like Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, Easter—and it’s a battle for consumer mindshare. I agree that it’s often predictable, but it seems like most marketing/advertising is geared towards the lowest common denominator (eg, pink champagne and chocolate covered strawberries - Yum! NOT).
We are running a first ever program at Hess promoting our Hess Select Chardonnay for the month of March. Outside of St. Patrick’s Day and college basketball’s March Madness, I don’t think we could have picked a more holiday free month! In March, we are donating to “1% for the Planet” to let people know that we are truly a “green” wine (not just a green labeled wine). And if we just happen to have some displays still up when Easter rolls around, well, BONUS for us!
Brian,
Welcome to Goodgrape.com—thanks for the comment. I have Kelli building my blog up one fan at a time!
I like the idea of your March promo. I’ll message you offline about it.
Thanks for reading!
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Vin de Napkin: That depends, will I be left with good wine or simply good company?