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March 10 2006
A month or so ago, we reported on the off beat wine label phenomena and highlighted a picture from Cleavage Creek winery.
Thanks to Tom at Fermentation’s for highlighting a follow-up on the wine brand. According to the classifieds in Wine Enthusiast magazine, it is officially for sale for the low, low cost of: $460K
Never mind that it’s a brand and as such you don’t have any land, or the fact that it’s a very niche player with questionable pull-through from distribution. It’s most sizable asset appears to be the double assets of the model on the label. Cleavage Creek, after all, ain’t a river in California.
No word on what services are rendered to the buyer of the label above and beyond the branding.
In other prurient interests, boutique winery Pinup Wines also, apparently, puts a tasty bottle of wine out to complement the tasty wife on the label.
PinUp Wines are handcrafted in very small lots from our premium estate vineyards located in the Dry Creek Valley, Russian River Valley and Sonoma County appellations.
Eachyear, our female wineclub members of all ages take their chances in arandom drawing to be featured on our PinUp label. Tastefullyphotographed and embodying the high-spirited lust for life found inwine country, our PinUp Wines have become a cult favorite and sell outquickly!
PinUp Wines are available only in our tasting room or by direct shipment.
Does anybody else wax philosophic about the the halcyon days of old? It used to be in the world of wine that it was enough to want to enjoy the lifestyle of good food, good drink and good living. Now, like reality television, it looks like the fourth wall has been broken down. The good life includes the night cap, after the night cap.
Cheers!
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March 7 2006
I caught this press release today.
Interesting, fun idea. Too bad the web site sucks. Badly. The Fonz would be proud.
An excerpt from their site:
About CheapFunWines.com:
Kim and the staff at CheapFunWines.com love wine. There is little in life that’s more fun for them than pouring a new wine or revisiting an old favorite.
What they don’t love is wine snobbery. At http://www.CheapFunWines they’llpromise to write about wine in plain English and make fun of people whodon’t. That said, they don’t profess to be a wine experts. They’retotally wine beginners - each with a keen sense of smell, a decentpalate, a passion to learn, and a sense of humor.
For the past six years, the staff at CheapFunWines.com hasoften trekked to wineries in Napa and Sonoma, trying dozens of reds andwhites. Slowly, they’ve learned what they like (Full-bodied Cab andpeppery Syrah) and don’t like (Bombastic fruity Zin and overblownChardonnay).
At CheapFunWines the staff won’t always be right. They won’talways use the proper wine vocabulary. But that’s OK. They’re alllearning together. So pop a cork and join them on a fun journey to acheaper, better bottle of vino. And send them your favorites!
Here’s the problem I have with this website—it violates almost every tenant of the conscientious blog community regarding blatant advertising and using a blog to express your voice and not as a commercial vehicle to shill something.
The writing is doesn’t speak to anybody in particular and trys to be snarky, but, well, consider yourself warned. http://www.cheapfunwines.com
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March 7 2006
There is something sublimely satisfying about rappersdropping “F” bombs and crunking at the Oscars—to the bemused delight ofLudacris and Queen Latifah amongst movie fans worldwide.
A sampling of lyrics:
Man it seems like I’m duckin dodgin bulletseveryday
Niggaz hatin on me cause I got, hoes on the tray
But I gotta stay paid, gotta stay above water
Couldn’t keep up with my hoes, that’s when shit got harder
North Memphis where I’m from, I’m 7th Street bound
Where niggaz all the time end up lost and never found
Man these girls think we prove thangs, leave a big head
They come hopin every night, they don’t end up bein dead
Wait I got a snow bunny, and a black girl too
You pay the right price and they’ll both do you
That’s the way the game goes, gotta keep it strictly pimpin
Gotta have my hustle tight, makin change off these women, yeah
This got me thinking. Where is there a wine analogy. Who brokers goods or services in are-packaged format that may be somebody else’s cast-off for profit, perhapstaking excess and applying some marketing to create a better product?
Ah well, when you say it that way, wellwe’re not talking about Pimps, we’re talking about negociants, at least in thewine business. Now, make no mistake, Idon’t mean this in a derogatory way—at least as it relates to wine. Well, actually, I don’t mean it in aderogatory way towards the world’s oldest profession either …
Negociants play a vital role in the winebusiness. Excess good wine can find ahome (and a lot of times some not so good wine can too, but I digress).
A negociant is really a merchant that buys and—sometimesblends wines—into a meritage or cuvee and then sells it under a unique label.
There are a lot of them out there—most we probably aren’teven aware of unless you’re visiting California on vacation and desperatelytrying to find the winery for Smoking Loon, for example.
I mention Smoking Loon, specifically, because it’s a labelfrom Don Sebastiani & Sons who operates as a negociant AND they make greatwine, for a reasonable price, targeted towards the under 40 demographic.
And, they are Wine Enthusiasts winery of the year for 2005.
He’d just left the familybusiness, Sebastiani Vineyards & Winery, after 15 years as CEO-of his ownfree will, he says, but with no clear place to land. He owned no vineyards, andhad virtually no staff except his young sons Don Jr. (Donny) and August. Whathe did have was his brain, his industry connections, and an idea that there wasa niche for a buyer-blender of California wine-what the French call anégociant-eleveur-who could produce wines that were modernly stylish andappealingly priced for a younger generation.
And, these guys are really hitting their stride. I mean, these guys have mp3 files on theirweb sites to download and listen to a narrative of their wine. In the wine business that’s akin to thefirst farmer that went from having a horse pull a dredger to having his firsttractor.
This would all be fine and dandy, but the wines reallydeliver. One of their latest releasesis a wine called Used Auto Parts. On the narrative, August Sebastiani asks therhetorical question, “What does the name Used Auto Parts have to do with wine,not much, but we think you won’t forget the name.” Right you are, August. And probably doubly so if the wine is as tasty as they have proven inthe past with other labels like Pepperwood Grove, Screw Kappa Nappa, etc.
Three new labels are being released, as well: Hey Mambo, Plungerhead, and le bon vin de laNapa.
These guys are one a roll … it may be hard out here for apimp … but, some guys seem to make it look pretty easy.
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March 5 2006
This is the first of 95 posts that I hope will take the theses of The Cluetrain Manifesto and tie it back to the world of wine and the coming wine boom that will be sustained by the coming of age and maturation of Generation X & Y.
This isn’t riveting reading for a good numeber of people, but I think its a good exercise because the professional wine world, in my estimation, is absolutely clueless about marketing to anybody besides the 2% of the people that call themselves snobs. Now, some folks are making progress—especially with "Adventure" brands the straightforward, sluggable wines that have clever names and can be found populating end-caps at the local SuperValue Mega-Mart.
But, they are missing the entire middle of the wine drinking public—the folks that drinks the "Adventure" brands, but also go to winery tasting rooms, pay for super premium bottles over $15 bucks and generally identify with wine, but in a autehntic, non pretentious way.
If there’s any doubt that the #1 thesis from the Cluetrain Manifesto (Markets are Conversations) is happening in a big way amongst younger consumers then please show me proof otherwise.
This is really simple. Generally speaking, Generation X & Y is the first wired generations—Generation X as they merged from college and entered the workforce (I’ve been online since 1995 and found my first job starting January 3rd of 1996 on the Internet) and Generation Y they’ve never written a paper on anything else besides Microsoft Word.
This point was really driven home to me while reading the lastest issue of Business 2.0 While highlighting 25 web-based companies that were headlining the so-called Web 2.0—the next generation of the Internet, virtually all of them were youth-oriented; not youth-oriented in the sense that they were marketed to people under 35, just the fact that they have been popularized by people under 35, and in many cases people under 25—and most fall under the category of either social networking or the tools for social networking.
As an example, Del.icio.us, Flickr, Youtube, Jotspot, and even sites like Match.com are driven by early adopters and early adopters tend to be tech savvy high school and college students.
’‘I find out about things I want to buy from my friends or from information on the Internet,’’ says Michael Eliason, 17, of Cherry Hill, N.J.
The above quote? Taken from a very prescient Business Week article written ... in 1999—the year that the oldest Generation Y members turned 20.
What has the wine industry learned in the last seven years—since they now have taken to wine and we know that markets are conversations?
Not much. But, they will. Sooner or later.
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March 2 2006
While on vacation last week my wife shared with me that her freshly painted toe’s were in fact a nicely fuschia-ish shade called "La Paz-itively Hot."
Her finger nails, I also came to find out have been "Friar, friar pants on Fire" which shouldn’t be confused with "Red, Red, Rhine."
She takes great pleasure with the names and the general cuteness of the whole make-up schtick.
I’ve urged her to get "Don’t Wine, Yukon do it," but, perhaps, that will be on the next trip for make-up.
So, when you take the fact that the majority (a slight majority) of wine buyers are female with the below excerpt attributed to a Decanter article:
‘More than 60% of wine drinkers are female and women buy 80% of thewine sold in the US, yet the wine industry has largely ignored them,‘said Tracey Mason, director of innovation at Beringer Blass.
Hmmm ...
Woman like make-up with funny names, predominantly drink martini’s with funny names, they buy the majority of wine ... what kind of wine might appeal to them if faced with a quick purchase decision at the grocery store?
the proliferation of “critter” or ”concept”brands — often featuring kangaroos, koalas, lizards, penguins, swansand assorted pouched and unpouched animals —could reach a saturationpoint, diluting any one brand’s impact.
“Definitelystarting with Yellow Tail, it has been a very rapidly growing part ofthe market, and we’ve captured more than our fair share,” Summer saidat a Bank of America investment conference.
“Isit a fad? I don’t think so,” he continued. “It is actually arepresentation of (new), younger consumers coming into the wine marketand being excited by things that are different ... It may not be asexplosive in terms of its growth in the future, but it definitelyaffords an opportunity for growth now.”
Just a thought ... maybe there’s something to those simple, but fun wines that fly off the shelf at the grocery story—the same person buying "Aphrodite’s Pink Nightie" also will pick-up "Screw Kappa Nappa"
And, maybe, it’s not actually the Millenials that are buying it—because these consumers really enjoy the autheticity of the story behind the wine from a winery and not wine as a brand.
I think that contradicts prevailing wisdom, but I don’t think all of these adventure wine brands are being purchased by image conscious twenty-somethings as much as the trade articles would have you believe. I think, instead, it’s people like my wife that like fuschia colored toes and a wine that doesn’t make you think too much while reading InStyle magazine.
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