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July 25 2006

Good Grape Blog Housekeeping

Just a housekeeping update for the site: As I review traffic statistics, I know a lot, perhaps the majority of readers of Good Grape, are accessing the site via my Typepad URL: http://goodgrape.typepad.com/celebrate/ or feed and not the domain I have set-up: www.goodgrape.com or a feed from that domain.

With a web site redesign happening and a migration from TypePad to a more robust system occurring in the next 45 days, I ask you to please change your feeds from the TypePad site to the domain--www.goodgrape.com.

I like you guys and I don’t want to lose my traffic. I’ll re-post this message periodically over the course of the next month or so.

Thanks,

Jeff

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July 24 2006

The Emperor of Wine

The Emperor of Wine by Elin McCoy, published in the summerof ’05, will be released in paperback on August 1, 2006.

Ijust finished reading the hard cover and felt, frankly, a bit unsatisfied. To borrow a wine cliché, it finished“short.” As biographies go, authorizedor unauthorized, this book largely comes up empty; it’s neither deeplypathologic about its subject or sweeping enough to provide context.

Instead,it plays a certain middle ground that offers little in the way of insight, butprovides enough detail to play successfully as a straight narrative.

Unfortunately,however, I’m not looking for scandalous tabloid-quality information, but rathersome insight into the pathos that makes the man or information that provokesadditional questions and a quest for more information on the ethos.

TheEmperor of Wine does neither.

Somemay argue that the book answers all open questions, like a tidy movie might,but I unabashedly would argue that the book didn’t raise enough questions.

InMcCoy’s treatment, we get a well-worn repeating of Parker’s formative years andsome broad brush strokes about his personality—he can be mercurial andpetulant, but has high integrity and he occasionally is a subtle if noteffective self-promoter--always taking the moral high road yet suffering the occasional lapse in judgment.

Heand Marv Shanken from the Wine Spectator don’t pal around, either—havingassumed the position respectively of benign ignorance of each other’s presence.

But,never do we get a penetrating peer into the man that has shaped the wineindustry for the last 20 + years. Theauthor, taking a decidedly reporter-like approach leaves judgments on Parker,his influence, and his character to the reader. A judicious choice if I felt like I had all the evidence. The only re-occurring theme the authorcircles back to is Parker’s unwavering, undeniable belief in the infallibilityof his reviews—his palate.

Perhapsthat’s McCoy’s way of explaining the simmering monomania that goes largelyunchecked and un-reviewed in the book—Parker never second-guesses himself andhe never admits to being wrong. Though,he is thin-skinned and bristles at criticism of his own influence, deferringhis power to that of a simple consumer advocate.

MichaelJordan didn’t become the greatest basketball player to ever play the game bybeing passive or relenting and, likely neither did Parker.

And,like a superstar, critics and other experts have systematically tried todiscredit him and chip away at his veneer while fans fawned at hispreternatural talents and omnipresential gifted palate.

Yet,mostly, these topics are treated to a two-dimensional rendering that,ultimately, never fleshes out the man to a level of intimacy that fostersendearment, or vitriol—just a safe middle of the road rendering of a man forwhich the final sentence claims:

“Therewill never be another emperor of wine.”

Hemight as well be the Jay Leno of wine, if you believe McCoy. In lieu of the book, this 20 page article onParker from Atlantic Monthly essentially acts as a Cliffs Note to the book, saving both time and money--a buying characteristic wine or otherwise that Parker would endorse.

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July 24 2006

Raving Fans at the Tasting Room!

Having turned the page on my Paso trip with today’sreceipt of the two cases of wine that I purchased at various wineries, I’mstruck by the wine blog Grape Juice and part II in their two-part series onwinery tasting rooms.

A brief aside, however, regarding the wine I bought andthe stress in watching UPS tracking via their tracking number:

I was in Pacific Grove, near Monterey, when I shipped thewine—and it was early in the morning and cool—“wear a jacket” cool—andfoggy. The blast furnace-like heat ofPaso the day before was a distant memory and the heat wave we had the last twoweeks in the rest of the country wasn’t top of mind.

So, I shipped the wine UPS ground. It was expensive to do so, and to send itvia air would have been even more expensive. I don’t care how you cut it, adding 25-30% to the total cost of wine foradditional shipping is tough.

I hoped for the best and was actually more concerned aboutbottle breakage then heat damage through the shipping process. Then about Tuesday last week as thethermometer crept into the 90s, I started sweating (figuratively) about thestate of my wine. I had visions of itcooking on the back of a truck. Ipulled up the UPS itinerary via the tracking number and HORRORS! It was beingsent by rail and was backed up a day in St. Louis where power had been outbecause of the heat. Great! My precious wine collected from a dozenwineries was sitting in St. Louis and getting hammered by the heat.

I started doing Internet research to see what the negativeaffects would be. Even though it wasinsulated by some Styrofoam, it would be no match for 100-degree heat on theoutside and internal temperatures that can be close to double the externaltemperature.

I Googled “wine + heat” hoping to find some solace. The gist of what I found on the Internet isthat if the cork doesn’t pop out, then you’re in pretty decent immediate shape,but there’s no telling what the long term affects can be—the best solution isto drink all of the wine young because it will depreciate in quality with lostbouquet and washed out flavor in the coming weeks and month(s). With the foil caps, the corks on my winedidn’t pop out, but several seemed unnaturally elevated within the enclosure. I’m assuming it saw abusive heat.

So, my answer to this situation is to drink the wine. Two or three bottles a week for about sevenor eight weeks. Hopefully I can do somehead to head comparisons between a Sangiovese and a Nebbiolo, Zin vs. Zin,Pinot vs. Pinot, etc and make the best of the situation.

There are several wines I wish I could lay down—includinga marvelous Zinfandel from Zin Alley, but alas, in the name of conscientiouswine citizenry, I’ll heed the call of duty and pull the cork.

Idid have one bottle casualty—the Rabbit Ridge Old Vines Zinfandel didn’t makeit—I got some leakage out of the cork—I don’t know if this was a bad cork job,or the transit, but given circumstances, I’ll shoulder the responsibility forthis one.

But,Rabbit Ridge brings me back to my original topic—winery tasting roomexperiences. In the second article(found here), Erin details additional items that make for a holisticallyenjoyable experience including the oft overlooked, but very simple notion ofhaving a variety of different wines and a reasonable price per tasting.

Theone winery that delivered on this in spades in Paso Robles was RabbitRidge.

Originallybased in Healdsburg, Rabbit Ridge opened an enormous Tuscan style facility inPaso Robles accompanied with a distinct line of wines that is, by label andgrape sourcing, different then their Sonoma wines—smart business todifferentiate the two now, before a growth curve causes an entire re-brandingeffort to delineate the two. And, withthe Central Coast wine scene taking off, it’s doubly smart.

TheRabbit Ridge wine tasting area is itself unremarkable and in a large warehousestyle space that also houses pallets and pallets of wine and barrels. It’s an odd contrast, to be sure, becausethe Tuscan style exterior of the building is marvelous and the tasting room’slack of development is an odd juxtaposition.

But,what the wine tasting area lacks in charm, it makes up for in absolute winedecadence. They pour a lot ofwine—freely and happily.

Wegot mixed in with a distributor tasting, so we got the nice take-away stemwareand the free pours, but I think they charge $5 for 8 pours and refund thatmoney upon purchase.

TheirPaso tasting menu can be found here and includes 19 wines, plus a couple ofothers that they pull out to treat the tasting customers.

And,as I mentioned, the pours are healthy. So, consider for a moment that even at a healthy 5 minutes betweenpours, you can taste through 20 wines in an hour to an hour and ½. If each of those pours is 1.5 oz or so,that’s the equivalent of 30 oz of wine or about five glasses of wine. If you’re not dumping, you might later wishyou were …

Mybuddy regaled the woman doing the pouring with some source credible storiesabout his very legit and true admiration for the wines based on his daysliving in Healdsburg along with his predilection for buying by the case—4 casesthis time—and the wine kept a flowing.

Thiswas before lunch, mind you. I startedscarfing down saltines just to throw something in my stomach to stanch what tothat point had been a mainline between the wine and my bloodstream.

Ifyou’re looking for good times, Rabbit Ridge is your place.

Theeasiest way to separate somebody from their wallet is to give them acourtesy-filled experience and a lot of pours of tasty wines. In this regard, Rabbit Ridge delivers allthe way around—satisfying the two qualifying criteria that Erin pointedout—variety and value.

Salut!

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July 24 2006

A Wine Public Service Message: Update

Leave it to me to miss the best and coolest way to recycle your wine bottles in my post on Friday. Tip of the hat to the guys at Stormhoek for the post of Carlo Rossi jug wine and its alternative usage.

And, in other posts I’ve often wondered aloud what wine company would step up to do some slacker/hip marketing that wasn’t filtered through a detached marketing bent that reached too hard or missed the mark completely.

Carlo Rossi seems to be answering the bell and they are doing so in a big way--and in the vein of Urban Outfitters and ReadyMade, they offer a few very cool ideas for some IKEA furniture/slash ironic hipster goods for the college and bohemian set.

This is, of course, after you have presumably finished your bottle/jug of wine--Carlo Rossi calling them "flavors" and creating as much cachet as they can by going with the tag/slogan "Jug Simple." The notion of flavors and marketing elevates it beyond Boones Farm, but with a little more "coolness" associated. I’ve never drunk the stuff, so I can only assume it’s thin stuff, but I suppose it’s a start for a lot of people.

Check out the nicely aesthetic site here and preview some of the building plans for the furniture projects ... including here.

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July 24 2006

Wine Sediments

Wine Sediments at the Well Fed Network is undergoing some (cue David Bowie music) Ch ..Ch..Ch .. Chan ...Changes with some new overall leadership/ownership.

Because of this, I’m going to do a full cross-post of my post for this week. It’s not up on the site yet, but the full contents of my review of two in-home wine tasting/consulting companies should be up in the next day or so.

The Traveling Vineyard and Wine Shop at Home offer an interesting business model that is part Tupperware and part bourgeoisie schtick for the growing wine customer base. I wouldn’t do this myself and most wine blog readers wouldn’t either based on their inherent wine knowledge, but this would be geared for your supermarket shopper anyways who is curious and intrepid.

Wine Palate Pleasers Pluck Your Wallet at Home

Amway, Tupperware, Avon, Tastefully Simple, LongabergerBaskets, PartyLite candles, the Pampered Chef and dozens of others will need tostep aside. There’s a new party marketingsheriff in town and it’s in the name of home wine tasting.

Many a sales person does their best selling half a bottlein at a business dinner and those socially lubricated sellers can take heart—there’snow a moonlighting opportunity available.

Theera of the coffee klatch convening at a friends home for gossipy chatter, somenoshes and an order form is going decidedly upscale with the burgeoning growthof several home marketing wine concepts.

The TravelingVineyard and Wine Shop at Home are two business models that have designs onconverting casual wine drinkers to loyal customers.

ForWine Shop at Home, born out of a 1-800 mail order business--1-800-WineShop, thedirect selling arm was an expansion of their business that was already focusedon selling boutique wineries to customers direct.

Inthe case of The Traveling Vineyard, its good business as a sales channel for Geerlings& Wade, a direct wine marketer with a catalog business.

Bolsteredby a network of consultants a reported 1,500 strong, The Traveling Vineyard operatedin 25 states and reached 150,000 potential customers through 20,000 tastings in2005, according to a June Wine Business Monthly article.

That’sa lot of wine.

Theconcept is simple enough and intuitive to anybody familiar with the Amwaycome-on of, “Have you ever dreamed of being financially independent?”

Eitherhosting a party or as a consultant, the name of the game is volume—volume insales and volume in having other consultants sign on to do parties and sellunderneath you.

Ifyou are the host of the party, a Traveling Vineyard consultant will come toyour home with five bottles of vino and the all of the accouterments needed fora tasting—including the invites to get them there and the glasses andevaluation forms thereafter.

WineShop at Home is similar if not more lifestyle-centric offering the opportunityfor custom labels and wine gift baskets to add to their eponymous wine club.

TheTraveling Vineyard also offers a wine club called Passport.

TheTraveling Vineyard is an interesting concept with virtually all of the winepresented and sold made or bottled exclusively for Geerlings & Wade,according to their Marketing Director Denise Kotopoulos as quoted in WineBusiness Monthly.

WineShop at Home sells smaller production wines with the occasional large volumeproducer like Coppola. Though, thoseplans are changing as this article indicates that they too hope to haveall of their own brands by the end of the year, as well.

Asa consultant, you facilitate the tasting at no charge, but make a commissionoff of the wine sales that take place. In the case of the Traveling Vineyard, if there are no sales, then thebottles of wine sampled are charged to the facilitator. The more wine sold, the more afacilitator/consultant can make. And,in an era of convenience, both business models are only operating in stateswhere direct sales are permitted, with growth planned as the other statestopple their wine shipping laws.

Anecdotally,the Wine Business Monthly article indicates that commissions for The TravelingVineyard can be 20% of their direct wine sales and a smaller percentage ofdownline sales for those that they recruit that consult at parties underneaththem.

Thesetwo business models are interesting in that they demonstrate an obviouseducational opportunity for wine to a wide customer base that will benefit thewine market overall.

But,it also begs a couple of questions. Twothings immediately come to mind that should be addressed for any wine loverthat is serious about their vinous activity. First, the quality control for education with the consultants seems tobe an area where passion can trump expertise—which is all well and good until Iwant to know the difference between a Syrah, Shiraz and Petite Sirah.

Secondly,20% commissions are healthy when you consider that most retailers take, at most,a 35% mark-up from distribution. This questionis answered pretty easily when you consider that both companies are movingtowards or are already committed to private labeling. Simply put, the margins are better, but are the wines better?

Regardlessof preconceived notions of in-home parties the sort that require a checkbook,both of these businesses are growing rapidly in sales and number ofconsultants.

CaveatEmptor in all things, but at least you get to try the wine first.

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