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April 7 2006
I was out for sushi last week and right after I ordered a Kirin to drink with my forthcoming sushi orgy, I saw a table tent highlighting a new wine designed especially for sushi—called Oroyo. Interesting. Sushi and wine haven’t always gone together because the flavors are so different.
When Igot home, I looked for it online. Made by Freixenet, it released in the states in 2004 and in Europe in 2005—I’m just behind the times, apparently.
Yoko Sato, a young Japanese winemaker with Freixenet, says that she hasfulfilled a dream, that of producing a wine perfectly suited to sushi.The brand dubbed, “Oroya” is made from Spanish grape varieties – Airen,Macebeo, Muscat of Alexandria – situated in the production zone of Vinode la Tierra in Castilla, Spain. According to Freixenet, the wine’sgentle acidity pairs well with the richness of raw fish, while itslight and fresh characteristics perfectly adjust to the strength of theWasbi, often hard to match. Oroya is available in a classy, elegantbottle suited to Japanese decor.
The San Francisco Chronicle had this to say in February:
Speaking of takeout, stop for sushi and uncork a unique wine made specifically for raw fish. The 2004 Oroya Tierra de Castilla ($8) from Spain is a blend of Airen, Macabeo and Muscat grapes made by Japanese winemaker Yoko Sato. With dusty, earthy aromas, sweet citrus flavors and taut acidity, the wine makes sushi sing.
With spring here, and a spot on the Friday evening couch beckoning, I would be remiss if I didn’t also offer up a movie recommendation based on wine and, er, a Japanese theme.
From no less a reputable source then Maxim magazine, The Legend of the Drunken Master made its way into the Top 20 All-Time Greatest Movie Drinkers.
The description from Maxim:
He’s like Popeye, only with booze instead of spinach. When Fei-hung drinks he becomes the Drunken Master and uses an invincible fighting style. The film boasts some of the best fight scenes and worst lessons for children ever.
New York Times Plot Summary here.
Fei-hung Drink of Choice: Wine
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April 4 2006
From The Office, 2005:
DwightSchrute:In the wild, there is no health care. In the wild, health care is, "Ow, Ihurt my leg. I can’t run. A lion eats me and I’m dead." Well, I’m notdead. I’m the lion, you’re dead.
When I was coming out of school in the mid 1990s, I needed healthcare, and a steady income—the parental umbilical cord having been cut. Before graduating, however, I took a mediaresearch class where, for approximately 100 minutes, spread out over two classsessions, we reviewed what was previously known as the Information Superhighway that was then manifesting itself as the World Wide Web (WWW). We talked about using the WWW as a tool forjournalism research—Yahoo! and Webcrawler were amongst the highlights. Later that year, while doing an internship Ihad Internet access from my computer—albeit at 2400 baud—which was effectively22X slower then a 56K dial-up modem which is too slow now if you have DSL whichis too slow if you have broadband at home. It was slooooooooow.
The highlight of that Internet access during my internship was -–regrettably— gettingmy first job at a small and forgettable advertising agency in Indianapolis, IN thatwas designing web sites in addition to seeing the object of my youthful affection, AlyssaMilano, nude from a recent movie she was in, Embrace of the Vampire. The latter far outweighing the former in thrill.
But, this Internet access essentially sent me in the direction of technologyas a career path and abandoning, for the most part, the advertising career Ihad previously just gone to school for. I haven’t regretted that decision.
In the ongoing chronicle of the wine youth movement, acouple of recent articles highlight this ongoing trend—wine—a passion, or a new personal interest for many of these young post-collegiate students, who are coming of age as a “Core” wine drinker, numerous reports show that they are pursuing a career inwine.
This jives with what marketers say are stereotypical characteristicsof Gen. Y as employees:
Unlike thegenerations that have gone before them, Gen Y has been pampered, nurtured andprogrammed with a slew of activities since they were toddlers, meaning they areboth high-performance and high-maintenance, Tulgan says. They also believe intheir own worth.
"GenerationY is much less likely to respond to the traditional command-and-control type ofmanagement still popular in much of today’s workforce," says JordanKaplan, an associate managerial science professor at Long IslandUniversity-Brooklyn in New York. "They’ve grown up questioning theirparents, and now they’re questioning their employers. They don’t know how toshut up, which is great, but that’s aggravating to the 50-year-old manager whosays, ‘Do it and do it now.’ "
Thatspeak-your-mind philosophy makes sense to Katie Patterson, an assistant accountexecutive at Edelman Public Relations in Atlanta. The 23-year-old, who hailsfrom Iowa and now lives with two roommates in a town home, likes to collaboratewith others, and says many of her friends want to run their own businesses sothey can be independent.
"We arewilling and not afraid to challenge the status quo," she says. "Anenvironment where creativity and independent thinking are looked upon as apositive is appealing to people my age. We’re very independent and techsavvy."
This 25 yearold from Ohio is starting a wine store called WineStyles. I’ve studied their model and also that ofVino 100, which is a wine concept by the same folks that did the Tinder Box atyour local mall. Personally speaking, I’mnot a fan of either concept—not that either is bad at its core, but my beliefholds steadfast that an independent store will fare better then a franchise—in therealm of wine. Note to readers: if you have a strong urge to spend $25K on afranchise fee, please let me know. Iwill write your business plan and create a compelling value proposition in yourmarket for a lot cheaper. The upside,however, is the pooled buying, which, of course, gets you access to wines witha scaled economy for price alongside wines that might not be in your localgeography.
An Excerpt fromthe Cincinnati Post:
WineStyles isdesigned for anyone who’s ever walked into a wine shop convinced that everyoneelse in the store - including the guy stocking the shelves - knows six timesmore about wine than he or she ever hoped to know.
The company has sold102 franchises in 16 states and has 47 stores open, including two inCincinnati’s northern suburbs owned by Jesse Weaver.
Weaver is aHenderson, Ky., native who was looking for a business opportunity after hegraduated from Belmont University in Nashville with a degree in finance.
"It’s aconsumer-friendly way to buy wine with a format that’s easy tounderstand," said Weaver, 25. "I’m learning about wine along with mycustomers, and I was smart enough to know that I didn’t know enough."
Weaver said hecompensated for his lack of knowledge by hiring two store managers who have adepth of knowledge about wines. Carolyn Thorne runs his store in West Chesterand Craig Madding is in charge in Mason.
WineStyles estimatesthat the start-up costs for a new franchise - including a $25,000 franchise fee- will run somewhere between $149,000 and $235,000, depending on real estateprices, renovation expense and fixtures expenses and the cost of permits andlicenses.
The company says thatthe rapid growth of the chain can be linked directly to America’s rapidlygrowing interest in wine.
Interesting, in this other story, however, that an MBAstudent, having the benefit of the extra education, would decide to put his orher own shingle out for their own business concept.
Excerpt from Business Week Online:
In 2005 wine overtook beer as the most common alcoholicbeverage consumed in the U.S. The U.S. is predicted to surpass Italy and Franceas the largest consumer of wine in the world by 2010. Per capita, U.S.consumption of wine was up by over 9.5% from 1997 to 2001, according to theWine Institute, a trade association of California wineries.
Not only U.S. consumption is increasing: The wine business is poised forcontinued growth worldwide. As more MBAs learn to appreciate wine for itsflavor and complexity, they have also noticed fertile ground for businessopportunities and a slower-paced lifestyle than they would have withtraditional MBA careers.
Courtney Ann Cochran, a certified Sommelier, started her ownbusiness. Link for her blog is below. It’s not too bad—a bit L.A.-ish, but notbad, on the whole.
And this from another Business Week article that highlightedMs. Cochran:
I’m the founder and principal of Your Personal Sommelier, awine-consulting company which offers personalized wine services to individualsand businesses in San Francisco and Los Angeles. These services include winetastings, cellar management, and personal wine shopping. In an effort to targetthe growing number of young, urban wine drinkers, I recently founded HIP TASTESEvents, a special-events firm through which I offer stylish wine tastings tothe general public in San Francisco.
As sole proprietor, my current job responsibilities encompass everything fromsourcing new business and forging partnerships to servicing client needs and overseeingmarketing and advertising. I’m my own IT staff, marketing guru, accountingstaff, and operations manager.
http://www.courtneycochran.com/blog/
In any period of revolution, it is always the unempowered that rise up to seize the opportunity. With Baby-Boomers retiring in droves, Generation X’ers having shaken off their malaise and stupor to move into parenthood, will the revolution occur in wine led by our youngest generation—Gen. Y?
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April 3 2006
Speaking with a forked tongue really bothers me. We’d all be a little bit better off,especially in the corporate world, if we said what we meant and meant what wesaid and provided fair context to our opinions.
But, duplicity lives on—especially in magazines with contributors and freelancers and diverging opinions.
Forbes Magazine ran an op-ed piece last month that is, tosay the least, frightening. In the onepage column, Veronique de Rugy, economist, theorizes that funding smallbusiness is bad—at least small business for the sake of small business. She instead posits that growth companieslike Google should really be the funding targets.
The danger in this article is her denouncement of the SmallBusiness Administration—a program that guarantees up to 85% of the bankslending value in the event of a default.
Because everybody loves small businesses, everyone wants to dosomething for them, whether it’s targeted tax credits, specialregulatory treatment or preferential access to government contracts.Thus it is that we have an agency specifically designed to addresstheir needs, the Small Business Administration. The President’s latestbudget proposes to shower a budget of $605 million on the sba, whichincludes money for counseling and training targeted at a myriad ofsubgroups, such as women, Native Americans, veterans and Spanishspeakers. In addition the sba has arranged for $28 billion in bankloans to small companies, guaranteeing repayment of up to 85% if theborrower defaults. These are not loans that the banks would have madeon their own. Congress appropriates no money for this program. Instead,small businesses are charged fees, but if the economy tanks and thedefault rate shoots up, taxpayers are on the hook for the balance.
The real danger here is, besides the academia/think tanknature of this that doesn’t take the real world into account, and the fact thatall businesses have to start somewhere and the VC-backed Google’s of the worldserve to act as example of the exception, not the norm, but, again, the realdanger here is the fact that 95% of all wine produced in the world is producedby a small business owner. Ms. de Rugy attempts a grab at sympathy from the reader indicating that ‘taxpayers are on the hook for the balance.’ Unfortunately, for that to resonate with taxpayers, they have to have a correlation in between the taxes they pay and where it goes in spending. That, however, is a function of our society that stopped existing with FDR, really. And certainly every politician likes a good pork project.
If wineries all over: California, New York state, Ohio,Virginia, and elsewhere were denied lines of secured credit or protected loans,how many people would chuck their corporate job for a chance at beingpassionate about something? This nottoo mention the fact that even starting a winery is one of the most capitalintensive risk endeavors that an entrepreneur could undertake.
This inherent disrespect for the risk involved in starting abusiness is enough to create some incredulity.
But, the real smack your head moment comes when Forbesstarts pimping it’s wine club that features—from, yes, you guessed small,boutique vintners that, without a little help either A) would have never gottenstarted or B) would have never grown to build a reputation.
Or, this article that extols the virtues of the smallproducer from said magazine.
On the other hand, Tom Eddy of Tom Eddy Winery looks “exclusively tohillside vineyards to produce a rich, intense, structured CabernetSauvignon showing both the complexity derived from differing vineyardsand the consistency of hillside locations.” Blending vineyards withsimilar characteristics (such as hillside locations) will produce winesexhibiting specific characteristics while taking advantage of themultiple contributions each property offers.
One thing can be certain, in a The World is Flat kind ofway, boutique winery fans can count on me being critical and providing criticalanalysis of French educated economists living in America downplaying the absolute significance of entrepreneurs with a passion having some help side from a loan program.
Oh, and by the way, I don’t really know if Tom at Tom Eddy Winery has an SBA loan, but I did some curosry research on the winery and they do well under $1M a year in sales with 3 employees. And, that’s the S in SMB business if I’ve ever seen it.
Like Casey Kasem in the infamous "snuggles" outtake—it’s just ponderous.
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March 31 2006
In my post on 3/21—Post Updates & Dusty Bottle Items I referenced a winery in South Africa called Stormhoek that was very inventively using their Blog as a marketing tool—with great success. Hugh Macleod at GapingVoid has blogged on them a couple of times including the genesis that can be found here and the very D.I.Y meets very cool product brochure is shown here at another Blogger’s site in the U.K.
Stormhoek winery is being imported into the states and they are repeating their free wine to the Blogosphere opportunity. To read about the 100 Geek Dinners that will feature Stormhoek wine go here.
An excerpt from GapingVoid on the wine dinner/giveaway.
1. We’d like to do 100 dinners in 100 days, but we’re not married tothe "100 days" part. We just thought it had a nice ring to it. If ittakes longer, no big deal. And yes, more than one dinner happening on asingle day is allowed.
2. U.S. liquor laws vary from State to State. It can get quitecomplicated, but we still have to keep it all kosher within the law.
3. As with the 2005 European blog promo, the idea is not to turn bloggers into wine pimps. It’s more a case of what I call "marketing disruption".
4. It’s nice when big events get Stormhoek coverage, however both me and Jason prefer taking the "Small Is Beautiful" angle.
A large, multinational alcohol brand covering an internet idustryparty is nothing new. But a small, South African winery covering asmall, intimate, random event in say, Phoenix, Arizona is much moreinteresting. Because it’s on a more human scale.
AND YOU WANT TO REACH PEOPLE ON A HUMAN SCALE. That’s what MadisonAvenue keeps forgetting. That’s what Madison Avenue can’t get theirhead around, because their business model has no credible answer for it.
5. This idea is still evolving; it’s still in its infancy. Ifthere’s something important we haven’t thought of yet, please feel freeto sare your thoughts. We’d love to have the feedback.
Another wine blog, www.winecast.net had this to say:
Over the past year, I have been following the Stormhoek meme over thatgapingvoid (where the drawing to the left comes from). The winery isnow entering the U.S. market and has an ambitious plan to supply theirwines for 100 (wine) geek dinners across the country. I havevolunteered to host one here in the Twin Cities on May 4, 2006 at 7:00p.m. From my Frappr listener map, I see there are several locallisteners who might be up for a nice evening of wine, food andconversation.
I signed up for Indianapolis, and as far as I know I will be hosting a small soiree to enjoy the wine in early June.
The really cool thing about blogging is the connections that people make, via technology, that they wouldn’t have otherwise have made. This is a pretty cool example of that.
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March 18 2006
Crush by Dave Matthews
Lovely lady
I am at your feet
God I want you so badly
And I wonder this
Could tomorrow be
So wondrous as you there sleeping
Let’s go drive ‘till morning comes
And watch the sunrise and fill our souls up
Drink some wine ‘till we get drunk
This article on "Critter Brands" appeared on the wire today. I much prefer the term "Adventure " brands, but, alas, it appears that ‘Critter" has become more popularly used.
This is the same story that’s been told numerous times in the wine press, and is now becoming a thread of conversation in various popular publications—Wine Enthusiast and newspapers.
"The average American consumer doesn’t want a big, tannic, heavywine that requires aeration and maybe decanting," he said. "People wantwines that you can open up and enjoy right now that are mellow,fruit-forward, kind of user-friendly wines that taste good and go wellwith food."
Annual sales of wines with animal labels or names reached more than$600 million last year, ACNielsen said, while overall sales were nearly$4.07 billion. ACNielsen records its sales data from supermarketpoint-of-sale purchases.
About 1,000 brands were introduced over the past three years, Bragersaid. Only about 400 had staying power - sales of at least $20,000annually. Of those, critter brands outsold the competition about 2 1/2to 1, Brager said.
A couple of new bits of information has been broken here, first that animal labels represented sales of $600M last year out of nearly $4.07B. That’s 15% That’s staggering.
Well, no wonder we keep seeing the proliferation of off-beat brands.
But, from a branding perspective, how long can this last? And, is this a fad or a trend. I would argue that it’s a trend with a shelf-life.
What can’t be argued is that these fun, quirky wine labels are flying off the shelf.
But, given that this wine is largely being attributed to grocery store sales, can we assume that its sales are primarily being driven by emerging wine consumers—folks, perhaps, a little less sophisticated in navigating a wine shop? Can we assume also that twenty-somethings i.e. Generation Y is also purchasing a fair amount of it?
The answer is probably yes.
But, I posit that everything has an adoption lifecycle—i.e. a lifecycle—birth, growth, maturity, decline. Product Manager’s know this to be true, certainly.
Take music for example, in practical terms, this is spun a little differently, but true no less.
Baby-Boomers grew up on bubble gum songs before graduating to the Beatles. Kids from the 70s grew up on John Denver before moving to Zepplin. And, my generation, well, the first album I ever had was Air Supply. And, I quickly moved to heavy metal before reversing course into classic rock—Zepplin, AC/DC, Pink Floyd, et al.
What’s interesting about this today is that all the kids that grew up on Britney Spears (gratuitous photo link) are now buying so-called backlog artists the likes of Zep, and Aerosmith, Kiss, AC/DC, Steve Miller.
Blender Magazine, a youth-oriented rock magazine, and Rolling Stone both have a monthly feature on artists that have seen their best albums 20 years in the past.
Heck, Guns n Roses, classic rock to kids nowadays, has their Greatest Hits on the Billboard 100 list—from a CD that was released two years ago, based on songs that were released, at the latest, in 1991.
And, even Dave Matthews has maintained relevance in the college scene for 10 years—a triple lifetime for an artist—basically because he keeps regenerating fans as college kids and their younger siblings simultaneously get turned on to him.
What’s the point, right? Despite what Yellowtail says:
That’s the story of Yellow Tail’s success, said Roy Danis of W.J.Deutsch & Sons Ltd., which imports Yellow Tail. It sells for around$6.99 a bottle.
"If they don’t have a good experience drinking the wine, they’re notgoing to come back, regardless of how pretty the picture is on thebottle," Danis said.
"The ultimate reason why people kept coming back was because weover-delivered on quality for that price point. Yellow Tail’s successhas to do with what’s in the bottle," he said.
The "Adventure" brand that ultimately survives long-term will be the product that segments its markets by diversifying—because peoples taste grow and develop and as they move through the lifecycle with a product they have a product to graduate to—just like the Old Navy/Gap/Banana Republic model. I think Yellowtail gets this and is, in fact, moving to this model. Though, I question if they will delineate between the brands enough to create a value perception i.e. Old Navy to Banana Republic.
Or, quite frankly, the move from Britney Spears to Led Zepplin.
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