Category:Wine news

Is the $95 Tablas Creek box wine the key to easing out glass bottles?

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

Jason Haas
Jason Haas: “I thought it would be successful, but the magnitude of the reaction still took me by surprise.”

Or – and more likely — is it just one more small step in doing what needs to be done to glass?

Last week, I wrote that consumers weren’t all that interested in alternative wine packaging, and that the 750-ml glass bottle was just fine, thank you very much.

So what blows up the cyber-ether at almost the same time? The news that Tablas Creek’s $95 box wine sold out in hours – a development that many heralded as the first sign that box wine was now acceptable for something other than the stuff that old ladies with cats buy.

The Toronto Globe & Mail, hardly sensational, asked: “Is a box wine revolution on the way?” And an editor I work with, almost as cynical as I am, said, “Jeff! We need a box wine story! It has arrived!”

It turns out that Jason Haas of Tablas Creek, as smart and innovative as anyone in the wine business, was almost as surprised at all of the excitement as I was.

“I thought it would be successful,” he emailed me, “but the magnitude of the reaction still took me by surprise — both when we announced it on our blog (with the most comments a blog piece I’ve written has ever received), and again with some of the highest-ever engagement with the posts about it on social media, and again when we sent it out and it sold out in four hours.”

Haas says he wanted to put some of his 2021 Patelin de Tablas Rose into a 3-liter box (the equivalent of four bottles) to see if there would be demand for expensive box wine. Box wine has never been much more than a niche in the wine business, accounting for about 10 percent of sales. And, for the most part, its wines cost no more than the equivalent of $8 a bottle, and usually much less. The Tablas Creek rose works out to about $24 a bottle – very pricey indeed for a box.

So when it sold out in four hours, tremendous enthusiasm. Many of us want to believe we can find a way past the 750-ml bottle and its 18th century technology, and no one wants to believe that more than I do. I’ve practically made a career writing about it.

But the media, Winestream and otherwise, overlooked a variety of caveats in covering the story:

• There were just 300 boxes of the wine. Selling out is impressive, but it’s not like it was the winery’s entire production of 2021 rose. Or a Big Wine product.

• Haas says the winery’s mailing list numbers 40,000 people, and “more than that through our social media channels.” Call that total 100,000 to make the math simple, and a basic business formula predicts sales of up to 1,000 boxes.

• Tablas Creek is well known and highly respected; that its followers wanted to support the box is not surprising. Another producer, with less of a reputation (and they know who they are), may not have been as successful.

• The winery didn’t try to sell the boxes through the three-tier system – which, to my mind, was the smartest decision in the entire marketing process. I’m guessing most wholesalers and retailers would have said, “Nope, not a good idea, don’t do it.”

None of this is to denigrate what Haas did or to say he shouldn’t have done it. As noted, we need to find an alternative bottle. But one small success is not a victory, and not when it’s running up against survey after survey that says what the survey last week said.

Because, as winemaker Charles Bieler told me recently, glass bottles aren’t going away just because we want them to. And Bieler, who makes wine in kegs and TetraPaks as well as bottles, knows more about than most.

So credit to Tablas Creek for taking a much needed small step. Let’s hope someone else has the courage of Haas’ convictions and takes the next step to help the box become as common as the bottle.

Winebits 739: Brad Pitt, supermarket wine, winery lawsuits

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

Churro
Churro, the blog’s associate editor, is glad he doesn’t have to write about Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and their winery.

This week’s wine news: Yes, Brad Pitt, plus more supermarket wine upgrades and winery lawsuits

• Brad Pitt-Anglina Jolie? The Wine Curmudgeon is quite happy that he no longer has to worry about our overlords at Google and SEO. Otherwise, the blog would have to have more stories like this: Brad Pitt is suing ex-wife Angelina Jolie for selling her stake in the French vineyard they bought together, Chateau Miraval. Highest interest? Of course not, but the kind of thing that makes Google’s search algorithm get as excited as a math equation can get. The story, from the BBC, isn’t clear whether Jolie was legally allowed to sell her share of the winery, but there are lots of excerpts from the lawsuit. Pitt had invest “sweat equity” in the property, while Jolie sold “with a heavy heart.”

• Cubs Food liquor store: Cubs Foods, a top Midwestern retailer (but no relation to the slimy major league baseball team that has broken the WC’s heart) has opened its 30th standalone liquor store. This is a significant development in wine retailing; it shows once again that grocers are serious about selling wine, and that the supermarket share of wine sold in the U.S. will continue to rise above the current 50 percent or so. Also important, reports Supermarket News, is that the store carries 1,400 different wines, including what it calls “luxury” brands.

• Bring the lawsuits! Regular visitors here know that the WC has always shown a keen interest in wine-related lawsuits, dating from when I was sort of part of the epic Cristalino-Cristal lawsuit. This one, featuring two California wineries, is a doozy — one producer is using another of the use of a picture of a shovel on the label. Wine Business News says that Tenbrink Winery. fopunded in 2008, sued La Pelle Wines, founded in 2016, for alleged trademark infringement. Tenbrink’s suit says it owns the right to the label shovel, even though “La Pelle” means “the shovel” in French. Ah, legal humor.

Do wine drinkers really care about the trends that the marketers say we care about?

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

wine store
Organic wine? Not really, thank you.

Not really, says one survey, citing little interest in cans, “healthy wine,” and organic wine

One of the problems with deciphering the wine business is that there is almost no good data. If we don’t even know for sure how much wine is sold in the U.S. each year (and we don’t, apparently), then how can we know what’s going on with even more abstract concepts?

I mention this because I’ve spent much of the past couple of months writing about wine trends, both here and for several freelance pieces. Those trends included “healthy” wine, canned and box wine, and organic wine, and how each will be key parts of the wine business this year.

Turns out I may have been wasting my time.

That’s because the Wine Opinions consultancy recently asked its group of mostly high-frequency wine drinkers (those who drink wine at least once a week) about canned wine, wine that is “better for you,” and wine made with organic grapes. The results were stunning:

• Organic grapes: Just 9 percent said they would buy more wine made with organic grapes this year.

• “Better for you” wine did even more poorly – only 5 percent said they would buy more wine marketed as “healthy.”

• And cans and boxes? Hardly worth mentioning, with only 3 percent saying they would more wine in cans, while potential box purchases were more or less flat for 2022.

What’s going on here? How can these results be so different from what the experts have told us is going on?

The answer, I think, rests with the highly conservative nature of all those high-frequency wine drinkers. If it doesn’t come in a 750-ml bottle with a cork-style closure, then they’re not especially interested in it. And many of the wines in the survey are certainly not of the 750-ml glass bottle variety.

Age didn’t even particularly matter, save for the organic and healthy categories. Younger wine drinkers, who are supposed to be more open to cans, boxes, and all the rest, didn’t show that much more of a preference for alternative packaging.

And where age did matter, it didn’t seem to matter all that much. Yes, there were significant differences in the number of drinkers older than 40 and those younger than 40 in buying “healthy” and organic wine, but those younger than 40 didn’t embrace either with much enthusiasm. Just 17 percent of respondents under 40 said they would be more likely to buy “better for you” wines in 2022, and the number was only 21 percent for organic wine.

One out of five people from a demographic that doesn’t buy as much wine as their elders hardly seems like enough to build a trend around, does it?

Photo: “Wine store” by stu_spivack is licensed under Creative Commons

Winebits 738: Ste. Genevieve, Kirkland wine, Sutter Home

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

ste genevieve
Yes, the WC remembers several of those Ste. Genevieve wine bottle styles.

This week’s wine news: Texas’ Ste. Genevieve apparently declares bankruptcy, plus a look at Costco’s Kirkland private label and wine pioneer Sutter Home moves to wine cocktails

• Bankruptcy for Ste. Genevieve? Ste. Genevieve, one of the oldest wineries in Texas, has apparently filed for bankruptcy. The Austin Business Journal reports that Mesa Vineyards, the winery’s corporate parent, asked for voluntary Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection on Jan. 20. That typically means the company wants to pay off its creditors and wind up its business. If so, it will bring an end to one of the most important wineries in Texas history. The company started life in the mid-1980s, part of a plan by France’s Cordier Estates to turn Texas into a key winemaking region. If that never quite happened, Ste. Genevieve may have produced nearly one-half million cases of wine annually at its peak, ranking as one of the biggest wineries in the country around the turn of the century. Its alumni include Don Brady, today the winemaker at Paso Robles’ Robert Hall, and its legacy includes a lot of empty bottles at WC world headquarters.

• Costco and Kirkland: Remember Ballantrae wine? That’s what Costco called its wine before Kirkland, which revolutionized the way retailers offer private label products. This piece, from CNN, does a fine job of explaining how and why Costco made the switch – and why it sells so much wine under the Kirkland label. Kirkland means Costco, said one analyst, and that means consumers will buy Kirkland products – even wine – because they know and trust Costco.

• End of an era? Sutter Home, which made white zinfandel a key part of the U.S. wine boom, has a new tact: wine cocktails. Reports the North Bay Business Journal: “Sweet Tea, Peach Tea and Lemonade Wine Cocktails are the latest ‘brand expansion” for the producer, owned by the Trinchero family. As such, it may mark a significant change in the winery’s approach, given the continuing decline in white zinfandel sales over the past decade, as well as the slump in wine costing less than $9 a bottle.

Winebits 727: The “Winestream Media is starting to sound too much like the WC” edition

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

kafka
“Let’s see. … should I write about a man turning into a roach or  quality$10 wine?”

This week’s wine news: Three major U.S. wine writers agree with the Wine Curmudgeon about what’s going on in wine – and how surreal is that?

• Bring on the ingredient labels! Writes Mitch Frank – a 17-year-employee of the Wine Spectator: “Frankly, why would younger consumers opt for wine? … If you walk through your favorite wine store, how is most wine marketed? Well, most of it comes in a 750ml bottle that is portioned to be drunk over dinner and requires a special device to open it.” And this: “Meanwhile, grab a can of White Claw and look at the back label, and you’ll find something almost no wine label has—nutritional information.” Stunning, yes? When did my rants become mainstream in the wine business? Which, honestly, is more than a little scary.

• Too many phony wine scores! Paul Gregutt, a former contributing editor to the Wine Enthusiast, is shocked at what’s going on with wine scores: “Even a casual walk through the wine section of your neighborhood Costco or supermarket will find it papered with ads for wines scoring 90 points and higher, including many priced well under $10. 95 point wines, which used to be a rare achievement, are more and more common.” So he is not going to use scores anymore. Which, of course, has long been the policy here, as well as the subject of more rants than most readers care to remember. And let’s not forget this, in which the blog took scores and crammed them into their proper place.

• Bring on the $10 wine! And if all of this isn’t surreal enough, Lettie Teague, writing in the Wall Street Journal (where the typical reader is worth $1.5 million), goes in search of quality $10 wine. She doesn’t have much luck, and doesn’t sound like she expected to, but does find three – all of which have been on the blog at one time or another. I’m particularly fond of the Dibon cava, though I haven’t seen it much in Texas lately. Teague would have done well to check out the blog’s Cheap Wine of the Year in January – she would have enjoyed the Scaia rose, as well as the always well done Scaia white.

Photo: Franz Kafka

Feds: Big Wine means less choice and higher prices

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

wine prices
Has wine consolidation led to higher prices?

Treasury Department says consolidation may have increased wine prices as much as 18 percent

The U.S. government may be about to do something that many experts said it would never do – and couldn’t be done anyway.

That’s rein in Big Wine, as well as the largest companies in beer and spirits.

Reuters reported yesterday that the Treasury Department “suggested stiffer Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission oversight, tougher enforcement of existing rules and development of new ones. …” The comments were released in a report that is part of the Biden Administration’s promise last July to look at concentration and anti-competitive behavior in the U.S. in markets that include alcohol, meat packing, and hearing aids.

The Treasury report focused on beer, which is even more concentrated than wine; the two largest companies control almost two-thirds of the market. In wine, the top five control about 65 percent of U.S. production.

Still, it noted that concentration in beer, wine, and spirits has resulted in higher prices. Beer consumers alone pay $487 million more a year than they should, said the report, and found that concentration can increase the cost of a bottle of wine by as much as 18 percent and a bottle of spirits by more than 30 percent.

Even more shocking? A Justice official sounded like the Wine Curmudgeon: “Enforcement and regulatory authorities should have the courage to learn and the fortitude necessary to enforce the law and protect competition.”

The report also noted that change will be difficult, since the states are responsible for much of the liquor regulation in the U.S. In addition, the Byzantine knot that makes up the country’s liquor laws would not be easy to untangle even if it was all under federal jurisdiction.

But that the report was released at all is good news for anyone who thinks consolidation has led to higher prices, less choice, and poorer quality wine. I wrote a trade story last year where a variety of anti-trust experts said unequivocally that nothing could be done. Which, hopefully, means they are wrong.

Photo: Maria Orlova from Pexels

Winebits 736: AI ID checks, restaurant wine, “healthy wine”

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

ai wine
“Stand still so I can get a good look at you.”

This week’s wine news: Artificial intelligence and checking IDs, plus more changes for restaurant wine and “healthy wine” is hip

• Can AI card drinkers? An English Aldi is testing software that will scan customer faces to see if they’re old enough to buy wine, beer, spirits, and cigarettes. The store, in Greenwich near London, is the discount retailer’s version of Amazon’s infamous Go stores, where there are no employees and no checkout – save for someone who wants to buy wine. Technically, says the story, it’s not facial recognition software, since the image is deleted after it’s used. For what that’s worth. Also in the “If you say so” department: The software company claims its system is so accurate that there is less than a 1 percent change of a 17-year-old fooling it.

• Smaller wine lists? Restaurants are scaling back their wine lists in the wake of the pandemic, says Nation’s Restaurant News, The story is wordy and tries to position the changes as “adjustments,” but the sense is that the days of massive, many page wine lists are ending – if they haven’t ended already. The other change? Restaurants will be changing lists more frequently, so that there will always be new items on it to make up for having fewer wines.

• Healthy booze: I’m going to take a more detailed look at so-called “healthy wine” – the low- and no-alcohol labels that seem to be all the rage these days, as well light wine that’s made to have less calories. I mention this piece because it shows how trendy these things have become; it includes details about a liquor store in swinging Soho that only carries non-alcoholic booze as well as a dedicated TikTok for sober drinking and a woman who compiles non-alcoholic cocktail recipes.