When Conventional Wisdom Goes Wrong
March 15th, 2010 by Tom Johnson
U.S. wine exports were down 9.5% in value last year, according to The Wine Institute, but almost 15% by volume. Does that mean that more expensive wines did better than less expensive wines? Is this not the opposite of what everyone believes is happening in the world wine market?
Last year, the U.S. exported 418 million liters of wine at an average price of $2.18 a liter. In 2008, the U.S. exported 491 million liters at an average price of $2.05. That’s an average price increase, by my calculation, of almost 9%, indicating that people — at least overseas — may be drinking less, better wine, rather than more, cheaper wine.
Asked about the apparent difference between their statistics and conventional wisdom, Wine Institute Communications Manager Gladys Horiuchi did her own math and came up with a 6% increase. (She’s right, by the way. But still.) She also noted that individual markets were higher or lower depending on all kinds of variables, including exchange rates.
“This is not,” she wrote, “a simple question.”
Which is true, but I’m not about to let a little thing like that keep me from reaching a simple conclusion.
In other news news gleaned from the same press release, while exports to Europe were down 21% overall, there were two eye-catching bright spots:
- Sales of American wine in Norway were up 65%, from, like, 12 bottles to 19, or something like that.
- The victory march of White Zinfandel in Great Britain continues, a boom based on what The Wine Institute calls “the consumer’s affection for the Golden State and our wines and lifestyle imagery.”
British Millenials clearly want to drink White Zin just like everyone in California. Do you think it would help if we told the Brits that White Zin is also very popular in Kentucky? (Compare for yourself: California lifestyle imagery here. Kentucky lifestyle imagery here.)
The Wine Institute’s press release and attached statistics can be found here.
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Another Piece of the Boxed Wine Puzzle
March 15th, 2010 by Tom Johnson
As my regular reader knows, I’m an advocate of alternative wine packaging. In particular, I’d like to see better boxed wine. In fact, I’d like to see expensive boxed wine and believe that the logistical challenges will be overcome. All that stands between me and my Brave New World of Caymus-on-tap is vision and a marketing breakthrough.
In a couple of weeks, Underdog Wine Merchants is going to introduce the Octavin Home Wine Bar. It’s a tall, eight-sided bag-in-box “cask” that a company publicist (always a trustworthy source) says will “take this growing part of the market to a whole new level.” Standard puffery? Perhaps. But the shape of the box isn’t the only thing different about Octavin. The strategy Underdog has in place for Octavin just might be a big step forward in the battle for high-quality wine in boxes.
Underdog is a subsidiary of The Wine Group, the world’s largest seller of boxed wine, mostly under the Franzia label. Underdog’s mission is marketing to Millenials, whose lack of brand loyalty and random purchasing habits have wine marketers bumfuzzled. They’re trying all kinds of stuff to get Millenials to behave the way wine buyers have behaved for the last 25 years, and not having a lot of luck.
One of the things marketers are trying is alternative packaging. The theory is that Millenials will adopt casual packaging as a kind of rebellion against their stodgy, dining-room-table-bound parents. Millenials, marketers agree, are more likely to be swayed by the value/convenience/environmental appeal of wine in something other than heavy bottles, and less likely to associate non-traditional packaging with inferior quality.
“The Millennial consumer is putting that idea in the rear-view mirror,” emails Patricia Schneider, hired by Underdog to handle publicity for the launch. “They are seeking high quality wine in the best package possible.”
Apparently to differentiate Octavin from other boxed wine, Underdog is departing wine industry orthodoxy and building its boxed wine product line based on the strength of existing bottle brands. Of the six wines that Underdog will release in Octavin, three are also available in bottle: Pinot Evil Pinot Noir, Silver Birch Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc and the star of the show, Big House Red, which Underdog bought from Bonny Doon in 2006.
To date, wine marketers have been hesitant to gamble brand equity by moving bottle wines into boxes, since boxes have been see as inherently downscale. As one winery operator told me recently, “No one is going to do that to a decent brand.”
That’s the great leap Underdog is taking, and if it works watch for others to follow.
Granted, Underdog is risking $10 brands, and the world won’t really change until someone is brave enough to box a $20 or $30 estate-bottled wine. But selling an established brand side-by-side in bottle and box is a gutsy move. The logic, clearly, is that the bottle legitimizes the box in a way that creating a new box wine brand wouldn’t.
Whether the brand is suddenly and irrevocably debased once boxed is one of the things the Octavin line will test. The box won’t be the only factor in the wine’s success or failure, of course, but people with an interest in alternative packaging should pay attention.
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Counterfeit Bollinger
March 14th, 2010 by Tom Johnson
Because Champagne just doesn’t have enough problems.
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So Tell Me: What’s the Worst Wine Advice You Ever Got?
March 14th, 2010 by Tom Johnson
My wife’s college roommate, after hearing that I was “into wine,” suggested that I sample some “pink catawaba.” That’s how she pronounced it: catawaba. That was probably the worst wine advice I ever got.
Palate Press publisher David Honig has singled out this posting as “the worst wine advice on a wine blog, EVER!”
For the fish, I suppose a White Zinfandel would be just fine OR a Cabernet Blanc or a Chardonet.
My first instinct on stuff like this is to disagree, since time is infinite and “worst ever” is a pretty tough standard to meet. I mean, you’d think almost no matter how terrible the advice might be that someone, sometime gave some that was worse.
The thing that sets Honig off about the above is the inclusion of White Zinfandel in any consideration of what wine order at a restaurant. The suggestion of White Zin is, on closer examination, the least of the advice’s problems. After all, White Zin is entry level wine, and everyone gets into wine via regrettable affinities. Not as regrettable, usually, as “pink catawaba,” but regrettable nonetheless. There is a police report somewhere in my distant past that forever attaches me to “Giocobazzi Lambrusco Red Table Wine.” I’m guessing even Honig went through a period where he tucked a bottle of Lancer’s into his picnic basket.
That said, the badness of Honig’s “worst ever” candidate goes deeper than just White Zin.
First, there is the reference to Cabernet Blanc. Go into just about any restaurant in the world and order a Cabernet Blanc and enjoy the funny expression the server makes as he or she searches for a polite response. It will be the same face I made when, working as bartender in college, a frat boy stepped up and ordered a Scotch and tonic. (I didn’t have to find a polite response; it wasn’t that kind of place. I had the bouncers toss him out on the street.) Cab Blanc, like Scotch and tonic, technically exists. It’s Cab-based rosé. I ran across some at a Virginia winery a couple of years ago and haven’t seen it since, though I admittedly don’t spend a lot of time search the rosé racks. Still, I think advising someone to go into a restaurant and ask for it by name is…well, it’s terrible advice.
Then there’s the reference to “Chardonet.” Somewhere in the back of my mind I’m thinking there’s a hybrid grape called Chardonet, but after searching a couple of 20-pound wine encyclopedias and leafing through five pages of Google references I can’t find any evidence of it. Instead, ”Chardonet” appears to be a misspelling of Chardonnay. Either way, “Chardonet, garçon” is (assuming you pronounce it “chardonnette”) another request that’s likely to render your server dumbstruck — or, depending on the nature of the establishment, get your pretentious ass thrown out on the street. So telling someone to order it might not just be bad advice, it might be legally actionable if the result is bodily harm to the reader.
So I guess I’ve got support Honig’s nomination of this as the worst wine advice given on a wine blog, and maybe the worst ever given, since the advice is basically to go to restaurants and order wines that do not exist.
Anyone ever get worse advice than that?
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Adulterated Wine: The Documentary
March 13th, 2010 by Tom Johnson
The British documentary series Dispatches looks at adulterated wine. It’s 47 minutes long and Channel 4 producer/reporter Jane Moore gets a little huffy about things that aren’t really all that consequential. I, personally, don’t get all that cranked up about oak chips, for example. On the other hand, by the time she gets to the trash-strewn soils of Champagne it’s clear that she’s really onto something and that the wine industry’s opposition to disclosure of ingredients is indefensible.
You can watch it here or go here and download it to your iPod.
I know, I know. It’s a little more than a year old, but I never saw it before and its really good.
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Yet Another Ground-Breaking Wine Experience You’re Not Allowed to Have in Kentucky
March 12th, 2010 by Tom Johnson
The Rhone Rangers are sponsoring a Grenache tasting March 27 from 2:45 – 4 PM Pacific Time. There are two ways to participate in the event:
- You can go to the tasting, which will be held in the Ft. Mason Center in San Francisco.
- You can tune into the tasting via the web, listening as the wine makers discuss their approach to wine making, sipping along using 2-ounce wine samples you can buy in advance and have shipped to you.
Unless, of course, you live in Kentucky. Here, participants in this event risk monetary fine and jail time, since shipping even tiny amounts of wine into the Commonwealth is a felony, unless you’re a licensed distributor of the sort that makes regular and generous campaign contributions.
UPDATE: A regular reader notes that samples can be shipped to Indiana, which is about 400 yards away across the Ohio River. You could — I’m being entirely theoretical here — have your wine shipped to a friend on the other side. A quick check of Google Maps confirms that there are bridges across the river at regular intervals. Choose an apprpriate bridge depending on whether you’re driving a car or a train.
Don’t forget: Kentucky law requires that you pay sales tax on items purchased out of state. Called the Kentucky Consumer Use Tax, you can pick up form 51A113(O) here.
Posted in Events, Regulation | Comments (0)
Are the Chinese Taking Over the World?
March 12th, 2010 by Tom Johnson
The Telegraph reports that China has become the largest non-European importer of Bordeaux wines. They have, specifically, passed the United States as a consumer of Robert Parker’s favorite wines.
Mon Dieu! Est-ce la fin?
You mean we’re not still number one? Or even number two? But Number three? In fact, if you count France itself, we’re number four. Chant that at the Olympics and see how it feels.
Do I need to spell it out for you? Do you get the picture? Are you prepared? Have you stockpiled gold and ordered non-hybrid survival seeds so you can make it through the collapse of the United States as a relevant economic and geopolitical entity?
Yeah, well: looking deeper into the data indicates maybe this development isn’t all that threatening. The Chinese, fat with profits from the manufacture of lead paint and discount underthings, certainly have a lot of cash to spend on Petrus and Coke. It’s also apparent that United States, doomed though we may be to economic collapse and a return to the Bronze Age, is not entirely on the Two Buck Chuck bandwagon.
China bought the equivalent of 18.25 million bottles of Bordeaux for $102 million, a per-bottle cost of $5.60. Americans bought about 15.5 million bottles at a total cost of $191 million, which translates to $12.30 per bottle. The Chinese, in other words, are drinking a little bit more of a lot cheaper French wine than we are.
One of the reasons for that is surely domestic wine production. In 2006, the last year for which I could find statistics (pdf), the United States produced 23.5 million hectoliters of wine, or just over 7 liters per American, which worked out to just about exactly how much wine Americans consume (pdf). The Chinese, on the other hand, produced 11.8 million hectoliters of wine, or just under 1 liter per person, while consuming 1.2 liters per person. The Chinese need to import more day-to-day French wine, while the United States produces plenty of regular stuff and tends to import more of the kind of wine that one uses to impress the boss or maybe get the wife into that Christmas present that’s never been out of the Victoria’s Secret box.
So, as you can see, it’s not all Petrus and Coke for them, and it’s not all poverty and humiliation for us.
Posted in Data | Comments (1)
My Favorite Wine Article in a Long Time
March 11th, 2010 by Tom Johnson
W. Blake Gray at the Los Angeles Times has written a spectacular article about Zinfandel field blends.
Joel Peterson and his son Morgan Twain-Peterson own one such vineyard, called Bedrock. Twain-Peterson, currently writing his Master of Wine dissertation on field blends, calls it one of the four greatest old vineyards in Sonoma Valley, along with Monte Rosso, Old Hill Ranch and Pagani Ranch.
Those vineyards are the source of some great wines: Ridge “Pagani Ranch” and Ravenswood “Old Hill” are two of my favorite Zin-based wines because of their complexity. But Bedrock has the most interesting history.
It was originally planted in 1854 by William Tecumseh Sherman and Joe Hooker, who would become better known in the next decade as Civil War generals. After the root louse phylloxera treated the grapevines like Sherman treated the South, in 1888 the vineyard was replanted by George Hearst, father of media mogul William Randolph Hearst.
It’s a really terrific article. Read it all.
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I’m Not Sure What She’s Saying, but I Love the Way She Says It
March 10th, 2010 by Tom Johnson
From Genevelyn Steele Swallows:
Lap up this hard and hairy monster with something soft and simple and fried–eggplant Parmesan, immersed in good olive oil and glistening with melted mozzarella, a faint fairy dusting of cheese crystals and a pair of white cotton underwear, lodged in the backseat for sopping.
Posted in From the Web | Comments (1)
In Which I Stop Before I Make a Complete Boob Out of Myself
March 10th, 2010 by Tom Johnson
Joe over at 1 Wine Dude is confused by large-format bottle names and wants suggestions about new naming conventions. After I crack wise in comments, other commentors with better reading comprehension skills come along and answer the question Joe actually asked, suggesting the use of, for example, Star Trek names.
That gives me the idea of naming bottles after actresses. Google proves conclusively that you can find anything on the web, at which point I lose interest in the project because it’s immature even by my low standards.
But I think Joe’s readers will probably make it funny, so read the comments.
Posted in Good Stuff | Comments (2)