December 23 2006
If there is a PH.D in the audience that understands the psychology of exclusivity, I’ll surely be grateful for a lesson on the power of being granted access.
What is it about the allure of the velvet rope that makes an inordinately long line queuing up outside a night club interesting to stand in … on the off chance that we might be granted entry, if we’re on the list or we happen to have attractive woman with us or some other indiscriminate social factor, and we’ll get hit with a high cover charge to boot. For some things, it seems, we’re all too willing to hand over money, sometimes absent rational thought.
I just came back from a Green Bay Packers game at Lambeau Field in Wisconsin (a trip that every football fan should make and akin, in my book, to taking a pilgrimage). My brother-in-law relayed a story about an acquaintance who is now in his mid-thirties that wrote a letter to the Packer’s when he was 11 years old asking for football tickets. Some 25 years later after being placed on the list, he’s a successful business person in Atlanta, GA and the Packers track him down with an offer of tickets for him, if he’d like to accept the opportunity to lease a luxury box … he does, indeed, choose to lease the suite and buys a house in Green Bay to use exclusively for tailgating purposes to accompany his luxury box--an expense that has now cost him a couple hundred thousand dollars based off of his innocent pre-pubescent letter asking for tickets.
While we all want to belong, I think some of this psychology/psychosis has to do with the small satisfaction that many people take in being in on something that the masses aren’t in tune with … for the same reason that people seek out new music … in today’s day and age our consumables are as much of a facet of our personality as our genetic makeup.
I’ve been signing up for allocated wines mailing lists lately … partly in curiosity to see how this portion of the wine world operates and partly because I want to taste the upper end of the wine spectrum to fill out my own wine education deficiencies. Harlan Estate, Williams Selyem, and several others are all wineries that I’ve recently signed up with and none of them have wine that is available for the public.
I’m anxiously awaiting my movement from mailing list member to mailing list customer for a handful of these high-end wines, sight, er, taste unseen.
Williams Selyem sent me a letter of introduction that is brilliant in its simplicity … damn if I don’t want to buy their wine. But, I can’t get past the Velvet Rope, though I’m going to stand in line … when I signed up they said it might be two years or so before I am able to buy.
The letter says (excerpted):
“You’ve been added to our waiting list and we look forward to adding you to the active buying list, referred to as THE LIST, in the coming months. We will notify you via letter when you have transitioned to THE LIST.
Williams Selyem wines are not easy to obtain as we do not have a tasting room that sells to the general public. There is only one way to obtain Williams Selyem wines…you have to be on THE LIST.
While you occasionally may see a Williams Selyem wine available on a wine list at a four or five star restaurant, you will never see one of our wines commercially available for a lower price than you paid. That’s because we have only one price for our wines for all customers. We give you the best opportunity to purchase our wines at the lowest price.
Once you have been added to THE LIST, twice each year you will have the opportunity to purchase a limited number of bottles of the appellation and estate wines (Spring Release) and the vineyard designate wines (Fall Release). At the beginning of both releases, you will receive your Williams Selyem newsletter and an order form which shows your allocation of wines (number of bottles you are able to purchase). The allocation is a projection of what we would like to make available to you; however all wines are sold first come, first served. They are not reserved and we encourage you to order early.
… During the first few years on THE LIST your allocation will be limited. However, once you have been on THE LIST for a while and buying patterns emerge (by purchasing continuously from our Spring and Fall Releases); you will gain access to a greater variety/quantity of our highly prized wines.”
This is marketing brilliance.
They are saying, ‘welcome to the line, we’ll let you know when you make it in the club, you’ll be buying at the same price that everybody else buys at (no free cover charge), and we’re going to monitor how much you buy and we expect you to buy continuously, if you buy enough continuously then we might let you into our VIP room where you can spend more money.’
And the funny thing is I just might. Somebody help me understand the psychology behind this mania?
digg this | toast this! | add to del.icio.us | add to newsvine | add to furl | add to reddit
Posted in, Free Run: Field Notes From a Wine Life. Permalink | Comments (2) | Print | Email This
December 13 2006
{Please Remember to bid on prizes and the Good Grape Cal-Mid Cabernet pack for the Menu of Hope III. You can bid at the following link and please use the code WB13}
As I’m coming to understand the wine industry from the inside out I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the issue of elitism and snobbery.
In a previous post, St. Vini from the Zinquisition had a dissenting opinion on my rant against Olive Garden—isolating a post he wrote on the value of wines with a national footprint on the smaller, hand-crafted stuff.
I don’t necessarily disagree with him and this got me thinking in a different direction—about the value of an Olive Garden trying to spread education on wine and where exactly wine elitism comes from.
In my previous life, closely aligned with IBM, I came to know all to well the insidious top-down fear mongering that is the management structure at the corporate behemoth. While I wasn’t an employee of IBM, I worked closely with IBM’ers on a daily basis for years and years. And, while they weren’t afraid for their jobs on a daily basis, (job security is quite good, actually) one of the typical motivating factors in their world was “looking good.” Or, perhaps I should say, not “looking dull” --because I heard that a lot. “We don’t want to look dull” was the refrain even as you were being asked to have ownership of information that was coming across four different layers in a weird game of responsibility without accountability. A majority of decision-making was based on the harmful notion of looking good for the boss, or even better, looking good for the boss’ boss. By proxy, most good sense was sucked out of a business situation based on this risk adverse quality of work life.
This is to say I kind of figured out the third dimension of the business—the gray area in between black and white where most people exist in a world that requires that things actually get done.
So, as I become acclimated to the wine industry one of the more curious aspects of my foray has been to try and decode where this mythical notion of elitism is propagated. It’s the bane of the industry—most everyone likes to pay more than just lip service by providing actual real value to creating an approachable product and an approachable brand that invites a sophisticated, but accessible clientele.
But, when I was more strictly on the consumer side it was easy to read some of the glamorized accounts of the wealth and sophistication in Napa, Sonoma and elsewhere and think that some of the wealth rub-off infected the industry creating a sort of snobbery that floated down the pike to the consumer like flotsam from a swollen, flooded river bank.
As my awareness becomes sharpened, though, I’m coming to think that I might have been off-base. As I meet producers, distributors, brokers, importers and wine technology folks, almost to a person this is a warm, friendly, inviting and CASUAL industry. Dress is casual, perhaps a touch hipper than the khaki and blue shirt uniform of Silicon Valley and more agrarian. Attitudes are bright and egos seem mostly manageable. This is a jeans crowd, and for the better.
Surely some subtle elitism that manifests itself as snobbery exists, but by and large I think the blame for this notion exists only a rung or two up from the consumer.
I’m blaming the Sommelier or Wine Director at fine restaurants as well as the high-end wine shop. And, I’m blaming the very small percentage of wine enthusiasts that are wealthy collectors and enthusiasts.
These guys are the spiritual robber barons and perpetuators of the velvet rope that cordon off the wine world for many newcomers.
I was in a conversation a week or so back where the light bulb went off. The jist of the conversation was around selling wine to restaurants the likes of which win Wine Spectator awards and the Wine Director has a slew of alphabet letters after their name from wine certifications. We were discussing the difficulty in getting on those wine lists and the comment I received back was:
“I like to work with guys that don’t have wine certifications. The guys that have certifications think they invented the damn stuff. It’s too much of a pain in the rear to sell wine that is excellent to guys that did a little studying, hang out with cooks and think their wine pairings are the end all be all.”
Interesting stuff and I agree with him, I just don’t think the chasm is going to be crossed with Olive Garden pimping White Zinfandel to folks dining on the all you can eat salad and breadsticks.
digg this | toast this! | add to del.icio.us | add to newsvine | add to furl | add to reddit
Posted in, Free Run: Field Notes From a Wine Life. Permalink | Comments (0) | Print | Email This
December 12 2006
Gremlins was a movie from my youth—a flick circa 1984 where Gizmo, a cute little furry creature of unknown origin, spawned evil offspring that multiplied exponentially when the furry guy was exposed to water.
That’s kind of how I see top 100 lists … they multiply exponentially when exposed to the opportunity for ink and paper. Virtually every wine magazine has a list of their wines of the year and most upper-tier retailers do as well.
These lists almost inevitably include “value” wines. It might be the most overused word in the wine lexicon.
Value, to me, is a somewhat nebulous concept.
Scoring a beautiful bottle of wine for $50 when only 150 cases are produced is a value to me. Scarcity drives price and Indiana isn’t first on the list for wineries to secure distribution. Value is also finding a $12 bottle of wine that drinks beautifully, but is priced for everyday folks that notice when the electric bill payment leaves their checking account.
Though, there is seems to be a dichotomy when calling something a value.
I think, as I allude to above, that a value is wine that drinks at least twice its price (as in our $12 bottle example) and a wine so good that it’s a must buy at the price it’s offered for sale.
I’m curious what others think, though. Please let me know how you define value.
This value thing came to mind this past weekend as I pulled the cork on two “values.” These wines are held up as bargains and models for bang for the buck by popular critics.
The 2005 Pillar Box Cabernet /Shiraz/Merlot priced at $10 bucks with a Parker score of 91 points and described by Mr. Parker as, “an unbelievable value” and “one of the great wine bargains of the world.”
In the words of my local wine guy:
This inky dark, ultra-dense fruit bomb has a spicy dark fruit nose and a super-ripe, full-bodied palate of rich, jammy, blackberry and ripe plum fruit that finish long and smooth with only the subtlest tannins in evidence.
Somewhere between the lines of my local wine guys’ description is the unsaid statement that goes something like, “This is a Tuesday wine if you like fruit and alcohol.” I, personally, didn’t care for this wine. It is one dimensional and not at all interesting.
What I didn’t mention in my reference to the two criteria for value is it doesn’t count if you think the wine sucks, period.
The other alleged “value” wine is also an Australian offering—the 2004 Woop Woop Shiraz—an 89 point rating from Parker.
This wine, on the other hand, is a superb value in my estimation and drinks exceptionally well for the price—many spots on the Internet sell it for $7.99--this is a bottle that compares favorably to $25 dollar bottles that I’ve had. It opens up nicely with a nice bouquet, is dense and layered and has bright fruit. I like it.
Overall, my lesson here is to take the Top 100 wine lists and the value wines for what they are—exponentially proliferating pieces of ink on paper and use them as a guideline for wines that might be interesting to try. But, in general, I don’t think I’ll be following too many more “value” recommendations anytime soon. It might be more fruitful to continue down the path of education regarding producers, reputation and style.
digg this | toast this! | add to del.icio.us | add to newsvine | add to furl | add to reddit
Posted in, Free Run: Field Notes From a Wine Life. Permalink | Comments (0) | Print | Email This
December 2 2006
I’ve been reading The Far Side of Eden by James Conaway and A Tale of Two Valleys by Alan Duetschman—two non-fiction Napa Valley-based books where the author takes a social reporting perspective on the state of the Valley; the new money that has poured in over the last 15 years, the outsized personalities, the ego and the old guard—a segment of folks that are clinging to the life that attracted them to the Napa area over the course of the 30 years. These differing groups, with obvious human dynamism are frequently in conflict with each other.
Despite the commonalities in subject matter, these are two different books—The Far Side of Eden is a literary tome with a well-crafted narrative and A Tale of Two Valleys is more of a long form article with some juicier bits of gossipy chatter.
Somebody should option either one of these and write a screenplay.
Forget Mondovino, the documentary that took on the globalization of wine, and forget Sideways the buddy road movie with California’s Central Coast as its backdrop and adapted from a book. And, really, forget A Good Year, the movie based on a book by Peter Mayle.
What is my recommendation for this screenplay? It should be a mockumentary ala the movies that Christopher Guest has been doing—This is Spinal Tap, Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind, and the film currently in theatres, For Your Consideration.
These mockumentary movies are all filmed in a faux-documentary style in deadpan parody style, with hilarious results.
All of Guest’s movies mine the territory of marginally talented people fanatical about a niche of interest and on the cusp of some notoriety—the audience, comically, gets to enjoy the ensuing schandefreude.
In Waiting for Guffman, for example, a local theatre troupe in the Midwest puts together a show for their towns’ sesquicentennial and the troupe director, Corky St. Clair, indicates that a Broadway critic is going to view the show and a good review could take the actors all the way to Broadway.
Imagine the comedic territory that is unexplored for a mockumentary in the wine industry—wealthy titan of business from an unglamorous business with more money than palate and his impeccably groomed and much younger wife moves to Napa to enjoy the good life. Their attempts at society and community integration while developing a winery and their interaction with non-Anglo help and zoning officials is set against the backdrop of conspicuous consumption and a new circle of friends with lifestyle, but very little else in common. Meanwhile, a media industry hell-bent on canonizing the glamorous side of an otherwise agricultural life plays the foil as a Parker-like figure is sent up as the critic that could make the husband-wife team FAMOUS.
Pure comedy gold for whoever wants to make the next wine related movie—a parody of the excesses, foibles, and interplay between man, the classes and the land in the wine industry.
digg this | toast this! | add to del.icio.us | add to newsvine | add to furl | add to reddit
Posted in, Free Run: Field Notes From a Wine Life. Permalink | Comments (0) | Print | Email This
November 28 2006
Something interesting is happening in the world of wine, albeit quietly with a sure, measured pace.
Negociants like Cameron Hughes, Don Sebastiani & Sons and consumer boutique vignerons like Crushpad are all popularizing a portion of the wine industry that used to be a very quiet corner of the business—creating labels for bulk wine or a quasi-custom crush with high quality markers.
But, there’s a next level over the horizon, and I wonder who will seize the opportunity to marry the bulk wine market with the hardcore enthusiast.
The next level is for a negociant outfit to start aggressively blending and to translate that blending ability to consumer preference so a customer might dictate the percentages of varietals that go into a bottle.
Take for example, a whiskey company: Compass Box Whiskey Company. In their own words:
Compass Box is a specialist Scotch whisky company. We are devoted to making some of Scotland’s premier whiskies through the art of blending.
We work like fine wine negociants. We choose individual casks of whiskies from different distilleries that offer complementary sets of flavours. We carefully blend these casks in small batches to make our proprietary whiskies.
These guys buy barrels, mix up their own blend and then sell it—as ultra-premium whiskey. I’m not much of a whiskey drinker, but I love this idea.
On the wine side there’s Mayo Family Winery in Glen Ellen. They have created www.theblendingcellar.com. The premise is simple enough, a consumer gets to blend his own wines using wines they have aged in French oak for a year—choosing from a couple of Cabs, Merlots, a Cab Franc and a Malbec, you can tweak until you find the right mix for your palate.
An even better bet for this is their blending kit that lets you do this at home. For $100 bucks you get all six wines, instructions and some equipment and a customer can do their own blending trials in the comfort of their own home. Once the blend is set, you place your order and your custom wine shows up shortly thereafter.
I Love this!
I think the long-term application is consumer retail. Can you imagine going into a combo wine shop & blending room? The store is using the Enomatic for sampling of all kinds of wines and then has a dozen wines on tap that can be trialed and blended and then bottled on site. The store has its own proprietary blends, ala Compass Box, which it sells, but also has “recipes” for other blends, as well.
Wine, on site sampling and participatory activity—what could be better? Let the cash registers ring!
digg this | toast this! | add to del.icio.us | add to newsvine | add to furl | add to reddit
Posted in, Free Run: Field Notes From a Wine Life. Permalink | Comments (0) | Print | Email This
Enter your email address for a monthly summary of posts, additional news and information available only to email subscribers. Your email is never rented, nor sold to anybody else!
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5 License.
Design by The Blog Studio
