Good Grape: A Wine Blog Manifesto

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April 19 2006

Wino Forever

With a nod to www.anecdotage.com for the content.

Johnny Depp, star of this summer’s Pirates of the Caribbean sequel, revealed in Decanter magazine this January that "Château Calon-Ségur, a Saint-Estèphe third-growth, was his top tipple."

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April 19 2006

Wine “Takes Off” at Airports

I’m in technology by profession. Technology and wine have a lot in common in that anybody that buys either one can do so only with validation from a third party. In the technology analyst space there’s a company called Gartner that essentially research’s technology in order to categorize their relative value against the competition and then they put together these research summaries with graphics called Magic Quadrants and then decision-maker’s read them to figure out if all of the spin you’ve been giving them the past 4 months is valid or not. But, then you can sponsor research from the same people and it really ends up being like advertising in the Spectator--on either side people swear that money doesn’t have an influence, but we all really know the truth.

The Magic Quadrant is interesting in this sense because a new wine concept has opened up at Dulles Airport called Vino Volo. Vino Volo (stands for wine flight in Italian) utilizes a very, very similar concept translated to the world of wine to categorize wine into four flavor profiles:
1) Bright 2) Rich
3) Light 4) Brooding

It’s an interesting concept in that they are combining tasting flights with food and retail at an airport with shipping.

I question the 4th category--brooding, though. That’s not really a word that resonates with people that have a likely affinity for wine. But it also strikes me as something that people labor on in a room for a while and then say, "Ah, to hell with it, I can’t think of anything else and my wife is blowing up my cell phone." "Brooding, it is." Then the intern writes a line item on his resume about his participation in brainstorming sessions at Taste, Inc. the company that operates Vino Volo.

Another interesting airport concept is the regional wine bar featuring wines of notable local distinction. The wine writing duo at the Wall Street Journal reported on this last year, and here’s an excerpt from their syndicated column. The entire article can be found here.

At Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina, tuckedinto a little space on the way to Concourses D and E, is the best ideain airplane travel since the jet engine: the Yadkin Valley Wine Bar.The day we were there, the bar offered 57 different wines from ninewineries in the Yadkin Valley region of North Carolina—a glass for$5, a taste of four wines for $3. This is such a terrific idea, bothfor travelers and for local wine industries, that airports and vintnersthroughout the country should follow suit—and, in fact, several areconsidering the idea.

All in all, I expect to see a continued proliferation of wine concepts as the idea takes root in a significant growth pattern.

And, just as soon as we think there’s a saturation point, it will likely explode beyond the expectations of everybody that follows wine as more then just a passing hobby. 10 years ago we did not have 3 things that today seem intrinsic to our daily life: the Internet, cell phones, & Starbucks.

Wine is heading down that same path.

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April 18 2006

Wine Blog Round-Up

It had been awhile since I ventured out from the mainstay 12 - 15 wine related blogs that I keep an eye on every week. I ventured out to http://www.wineblogwatch.arrr.com to make sure I’m checking out wine bloggers with an interesting voice.

I ran across a couple of things of interest. Wino Sapien has an interesting post and excerpt from the book Don Quixote related to wine.

"Leave me alone for that," said Sancho; "never fear but I’ll hit upon the place it came from somehow. What would you say, sir squire, to my having such a great natural instinct in judging wines that you have only to let me smell one and I can tell positively its country, its kind, its flavour and
soundness, the changes it will undergo, and everything that appertains to a wine? But it is no wonder, for I have had in my family, on my father’s side, the two best wine-tasters that have been known
in La Mancha for many a long year, and to prove it I’ll tell you now a thing that happened them."

Check out the the above, a site from Edward, an Aussie.

A guy from my hometown in South Bend, In is doing a really nice job with wine podcasts. You can find Wine for Newbies here.

And, finally, here’s an article on Dr. Richard Vine, the now retired Professor of Enology at Purdue University in Indiana and a wine consultant for American Airlines.

The Fort Worth, Texas-based carrier maintains 15 different wine listsfor passengers in first and business class, specially selected forvarious routes. At any given time, "we have more than 60 wines inservice and another 60 queued," said Richard Vine, who has spent thelast 20 years as American’s wine consultant.

You can find the article here.

Dr. Vine is also heavily engaged in the Indy International Wine Competition, held every summer in late July or early August. You can find info. on this here—the largest wine competition in the country outside of California.

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April 17 2006

Let your wife know there’s now a wine shop next to Coldwater Creek!

I’m Winston Wolfe. I solve problems.

-Winston Wolfe, Pulp Fiction, 1994

Tom at Fermentation has a blog entry today on WineStyles a franchise wine retail concept. His post was observational and open and he’s got his finger on the pulse of the world of wine with a pop culture infused filter. I’ve commented on WineStyles before when I ran across a post about this franchise penetrating the Midwest--specifically the Ohio market; and, on the whole, I have been critical--for a couple of reasons--some petty, some valid on a larger scale. As a singular post, I’ll bullet-point my assertions, mostly because I feel passionately that:

wine + franchise = bad idea

1) How hypocritical is it that a wine store feature value, unique, niche, regional wine finds that are not mass-market, yet be a franchise concept--something that is not unique or niche.

1.A) If Wine Styles grew out of a local market where it delighted customers and desired to go national, I might hedge a bit, but, nah, that’s not the case--they started out as a franchise and strive to propagate franchise stores.

2) There is nothing unique about the concept--there is NO intellectual property that creates a barrier to entry; my guess is their real estate strategy is to go next to the Panera Bread store.

2.A) As I mentioned in my earlier blog post on this, if any reader has a burning desire to start a wine store, please contact me. I will write your business plan for you with water tight research and not charge you anywhere near the $25K they want as a franchise fee.

3) I get nervous when the founder uses head shots from her former modeling career. No, seriously, I used to work for a start-up in the Internet era and the founder was a first-rate narcissist--ultimately his hubris cost a lot of people a lot of money. This is the petty comment ...

4) The wine retailer purchases from their local distribution--so they are buying the same wine that everybody else stocks in town. So, why spend the $25K for the franchise fee or the ongoing royalties--there’s no economies of scale--i.e. all of my fries, patties, shake mix, etc comes from Wendy’s.

5) An analogy used liberally in the tech space in the 1997 - 2001 timeframe was the gold rush mentality--the "first mover mentality." The guy that got in first wins the prize. That was quickly de-bunked and we’re now going through a very interesting v2.0 time period of the Internet--blogging being just a small portion of that new capability. My point here is, with wine predicted to have exponential growth over the next 10 years (at least), the concept that can scale locally, regionally and then nationally hasn’t surfaced, yet. In this game, I’d be willing to bet that 2nd, and maybe 3rd mover status will be the one that can grow to national mindshare. Or, alternatively, I’d bet on Best Cellars for growing out of the East Coast.

In truth, I have a completed business plan for a concept that I think is far superior, but would certainly not be franchised for a good period of time. Perhaps, I’ll post it one day in whole or in pieces like free Internet software and see what kind of feedback I get back.

On the whole, with WineStyles and one or two others, I’m just not seeing much in the store design, merchandising system, or overall concept that is that interesting--particularly if your target is the over 40 moneyed-set. Why start with a faux-upscale store for an uber-discerning crowd?

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April 17 2006

Wine Sediments

I have another post on the Wine Sediments portion of the Wellfed network. The Wine Sediments portion of the site can be found here.

In my post, I basically take two angles:
1) Wine ratings should post ALL scores of all wines reviewed--in the interest of full disclosure
2) The entire wine ratings game might be ready to overtaken by the people

In this post, I also throw-in a Lake Wobegon reference as contextual support for the fact that all of the wine ratings we see are above average.

As an additional tid bit, I scanned an issue of Wine Spectator AFTER having written my current post (Jan. 31 - Feb 28 issue). In the article called "The World of Wine in 2005," it lists the division of scores for ALL wines reviewed in 2005 and fully 46% of the 12,000 + wines reviewed scored an 85 - 89--or Very Good (A Wine with Special Qualities).

And, only 8% scored 75 - 79 (A drinkable wine that may have minor flaws).

A couple of years ago there was a little bit of a flap with grade inflation at Harvard University (NPR blurb here).

Does anybody think we have the same thing happening in wine, or at the least an opportunity for disinter-mediation from consumers?

Thanks to Mark Fisher, the editor of the Wine Sediments site also maintains Uncorked a blog companion to his wine pieces for the Dayton Daily News and an adjunct to his beat as a reporter for the same paper, he has graciously invited me to write for Wine Sediments as a guest columnist--a proposition I will take him up on with some regularity.

When a glass of wine has a rough edge to it, it can be referred to as having some "angularity." Mark’s writing only drives home positive "angularity" --as in he always has an interesting take. His last post on wine ratings is in this vein and can be found here.

Pop over to the site and take a read.

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