May 9 2007
Instead of long, analysis based post, I will keep it short and sweet and simply draw your attention to something that at once seems interesting and curious—curious in terms of marketing in the wine industry.
The wine blogosphere should soon be ablaze about Secret Salmos. Maybe.
I saw the ad in Wine Enthusiast magazine, intrigued enough to rip the page and check it out online.
Found at www.secretsalmos.es, an author named Javier Sierra has created a mystery game online, replete with impressive graphics that takes readers through an adventure game/viticulture learning adventure.
Created for the Spanish wine company Torres, Secret Salmos is a clue based game that seems to be intended to draw consumers in and engage them around understanding the Priorat wine region.
The entreaty to begin goes,
Brother,
A long time have tarried to get here, but you have given proof of merit to begin the path, since you have wisely passed the test of contemplation
I’m going to spend some more time on this, in greater detail, but in the meantime check it out and leave a comment. Is this cool, a wide miss of the mark on what wine consumers would find interesting or is the jury still out?
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May 2 2007
Remember when you were at that college party at 4:00 am? Few, very few stragglers are left in a foggy machismo haze, clinging to the bravado of draining the keg? The detritus of an evening sweaty and cramped in a friend of friend’s basement litters the ground. In the background the clamorous bellow of the soused is echoing in your head as some knuckleheads try to tie together the shreds of a philosophical debate that doesn’t have an answer.
Your head hurts and you have made it to the point in the evening where you have been simultaneously over-served and begun your hangover--without the benefit of any respite in between the end of your evening and the beginning of your morning. Aspirin and water seems like a good idea.
I feel like that—I have started my hangover, but I haven’t gone to sleep yet. Soooo tired. Must rest.
This technology/terroir debate can do that to a man.
A week or two back I blogged in a post found here about the blogging fury that started with a couple of Eric Asimov posts on technology in wine. Appellation America subsequently took up the conversation in a two-part article by Alan Goldfarb and gave a final postscript by respected wine writer Dan Berger.
Mercifully, (and hopefully) the Clark Smith, technology “Frankenwine” conversation will go into hibernation for 6 months or so, or at least long enough for Alice Feiring to write a book touting natural and non-interventionist wines.
My take on the entire technological intervention (Micro-oxygenation, alcohol reduction, etc) debate was that I couldn’t form an opinion because I hadn’t yet tasted any wine that I knew had been manipulated.
So, I bought some vino from Clark Smith and his label WineSmith—a Syrah, a Faux Chablis and a Cab Franc.
I now kind of get Smith’s philosophical musings about being a cook and using ingredients to create a dish, as the below excerpt indicates:
“If you haven’t had an education in what wine is and how it can be worked with, then you’re basically bottling cocoa powder because you don’t know what the Aztecs taught the Belgians – how to transform cocoa powder into chocolate; how to transform something nasty into something profound.
“It’s like when you open up your window one morning and look out on your front lawn (and) somebody’s dumped 25 tons of bricks,” he says in one of his many digressions. “Most guys will just call up a trucking company and have them load the bricks up and take them off to the dump. Now you’ve got your front lawn back. But if you’re a mason, you put an addition on your house and you say, ‘thank you very much.’
“If you know how to work with the raw material to build a structure, you don’t strip it out of the wine. You use it to make wines that have much more presence and much more depth and much more longevity.”
The Syrah, especially, straight out the bottle had a nice, well developed peppery nose--varietally correct. From popped cork to my gullet inside of 60 seconds, the Syrah drank like it had been decanted for three hours. It offered integrated tannins and a full explosion of flavors—it was very soft, velvety, enjoyable.
Even the Faux Chablis tasted less like a Chardonnay from the Napa Valley College student vineyard and more like a nice Chablis—with a steely undercurrent.
And while both wines are pleasant drinkers, they just don’t seem normal.
In the Dan Berger article he notes:
Last year on a trip to Australia (my 14th), one of the top wine makers in Australia said, “Look, there is just no substitute here for time. Micro-ox is a great technique for [tannin management in] low-priced wine, but you’d never want to risk doing it with anything like fine wine.”
A second Australian wine maker told me that micro-oxygenation is a fine technique to reduce tannins in cheap wines, but that the process tries to speed up the polymerization of tannins and can leave a fine wine lacking some of the stability wine makers prefer for wines that will be aged—which is the goal of many fine wines.
Ultimately, I view this technology vs. terroir debate through the mental filter that wines that age, fine wines with forbidding young tannins, will probably be exposed for the use of MicroOX over the long haul and consequently they won’t use the technique, or will use it in an understood, transparent kind of way.
It seems to me, in a speculative manner, that some of the cult cabs that are immediately drinkable, but also can be laid down for a few years surely use MicroOX to soften the tannins.
To me, it seems that the Syrah from WineSmith would not be good for anything but short-term gratification. For lesser quality wines I can see where it has its merit. This is the difference between art and pop culture—the difference between a something designed for immediate consumption like a tabloid magazine versus a literary book. There’s room for both, it just depends on what floats your boat.
And, as most of us know, when we chase short-term gratification, a hangover of some sort usually entails. Maybe those bellowing and soused students can take up the debate …
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April 17 2007
I love these Wine 2.0/internet/Generation Y wine stories. I’m not sure if this is kind of a developing scene, or a revolution, but these brands seem to be proliferating at rate that is growing and they always have a good angle with some interesting momentum behind them.
By way of background, a couple of weeks ago I did a post on Bret Lyman who works professionally for a series of short films he is producing under the pseudonym of B. Napa.
Bret is striving to create the definitive documentary of harvest and he premiered a short film at the recently concluded Sonoma Valley Film Festival.
Interestingly and unbeknownst to me until I was tipped off (and I separately saw a Wines & Vines article), another documentary premiered at the festival called “Harvest Young.”
The premise of this documentary is the wine industries ignorance of Generation Y.
You can watch the trailer here.
While I haven’t seen the documentary, I understand that a wine called Sacre Bleu is principally featured in the documentary as a brand that targets young wine consumers.
I found out from a local Indiana distributor that Sacre Bleu is going to be introduced in Indiana in May.
Funny how these things collide from different corners of the wine universe.
Sacre Bleu, depending on which version you believe, is a stereotypical French cuss word for “Holy Crap” that nobody actually uses—similar to the notion that all French men are great lovers and the French love Jerry Lewis.
The wine appears to be something of a negociant brand from a company based in Minnesota, though the positioning fits into the statistic that Gen. Y/Millenials are attracted to import brands. The wine line-up includes a Cab., Pinot, Merlot, Chard, and a red and white blend.
An article on the “Young Harvest” filmmakers elaborates on their happenstance trip into Minnesota to talk wine with the folks behind Sacre Bleu.
“We’re making a movie about the wine industry in California and we end up going to another area, Minnesota, where you don’t even think about wine,” he said. “We got their views about wine and we’re finding out they’re basically wondering the same things.”
The brand Wilson referred to is Sacre Bleu, a company that imports and specifically markets a brand of wine to 21-28 year olds.
Sacre Bleu uses marketing methods previously unheard of in the wine industry, like a MySpace page and wine parties, to appeal to a younger crowd.
Sacre Bleu is also 90 point-a top-rated wine-and sells at a price that doesn’t break the bank, a big plus for the younger demographic.
I’m going to poke around on this one and see if I can’t get in contact with Sacre Bleu, in advance of their Indiana launch. Until then, check out their site and their Myspace.com page and contemplate the notion that this trickling of new brands aimed at younger consumers that are more holistically appealing than, say, a critter brand, is actually the emergence of the next brand of wine marketing.
Of course, from a marketing perspective, hot chicks on your Myspace page don’t hurt, either.
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April 15 2007
There’s an old saying along the lines of, “Nobody should watch sausage or legislation being made.”
The wine industry is experiencing a little roiling debate about the sausage-making and incidentally it falls down party lines ala a political battle.
Wine & Spirits magazine has an excellent article in the April 2007 issue about wine technology pioneer Clark Smith and his company Vinovation (perhaps one of the finest profile pieces I’ve ever read in a general consumer wine magazine. Unfortunately, you can’t find the article online, just the excerpt here.)
Irrespective of the content being online, this is an article worthy of purchasing the magazine because it is acting as a lightening rod for debate around a simmering technological ideology war in the world of wine. Speaking of war, ironically enough, the lead of the story says,
“Perhaps the most telling characterization one can make of Clark Smith is that, despite his reputation as a visionary, he found out about Hurricane Katrina after George W. Bush did.”
The story goes on to elaborate that Smith is something a detached brainiac, oblivious to his surroundings. According to Mark Lyon of Sebastiani Vineyards, “He’s like a horse with blinders on. He’s not looking at the periphery—he’s just going for the race.”
That sounds familiar.
Perhaps that sounds too familiar, but the more apt and direct analogy might be that Clark Smith is something akin to George W. Bush straight away without the glancing Katrina comparison. Bush doesn’t know that you can’t win an ideological battle and apparently neither does Smith. He is a pariah in a blue state; with many in the wine industry turning their coats conservative and “anti-manipulation” regardless of the sensibility.
Unfortunately for Clark he’s using a knife in a gun fight and he doesn’t have Karl Rove to craft his message. As the Wine & Spirits article notes, “his ego and his rhetorical style can leave listeners drowning in his wake.”
Maybe the Bush comparison isn’t as apt as I thought …
In no less than a span of six weeks, Smith has been prominently featured in at least four media outlets fighting the ideological battle between intervention and supposedly “natural” winemaking.
Essentially it boils down to two camps—the first camp are those that decry wine manipulation in the form of 1) de-alcoholization, 2) The removal of acetic acid which occasionally occurs with the removal of water that isn’t returned to the wine, increasing concentration and 3) micro-oxygenation—the practice of introducing oxygen to wine to soften tannins and create a gentler mouth feel, good for wines drunk in their youth. The second camp is those, primarily Smith, who believe technology can help express terroir. Smith is alone in this fight because most of his customers prefer that they remain confidential.
Can you imagine? Outing the Vinovation customer list would be like the beltway madam whose black book makes its way into the journalist’s hands.
The wineries want confidentiality because all of these technological applications are dirty secrets the wine industry prefers that the greater consuming public not be privy too, lest they ruin the mystique for wine at higher price points. Nobody wants to get painted with the “corporate wine” brush, particularly at higher price points. Speculation indicates that as much as 50% of the wine industry might manipulate in some manner.
Eric Asimov picked up on the Wine & Spirits article and touched on Vinovation in what will become a legendary post that spawned about 30 pages of comments by my printer page count. And, Asimov posted a follow-up that can be found here that picks up the same general thread and follows up on some threads from the user comments.
Elsehwhere, Smith is featured in a Wines & Vines article touting the use of oak alternatives—another dirty secret that most wineries would prefer to keep as a detail not discussed in polite company.
Finally, I took the bait and read the article referenced by Roger Dial from Appellation America in his email in trying to drive debate at the newly posted Clark Smith interview at Appellation America—including excerpted quotes to whet the appetite before the clickover.
The AA article includes such molotov cocktails like the below broadside, which is really a backhanded defense of the use of his technology, which he does by invoking Nazi Germany as the real pioneers of wine technology.
“I’m telling you, the wine industry went right down the toilet when electricity and stainless steel and all of this hyper-technology came in,” he begins. “Because we took how to make wine like that (without the use of technology) and threw it out the window. We took everybody who knew how to make wine without SO2 (sulphur dioxide used as a preservative), and shot ‘em in the head because great German technology was going to save us.
“The Germans won World War II you know, in the wine industry, because they came up with a wonderful way of making beautiful, soulless Rieslings. They divided it into two kinds of wine – the beautiful and the sexy. With stainless steel, sterile filtration, inert gas, packaged microbes and the application of electricity, they came up with a whole new way to make wine which basically freezes its development.
“…They convinced the French to adopt far more reductive winemaking practices than is appropriate for Cabernet,” he goes on. “And Riesling and Cabernet are not the same thing. … And now we’re making wine like this (un-soulful) instead. That’s fucked up. Everybody thinks stainless steel, electricity and refrigeration are all perfectly fine because they have them in their kitchens. They grew up with them and they don’t understand the impact that it had on traditional winemaking.”
Throughout this debate, I’m left scratching my head thinking three things:
1) Anybody in on this debate that is not an uber-wine industry insider shouldn’t have an opinion because they haven’t had the wherewithal of full disclosure to discern the differences in between wines that are clients of Smiths and those that are allegedly not manipulated. To alleviate this one for myself, I’m going to buy some of Smith’s vino in order to taste the technology. You can buy some here.
2) I want to hire a marketer/p.r. guy to help out Clark Smith because he’s not helping his own cause out.
This guy needs a handler and a marketer in the worst way starting with his wonkish way of abstractly trying to explain what he does, his mention of Nazi Germany and his whole positioning of “Practicing GrapeCraft” –bringing in the specter of technological witchcraft is not a very good association nor is the shameless treacle in his positioning statement of, “The Practical art of connecting the human soul to the soul of a place by rendering its grapes into liquid music.”
3) Everybody loves a good bratwurst, but nobody wants to know how they are made
I have a hunch that he is only now beginning to bare his academic chops and circuitous logic in defending himself in a fight that can’t be won. As Rick Jones from UC Davis is quoted in the Wine & Spirits article in reference to an anecdote of Smith as a student, he says:
“I remember feeling a mixture of envy and embarrassment—he was so guileless, but he had such balls. I think a lot of people in the wine business have a mixture of emotions about Clark.”
I’m not sure if he’s from Texas, but it looks like he’s got some spurs on his boots and is willing to dig in. Pop some popcorn; this ideological war should be a good one. Check out The Grapecraft blog to watch it unfold. You might buy some of his wine to quaff, too. You know, for reference sake.
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April 6 2007
Oddly, food and wine are intrinsically linked and natural complements, but on the Internet you have two distinct camps and never do the rivers really meet. Sure you have Fork & Bottle and a couple of other good blogs that cover territory in both the edible and quaffing arts, but for the most part people stick to either being a foodie blogger or a wine blogger.
Actually I guess the same is true for mass media like Food Network. They don’t have a single damn show about wine.
It seems like kind of a slight, actually.
Taking a cue from popular media must be the reason there really aren’t *any* blogs period marrying food and wine by, say, a professional like a Sommelier that talks with intelligence, wit and verve about pairings and life on his/her feet working in white table cloth restaurant.
If there are blogs like this that I’m missing, please leave a comment and point them out to me.
I’d really like to see a blog that covers food and wine from the perspective of a Wine Director or a Sommelier—not a snarky, ‘too cool for school’ blog, but one that really tells it like it is from the trenches-- stories of the distributor reps., and the boorish patrons and the annual junkets and the egoist chef that wants to pair Pinot with everything.
There are blogs certainly like this in virtually every micro-niche category:
• When I want to get the between the lines good stuff in sports, I read the blog Deadspin.
• When I want to get celebrity gossip (which isn’t that often, actually) I read Perez Hilton.
• When I want to get the straight skinny on what’s happening in the world of wine distribution, I read Fermentation
• When I want the straight dope on all things food and the restaurant business related I read Michael Ruhlman’s blog.
Michael Ruhlman, surprisingly, has incredible chops having written three books that make up something of a set of must-read books for those in the food know—The Soul of a Chef, The Reach of a Chef and The Making of a Chef.
Anthony Bourdain, he of the Travel Channel and an author in his own right with the must-read Kitchen Confidential, is a guest blogger on the site and pulls no punches. He wrote a hilariously scathing post in February about Food Network personalities that made its way into the internet jetstream and also received a mention on Dr. Vino’s site (found here).
But, the really curious thing is, if you watch the Food Network as I do and in the quantity that I do then you know all of the personalities … personalities that Bourdain doesn’t so much eviscerate (okay he does eviscerate Sandra Lee, but she deserves it), but merely point out foibles in their handling as food personalities.
Somehow missing in action in all of this Bourdain commentary is the one guy that could be the food and wine bridge for Food Network, blogs, and, well, mankind. I’m speaking of Michael Chiarello.
Bourdain completely passes over Michael Chiarello, the guy with the perpetual dinner party of “friends” that act like they have never met before, on his cooking show, Easy Entertaining with Michael Chiarello.
Chiarello is the one guy with wine roots. Filmed on location in Napa at Trefethen winery, his show is the only show on the Food Network that is remotely close to wine. In fact, Chiarello has his own vineyard and makes a pretty darn good bottle of juice, too—if the reviews are accurate. AND, he is a former Chef at the Napa restaurant Tra Vigne, too.
So, here’s my gauntlet—somebody needs to start writing a wine and food blog with some insider authority and a professional bent, or Anthony Bourdain needs to start calling out all of the Food Network chefs so the one guy that has a link to the wine industry can get his proper due (or even skewering). Or, Michael Chiarello is going to have sidestep all of this nonsense and simply start his own blog with his own initiative and write about the ins and outs of food and wine, his restaurant experience and the challenges in running a wine lifestyle business.
No less than an information hungry online public demands it.
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