Written by Rob McMillan, using plain language that is artfully juxtaposed against a pop culture reference point, he typically nails not only his predictions for what is around the corner, but he puts current events into a context that leads to “a-ha” moments.

McMillan has clarity of thought that is refreshing.  I find that he synthesizes information in a way that I “feel,” but can’t quite articulate or substantiate.

As a precursor to the full 2010 report released in late spring of ’10, McMillan has published short-form guidance for 2010 at this link.

True to form, it’s a good read.

This past summer, I wrote a couple of posts about what I sensed as intractable shifts in the view of luxury-priced wine.  I used a book called Reset as a backdrop for the posts; the book by Kurt Andersen optimistically describes our current hardship with hopefulness, not in the sense that we will return to the old ways of living, but, triumphantly, we will not do so, learning from the lessons of our near-term past.

In the post(s) I suggested that luxury wine and the attendant pricing needs to be radically adjusted to current reality, not only for what people are buying but what the sensibility for spending money will be in the future. In response, I received numerous comments from industry-related folks that essentially said, “People will return to their old ways of buying luxury goods, they always have, they always will.”

Yes, of course, that is a true statement.  But, “when” is a better question because it doesn’t look like it will be for several years, or in the previous form.

Mind you, I live in a suburb of Indianapolis, IN.  That’s the filter I view things through.  No offense to Northern California, or the East Coast, but both are a bubble in relative affluence, wine culture and politics.  Indy is affectionately known as the “Crossroads of America.”  What the geography lacks in true wine culture, it makes up for in temperature readings of our culture at-large.

As an example, the lease to my car is coming up in a couple of weeks.  In a previous era, I would have been pushing to get a new lease, a better car, something in the “near-luxury” category that I felt denoted how I perceived myself and my place in society.  What am I doing instead?  I’m going to buy the car out of the lease and drive it until the wheels drop-off.  Why?  It’s because a “functional” and “affordable” car have become more important to me than a status marker.

I think I’m in good consumer company, too.

What the “Crossroads of America” have told me, as an abstract set of tea leaves, if you will, is that the days of buying a $65 dollar wine Pinot just because you can are as distant of a memory as meeting your wife at the arriving gate at the airport, or driving an Acura because it speaks to a self-concept.

Two very salient quotes from McMillan’s report include,

“Defining a new normal is more prudent than waiting for the old normal.”

“When will the market return to normal?”  The real answer is not very soon.”

The report concludes by noting,

“We do believe we are in the midst of a price reset in fine wine that will lower the wannabe cult wine prices and collapse brands into narrower price bands below $50.”

It’s an interesting set of points.  As an aside, somebody should take note of the price bands quote because price segmentation above $25 hasn’t yet been stratified into consumer categories.

In a nutshell, similar to post-9/11, what was previously accepted as “normal” has changed.  Just as our airport routines are radically different, so too are our consumer patterns, particularly around wine.

One thing is certain, if I were a luxury wine producer, I would completely rethink my go-to-market planning around a new structure of consumer categorization.

Acting as a complement to the Silicon Valley Bank research is recent consumer research that goes to the core of this “new normal,” defining new consumer segmentation.

In the study, entitled “Marketing to the Post-Recession Consumers” by Decitica, they state, “This research decisively shows that marketers need a fresh lens through which to view consumers in the post-recession world …”

The abstract of the summary notes:

Experts posit that the household deleveraging process is far from complete. Adjustment of household balance sheets, which had begun in earnest in the thick of the recession, continues apace with nary a sign of ending anytime soon.

This study goes beyond superficial measures of consumer sentiment.  …this research not only concludes that the recession has caused a profound, deep-rooted change in consumers’ spending habits but also that there are four distinct consumer segments emerging from the recession.

The report goes on to highlight four consumer categories:

• Steadfast Frugalists
• Involuntary Penny-Pinchers
• Pragmatic Spenders
• Apathetic Materialists

At this point, it’s a manifest reality that our “normal” is a fresh coat of paint over a near-term past, both from an industry perspective looking at consumers and consumers looking at producers.

Where the rubber meets the road is what happens now.  Rob McMillan used the movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life” as the pop culture context for his report.  The key for boutique wineries with luxury pricing is to figure out how to tap into that “wonderful life” in a way that is sustainable for both them and the consumers that buy from them.

With McMillan’s words echoing in my ears, ““Defining a new normal is more prudent than waiting for the old normal.” 

I hope producers take his advice.

Additional Reading

More Wine Unsold During Economic Slump

Post-it Note Image Credit

Marketing effort, that is.

Yes, agencies that do wine PR and marketing, mostly those doing large umbrella campaign work for country or varietal associations, might be the under-acknowledged heroes in the wine industry, bringing new varietals to light via a focused effort on creating mindshare.

In the past, I have naively noted that country association advertising in wine glossies was a waste of money.  Ah, the precociousness of youth.  What I didn’t know at the time (but now realize) is that wine country association advertising is a part of a multi-pronged marketing plan aimed at the hearts and minds of wine influencer’s and consumers and it is primarily driven by PR and marketing pros.  Instead of “Making the Muse,” I could have just as easily called this post, “Battleground U.S.”

Seemingly, everybody is ramping up their marketing efforts in the states.  Not that this is a bad thing, quite the opposite.  Wine marketing people are increasingly acting as the tastemakers for the future.  And, with wine quality being uniformly superb around the world, it’s a benefit that forward-thinking wine countries and the professionals that they work with bring under-acknowledged wines to the forefront.

By way of context, it was with interest that I recently found out that color trends for our fashion is governed by a group called the Color Marketing Group (CMG) based in Alexandria, Virginia.  A non-profit consortium of color experts, CMG forecasts direction in the form of their Color Directions® guidance document nineteen months in advance for all industries, manufactured products and services. 

Based on these color forecasts, the Color Management Group members “translate” that information into salable colors for manufactured products in all industries.

So, if you’re wearing a lavender shirt and painting your bedroom robin’s egg blue in the spring of 2011, you now know who to thank.

Trends management, related to wine, is interesting to me because it used to be that in the wine world Sommeliers were the trendsetters; the Color Management group as it were.  Gravitating to and latching on to quirkiness and neglected varietals, the unspoken secret society of Sommeliers built a varietal over a period of years, wine list after wine list.  Gruner Veltliner and Condrieu are two notable examples from the last decade that spring to mind.  Condrieu is interesting to note because acreage under vine for Vigonier, the primary grape grown in the Condrieu AOC, has increased in the U.S. over the last decade, but mindshare has remained flat—mostly because of a lack of unified varietal marketing, in my opinion.

However, this trendsetting is no longer a monastic pursuit, at least not in the singular sense.  Sommeliers have help and their influence is being buttressed by the online wine scene.  In a hyper-connected world, where the stakes are high, it seems as if mindshare for varietals is developing in 12 and 24-month campaigns at a level more organized than “organic growth,” making the “tipping point” something that can be managed.

Take Wines of Chile for example.  What will we be drinking in the next couple of years, a newly omnipresent varietal that will enter our wine vocabulary like Malbec and Albarino before it?  Carmenere.

With a plum piece written in Saveur magazine by David Rosengarten, the trickledown effect from Wines of Chile and their marketing firm RFBinder is already happening.

According to Atalanta Rafferty from RFBinder, the agency responsible for two large Wines of Chile online wine tastings this year:

“Over the past couple of years, we have focused on changing the perception of Chilean wines (to make) them a player in the above $10 wines (category).”

We see the ‘Discover Carmenere’ online wine tasting (as) an example of how we worked to educate the media about the quality and diversity of Chile by highlighting a key varietal and the different wine regions of Chile.  We have also included top sommeliers in our education program conducting a Carmenere seminar with winemakers as (a) part of our annual Grand Tasting.”

Rafferty noted that Chilean wines have gained popularity and awareness (read:  mindshare and marketshare) over the last several years leading to an increase in market penetration from 8% in ’06 to 10% in ’09.

Said Rafferty, “Wines of Chile also defines success in the way journalists, bloggers and top sommeliers are talking about Carmenere.  Consumer and trade publications have published features on Carmenere and other Chilean varietals – like David Rosengarten’s story on Carmenere in Saveur this month.

Looking forward, Wines of Chile plans to continue to promote Carmenere as one of Chile’s signature (varieties).”

Rob Bralow, a PR rep. for Gregory White PR, the firm who manages Chilean winery Vina Carmen noted, “These regional programs are great, they give a sense of unification to a region, a single message for the consumer to digest.”

This is all very savvy marketing.  As a wine enthusiast (and alpha consumer), I have patterns of buying behavior that I move in and out of, and Carmenere wasn’t a part of that program a year ago.  However, now, understanding the regional lay of the land in Chile and tasting a half dozen bottles, I’m much more likely to look for a Carmenere when I’m wine shopping in general and, in particular, looking for a Cabernet Franc, especially if the trade-off merits are slight and Chile offers a better price value.  And, of course, I’m also likely to write about this in some form or another as life experiences filter through the wine prism.

That said, I’m no trends soothsayer, but in order to prognosticate the future and determine the next up and coming varietal or region you really only need to follow the marketing focus.  So, what’s up next?  Soave from Italy and Georgian wines from Eastern Europe!

Next time we want to decry the pervasive hand of marketing for its invasiveness, let’s pause for a moment and at least look at it within context.  For all of the inventiveness of wine enthusiasts who seek out the unknown, chances are good that your newly discovered varietal had a helping hand helping you to “discover” your next muse.

I’m convinced that the wine world is not only a microcosm of our world at large, but also emblematic of our politics – notably the special interests.

Seemingly, there are as many special interest groups in the wine world as there are lobbyists on The Hill.

I’ve been doing a lot of regional travel lately and listening to my fair share of talk radio with all of the windshield time. When I get tired of sports talk and NPR, I flip to whatever conservative talk radio station appears through the crackles on the AM dial just to get a more complete picture of “the conversation.”  Phew, based on the dogmatism, you might think Obama was a cloven-footed heathen carrying a pitchfork.

Our national politics are messy, crazy, and hard to decipher ... in the Republican party alone (according to vaunted source of accuracy, Wikipedia), there are at least 10 factions.

Fortunately(I think), the wine world isn’t governed, at least not in a classic sense, and it shows some of its beauty in its glorious, messy diversity, but what would happen if the wine world was a constituency that needed to be placated by a politico?  Well, it gets messy.

• Online wine writers vs. mainstream writers
• Credibility and ethics
• Monetization

Each will cause a response with a certainty normally accorded prognosticators predicting the sun coming up tomorrow. 

I note this because it is only after weeks of procrastination coupled with a hardy constitution that I approach one of the biggest online wine “tempests in the teapot.”  It’s a conversation fraught with peril, equivalent to a Mom wearing heels, hot pants, and a cleavage peeking top at a PTA bake sale filled with hovering suburban frumps.

I’m talking about money.  Specifically, it’s the notion of how exactly wine writers get paid when online advertising is only exceeded in scarcity by paying gigs.

By way of context, in August I wrote a series of re-cap posts about Rockaway wine and indicated I wanted to explore the revenue aspects of online wine writing.

I chickened out. 

This past week I again mentioned wanting to explore the issue, and now I WANT to chicken out again.

The issue isn’t my cowardice, it’s just that talking about the unknown relative to wine writing in conjunction with money incites equal parts dissension and derision – not a situation that I am afraid of, it’s just something I don’t readily try to provoke.  Plus, it’s a bit off-topic from this blog. 

Principally, however, I want to briefly touch on it because so many voices in the wine world treat the money conversation as inextricably linked to ethics and with a piety normally reserved for Catholic priests who clandestinely hold altar boy sleepovers.  And, unfortunately, they can speak to contemporary trends as well as I can say mass in Latin.
So, couched innocently, I’ll very briefly say it on a Saturday when my Mom and the search engines are the only ones reading …

As wine writing continues to make its move online, increasingly brands will be crafted by individuals and not mastheads with editorial guidelines and ethical statements.  This much we already know.  Simply, there will be more “wine personalities” in the constellation, with varying degrees of luminescence.  Wine content will be the natural end result, but it will be less a part of the “journalism” conversation and more a part of the “personality” and “marketing” conversation.  Whether or not these people are “critics,” “journalists” or “lifestyle writers” in practical application is really immaterial because they’re perceived as influencers not in a journalistic way, but as leaders of a niche of fans. 

In doing so, as “wine personalities” continue to develop apace they will be sought out by wineries and wine companies who seek to work with these people as influencers, in the form of a “Brand Advocate.”

Put simply, they’ll be endorsers or “advocates” with sponsorships while providing services accordingly.

The issue of ethics then becomes a reasonably moot point because ethics are typically guided by the mastheads for which people write and vary wildly.  The real issue becomes integrity.

It won’t be a matter of whether or not it’s ethical to consistently write and promote a wine because somebody happens to be earning some level of an honorarium, it will be a matter of their integrity, a personal policing allowing people to live and die by their own sword.  Do you believe them?  Should you?

I won’t get into a blow-by-blow breakdown of what endorsement and sponsorship means, separate from advertising.  I’ll let people draw their own deductions.  I will note, however, that endorsements are occurring in other blog segments and it’s only a matter of time before it hits the wine niche.

Check out the Tony Stewart Burger King commercials for a fun, ethical sensibility on endorsements.

For additional reading on the notion of sponsorship and endorsements check out the following links:

Social Media Moms

Sponsoring Fans?

Shaun White Lifts Off

Add Sponsored Conversations to Your Toolbox

Citizen Journalists to Citizen Marketers

I read through these emails and catalogs just to see what’s going on and who is selling what—much the same way that I flip through the Pottery Barn catalog even though I’m pretty sure the last time I bought something it was a gift card for a wedding circa 2001. Oh, I’ll occasionally buy from the out-of-state wine guys, (those that will illicitly ship to Indianapolis—you know who you are—my shepherds on the wine underground railroad; my comrades in the “don’t ask, don’t tell” wine army) but more often than not I shop local.  Here’s the rub in this situation, though—the wine shop with the largest, deepest selection in town, a BevMo or a Binny’s by like comparison, is also the shop that I hate going to—I’ve had a couple of customer service issues,  the floor staff talk down to you, and a lot of other reasons that are legitimate, but too long-winded to repeat here.  I still go there when I have to and I curse to myself as I begrudgingly hand over my debit card. 

And, for reasons that I can best describe as self-flagellation, I always read this wine shop’s monthly flyer—mostly to copy-edit the damn thing.  It’s a messy eight or nine-pager written by the owner, replete with bad clip art, typos and other acts of profound language villainy and hackneyed marketing.

Now, I should note that those that live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.  I make a decent mockery of the English language—particularly with the use of the possessive, the occasional passive voice and the regrettable use of too many adverbs.  However, one thing I make a deeply concerted effort to do is fact-check.  If I state something as fact, I attribute it, link to it or double-check it if I paraphrase.  It’s a bugaboo I’ve carried since college.  I may occasionally be full of shit, but at least it’s factual.  And, with the Internet, there’s really no reason not to triple check things ... by virtue of my dogmatism, I have an extremely low threshold for fact-checking laziness ... laziness like, oh, I dunno, a certain Indianapolis wine retailer stating that MIKE GRGICH IS DEAD.

For the love of God and all that is Holy, how can you NOT pop a browser to search for “Mike Grgich” and see that he’s not dead??

It’s enough to make you overlook the misspelling of “excited.”  It’s enough to make you overlook the inflated score he gave the Chard—not 89 points, a solid 90 points. 

If you the image below is too small you can download the flyer (here) and scroll down to page 6 to see the kind of wine situation we’re dealing with in the Circle City.  It’s just another circumstance in life’s rich pageant.

Video date:  9/25/09

Despite much virtual ink being spilled this year about mainstream wine writers and their amateur counterparts on the Internet (bloggers and such), it’s still a conversation fraught with teeth gnashing and in situ analysis;  it’s a crystal ball gazing conversation about the great big maw known as the “unknown” and what it will bring.  And, while all of these conversations are framed in an “us vs. them” “now vs. future” context, the reality is that the lines have already broken down to the point of indecipherability.

It’s less Faustian bargain and more manifest reality.

To quote the comic strip Pogo from 1970, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

In years past, wine writers mostly wrote offline for a masthead with some dabbling online.  Nowadays, however, most wine writers write online with some dabbling offline.  It’s a 180 degree turn around and it has mostly happened in the last 14 months.

Simply, there are no professional wine writers or bloggers anymore – we’re all in the same online pool now as a new set of standards take shape for classifying merit.

Two summarizing points:

A) The term “blogger” is passé

There are professional wine writers, professional-amateur (pro-am) wine writers and people that keep wine journals online.  Ultimately, the delivery vehicle doesn’t much matter anymore.  And, frankly, I don’t want to be considered a blogger anymore and neither should others who consider their work thoughtfully.  While it’s a very “affected” thing to say, it’s true.  To quote Bernie, a supporting character in the 1986 movie, About Last Night, “A pro, Danny? A pro is how you think of yourself.”

B) The conversation of how people that write about wine get paid has less to do with advertising and more to do with endorsements and sponsorships.

This is a topic I’ll get into in a subsequent post, but it will blur the lines of editorial to a far greater extent than what is indicated by a recent post elsewhere on wine writers hopping back and forth between public relations and journalism.

By way of context, I’ve noticed several things that have led me to these seemingly simple conclusions that are far from simple.

1) Wine Writers Symposium sees wild shifts in audience

W.R. Tish wrote an article on the Symposium for Professional Wine Writers in the June edition of Wine Business Monthly. In that article he noted:

As a group, the symposium-goers represented the reality that wine writing has become a many-headed beast. What separated these writers from their peers was a desire to congregate with fellow scribes in a setting both rich in wine and deep in talented panelists and presenters. What they lacked in Parker-esque panache they more than made up for in passion and commitment.
So which way is the wind blowing in wine writing these days? As an attendee at the first (2005) and most recent symposia, I can state with certainty: it is blowing, with gale force, toward the Internet.

2) Wine sampling to online wine writers has increased 20X

While a novelty in the beginning, wine samples, as indicated by the now standard FTC disclosures, has increased at an incalculable rate.  By my personal estimate, I would say at least by a factor of 20X based on quantity.

3) Top bloggers are … professionals

A recent Wine Opinions polled named the top seven wine bloggers and the list comprised, well, all professionals of some sort – Eric Asimov, Jancis Robinson, Stephen Tanzer, Eric Orange from Localwinevents.com, published book author Tyler Colman, wine retailer and personality Gary Vaynerchuk, and Alder Yarrow.

4) Lifestyle journalist starts an online food and wine property

Corie Brown, ex-Los Angeles Times reporter, who covered wine topics, has started an online media property called Zester Daily (as noted in the comments section at Vinography.com).

5) Technorati says of blogging, “Mo Betta’ ”

The 2009 Technorati State of the Blogosphere report, the fifth edition of this annual survey of all things blogging, doesn’t have much new to say except discussing professional bloggers.

6) The book, “Say Everything,” says what needs to be said

In an impeccably researched historical view of blogging, author Scott Rosenberg notes in his book, Say Everything:  How Blogging Began, What It’s Becoming and Why It Matters, “Historically, the succession of media forms and technologies follows a predictable pattern:  every innovation arrives with a fanfare announcing that it will replace its predecessor.  But when the dust settles, the newcomer almost always winds up having redefined that predecessor rather than eliminated it.”

7) The Gartner Hype Cycle moves blogging down the path

Most probably aren’t familiar with the “Gartner Hype Cycle.”  Conducted by Gartner, a technology research and advisory company, they provide a framework for placing trends in context based on sentiment and adoption.  In the most recent “Hype Cycle” for social software, released in July, they moved “blogging” from the “slope of enlightenment” to the “plateau of productivity” year over year.

By the Gartner definition, this move has blogging transcending a 2008 sentiment of, “experiment to understand the benefits and practical application of the technology” to 2009’s, “A technology reaches the ‘plateau of productivity’ as the benefits of it become widely demonstrated and accepted. The technology becomes increasingly stable and evolves in second and third generations.”

My overall point is this:  when hindsight being 20/20 turns into perfect vision, 2009 will be the year in which we note that the cheese moved for good.  There are no longer bloggers or professional writers.  They are one and the same.  Some writers are better than others.  Some writers write for a living, while others are hobbyists.  Even those hobbyists may pursue their craft ardently; a separation from those that keep online journals for more satisfaction and less externally provided, feedback-oriented gravitas.  But, it’s here and it’s now. 

In my next post, I’ll define the changing landscape of a little thing called money.

Veterans Day

Both of my grandfathers served in WWII and my Dad served in Vietnam.  Despite growing up in a family in which service to our country was a reality, it wasn’t talked about much.  Instead, it was acknowledged by dated Technicolor pictures of handsome men in uniform, their tremulous smiles denoting the unknown, along with other artifacts like heavy wool blankets, decades old, a memento to go along with the VFW membership, used by the little people in the family to keep the winter chill at bay every December, an itchy training ground for the holiday sweaters foisted on us in the weeks to come.

While I broke rank (pun intended) and didn’t serve, as the men in my family before me, I always call my dad on Veterans Day and thank him for serving.  And, I would certainly do the same with both of my Grandpas if I could.

In keeping with Veterans Day, David Honig, Founder of Palate Press, wrote a brilliant article that traces his grandfather’s steps while serving the U.S. in WWI France.  Via letters home, today’s sacred heirlooms, David traces Archie Brick’s route through France while offering asides with contemporary beverage reviews analogous to the region in which his Grandfather was located.  It’s simple, it’s brilliant and I strongly urge you to read it today in homage to all those that have served our country so nobly. 

The only Thanksgiving Wine Recommendation I will make

It’s getting to be that time … time for Thanksgiving wine recommendations – an event that roughly coincides with the release of Beaujolais Nouveau – a duopoly of wine events that wine writers love like getting root canals and watching senior citizens eat corn on the cob.

The only Thanksgiving wine recommendation you’ll catch me making is one I’ve already made in a post from January 2008 – the 2006 Cellar Rat Pinot Noir crafted by Alan Baker at Crushpad from Wentzel Vineyard fruit.

From my one case allocation, I have three bottles remaining.  Like most wine drinkers I’m a wonderfully polyamorous   drinker so drinking nine bottles in the span of a 20 months indicates what I think of this beautiful wine; it was naturally inoculated, unfiltered and lightly oaked giving it a delicate balance in between Old and New World styles – rustic and earthy, yet fruit-forward, nicely structured with balanced acidity.  It made a lovely companion to Thanksgiving last year and will do the same for my table this year, as well.

The Cellar Rat is hitting its peak and probably has two to three years left of optimum drinking.  Alan, immersed in a new wine project called Cartograph, is selling the last 10 cases of his stash for a 20% discount from the list price of $42 per bottle if you buy a ½ case.  Free shipping if you buy a case.

Two barrels or 50 cases of this wine were made.  If you like the artisanal story factor, you like Pinot and you like excellent foot-friendly wine, you can’t do much better.

Details here.

The Wine Success Paradox

My wife and I get together with a few other couples once a month to drink wine.  It’s good, clean fun with each of us taking monthly turns hosting and selecting the monthly theme for our “wine club.”  Every month, inevitably, in the midst of our Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot, Riesling, or Cab, we end up talking about sensory evaluation – what the heck are we tasting in the glass? 

This past Friday night, there were looks of dumbfounded incredulity when I said I thought the Road 31 Pinot Noir we were drinking had a nose showing “mushrooms soaked in cherry coke with some tar on the edges.”  This observation led to a conversation with one of the members of our club who, again, revisited his difficulty with learning about wine, a monthly occurrence.  Chris is a CPA who runs his own business and specializes in tax accounting with a special expertise in parsing the U.S. tax code for small businesses.  I have to note, I find it mighty odd that a guy who intimately understands the tax code has a hard time understanding what he is tasting, yet I don’t blame him for this shortcoming.

I’m reminded what the wine world too often forgets or takes for granted – the number of “wine enthusiasts” pales in comparison to the “wine interested” and it’s the job of everybody who has made their way down the learning curve to ensure that the wine interested stay interested and turn into enthusiasts.

Marketers use the AIDA model – Attention, Interest, Desire, Action – as a means to convey the cycle through which people traverse on their way to consummating action.  To me, at least related to engaging in a new pursuit, it’s an incomplete analogy, because “success” isn’t accounted for.

When I first got into wine, I took up golf at the same time, making a very conscious decision to tease out the truths of both.  Plain and simple, my interest in golf waned and got lost quicker than a 3-pack of balls caused by my physics-defying 7-Iron slice.  I was bad at golf and my ability to get better didn’t look very good, at least relative to wine where I was really enjoying myself and learning, and growing.  I gave up golf, putting my clubs in the corner of the garage.

In wine terms, I’m inclined to revise the AIDA model to be inclusive of the following:

Attention—Interest—Desire—Action—Understanding—Success = Passion

Just like my golf game, I think it’s easy to forget that virtually no one has made their way down the path to wine enthusiasm, beyond wine interest, if they haven’t had a measure of success.  And, you can’t have success without understanding.

To me, the two biggest qualifiers to wine success are seeing the industry beyond the “lifestyle” that is perpetuated as marketing shtick and understanding what you are drinking.  In doing so, consumers get a more holistic view of the wine world and they understand what they are putting in their mouth.  It seems so simple, right?

There are a lot of folks who couldn’t care less about French wine classification, but everybody needs to understand industry environmental factors and what they taste in order to graduate down the path of wine success.  It is core to wine appreciation to have context and to be able to stick your nose in the glass and smell some nuance.

Just a thought, but the unspoken paradox in the world of wine is the implication that knowledge, in and of itself, is most important.  To me, all the wine 101 books in the world don’t mean a thing if somebody has an interest in, but cannot identify flavor components in wine and they don’t have the appropriate context to place the wine situationally.

I gave up on golf because it looked too hard to get to a level of competency.  Fixing my slice was too daunting.  How many “wine interested” people have given up on wine because they couldn’t get to a level of competency, sensory or otherwise?

… Speaking of Wine Enthusiasm

Two weeks ago I wrote two posts with suggestions for improvement for Wine Enthusiast magazine.  Amongst many suggestions, I elaborated on what I perceive to be a need to ratchet down the “lifestyle” and provide more context for how the industry operates. 

Over the course of the nearly four years of writing this blog, I’ve taken a fair number of shots at a fair number of targets, liberally sprinkling in constructive criticism. In doing so I’ve received my fair share of return criticism from people who didn’t appreciate or disagreed with what I had to say.

Of the numerous “nasty grams” I have received, one that I might have expected that never came would be from Adam Strum from Wine Enthusiast.

Instead, Strum, bar none, has been the one person who took the feedback with a spirit of professionalism and open-mindedness.  Having shared several emails privately with Adam in the midst of and after writing the posts, I was dumbfounded that he was not only receptive to my suggestions, but he was going to review them for potential action.

To wit, last week Strum wrote a post at the Wine Enthusiast blog soliciting feedback on the appropriate mix of lifestyle content in Wine Enthusiast magazine, titling his post, “Wine as a Passion/Wine as a Business.”

In brief, I think our wine media fails most wine enthusiasts and I’m not alone in that thinking.  If you’re interested in adding your opinion to the matter and giving it to somebody who is listening, mosey over to the Wine Enthusiast blog here.

Liquid Memory

Mike Steinberger, the wine columnist for Slate magazine, wrote a book this year called, Au Revoir to All That: Food, Wine, and the End of France.  Despite his book being good, presumably, he knows what it’s like to receive a crushingly bad book review.  Because of this it makes his recent review of Liquid Memory by Jonathan Nossiter all the more credible (and interesting).

I’m an information hound and consume massive amounts of media.  I cannot recall, ever, one author calling another authors work “execrable,” as Steinberger did in his October 30th column.

I’ve only made my way into about 20 pages of the stultifyingly boring book, “Liquid Memory,” but you can be sure I’ll read it through just to see if I find it as wretched and “deserving to be execrated,” as Steinberger and Merriam-Webster note. 

In good form, the comments from that post exceeded the length of the post by a measure of 3:1 with some interesting thoughts about why “Champagne” should only come from the Champagne region of France.

To be honest, it’s not a subject that I’ve spent a lot of time studying.  I don’t drink much Champagne (or sparkling wine for that matter) and I’ve never had a sparkler (Champagne or otherwise) that I’ve found revelatory.  Call me an ambivalent Champagne observer, like most of America, whose interest in the subject was piqued by a press release from The Champagne Bureau.

When I write an op-ed piece I approach it like a journalist would approach any subject – first understand concepts and then understand facts on both sides in order to get to the essential truth.  This post was no different.

The essential truth for me was the fact that the Comite Interprofessionel du Vin de Champagne (CIVC) has their head in the sand about contemporary marketing practices and are stubbornly clinging to a sensibility that has them beating consumers over the head with negativity – “Only Champagne comes from Champagne.  Don’t be fooled by marauders” (my words not theirs).  To me, it’s a flawed way of going about communicating value.

So, it was with interest that I received two emails after I published my post – one was from a regular reader asking, with a sigh, why I opened this can of worms – the Champagne folks have protected their name for decades and it has been an issue that has been vetted ad nauseum over the years.  The second email was from a PR representative of The Champagne Bureau who said that I misrepresented the point of the protectionist nature by the CIVC folks and The Champagne Bureau, the US arm. 

In response to the first question, I have to ask rhetorically, have you ever purchased a used car and somebody says, “Hey did you get a new car?”  To this, you reply, “It’s not a new car, but it’s new to me.” Well, this Champagne silliness is new to me after I made my way onto a PR distribution list. In response to the second inquiry, the misrepresentation issue, well, I’m not so dogmatic as to have an opinion and to hold onto that opinion without doing further investigation, especially when pushed to reconsider.

So, I started doing more digging.  In particular, I happened across a fascinating and well-written 25-page paper from 2003 written for a Harvard law class that acts as a survey of the last 100 years of Champagne regulation.

In sum, the paper is about, “(the French are taking) great efforts to capitalize on the Champagne name throughout the world and aims to ensure that the French wine region receives these benefits exclusively.”  It’s a nice piece of work and something I would recommend reading to anybody who wants a breezy overview report on one hundred years of Champagne history.

At the same time, I received another press release that indicated that The Champagne Bureau was awarding Schramsberg and Beringer with the First Annual Truth-in-Labeling Award of Excellence for leadership is accurate wine labeling.

I then followed up with The Champagne Bureau in an effort to have them elaborate on their position, and the suggestion the PR person had made to me privately that said, “The U.S. currently provides (consumers) with virtually no protection when it comes to sourcing the grapes used in the wine and accurately indicating its place of origin … let me know if you have any questions concerning the extent of this problem and its impact on U.S. consumers …”

In response to my inquiry I didn’t receive statistics about the alleged deceit that dupes the U.S. consumers.  Instead, I got marketing one-pagers on protecting wine place names and Champagne as the only “true” Champagne.

Unfortunately, I’m still not getting it.

The crux of my original post was simple – if Champagne is used as the catch-all phrase for sparkling wine, like “Google” is for searching the Internet or “Jell-O” is for gelatin, then why not roll with the punches and tell a back-story about Champagne as a point of differentiation and let consumers divine the truth, while forsaking the “watchdog” aspect of their marketing which is, frankly, a bit of a turn-off.

The unfortunate reality in this examination of Champagne vs. sparkling wine is the fact that the majority (the vast majority) of U.S. consumers call all sparkling wine “Champagne.”  In addition, I would posit, most U.S. consumers don’t give it a second thought because they associate Champagne and sparkling wine with special occasions – weddings, promotions, New Year’s Eve – it’s not a part of the wine stream of consciousness.

If the CIVC and The Champagne Bureau want to truly actuate a greater acceptance of true Champagne in the U.S., protecting their market share and stemming sliding sales, unfortunately, my position remains the same:  spend your time actually marketing in new ways that create interest instead of playing campaign politics by focusing on attacking your opponents. 

Perhaps my greatest takeaway, by analogy, is the fact that if an African-American with a name that harkens to Muslim origins (in the age of global terrorism) can win a presidential election by inspirationally leading with “Hope” and “Change” while not getting dragged down in attack mud-slinging, engendering respect on the world stage leading to a Nobel Peace Prize then that might be a page from the marketing playbook that would work for the Champagne folks.

A high-road approach engenders goodwill.  And, perhaps in doing so, somebody will open a bottle of Champagne to celebrate more frequently instead of grabbing a sparkling wine like the new President enjoyed upon his win.

In fact, the ’06 Rockaway, as beguiling as the ‘05, if not slightly more pensive, is smartly being released to market in February ‘10, allowing for some bottle age and integration.  Upon my opening, it was hot, uncoordinated, and awkward – like a first kiss at a Prom after-party.  After sufficient time in the decanter (forget about an hour – the Rockaway needs at least two hours of vigorous oxygen to start to show), it rounds into form and turns into a delicious, massive wine that belies its 15.4% alcohol.

The Brothers Ridge, for its part, a new release to market with the release of the ‘06 vintage, is also an Alexander Valley Cabernet at the same price point as the Rockaway—$75.  However, the Brothers Ridge comes from vineyards east of Cloverdale, a northerly vineyard to Rockaway and the warmest spot in Sonoma County.  Both wines were provided to me by the winery.

Now, while some will decry the “bigness” of these wines as a source of polarization, I’m not one of them.  The alcohol can partially be explained by a quote attributed to Rodney Strong wine consultant David Ramey in the October 31st issue of Wine Spectator, he notes (not necessarily in regards to Rodney Strong specifically), “This issue of alcohol is overblown.  That’s where our grapes our ripe.  It’s California’s birthright.”

Who am I to disagree especially when the Rockaway, and its little brother, Brothers Ridge, straddle the line so well between ripe and “Californian” without crossing over into “hedonistic” territory, a connotation, to me, that has come to mean, “Australian cough syrup.”

Ironically, the Brothers Ridge, a straight varietal offering in contrast to the splash of Malbec and Petit Verdot (2% and 1% respectively) that made their way into the Rockaway blend, is more classically refined than its big brother.  Both are a part of a triumvirate that will be complete when an offering called “Alexander’s Crown” is released in the future.

It should be noted that 2009 is a big year for Rodney Strong.  Under the stewardship of owner Tom Klein, Rodney Strong continues to act as a pacesetter for the California wine industry, celebrating not just their 50th anniversary in 2009, but also celebrating, notably, the fact that they have become the first winery in Sonoma County to become carbon neutral.

While I vacillate on how I feel about the merits of being carbon neutral when it can be viewed in the same vein as checkbook philanthropy, I have to give credit to people and organizations that take the step forward instead of sitting on their hands.  And, significantly, Rodney Strong has demonstrated a commitment to sustainability over a period of years, dating to 2003 when they first installed solar panels.

Likewise, Rodney Strong the winery earns my admiration when 20 years after the purchase of the winery from Rod Strong the man, they still honor his legacy by making a sizable donation to the Wells Fargo Center in Santa Rosa based on a desire to support the arts and pay homage to the Rod who was a dancer and dance teacher, having danced internationally and on Broadway.

Critics, always ready to take potshots at PR efforts, will dub me a rube for buying into the perception of the largesse, but as a student of marketing, sustainability and good business, I have to note that Rodney Strong, with a multiplicity of efforts at greening, quality AND telling their story are hitting their stride.

2006 Rodney Strong Rockaway Cabernet Sauvignon

Not quite as lip-smackingly good as the ’05, this is still a very good effort that needs time in the bottle.  A nose of dark fruits – blackberry, black cherry, blueberry and cassis with hints of bay leaf, black olive juice and menthol gives way to plenty of stuffing on the palate with more dark fruit, menthol and black tea with a deep core of dark chocolate.  The finish isn’t as impressive as the ’05 and the tannins are a little chewier, but this a very nice wine with pedigree that will round into shape over the years to come.  90 points.

2006 Rodney Strong Brothers Ridge Cabernet Sauvignon

Big, bold black cherry juice with an earthier quality than the Rockaway.  There’s plenty of fruit on the nose with pleasing and complementary floral and earthy aromatics with hints of green bean.  The palate offers velvety blackberry, blueberry, menthol, and beet juice.  More classically refined and less decadent than the Rockaway, the finish lingers with the fruit and leather to go along with fine grained tannins.  91 points.