Rolling the Dice on the Growing Populariy of Wine
7-Eleven is going into the wine business.
The around-the-world venture began in earnest this year with a series of video conferences followed by multiple trips to California’s wine country. Leveraging its sheer scale and sourcing capabilities, 7-Eleven approached The Wine Group, the world’s third-largest wine producer, with the mission to craft two quality, affordably priced varietal wines.
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“The development and production of Yosemite Road wines was a global team effort and is just the beginning,” said Kevin Elliott, 7-Eleven senior vice president of merchandising and logistics. “By using our collective purchasing power to negotiate product exclusivity and pricing, we can meet customer demand for quality and value, as well as differentiate our brand from the competition.”
The Cabernet and Chardonnay will sell for $3.99.
It’s easy to be snotty about mass market deals like this, but there’s a lot of upside in this for the wine business. With the glut of good grapes in California right now, deals like this could produce solid value wines, the low price and easy availability could help convert beer drinkers to wine drinkers, and the opening of new markets can help grape growers under economic pressure stay in business.
November 5th, 2009 at 10:06 AM
I’ve read several articles about this but didn’t think about it the same way… maybe my ideal bottle of wine isn’t so far off after all. Perhaps it can be found at 7-Eleven. Here’s my criteria:
- Very inexpensive (check)
- Easily found (check)
- Tastes great (????)
I’ll have to try this but I am thinking that my hopes and dreams of finding the ideal bottle of wine is not going to be fulfilled….
Cheers!
November 5th, 2009 at 10:13 AM
I’m not sure “ideal bottle of wine” is the right metric. “Good wine at a good price” is probably more accurate.