Good Grape Wine Company

June 26 2006

Appellation America Gets It …

I received word from communication folks representing Appellation America that their wine reviews will now be in a "recommendation" format that provides background and context to the wine they are discussing.  The email explained:

EACH WINE TELLS A STORY
“We believe that there is a compelling story in every good wine,” explains Appellation America Managing Editor Adam Dial. “Our writers seek to build their assessment around that story for enhanced and lasting consumer interest.”

Appellation America wine reviews are not carried out by collective panelists, but by individual, experienced wine writers, whom readers can judge separately and determine if they are the reviewer for them and their tastes. This personal, rather than panelist, approach to reviewing and recommending wine is designed to bring transparency to the wine review process.

CONTEXT AND TERROIR TRUMP SCORES AND RATINGS
“Appellation America’s wine reviews are designed to go beyond the brief description + cryptic score approach often carried out anonymously,” says Dial. “We live in an age of consumer access combined with transparency and believe wine reviews should be brought into this new world.”

Let me be one of the first to offer up a hearty and congratulatory, "BRAVO!" 

This is absolutely spot-on.  These guys seem to get it.

And, on some level I feel a sense of validation because I’ve written an entire business plan that called for wine retail around this very concept.  I took it a step further and called for wine stocking not by varietal, but by winery with extensive point-of-purchase materials that  explained the story of the winery via a narrative controlled at retail and not by the distributor or winery.  And, in my plan, I was planning on doing this all within the framework of a strong retail branding effort to maintain consistency on look and feel.

Alas, the plan remains just a plan, but AA’s approach, in my opinion, is market timing that should offer a compelling point of interest for consumers.

Consider that:

1)  Blog posts are proliferating at an exponential rate with a velocity so intense that measurement is very difficult ... and ... blogs are mostly written in the first person narrative style ... i.e. ... conversational--a story from one person to another.  And, in fact, many notable bloggers write wine reviews in this manner--Alder at Vinography notable as one example.  I noted as much in a recent post that can be found here and I took my own crack at it here.

2)   Word of Mouth or "viral" is the new way to market, and in the absence of that, tell a story in a genuine, trusted way ... or, as Appellation America says, in a "transparent" fashion.

3)  People buy wine either based on recall or at the point of sale  and anything that can increase recall will aid sales

4)  Wine ratings haven’t evolved in any meaningful way in at least 20 years.

The one thing they are missing, though, is some sort of metrics on the actual mechanics of the wine--legs, nose, body, clarity, etc.  Because they are focused on appellations, it can be assumed that their audience is savvy, or at the least they’re not dumbing down to their audience, so a visual using some sort of dashboarding graphic might be appreciated and interesting.  Though, I plan on doing this on v2 of the Good Grape web site, so perhaps I can offer it up as an idea ... I’ve been meaning to inquire about that Ohio River Valley appellation assignment for AA.

Long story short, congrats to these guys because they are doing an exceptional job at delivering either one of two things:  1)  What the public wants or 2)  What I think is a good idea. 

The former will pay their bills a lot better than the latter, though. 

Continued best wishes on successful growth to Appellation America.

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