May 9 2006
The wine industry shouldhold onto their collective corks, because they are now effectively gettinglapped by a coffee company from
Say what you will aboutStarbucks--and people do: either you love it, or you see it as another exampleof mega commercialization that is stripping communities everywhere of theirindividual identity.
Though, one thing you can’tsay about Starbucks is that they don’t brand or market themselves well.
Witness the rollout of the“What Makes Coffee Good” campaign with the associated web site at www.whatmakescoffeegood.com
What makes this site such agood marketing example and why should the wine industry take pause to study it?
Starbucks is mainstreamingthe coffee equivalent of terroir AND winemaking.
Why are they doing this?
They are doing it becauseStarbucks needs to wrap a value message around a commodity product. Coffee, razors, toilet paper all have meaningin our lives because of marketing.
And, Starbucks is doing it successfully,I might add.
A two-page spread in theJune issue of Food & Wine magazine introduced the new advertising to me,with loving copy and a headline that says:
Geographyis a Flavor.
This excerpt from an articleon a coffee site very interestingly elaborates on and weaves the story togetheron the “stolen playbook” and interlinked nature of coffee and wine:
Thediscussion in Specialty Coffee has been how to get people to take coffeeseriously… how do we get them to ponder the notion that there is a lot to knowabout this very complex beverage? The answer has been to make coffee the"new wine"; talk about it like wine, write about it like wine, sellit like wine. I guess the argument was convincing; one company started to selltheir roasted and green coffee in clear, corked wine bottles! Another deepfreezes green coffee to save "vintages" as one would cellar
Ina general sense, it is easy to compare coffee to wine. Neither are nutritionalnecessities, but are integral to our food habits. They are both consumed forpleasure. And the aroma and flavors of both have the potential to connect thosewho imbibe with the lives and fates of people throughout the world, to theirculture, their nation, their soil. What we enjoy is a direct result of theircare of the plant, precision in processing, careful transportation andhandling, and diligence in preparation. The more we enjoy single-farm coffeesfrom distinct origins, the stronger and clearer that connection might become.
Whymake standards? Coffee certainly needs standards to enhance the bond betweenthose who love the drink, and all those whose work makes it possible, standardsthat are adaptive and suited to our unique trade. No, you can’t certify a goodcup of coffee since it could be stale, or even worse, French-roasted! And theprocess of instituting a neutral "coffee board," one not related toany trade association or business entity, is a daunting task. But someone hasto guarantee the meaning of first-tier coffees when the market refuses to pay afair price, and corporations are happy to fudge the names of offerings to makethem sound single-origin, or Estate-grown.
But, there’s an importantdistinction here that separates coffee from wine, a point the article latermakes and Starbucks understands as well. Anywhere coffee can grow it should bepretty good.
The concept of terroir, orin their lingo, geography, really doesn’t work that well until you combine itwith that of the process you take with the actual bean.
And, Starbucks makes itstupid simple to get the connection, and the education. And, the web site isnice, professional and clean.
The real question here is whycan’t wineries do this? Now that consumption is rising significantly, why can’tthe Wine Market Council do this bit of marketing—link the concept of thegeography with the value-added process in the winery?
Why can’t a market leadertell a "wine as a product from the land" story, help the consumerunderstand and create a high quality product at the same time?
Why is there always atrade-off between good branding and good wine ala Yellowtail?
If a wine association or alarge winery decides they do want to do it, they can send me a note, becausewhile the www.whatmakescoffeegood.comis interesting, I registered the www.whatmakeswinegood.comsite this morning.
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May 9 2006
A while back I tripped across a web site at www.winelabels.org, it’s a blog in the truest sense of the word, though the technology isn’t a blog service. The owner of the site, Peter F. May, combines some really good, spot-on writing alongside an archive of unusual wine labels--of the Fat Bastard and Cleavage Creek variety.
The site celebrates the weird, odd and esoteric in wine labels.
Peter dives into the occasional double entendre and I was going to reference an article he wrote on the "Gallo Nero" on the Consorzio Vino Chianti Classico wine. But, I decided it was too naughty for me to pull off with grace. In the interest of full disclosure, you now have the context and you can find the article here.
With that in mind, I found a recent article in BusinessWeek that touched on the "Blook" phenomena,
Justabout any blog writer—there are 36 million blogs out there, with 75,000 newonline diaries added daily, according to search engine Technorati—is acandidate. "We believe there’s a market [for book-publishing services] forevery single blogger out there," says Eileen Gittins, CEO of onlinepublisher Blurb.com. "Charles Dickens originally serialized his novels inmagazines. We are seeing much the same thing happening today, with blogs."
Big-name publishers such as Putnam and Little, Brown & Co. have begunreleasing books based on blogs. "I am now more open to blogs than I wouldhave been [before]," says Judy Clain, executive editor at Little, Brown.And a dozen new businesses have sprung up with the intent of helping scribesturn their blogs into books. Blogbasedbooks.com, specializing in blooks, hasset up shop on the Net.
Unheralded in the wine blogging community and, really, saddled with a charmingly ugly site, Mr. May has been rewarded with a book contract and his book "Marilyn Merlot and the Naked Grape" will be off press on June 1. Though, to his distinct credit, May has been maintaining the site since 1998, clearly at least five to six years before most wine bloggers got off the ground.
This is nice to see. Mainstream writers jumping into the wineblogosphere is well documented, but to my knowledge, this is the first"reverse course" book of a freelance writer / wine blogger making thejump mainstream.
Tip of the hat to the new blog (ANOTHER one in Ohio) My Wine Education who tipped me off--she has the book on her Reading List on her navigation--probably based on the fact that they are both in educational technology and technical writing.
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May 8 2006
I’m pretty sure that nothing raises the ire of wine aficionados more than boxed wine.
I was at Target just last week and made a jaunt through the wine section to see how Andrea Immer was pimpin’ wine this month and I almost bought the Wine Cube. I’ve almost purchased the Wine Cube on at least three other occasions, but, yet, there’s something missing for me that even curiousity can’t overcome. That, and the fact that I have bad memories of Franzia from 10 years ago--the wine that wouldn’t go away, an endless supply of red bile water taking up 25% of the juice and milk area in the refrigerator.
Boxed wine has no cork, no winery backstory, no nuance--just juice in an air-tight bag packed into a box and shipped off to your local store ready to be foisted upon a Soccer Mom doing some shopping.
And, perhaps that’s it. While I don’t subscribe to a lot of wine convention, I would like to consider myself a cut above the box set.
But, maybe I should reconsider.
The New York Post has an article in today’s Online Edition that caught my eye. Notably, because it features a "dtour" "wine in a tube." This isn’t red not news, as it was released with a PR cycle in November of last year, but what I didn’t realize is that Daniel Boulud and his eponymous restuarant in New York were a part of the program.
While Boulud probably has more dollar signs in his eyes then a practical desire to bring wine to a larger audience, you have to believe that a guy that invests so much in quality in his restuarants woud ensure that the integrity of his name--as associated with the wine--ensures a pretty good product. These arguments go a long way toexplain why premium boxed wine sales have grown 70 percent over 2005.But the question remains: Would you order a box of wine at dinner? Theguys behind Dtour are betting your answer is yes. Dtour is now pouredat DB Bistro, where it is decanted and served by the carafe for $17. AGoogle search turned up a number of articles on box wine and some decent andnot so decent reviews. One of the mostbewildering is a review from the San Francisco Chronicle—the below tasting notementions, berries … violets … and a soupcon of rubber.
"There’s enough technology out there now that theboxes are not harming the wine at all," says Kym Apotas, assistant winebuyer at Astor Wines. "It’s best for easy-drinking wines that you won’tstore for a long time."
Excuseme? Soupcon stands for “a very little amount.” A soupcon of rubber. As in:
The 2003 Wine Cube California Cabernet Sauvignon-Shiraz($16) is balanced and consistent, if slightly light-bodied for a blend of thesetwo grapes. It tasted of berries, violets and a soupcon of rubber.
On second thought, Ithink it will be a very long time before I purchase a box wine, Andrea Immer, Daniel Boulud and their wine boxed spawn notwithstanding.
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May 7 2006
Every time I think that wine will forever be shackled by the boundaries of its antiquity, I’m given hope by folks that are taking a new look at a different way of doing things.
And, with the news ablaze for the last year on wine shipping laws and the tyranny of the distributors, it’s interesting to see business models take shape.
One of the significant challenges in the industry is the preponderance of wineries that are starting and developing coupled with the consolidation of distributors.
Something has to give, right?
Usually, it’s the small wineries that struggle to find a market for their products--not because their product isn’t good, but because they lack the financial mite to earn sell-thru from distribution.
I’ve recently run across a spat of of business models from companies looking to alleviate the the distance between a consumer looking for boutique wines and the small winery trying to get started and build an audience.
I’ve written about Crushpad Wine before. I really like their business model and find the process fascinating. Overall, I have doubts about their ability to scale the business when most of the wines have a suggested retail value well past the $20 range--which means the quality is definitely going into the bottle (and their list of vineyards backs that up).
But, they aren’t doing any favors to the enthusiast winemakers (their audience, for the most part) that have to find a place to sell the stuff when they have absolutely no reputation to fall back on. I owe this to Crushpad having to develop size to drive costs down, but just the same, with quality in wine at such a great level, it would be nice to see them bring in some quality bulk wine for blending and to help bring costs down, overall.
The market for sub-$15 bottles is XXXXX big, while the market for greater than $20 bottles is only XXX big, as an example.
In my humble opinion, those outside of the wine industry have no idea that wine is sold in bulk like a commodity, and as such, those coming in to Crushpad wanting to create a label are more interested in quality then vineyard designation--even if that means using bulk wine.
But, to their credit, Crushpad has put together a program that takes care of absolutely everything and all a fledgling wine brand has to do is help sell the vino. Their commerce package includes everything from soup to nuts--the wine development, the brand development, the compliance for packaging and the fulfillment. All you have to do, as kind of a winemaker, or at least as the guy writing the checks, is drive demand.
If a winery is not so hot at driving demand, they might want to check out a new web-based offering called Radcru.com
From the Radcru press release:
How RadCru works
Each day, RadCru works with our winery sellers to select one specialwine deal and offer it to RadCru’s members and the general public foran entire 24 hour period. To heighten anticipation, RadCru membersnever know what special wine will be offered until it goes live eachday. Each day’s wine offer is made available to the general public at12:00 am and is sold until 11:59 pm the following night or until thewine offer sells out. Once a wine offer has ended and the buyer haspaid the winery, that day’s winery ships the product to each buyer.Selling on RadCru is easy and profitable.
"RadCru has a strong understanding of the challenges many smallwineries face in showcasing their wines to the general market. Our goalis to provide small wineries with valuable exposure, strong sales andrevenue and a reliable platform to consistently reach out to winelovers through this innovative sales channel," said Jeff Playter,Director of Marketing, RadCru LLC. "RadCru focuses on unleashing justone great wine each day. By keeping it simple and offering hard to findboutique wines at great prices, we believe there is a huge marketopportunity here.”
I’ll leave the snarky comments alone, but I’m sure most PR professionals would encourage the client to find a customer to vouch that, "RadCru has a strong understanding of the challenges many small wineries face ..." INSTEAD OF the Director of Sales ... nonetheless, this is an easy business for Radcru.com, they just have to aggregate customers and the winery does all of the work.
The last model, and, perhaps, the most enduring, is that of the ReThink Wine site from Inertia Beverage. It’s really a no brainer--go to small, boutique wineries and help them get off the ground technologically with the only thing more important then an accounting program--a web site. An any entrepreneur will tell you--it’s better to have a customer then a place for journal entries if you’re just starting out. Once the winery is off the ground with the site, Inertia gives them a couple of avenues for sales--one being slotting in the Inertia Beverage trade site where restaurants can buy direct and the other being commerce enablement whereby they pass through a customer to the winery site for fulfillment of the wine.
Ultimately, the winner in this is the customer--so long as we’re able to keep on top of tall he different places to buy wine. Though, today, it’s easier to buy wine from a local store, I think we probably said the same thing about books 10 years ago. Internet commerce and its permutations are here to stay and, perhaps, its greatest yet-to-be-tapped opportunity to create a sustaining impact might be in the wine business.
On Friday it was "Long Live Mexico." Today, it’s "Long Live Small Wineries"
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May 7 2006
I polished off a bottle of the Hop Kiln 2004 "A Thousand Flowers."
Hop Kiln was one of my favorite wineries when I took a whirlwind sprint through Sonoma a couple of years ago.
A recent article on Winecountrythisweek.com had this to say about Hop Kiln:
The landmark Hop Kiln in Russian River Valley has been home togenerations of pioneers, ranchers and winemakers. Today, the100-year-old structure is a favorite winery site – a lively place wherelocal residents and Sonoma County visitors come to drink in thegorgeous views, warm hospitality and delicious wines. An icon of SonomaCounty’s rich, agricultural past and one of the only stone kilns stillstanding, the property is officially listed on national, state andlocal Historic Registers. Dramatic and welcoming, Hop Kiln is amemorable destination.
They’ve completed some renovations since I’ve been there, but then as now, it’s a charming, unpretentious way to soak in a historical site and do a tasting.
The wine blog "Walk the Wine" shares my sentiments on the ‘A Thousand Flowers" when they say,
the folks at Hop Kilnin Sonoma County have found the right formula to tickle my palate. Theymake a blend of chardonnay (38%), gewurztraminer (27%), riesling (22%),and sauvignon blanc (13%) that’s called A Thousand Flowers. And, it sells for only $13 a bottle.
The Thousand Flowers remains a favorite. The 2004 has aromas that arelush with flowers and tropical fruit and apples, so much so that youexpect to encounter sweetness with the first taste. But, instead, thisunique wine achieves a nice balance, like a fine Alsatian. While thechardonnay contributes a nice richness, I think it’s the gewurztraminerand to a lesser extent the riesling that carry the day here.
It’s a very nice wine--a somewhat muted nose when compared to the absolute delicate fruit and flower combination in the glass. It’s allergy season, so it might pop with more bouquet to me later in the summer, but it was very tasty. My bottle was a gracious gift from a friend in California, you may have to hunt for it as I don’t believe its distributed in every state, well, not mine, for sure. So, keep an eye out for it.
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