September 13 2006
Parker’s Double-Speak Baffles Wine Aficionado’s
The October issue of Food & Wine magazine (which is chock of interesting articles by the way, this being their "Best-Ever Wine Guide") also features an article by Robert Parker, Jr. called, Is Bordeaux’s 2005 Vintage Worth the Hype?
Many journalists have been accused of creating the news moreso then just reporting the news. And, Parker has been well-documented as being indefatigable and empirically correct in the belief in his opinion. But, after leading the 2005 Bordeaux charge his articles opening paragraph says:
Has the 2005 Vintage produced the most perfect, the most gorgeous, the greatest Bordeaux the world has ever seen? If you believe all the extravagent praise coming from producers and media alike, you might believe that’s true. But, it’s better to separate hype from reality and look at the wines themselves.
Huh?
Is Parker a pundit or a reporter? Which is it? You can’t be an influencing tastemaker and then try to rise above the fray by commenting on the frothy furor that you created in the first place. He doesn’t single-handedly drive the market, but he is most certainly the gas in the engine. I would be willing to bet that virtually 95% or greater of all futures have been sold with quotes from Parker attached to the sales material.
On his message board, well before the en primeur tastings in late March/April, he had the following to say:
Hateto tell you, but 2005 is the real deal….I don’t think it makes much sense tosay,as many Bordelais are already..that it is the finest vintage in memory, butit truly has everything….great aromatics…fabulous ripeness…high but sweettannins…and amazing concentration….and unlike 2004,2003,2002,and 2001,itactually appears very consistent in all AOCs….
Later in the spring, in his newsletter, he said:
I have never tasted so many extraordinarily rich, concentrated, massive wines so high in tannin and extract, yet with such precision, definition, and freshness. It is clearly a singular vintage that should evolve into one of the great vintages of Bordeaux.
It has been posited that Ralph Nader, 1970s consumer watchdog, was something of an inspiration for Parker. Call me crazy, but I’m suspicious of Moses coming down from the mountain with the tablets and then stating, metaphorically speaking, in Food & Wine that:
Overall, the 2005 Bordeaux have turned out brilliantly, and the 2005 does appear to be one of the most singular years of the past five decades. But it would be reckless to claim the finest 2005s will surpass the top wines of 2003, 2000, 1996 (in the northern Medoc), 1990 or, for that matter, the legendary 1982 vintage.
Which is it, Parker? No double-talk about its singular greatness couched in caution. When Moses came down from the mountain he didn’t say, Thou Shall Not Covet Thy Neighbors Possessions Unless They Have Something Really, Really Nice ... he drew a line in the sand.
In addition to being a pundit, reporter, and tastemaker it would seem Parker has some political chops as well.
In my opinion, Parker is singularly waffling about how fabulous the ‘05’s are—a mania that he largely created.
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September 12 2006
On Bordeaux, Cult Cabs, Wine Tastings and Fantasy Football
Weekone of my Fantasy Football league wrapped up last night with a bitter 1 pointloss to my brother-in-law. Myquarterback, Jake Delhomme from the Carolina Panthers, had a horrible game onSunday otherwise I likely would have won the game.
Forthe uninitiated, fantasy football is easily the greatest value you can get for$75 bucks based on the five months of pleasure it gives. The deal is you get enoughof your buddies together to form a league with 10, 12 or 16 teams and then youdraft players by position—a quarterback, a couple of running backs, some widereceivers, a tight end, and on and on until you have a “team” of players andsome guys on a hypothetical “bench” that can be substituted in week to week.
Youplay games weekly with your team’s outcome determined by the collectiveindividual performances of the NFL players you drafted for your team measuredagainst your opponents’ team of individual performers.
Forexample, you could have Peyton Manning from the Indianapolis Colts atquarterback and Edgerrin James, the running back for the Arizona Cardinals, allon your “team” playing against Marvin Harrison, the wide receiver for the Colts,and Alex Smith the quarterback for the 49’ers.
It’sa lot of fun for not a lot of money out of pocket.
And,increasingly, it’s big business, too. Alot of the web sites that run fantasy leagues have all types of advertising andsponsorships. Somebody is making money off of Joe Six-Pack being a football fan.
FantasyFootball got me thinking about the Judgment of Paris, the famed 1976 winetasting in which French wines were pitted against American wines.
Whatif somebody started an online Fantasy Wine League—The FWL, for our purposes.
Ateam of participants would pick from a selected group of wines from, say, thelast five years from California and France—this wouldn’t be the universe ofwines, it would be maybe 500 total wines from selected producers—the wineriesacting as the equivalent of NFL teams and the actual wines acting as theplayers.
Rosterslots would be picked to include varietals as the equivalent of footballpositions. A Cabernet or Bordeaux is your QB, a Pinot or a Burgundy is a Wide Receiver,Chardonnay or a White Burgundy is a tight end, Merlot could be your kicker and on down the line until you’ve drafted afull team of players, er, wine.
Teamsin each wine FWL league would draft their “team” based on research theydid, just like in Fantasy Football. If you wanted to select a young wine, akinto a rookie in the NFL, that would be your decision. One person’s astringentand tannic bomb is all upside potential to another team member. One team may elect to go with all four andfive year old wines, with a bit more “experience” to them.
Nowthat people have their “teams” of wines selected based on their research intohistorical scores, terroir, chateau or winery reputation, viticulturaltechniques, etc roaming blind tastings would be set-up in major metros withwine affinity groups.
Allof the wines would be blind tasted and scored. Week 14 could be in Indianapolis with the Indy WineEnthusiasts group.
Ona weekly basis your team would win or lose based on the aggregate scoring ofthe wines on your “team.” Eventually, asthe playoffs near, the teams with the best records move forward with the winesthat scored the most consistently until there is a league champion.
Wineriesand those charged with consumer marketing for wines could provide sponsorshipdollars and the league champion could win a mixed case of the wines from hisselected team.
Tome, this is like a wine competition that appeals to consumers on a massscale. Instead of yelling at thereferees on TV, we could actually yell at Bob in Temecula that has a palatebias towards Chateauneuf-de-pape based on his scoring at the enthusiast’s blindtastings.
Ifany winery wants to be the title sponsor, drop me a line. I’ll get the inaugural campaign set-up.
Crazierthings have happened … who would have thought we’d have poker games on TV everynight of the week?
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September 11 2006
Music & Wine: It’s a Business Doing Pleasure
Acouple of weeks ago I picked up Wired magazine at the airport in
L.A. I haven’t read Wired in years, but the coverpiqued my interest exclaiming, “The Rebirth of Music: Radio Sucks. The Labels are Lame. Now BandsAre Taking Over—and Fans are Getting What They Want.”
Wow. That’s taking an unequivocal stand.
I’ma huge music buff. I buy dozens of CD’sa year and that’s exactly the problem—I buy dozens of CD’s a year—I haven’tmade the move to the digital revolution. But, I’m on the cusp of doing it—having spent a decent amount of moneyto have a guy digitize 450 + cd’s for me in my evolution towards an iPod.
Forthat reason the issue seemed interesting and hit me in my aperture. Forget the irony in being a half decade or so(emphasis on –or so—) older then the folks sitting around me wearing tatteredjeans and hoodies listening intently to their digital music player while Itried not to spill my cup of coffee on my work slacks reading up on the digitalmusic revolution.
Ialso picked the magazine up because I’ve been thinking about the commonalitiesbetween the music industry and the business of wine. If you’re like me, you think that the musicindustry and the wine industry have very strong parallels—substitute recordlabel for distributor and the analogies are pretty easy. And, while I might be a beat behind intechnology and music, I’m all for “guns a-blazin” progressiveness in technologyand wine.
Bothindustries feature monolithic entry points that choke off the new andinteresting for the safe, tried and true. The key difference between the twoindustries is music is circumventing the record label using the Internet as avehicle for distribution. Wineries aredoing that as well, but it’s much earlier in the lifecycle.
Easily,the September ’06 issue should be required reading for every small to mediumsize winery—not
for the answers it provides, but for the questions it asks.
Oneof the articles in the issue featured Terry McBride, CEO of Nettwerk MusicGroup, a Canadian music management company and indie music label—they manageartists like Barenaked Ladies (BNL), Sara McLachlan, Avril Lavigne and others.
McBrideis essentially turning the business of record labels upside down. Below are some key excerpts from the article:
Onusing Myspace.com for the upcoming BNL release:
McBridewants to make the individual files available so that amateur DJs can use themlike Lego bricks to create something something all their own. The industry likes control. McBride is proposing unfettered chaos.
Onthe state of the industry:
Themarket for music is thriving. With therise of peer-to-peer networks, the iPod, and other digital technologies – plusa 100 percent jump in concert ticket sales since 1999 – the world is awash inmusic. The industry now has more sourcesof revenue – ringtones, concert tickets, license agreements with TV shows andvideogames – than ever before.
“Thelabels were never in the business of selling music,” says David Kusek, vicepresident of Boston’s Berklee College of Music.
Onthe future of the business:
“Thefuture of the business isn’t selling records,” McBride says. “It’s in sellingmusic, in every form imaginable.” Webecome the management company, and the record company rolled into one.” We take our 20 percent cut of the whole pie.”
Onthe mechanics of executing the business model:
McBride’ssuccess will depend on what he calls “collapsed copyright.” Nettwerk will represent artists like BNL, butthe bands will record under their own labels and retain ownership of all theirintellectual property, an anomaly in the industry. The bands, in turn, can expect to earnconsiderably more money – say, $5 to $6 from the sale of each CD instead of thestandard dollar or two.
Ontaking advantage of the significant changes in music marketing:
Nettwerkis also poised to take advantage of the significant changes in music marketingwrought by social networking sites like Myspace.com. Some of the most promising new bands … owetheir success to online word of mouth and grassroots marketing. Nettwerk has tapped this phenomenon to thefullest, offering prizes to people who sell a certain number of CDs to friendsand using software to keep close tabs on its extensive network of volunteermarketers, formerly known as fans.
Onthe potential success of the model:
If(BNL) can bring in even modest returns, both Nettwerk and the band will be inthe black. The real test will come asNettwerk tries to launch bands like the Format, an indie act with a smallfollowing and no real presence in the popular consciousness. “If we can break bands using this model,”McBride says, “the industry will never be the same.”
Interestinglyand very surprisingly I might add, I was reading the current issue of WineBusiness Monthly and their coverage of the recent Master of Wine Symposium in Napa featured a presentation by… Terry McBride from Nettwerk.
Thearticle said,
Hespoke about missing opportunities with Internet marketing, and not just to theyounger crowd. No one present knew that60 percent of today’s Internet content is created by the consumer (it was zeropercent just two years ago), and consumers over 40 years old make up more than50 percent of Internet use. McBride alsoadvocated use of the more social sites to capture an audience, saying thatpeer-to-peer communication is key.
Interesting,interesting, interesting. With emergingbusiness models like that of Inertia Beverage Group, small wineries likeCapozzi and Stormhoek leveraging the Internet to great extent, and afundamental shift in the laws that allow direct shipping, I see opportunity inthe wine business for wineries to control their destiny and consumers to secureaccess to wine that they would have previously never been aware of.
Neitherof the articles referenced here from Wired or Wine Business Monthly are online,yet. But, both post articles about a month behind the physical hardcopy date ofthe respective magazines. Check themboth out and if anybody went to the Master of Wine Symposium and has a copy ofTerry McBride’s presentation, I would love to see it.
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September 8 2006
Coming Soon: The Rachael Ray of Wine
A few weeks back Tom at Fermentation had an interesting post on wine celebrity pointing out that, notably, there isn’t a single American wine authority of significant note.
And, certainly there’s not a celebrity with a Q Rating that matters.
Tom’s post is interesting because I had never really considered it much and because it’s curious to think that in a celebrity obsessed society with dozens of weekly magazines dedicated to the comings and goings of celebrities personal lives, that the wine industry wouldn’t have a single person that can generate mass consumer affinity.
A couple of Tom’s readers made analogies about Rachael Ray, the preternaturally perky Food Network store and Alton Brown, the pseudo-food science guy, also on the Food Network, that does a wildly inventive and original show that has begat books and mall appearances.
I pulled Rachael Ray’s media kit for her new magazine and roughly 25% of Americans know who she is—that’s pretty impressive.
Andrea Immer-Robinson probably comes closest to mass awareness with her Target stores promos, books and a show somewhere on Channel 234, but nothing resembling the zeitgeist that others have generated.
I’ve been mulling this over considering where and how a next generation wine celebrity would emerge. I’m not sure who will eventually rise, though it’s pretty clear who won’t emerge—it won’t likely be a writer and it won’t be somebody over the age of 40.
Consider the trajectory of growth of wine coupled with the considerable adoption of wine with those in their twenties and it’s pretty easy to see that whether developed organically or developed with the assistance of media pros, the person that grabs the public consciousness will likely be a Sommelier by training, female and probably under the age of 35. Odds are that Las Vegas or another locale will spawn this budding celebrity as much as any food-centric metro like New York or San Francisco.
Over the course of the last three weeks I’ve read the current issues of Food & Wine, Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast, and Wine & Spirits and each of them had articles about or featuring young Sommeliers.
It makes sense given our current state of affairs with food and chef celebrity. It’s like a football coach, when a team is successful the chief lieutenants get a chance to take center stage. In this case, behind the talented chef—the coach and leader of the restaurant—stands a charismatic Sommelier.
Names that today are obscure could, a year from now, be famous.
Tony Cha, the Sommelier at Michael Mina in San Francisco, was profiled in both Wine & Spirits and Wine Spectator.
My money, though, would be placed on Alpana Singh.
Singh is female, 29 years old and beautiful, but attractive in a way that doesn’t breed contempt and seemingly beguiling enough to disarm even the macho trophy wine collector. Her Indian heritage is exotic enough to inspire interest in the same way that Brits, any Brit, somehow sounds intelligent no matter the subject matter to your average Anglo viewer.
A Google search on her returned over 52,000 pages. Her burgeoning rival, Chantelle Grilhot, the self-declared “Best Young Sommelier in America,” only rates a mere 459 Google mentions.
Another reason I’m betting on Singh? She works in Chicago, just a touch off the beaten wine trail, she has a local affiliate public television show, and she is publishing her first book in the next couple of weeks.
The similarity, you ask? Rachael Ray, when thrust onto the national stage, was working in upstate New York, off the beaten path, had a local public television show and had just published her own small press book.
Get used to seeing Alpana, I have a feeling she might be getting ready for her close-up.
Posted in, Good Grape Daily: Pomace & Lees.
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September 7 2006
Wine Marketing Builds a Home
I was turned on to a brand-spankin’ new wine marketingresource by a commenter on Good Grape.
Craig, the poster, tripped across a coincidence between thebranding of RadCru and an obscure BMX movie from the 80s called “Rad.” The main character was named “Cru.”
Either he or somebody close to him posted a message andimage at the “so new it still squeaks site,” Wine Marketer that pointed out thesimilarities.
It would be more interesting, if it weren’t a non-issue.
Nostradamus allegedly predicted the Gulf War and 9/11, too,and that was 450 years ago.
I grew up in the 80s—the heart of the decade was theprimetime of my youth. My high schoolyears were at the tail end of the 80s and early 90s. And, I had a middle-school skateboard andbike phase.
So, when I don’t recall this movie, I don’t put a lot ofstock into perceived derivation from a 20-year old BMX movie and contemporarywine marketing with RadCru.
If it was Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo it might be another story, however.
Jeff Playter at RadCru responds and notes the oddcoincidence and indicates where some of the inspiration does come from—includingseminal 80s metal band Motley Crue. Playter and I need to hook up. What guy from that era didn’t love the Crue? Vince Neil, the leader singer of the band,still touring today with Aerosmith, also has a label called “Vince Vineyards.”
My one point tangential to wine and marketing here is theoriginal poster and his assertion that RadCru was uncreative or might haveripped off the movie. And, I think thatnotion, categorically, needs to be shut down. If you’re in marketing you know that there are no new ideas. There is not a single thing in this worldthat hasn’t already been thought of. Real value, however, lies in combining existing ideas in ways that haven’tbeen combined. He would do well to moveoff the belief in the empirical correctness of an original idea.
Check out the post here for a wine detour into what’s beingsaid on the Internet.
And, more importantly, check out WineMarketer. It will take a while for them to get anywherenear the level of Marketing Sherpa or Marketing Prof’s, but this kind ofprogress, however incremental, is encouraging.
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The October issue of Food & Wine magazine (which is chock of interesting articles by the way, this being their "Best-Ever Wine Guide") also features an article by Robert Parker, Jr. called, Is Bordeaux’s 2005 Vintage Worth the Hype?
Weekone of my Fantasy Football league wrapped up last night with a bitter 1 pointloss to my brother-in-law. Myquarterback, Jake Delhomme from the Carolina Panthers, had a horrible game onSunday otherwise I likely would have won the game. 
Acouple of weeks ago I picked up Wired magazine at the airport in
for the answers it provides, but for the questions it asks.
