Good Grape Wine Company

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You never know who you’ll bump into on the Internet.  A couple of weeks ago I was on the forum at the Wine Lovers Page (.com) and responded to several posts from a guy named Bob Ross and another gentleman named Thomas Pellechia. Thomas Pellechia?  Where have I heard that name?  Then I looked to my right, adjacent to my desk, on the floor in a neat pile and saw the book that I had set aside to review over the holidays—Wine:  The 8,000 Year-Old Story of the Wine Trade by Thomas Pellechia. Pellechia and I have since communicated via email and he demonstrates a tremendous understanding of the wine world based on his experience in every link of the value chain. More notable than that brief aside is his newly launched blog called VinoFictions, launched this month.  Thomas strikes me as the kind of guy that calls a spade a spade and his mission statement backs up the intention of his blog: Our Mission Statement: to bring truth to wine. You know the game called telephone: a comment starts at one end of a group and is whispered to members of the group, one person at a time. By the time it makes it to the last person in the group, the comment bears little resemblance to the original. A lot of information about wine is passed along like this. Plus, a lot of marketing manipulation is passed along as information. The aim of this blog is to set the record straight. I have little doubt that Thomas will set the record straight.  And, if he doesn’t, perhaps his compadre, Bob Ross, will.  Bob is going to contribute to the blog in the form of a peer review, like academics that vet each others work.  This is Siskel and Ebert approach, I suspect, is a good blog idea whose time has come. I’m going to like reading Thomas as he’s already taking people to task … ~~~~~~~~ Over at Winecast.net, Tim is taking the lead as organizer for the Wine 2.0 movement—which is sorely necessary.  I’m not sure I would want to call the online movement in the wine community Wine 2.0 because that begs to become passé, but the rush of new businesses online cannot be confused with anything but opportunity.  I firmly believe that wine on the Internet today is the equivalent of books on the Internet in 1996.  Green pastures and blue skies in terms of online sales, but who will become the Amazon?  Though I attended the Wine 2.0 event in San Francisco in November, that event struck me as not being nearly geeky enough to be interesting.  While Tim isn’t a geek, he does bring the right mix of skills to being an online ringleader—notably he’s a marketer with technical chops—two characteristics that are sometimes in conflict with each other.  Tim has written a Wine 2.0 “Mini Manifesto” after taking his inspirational cue from Hugh at Gapingvoid.com.  Hugh’s blog, while not in my everyday reading line-up, dances on the edge of being brilliant.  In my book, “genius” is reserved for a very select group of people—Frank Sinatra, and Michael Jordan come to mind.  The next notch down is being regarded as “brilliant” and Hugh continues to write stuff that gives me pause. Since it’s the holiday season, I am reminded that I once asked for and received a book by Matt Drudge of the Drudge Report, so I should more carefully choose my words about relative brilliance, but live by the sword, die by the sword, I guess. ~~~~~~~~ Speaking of choosing our words carefully, I have openly fawned about Don Sebastiani and Sons—their wines are good values at their price point and their marketing is clever, but no longer do I take in everything at face value. There’s an article in the December issue of Wine Business Monthly called:  The Sebastiani Perspective on Global Sourcing that floats out a couple of dunder head quotes.  The one that gets me is a quote attributed to August, the youngest son of Don.  He says, in response to the question of “How are Young People Different Today?” “A lot of it started with Two Buck Chuck.  Instead of going down with $20 and picking up a 12-pack of beer, my college friends were buying a 12-pack of wine instead.  Then you get out of college, get a job, have a little more money, and figure, if I spend $4 or $5 on a bottle of wine instead of $2, look at how much better the wine is.  That was the evolution within my circle of friends.  I spoiled them plenty, and would go home for weekends and bring stuff back.  But I really think Two-Buck Chuck is to thank for a lot of it.” Out of the mouths of babes … way too simple to say that Two-Buck Chuck started the tsunami of wine consumption amongst Generation Y.  Having a Trader Joe’s in his college town may be his reality, but that’s just simply not so for the rest of the country.  Atlanta, GA just got their first T-J’s this year.  It may play like that in the Pac 10, but I guarantee you it doesn’t hold water in Big Ten, SEC, ACC, or Big East country. Equally simple, I think the cocktail culture has as much to do with it—not everybody drinks liquor and if you’re a student and you want something in a glass what else are you going to drink?  It’s probably not a beer, more likely a glass of wine and sometimes trends can’t be summed up and defined ... they just happen ... that’s what the Internet is all about anyways ... One under-reported aspect of Sebastiani’ future plans, despite the article’s headline in Wine Business Monthly, is the fact that they are joining Alice White wines in turning to global sourcing; that may turn out to be more nefarious than a naïve answer in response to how people in their twenties are approaching wine. ~~~~~~~~ I ran across a new music-oriented service that could have cross-over business model implications for small wineries. With viral markets, the wisdom of crowds and other user-owned models, Sellaband.com is brokering the opportunity for fans to pay a $10 ante and buy a share in an unsigned band.  When a band signs up 5000 fans and has $50,000 they record a CD which every shareholder receives for free.  Additional profits can be paid out to the fan base via album sales, ad revenue, et al The wine industry has cooperative arrangements with a bunch of winemakers as in the A-Z Wineworks in Oregon, but I don’t think there’s truly a concept where the winery is owned by the people.  It might be an interesting concept.  I’m good for $100. Part III of News, Notes and Dusty Bottle Items coming in the next day or so … http://www.goodgrape.com/index.php/337/