July 23 2007
On the heels of reports coming from The Wine Industry Technology Symposium last week and tasty quotes from Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV like, “Ninety-nine percent of the people in the wine business are really blowing it” and “Now everyone has got an opinion. Every single person you cross paths with in this industry you need to fear, and you need to embrace,” I’ve been re-thinking how I mentally get my arms around the various sub-segments of wine communities on the Internet.
Excuse me for a post while I talk this one out, out loud, “Deal or No Deal” game show style and let me also say upfront that I now think Wine.com is in an incredibly strong position in the consumer direct online wine space, I just didn’t “get” that position and how it can evolve as their customer needs evolve.
Some context: Tom from Fermentation and his survey on influence in the blogosphere is starting to make me sway in opinion—particularly the part where 68.4% of respondents said they have purchased a wine after seeing it reviewed on a wine blog. I think Tom’s survey shows, without question, that there is some definite credence being given to blog wine reviews, a position I haven’t always held.
So, whereas, I’ve always viewed the wine blogosphere and wine reviews as an influencer mechanism similar to a traditional wine magazine (you read something you make mental note, maybe you recall the information in a buying situation), I’m now starting to see the vision for it as a buying mechanism (you see something, you agree, you buy). This is “Citizen Journalism” moving to more “Citizen Buying Sentinel.”
In early June I wrote a post as a follow-on to the Wine 2.0 event that took place in San Francisco and I took Wine.com mildly to task for being the #1 Wine site on the Internet, but not demonstrating any Web 2.0 technologies—a blog, RSS feeds, collaboration, etc.
At that moment, I viewed it as not providing enough social content around the buying situation (influencing).
Imagine my surprise when the CEO, Rich Bergsund, left a comment on the site, alongside another Wine.com colleague, who pointed out that Wine.com extensively uses RSS feeds.
Rich said in part:
We’re passionate about wine too, and also passionate about learning what our customers want and working hard every day to give it to them.
I think all the community stuff you guys are talking about is great. Wine is social and the web is going social, so wine on the web is a natural to be social.
For the Internet to really have an impact on wine, don’t forget all the other pieces customers care about. Reliable and convenient access to all the great wines the community is talking about. Low cost, fast delivery. Customer service.
What Rich didn’t really lay out, (but is a key point) is the fact that online socializing and online selling are two vastly different things, which makes Wine Library TV’s acquisition of Cork’d all the more intriguing and prescient. And the other point that Rich didn’t elaborate on is the fact that despite Wine.com being the #1 online wine commerce shop, there’s a strong likelihood that his customers aren’t completely ready for blogs and the capabilities afforded by Web 2.0 technologies. There’s a product lifecycle curve in everything.
So, here’s where my opinion is evolving. I’ve spent additional time researching Wine.com--spent a good amount of time poking around their site, I have reviewed their affiliate program in addition to being tipped off to their Windows Live “Just In” widget that lives on your desktop.
Wine.com is on the cutting edge in many areas. However, it’s not noticeable to the wine blogosphere because Wine.com is focused on selling wine—all of their cool technology has to do with selling and servicing customers, a fact originally lost on me when looking at it through the filter of the Wine blogosphere and community.
You have a couple of different mechanisms in play here: wine blog wine reviews, wine-tasting note community sites, and online wine commerce with an exceptional customer experience (Wine.com)
What I ultimately think is shaping up here is competition in the consumer online wine arena between two worthy competitors—Wine.com and Wine Library, but their growth structure right now is coming from two different points of view that ultimately will coalesce.
Wine.com is coming at it from a less technology-savvy consumer point of view, those mostly interested in buying wines like traditional retail. They are #1 in size. Eventually their consumers will want more community-oriented aspects at which point they can build out the community engagement models, building on their buying and selling expertise and customer service experience. This is a different audience that will evolve to become more Web/Wine 2.0 centric in the near future.
Wine Library is coming at it from the complete other end—the Web 2.0 perspective—blogging and social networking, with the acquisition of Cork’d, as a tool to drive community engagement and commerce, creating customer ambassadors. Wine Library TV, anecdotally, is growing its ecommerce wine business significantly. These are the early adopters, and more and more consumers will join their ranks in the near future.
Two different models, coming from two different perspectives, and in 18 months time, they will be head to head competitors, with their two different looking customers essentially becoming one and the same. I wonder if Wine.com is readying technology ahead of the curve in anticipation of their customers growing needs and I wonder if Gary Vaynerchuk is ready for his close-up with an audience that is likely to grow 10 X in the next year.
This will be fun to watch play out.
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Posted in, Tasting Safari: Wines You Can Buy Online. Permalink | Comments (2) | Print | Email This
July 19 2007
A funny thing happened in between June 28th when word first hit that the ’05 Charles Shaw Chardonnay won a Double Gold medal at the California State Fair wine competition and July 12th when names of the rest of the winners were officially released. First, the wine blogosphere was completely atwitter with incredulity, but secondarily nobody, to my knowledge, has looked at the full results in order to do analysis and call an additional comeuppance on Charles Shaw.
Perhaps because no ‘just desserts’ are coming.
I won’t do too much of a re-hash of the blogosphere posts, but there were plenty of them on all sides of the issue. I will, however, note that I staked my position out—these wine competitions are as valid as any other means of subjective wine evaluation.
Others like Tim at Winecast and Jim at Wine Enthusiasts’ wine blog gave very reasoned analysis on how these sorts of Double Gold anomalies might occur.
I’m going to throw out another theory and it has nothing to do with the palate fatigue, batch variation or potential incompetence of the judges.
Hear me out for a second as I get to my point.
First, if you look at the full results you’ll see that not only did Charles Shaw win, but a load of other grocery store wines were extremely well scored. To summarize a few of them, consider the following (to see the full results click here):
Double Gold (Score of 98) 2006 3 Blind Moose Pinot Grigio; $9.99
Double Gold (Score 98) 2004 Barefoot Cellars Reserve Merlot; $18.00
Double Gold (Score 98) 2005 Five Rivers Winery Cabernet Sauvignon; $9.99
Double Gold (Score 98) 2005 Hey Mambo Sultry Red; $10.99
Double Gold (Score 98) 2005 Napa Ridge Winery Sauvignon Blanc; $12.99
Not only did Charles Shaw Chard win a Double Gold, Franzia scored another coup when his Napa Ridge winery scored a Double Gold. And, there are a ton of examples of wines like Black Mountain (Trader Joe’s), Fetzer and Fish Eye winning golds, silvers, etc.
Ponder that for a second—any consumer in the country can pick up all five of the above listed Double Golds at a grocery store. No boutique wineries crafting small lots for a careful list of allocated wine customers; these are big brands with high production and massive national geographic distribution.
Simply put, the theories posited by others regarding the fallibility of the Charles Shaw win don’t hold water based on the baseline of other national brands also winning.
It may be useful to check out the judging criteria (Pages 11 -23 at this link).
The California State Fair wine competition judges wines over the course of three days—all judges are selected and thought to have a professional palate i.e. no hacks, please.
They employ the “Peterson Method.” The wines are brought to the judge’s table in flights of 25 to 50 wines, depending on the varietal and the number of wines entered. Four judges per panel will first smell a wine, and then arrange it into 3 categories according to each judge’s criteria. The judge then re-smells the wines in each category and places them in a “ranking” order. The wines are then tasted and rearranged again in a “ranking” order and awards are given.
In regards to scoring, judges are encouraged to give a plus or minus score to each wine aware (for example: a silver +). Each of the awards is given a numeric score for each of the four judges on a panel, added together, divided by the number of members of the panel and given a final numeric score.
If all judges on a panel decide to give a particular wine a gold medal, the wine will be elevated to Double Gold status.
So, here’s my theory on why grocery store wines are winning.
You know how in the Olympic gymnastic competitions from the 70s and early 80s, the eastern european gymnasts used to demonstrate little personality, military precision and technical perfection? And, they won gold medals.
I think this wine judging, in this format, with this number of entries is the same way. By having the criteria be blind-tasting/smell, categorize, smell, rank, taste, final rank the judging is set-up to reward technically perfect wines.
In my opinion, this judging style holds little regard for a wine that shows the slightest bit of immediate reticence or incorrigibility.
Who makes absolutely technically correct wines? Who ensures that the nose is present, that acids, tannins and fruit are harmonious, without being offensive? Big wine companies do. When you’re tasting blind, and you’re tasting a large quantity of wine, the winner is almost assuredly not going to be the wine with a big personality, a bright smile, a joie de vivre, nor a repressed past, but a hopeful future.
The winner is going to be the wine that is the least offensive. The winner will be the Russian gymnast. Technically perfect. Devoid of any emotion, an unblinking machine, but technically perfect.
To test this theory, I picked up a bottle of the Five Rivers Cabernet—the Double Gold medal winner. You know what? After just 10 minutes in the glass this was a very nice wine—much nicer than many Cabs. I’ve had at quadruple the price. It’s technically perfect. It’s not going to draw me into ponderous introspection, but then that’s not the point.
What is the point? What if Fred Franzia is right when he says that no wine is worth more than $10 a bottle?
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July 19 2007
It’s been a while since I posted here at Good Grape so I thought I would get back into action with a meaty topic I think a lot about in my day job as a wine marketer.
How has wine marketing changed in the era of consumer generated content?
At one end of the spectrum is the ground-breaking work by Hugh MacLeod harnessing the power of social media to reposition Stormhoek as a “social object.” You can check out Hugh’s account of his campaign by viewing a 25 minute video of a talk recorded at the PSFK Conference in London last month.
What is most interesting about Hugh’s story is how simply—and almost by accident—he implemented a global marketing campaign in a very fragmented and traditional industry. Like a lot of wine brands, Stormhoek is a volume play where critic’s scores, aggressive sales practices and shelf-talkers are the standard marketing approach. So what did Hugh and Company do? They engaged the blogosphere and started a global conversation about their brand. The result was more than doubling sales in less than 2 years for an investment of about £20,000 (approx. $41,000 USD).
The other end of the spectrum is where 99% of the wine industry is at the moment with their heads in the sand about the internet and little clue about social media. They live in fear someone uneducated consumer will bad mouth their wine on one of the new Wine 2.0 sites such as Cork’d. This level of spin control and anxiety is understandable given the subjective subject of wine tasting where a $2 Chardonnay could be judged superior to a $40 Chardonnay.
But I have three words of advice for winery owners - Join the conversation!
We have seen a few brave wineries start blogging and engage the growing wine blogosphere. Although the jury is still out on their efforts, I know wine has been sold and word of mouth has resulted in new customers.
Don’t have a tasting room? Use your blog to create a ”virtual porch.”
Have a limited marketing budget? Spend some time reading and responding to wine bloggers and they will say some good things about your wine and drive traffic to your blog.
The theme of this week’s Wine Industry Technology Symposium underscores the urgency of wineries adopting new online marketing strategies. My favorite quote was from wine podcast superstar Gary Vaynerchuk from Winelibrary.com who said in his talk to , “Embrace your website as your business.” Amen, brother; I hope a few wineries there got the message.
So the bottom line is that wineries who are not part of the social media conversation are doomed to let consumers determine their word of mouth. Like any online endeavor there are trolls but if you engage and extend the conversation you are more likely to encourage partisan customers to come to your aid. If you do nothing, you are likely to suffer in ”Google Hell” for some time.
All it takes is a bit of time and focus. The rest—like what Stormhoek has done—could be history.
Cheers,
--
Tim Elliott
Winecast
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July 18 2007
I finished reading The House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty, a book widely hailed by most reviewers as a an excellent, well-researched and gripping portrait of the vision that lead Robert Mondavi and his family in bringing the modern U.S. wine business to its place as a respected and equal member at the world wine table.
This is an excellent book and reads as a Greek tragedy where the mistakes of the past are destined to be repeated. I highly recommend it for any reader of this blog, interested in the Mondavi story, or simply interested in a rags-to-riches family saga set against the backdrop of the American wine industry.
A small cadre of reviewers have tried to discredit the book by asserting that the author had contempt for her subjects, that the entire premise of the book and the reason that the Mondavi winery was lost to Constellation is based on false pretenses and that the human foibles of the Mondavi family are juxtaposed in a way that is unflattering. But, on the whole, those reviews ring hollow when you consider the sheer amount of research that the author, Julia Flynn Siler, did for the book—almost 400 footnotes broken out by chapter, almost 90 interview subjects, encompassing thousands of hours, including principals from the Mondavi family on multiple occasions, and a bibliography of depth and repute.
Make no mistake, this is a well-researched book. In any analysis of a situation, the sum of our experiences impacts our perspective and it seems likely that this is as close to the objective truth as we’re going to get.
What this book is, and ultimately the likely source of the dissenting book review opinions, is a very human portrait of the family; detailed without muckraking. The author thoughtfully includes parts of the Mondavi human condition into the book to lift the veil on the family, and also bring some level of humanity to the story.
Though we see the family through a finely rendered personality filter, it is not a complete rendering of the human being, more impressionistic than finely detailed oil painting. In a story driven by family history and events, Siler does a fine job of not letting the characters get in the way of the story—giving us a glimpse into the broad character traits of the players in the book, however broad brushed they may ultimately be.
Robert Mondavi is the visionary, sometimes quick to criticize, he of unyieldingly high standards, the chief drum beater for the winery and one with an admiring eye for women, all women.
Margrit Biever, Mondavi’s second wife, is the worldly bon vivant who captured his heart, while creating questions in the family on her pureness of intention in pursuing Mondavi. Assertions are made that Bob’s philanthropic largesse was her attempt at wielding influence in the twilight of their years, after long being relegated to accepted sidekick, but not accepted family.
Michael Mondavi, Robert’s eldest son, loyal and chief aid in building the business since the 1960’s is cast, perhaps, the least fully and shown to be motivated by money and self-interest while making risky business decisions that were not fully thought through.
Timothy Mondavi, Robert’s youngest son, the winemaker, sensitive, emotional, mercurial and prone to capriciousness.
One of the morals of this story, aside from the lessons learned from the business, is the unblinking reality that working with family is tough and communication is even tougher—lots of letter writing and 6 month sabbaticals in the Mondavi family. And, as we near the end of the book, we see the fractured family from three generations, despite the circumstances that have driven them to different directions, still making an effort to unify, and come together, however limited that may be.
I see the Mondavi’s and this story of their life as one of redemption—Michael and Timothy both have new family projects and Robert Mondavi, in declining years, is still hailed as THE visionary for the modern wine industry. The wine industry to me is like the NBA—the NBA is good when a New York or Los Angeles team are doing well. Likewise, the wine industry is good when a Mondavi is leading the way. Greek tragedy? Perhaps, not. Maybe this is an Indian allegory with the Phoenix rising from the ashes and perhaps a second edition to this book will have the subtitle: The Rise, Fall and Rise Again of an American Wine Dynasty.
And, even if not, this excellent book casts considerable light and does little to sully the reputation of the wine industry’s First Family.
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July 17 2007
You read it here, first. One of the next emerging brands that will get a lot of wine industry press for their innovative marketing tactics just launched distribution in my backyard, as a part of a larger regional rollout. This beautiful wine comes from France via Minnesota with a decidedly different approach to the staid business of marketing wine.
Some background, in a previous life I was minding my own business looking through a pipeline report in a sales meeting when I saw a company name you don’t often run across—Electric Fetus.
Delicate laughs ensued.
It turns out that the Electric Fetus is a legendary record store in the Minneapolis area. Electric Fetus is
also the same record store where you can buy the new album from White Light Riot—a Minneapolis area band that released their first full record last month, Atomism.
Channeling a Led Zeppelin meets new millennium rock demigod histrionics, White Light Riot, is the band that is featured in the below YouTube video ad for Sacre Bleu wine, the new “template for a wine ad.”
Ironically, if given a choice of any way to spend a night out, I would, undoubtedly choose live music—the visceral experience, to me, provides me a jolt of energy and creativity. I think Sacre Bleu is onto to something here.
Sacre Bleu wine is a fantastic little wine company, tapping into a youthful zeitgeist. The brand owner, Galen Struwe, found my blog, when I referenced them as being a part of a documentary, focused on wine and Generation Y, that was featured at the recent Sonoma Film Festival. Another documentarian, B. Napa, released his short, called “Crush,” as a precursor to developing a full feature length documentary, sponsored by Don Sebastiani & Sons. A portion of Don Sebastiani & Sons product portfolio is carried by the Indianapolis Distributor, Crossroad Vintners. Crossroads is the same distributor that carries Twisted Oak. Folks in the wine blogosphere know Twisted Oak, for sure. Crossroads is also now carrying Sacre Bleu in Indiana.
It’s a small world. But, make no mistake, this isn’t your dads Châteauneuf-du-Pape—these are lush, fruit-driven wines meant to be enjoyed. If you’re looking for a wine brand that epitomizes this whole “Generation Y drinks imports” thing than look no further than these guys.
What Sacre Bleu and Galen are doing, from a marketing perspective, is cutting edge, for the wine business. They have found a market that is a ripe audience for their above-average quality product and they are communicating to their customer in a way that they want to receive information—myspace.com page included, and their almost 3000 friends.
And, on top of all that, the wine is good. I was able to sneak some samples from the Indiana distributor and I’ve tasted through the chard, merlot, pinot and cabernet with friends (saving both of the blends for me)—and they are all nice, high-quality, easy-drinking wines, the kind of wine I might want if I were out, enjoying some nightlife with friends, or live music.
With that, I’d like to give Sacre Bleu a hearty “Hoosier” welcome as they begin their launch in the Indiana market. We’re glad to have you! Now, I just have to find out when the next “Rock the Wine” event is in Indy. The Vogue, The Patio, Radio/Radio, Music Mill and several others are all great music venues. Or, check out Indianapolismusic.net.
I hope these venues have shatter resistant wine glasses--all the better for enjoying wines that are a 10 and music with the volume turned to 11.
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