Exorcising Diffident Demons

I’m mad.  I think our economy is getting better and I am not happy about it.  Our economic distress has NOT affected enough positive change, wrought through hard times, the equivalent of my grandparents, Depression-era influenced, saving money under the mattress, hiding it in the freezer and under the sink in coffee tins because they didn’t completely trust the banks.

What a blown opportunity to create life-altering change for the peccadilloes that inhibit positivity in our wine world.

Wine is the New Black

It is official.  Wine is the new ‘Black.’ Wine ‘Plays in Peoria.’

‘Will it play in Peoria?’ has traditionally been asked, somewhat rhetorically, to determine if something will appeal to heartland/Main Street America.

The results are in.

In a recent Wine Market Council report highlighting Nielsen research (as presented in Wine Business Monthly), Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Illinois, cultural flyover states if ever there were any, all demonstrated exceedingly positive growth over three judgment time periods – a year, 6 months and 3 months in 2008.

For example, total dollar sales for wine in Indiana increased 16.7% over 2008.  Total dollar sales for Wisconsin grew 24.5% over the last six months of 2008, and Illinois grew 27.6% over the course of the year—explosive growth by most measures.

This is great.  It’s hard to underscore how relevant this is to wine culture at large.  If wine growth is exploding in Indiana and Wisconsin, you can be sure it’s a trend and not a fad.

And, while I appreciate that my region of the country has decided to come to the wine dance, I fear that our contemporary wine culture will not have a long enough period of time with reasonable price point wines and expectations that normalize the population before the recovery.

The unfortunate result of this is the fact that we will go back to our near-term old way of doing things.

That is, our wine culture will still be skewed towards reflecting approximately 2% of the population while the other 98% of the wine drinking world scratch their collective head trying to figure out what they are missing.

California wines will go back to aspiring for that $18 – $25 price point, allocation wineries will be aloof and cult wines will continue their ascent up the price ladder, all while we breed another generation with a contemptible view towards wine, supported by popular media that paints by the proverbial point with a bent towards lifestyle.

Excuse me if, in a microcosm, I feel like the we could use some more suffering to get our domestic wine culture to healthy place to grow from.

Restaurant Wine, Gouging Customers since time Immemorial

The old grind has always been that corkage fees are out of whack or non-existent and that restaurant wine prices are too high.

This conversation has been going on for decades.

And, you know what, corkage fees ARE out of whack or non-existent and restaurant wine prices ARE too high.

Generally speaking, I don’t care much about corkage fees, etc.  I don’t take a sandwich to a picnic, or sand to the beach, so the notion of taking wine to a restaurant, or not, isn’t that big of a deal to me.

However, I do get peeved, really peeved at restaurant wine prices.  So do a lot of other people, as well. 

I’m taking a couple of days off in Florida with my wife and some friends.  I order a dozen oysters on the half shell and a glass of Sauvignon Blanc.  The wine, Kendall-Jackson, the lesser of evils on the wine list, is $9.50 a glass.  A glass!  A bottle retails for about $11 at retail. 

Are you kidding me?  That furrowed brow of mine doesn’t magically spell out “dumb” like some consumer crop circle within your kitschy, purposefully low rent seafood shack.

Does restaurant wine pricing get under my skin?  Sarah Palin is the anti-Christ to me, but to borrow a phrase, “You betcha” it bothers me.

The argument is that restaurants make most of their profit on the bar and desserts, so wine pricing is a mechanism of making up for loss leaders or break evens on the entrée.

Arguments have long been developed that more wine would be sold if it were more reasonably priced.  Evidence today indicates that the high-end of restaurant wine lists are growing dusty, while more people are buying wine by the glass, which have typically been priced so that a glass pays for the wholesale cost of the bottle.

With an economic recovery, expense accounts will loosen, disposable income will free up and more wine will be purchased without ANY change in the habits of restaurants.

That’s too bad because we’d be better off if entrees were priced sustainably so that wine didn’t have to have a 2.5X mark-up on a bottle.

Personally, what I want to do is start a consumer groundswell movement, and use RFID tagged customized casino chips that you can leave with your restaurant receipt.  The chip would say, “I didn’t buy any wine because your prices are inflated.  Tell your manager that your tip is smaller because their pricing practices inhibited my desire to enjoy wine with my dinner.”

Call it the ‘Consumer Coalition against Restaurant Wine Price Gouging.”

These chips would be free to anybody that wants to order them.  The RFID chip would map online into a Google map indicating where they have been played and the entire web site would use the API from Yelp.com where people can go after a chip has been played to detail their experiences about wine price gouging.

Likely, this idea goes into the pile of other ideas of activism that get relegated to the prioritization of time and money – notably my time and money, but just the same, something should be done, even if the economic times aren’t going to cooperate with us to create impactful and lasting change.

Related to wine, what are your diffident demons?