champagne discount generic+trademarks heidi+barrett howell+mountain+cabernet lamborn+vineyards napa propaganda tasting tour wine wine+blog
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.
Posted in, Free Run: Field Notes From a Wine Life. Permalink | Comments (0) | Print |
July 15 2007
I had a dream that I opened a bottle of value wine from Trader Joe’s and out popped a Wine Genie, a “Trader Genie,” if you will. He offered to grant me 10 wishes, plus five additional wishes, if he liked my first wish, but only seven total could be wine related and all had to be related to the betterment of mankind. I jogged a quick note, told the genie that he was awfully particular and made my first wish:
Here’s what I asked for:
1) I wished that buying inexpensive wine from Trader Joe’s was more reliable and less crapshoot
My wish pleased the genie and three additional wishes were granted
2) I wished that all people would return their shopping carts to the return corral instead of leaving them free to catch a wind gust and bang into my car
3) I wished that the “green” movement would quickly move to trend and get out of “fad” territory while at the same time teaching people how to simply recycle before moving into discussions about carbon offsets.
4) I wished that budget hotels would stop installing granite surfaces
5) I wished that the whole “mixologist” and cocktail hype would come to a merciful end
6) I wished that Axl Rose, leader singer of Guns ‘n Roses would either finally release “Chinese Democracy” or just go away
7) I wished that I wouldn’t have to pay for $3 bottled water at the airport after being forced to first dump whatever liquid I had before entering through security
8) I wished that an “A” – list celebrity would raise the bar on star-related wine offerings
9) I wished that wine blogs would ascend in influence to the top of the online blogging pyramid
10) I wished that “fruit-bomb” would be stricken from every wine writer’s vocabulary.
11) I wished that my palate was as sharp as my wife, who is only marginally interested in wine (this does not benefit mankind, but the Wine Genie was still trying to get his head around “fruit-bomb” when I slid this in).
12) I wished that Indianapolis, IN had one ground-breaking food and wine institution on par with Berkeley’s Chez Panisse or Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant.
13) I wished that one medical researcher would combine ALL of the wine-related medical research and health benefits into one document, for easy publicity and marketing for the industry and saving people from tracking down 76 different press releases and research papers.
14) I wished that a wine marketer would then get smart, take that wine medical research and brand an adult wine-tasting party game of “Operation” with wine’s medical benefits
15) I wished that almost 40 years after the counter-cultural movement in the 1960s, we didn’t have history repeating itself in the new millennium
Posted in, Free Run: Field Notes From a Wine Life. Permalink | Comments (1) | Print |
July 10 2007
Two years ago, as a wedding gift to me, my wife gave me a gift certificate to a wine U-vint place in Indianapolis—it was something that we could do together and it was a show of support for her glancing concern for wine juxtaposed against my near mania. I thought the wine idea was a fun and thoughtful gift, and not inexpensive, either. The store in Indianapolis, Grape Inspirations (insert wordplay groan here), is a franchise from a Canadian operation called “Wine Not.” The gist is you taste through the wines that are available at a tasting bar, decide which one you prefer and then you participate in the “winemaking” process. I chose an Amarone, mostly because it was the most robust of the reds and unfortunately, in this situation, I drink a disproportionate amount of red to white. Here, as is the case with “real” wine the whites shine much better at this quality level.
The “winemaking” process is pretty simple since it comes from concentrate—you basically put it in a sterile container, sprinkle some yeast on it and then come back to bottle—the store personnel do all of the racking and any maintenance on the wine, including administering the oak chip soak bag.
It was a nice gift, but I was getting nervous. It produces four cases of wine and the wine, initially, was thin and, frankly, not all that great. When I say “not that great” what I really mean is I wouldn’t use it for a Coq Au Vin, either. They say to give it six months in the bottle. I waited six months and, again, it was thin and, frankly, not all that great. Meanwhile, while I didn’t mention anything to my wife, I continued to pull bottle, after bottle, after bottle of purchased wine for through-the-week consumption. I knew she was biting her tongue, and she knew she was biting her tongue, but I wasn’t owning up to the fact that the four cases of wine in the basement kind of sucked and I don’t like to waste my bottle chooses on something I wouldn’t really enjoy. I waited another year and, well, it was kind of thin, not offensive, but, frankly, not all that great.
My nervousness was reaching a nadir because this is not wine meant for the long haul. Three years is probably the top drinkable shelf life for this stuff. So, imagine my delight, when this past weekend, after two years, I pull a bottle and lo and behold this Amarone, while tasting more like a $12 house blend than a $50 Amarone, is now perfectly quaffable. It’s a pretty simple wine, nothing profound, but in terms of bringing through the week pleasure, it’s perfect.
I remarked to my wife that this wine was now drinking pretty well and I revealed my “secret” fear that I was going to have to make the wine disappear. She laughed, expressed similar concern and then gave her implicit approval that I could now make the wine disappear—properly—because I think I’m going to have to drink all of it in the next 6-9 months. Ah, such a burden. If anybody wants to try a bottle ask nicely and I’ll send you one to kick the tires on.
Posted in, Free Run: Field Notes From a Wine Life. Permalink | Comments (0) | Print |
July 9 2007
In the midst of all of this talk about wine ratings and review methodologies, I think it’s useful to re-visit and remember how simple wine is to make.
This helps keep me grounded, for sure.
I don’t think people try to be a wine elitist, but the knowledge to be proficient in the language of wine is forbidding enough that sometimes I think enthusiasts lose sight of the forest, for the trees—like the bad organic chemistry professor unable to communicate at a level that a wide-eyed student can understand.
I was reading one of my wife’s magazines, an arty D.I.Y. magazine called “Craft” and there’s an interesting article written by a bicyclist/adventurer, Alastair Bland, who spent seven weeks (and 2000 miles) bicycling throughout Greece.
Faced with a light load, and plentiful fruit stands in the summer of ’06, he did what any lover of vinous things would do, he made wine.
His seven steps to making fruit wine should be a moment of clarity for anybody (me included) who seeks to elevate wine to a throne of worship.
I’ve paraphrased and excerpted the article to just the net-net (the article, in the current issue, volume 3, isn’t online yet).
Step 1: Pick a half-gallon of berries (mulberries, blackberries, et al)
Step 2: Juice the berries using a clean sock to separate the juice from the pulp
Step 3: Move juice to a screw top container; like a Nalgene bottle for example, leaving room for fermentation
Step 4: Add yeast, specially bred wine yeasts work, as does bread yeast from a countryside baker
Step 5: Ferment, allowing for 7-10 days; at day 4 or 5 it will be spritzy, but drinkable; wait for the full fermentation to complete
Step 6: Decant from sediment; using clean sock if handy; pour back into a clean vessel
Step 7: Drink! Mulberry wine is a rustic, punchy, big-boned beverage, dominated by yeast aromas and lingering traces of berry. There is little tannic quality, making it surprisingly smooth. The alcohol runs at 8% by volume. Don’t expect a first-rate drink—this is travel wine. Enjoy it in the afternoon, but remember that it’s always 5 p.m. somewhere, and in Europe it doesn’t really matter anyway.
For other fun related crafting projects (for those crafty and/or their husband or wife) check out the Craft site—including the project to make stamps out of discarded corks.
I now stand fully re-calibrated on wine and ready to go back to normal programming, but I wonder if Russ from California Wine Hikes has this as a part of his program?
Posted in, Free Run: Field Notes From a Wine Life. Permalink | Comments (0) | Print |
July 2 2007
I did a post late last week for the Inertia Beverage Group blog that got caught in the middle of three or four other worthwhile posts. At the same time, I read the San Francisco Chronicle article online in which Chef Mario Batali rebukes irresponsible bloggers. The Yelp.com post I did for my employ and the nature of blogging and online conversations, vis a vis the Batali rant, kind of go hand in hand, so I’m doing pretty much a full cross-post here of my post from last week. I’ve annotated and edited the entry that was previously meant for wineries, for relevance here.
There are some intractable truths in life:
1) Mario Batali is the only Food Network chef with still intact day-to-day in the restaurant cooking chops
2) Word of mouth marketing can drive business (or a restaurant)
3) If an article is published in USA Today, you can be certain that the topic of the article has reached a critical mass
So it was a couple of weeks ago when I read an article in the June 13th issue of the USA Today that highlighted the online user review site Yelp.com. Last week, I read this tasty nugget from a blog post Chef Mario Batali wrote on the restaurant blog site Eater. Batali says, in part:
blogs live by different rules. Many of the anonymous authors who vent on blogs rant their snarky vituperatives from behind the smoky curtain of the web. This allows them a peculiar and nasty vocabulary that seems to be taken as truth by virtue of the fact that it has been printed somewhere.
This is germane because of a new user-generated review site called Yelp.com.
Yelp is bringing the Amazon.com concept of user-generated reviews to the local business market. Now, Bob’s Dry Cleaning, Joe’s Auto Repair, a restaurant or a tasting room can be exhorted or skewered for everybody to see in a democratizing populist kind of way.
According to the article, “Yelpers” as the users are known, have written more than 1 million reviews since the site launched in 2004. And, more importantly, 500,000 reviews have been written in the past four months—indicating critical mass.
In addition, according to the article, the Yelp’s audience has grown 124% from May to May, according to Nielsen/NetRatings and monthly visitors have increased to over 1M
I did a quick search on the traffic rankings at http://www.alexa.com and Yelp is the 1,777 highest-trafficked web site on the web. This is encroaching elite site status.
Not sure what to expect, I went to Yelp.com to do a search on “wine” for Napa, Healdsburg, and Paso Robles, CA.
You better believe that people are talking about restaurants and winery tasting rooms, their visit and their experience at Yelp.com—many, many people are doing so.
Just as most if not all of the readers of this blog who have purchased a book from Amazon.com have been dissuaded from purchasing a book that got a lousy consumer review, so too are people reading Yelp before they plan their dining excursions or their tasting trip to Napa Valley, Sonoma or the Central Coast.
I won’t name names, but your own search will yield some of the same reviews that I saw regarding winery tasting rooms. Just for reference I checked New York, NY and Batali’s lead restaurant, Babbo, where the restaurant received 4.5 out of 5 stars in aggregate.
Overall, I think Batali might be over-reacting. Online word of mouth is the same as regular word of mouth, except you can now be privy to it—kind of the way Simon Cowell gives the medicine straight, with no chaser on American Idol. Most everybody has a tender sensibility in some form.
For a completely different take on Batali trying to cut-out an online disintermediation play, read this current Business 2.0 article.
What do you think about user-generated reviews? Do they influence your decision-making? Would they stop you going from a winery tasting room, a restaurant?
Posted in, Free Run: Field Notes From a Wine Life. Permalink | Comments (1) | Print |
Enter your email address for a monthly summary of posts, additional news and information available only to email subscribers. Your email is never rented, nor sold to anybody else!
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5 License.
Design by The Blog Studio
