Category:Wine rants

How to make the blog even more fabulously successful?

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

old-time newspaper newsroom
“You’re all going to be replaced by free, outsourced content. Because this is all about what is best for me.”

Be like the NYT, and outsource its content

The Wine Curmudgeon, courtesy of the New York Times, has discovered a way to make the blog even more fabulously successful than it already is – I can outsource the content to someone who works more cheaply than I do.

That’s what the Times – my once beloved New York Times – did when it said it would close its sports department in favor of running stories from a website called The Athletic. How and why this happened is still a bit of a muddle; it apparently has something to do with the paper’s long-running union troubles as well as its not too brainy $550 million purchase of the money-losing Athletic in 2022.

Full disclosure: I was an employee of a Times subsidiary when I was the sports editor of the daily in Houma, La. Even then, the company’s management style was brusque. I was told that if I did a good job, I could move to the paper in Florence, Ala., or Lakeland, Fla. Which, not to denigrate the quality of those cities, didn’t have much appeal to a young, ambitious, newspaperman.

Still, if I overlook how despicable outsourcing the sports department is – it’s something that a sleazy leveraged buyout company would do – this might work. I can probably find a variety of young writers who will work for free for the exposure and the experience, and then I can use their copy under my banner. How 21st century, Elon Musk and Jeff Zuckerberg-style capitalism is that? They do the work, and I reap the benefits.

Now, will the blog be as well-written or as informative or as much fun as before? Of course not. But that’s not the point. The point is that I am making more money for myself, and the rest – the employees, the readers, the service that I am performing – be damned. Because, of course, 21st century, Elon Musk and Jeff Zuckerberg-style capitalism.

The catch is that I can’t overlook how despicable the Times’ action was. It’s supposed to be one of the bastions of American journalism, and not this company or this company (whose failings I know all too well). So I won’t outsource the blog. I will cancel my subscription to the Times, though. and hope its bosses eventually see the error of their ways.

Because one of us has to do the right thing.

Can a wine glut boost the wine business?

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

People tasting wine
“$10? Really? That’s damn fine wine.”

Of course – if the wine business wants to turn out quality $10 wine

Dear Wine Business:

Once again, the Wine Curmudgeon takes keyboard in hand to offer some help in your current crisis. Which, if possible, just got worse. Turrentine Brokerage, one of the most respected companies in all of wine, reports that bulk wine levels – dare I say? — are past a crisis (complete with fancy colored charts):

“Total California statewide gallons actively for sale are now up to 22.4 million. This volume of wine has only been available on the market four times before, and each time was after a record or near-record sized harvest. In contrast, the 2022 harvest was the lightest in a decade. The elevated volume of bulk wine actively for sale shows the concern of wineries over slowing consumer sales.”

In other words, wineries are making less wine because they finally figured out consumers are buying less wine. That means the wine they don’t use goes to the bulk market, where it waits for someone else to buy it – and waits and waits and waits. Because “current inventory can feel more like a liability than an asset, so don’t get left behind because you are hoping for a higher price.”

Since there won’t be one.

Fortunately, the WC has a solution to this problem: Cheap wine.

I can’t take credit for all of this. Much of it must go to the blog’s official European correspondent, who told me: “This should surely be a moment for someone to create a good value $10 brand.”

To which I said, “Eureka,” and wrote this post.

In fact, there is nothing unusual about this. “Wineries” make wine all the time without actually growing any grapes; instead, they buy grapes and wine on the bulk market, invent a name for the wine, bottle it, and sell it. These days, it’s mostly done with higher-priced wine because of premiumization, but I’ve been doing this long enough to remember terrific $10 brands like Line 39 and Yellow + Blue that did the same thing.

So why not do it again? The quality wine is available, and at more than fair prices, says Turrentine. Besides, what do you have to lose by trying? It’s not like the wine is going anywhere, and there’s more than an even chance that consumers might buy quality $10 wine. And then buy some more.

Or at least that’s what they tell me.

Your pal,
The Wine Curmudgeon

A wine accessory that costs as much as a decent case of wine

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

How did we get to the point where marketers think they can flog this stuff at us?

The Wine Curmudgeon gets the occasional e-mail from readers telling me to calm down, that things in wine aren’t as bad as they seem.

To which I offer this commercial, which showed up as “sponsored” when I did one of my regular searches on YouTube for wine-related videos.

It’s not so much that the ad resembles that of a luxury car, which is disconcerting enough. I want to drink wine, not buy a Lexus. And what does it say about the demographics of people who search for wine on YouTube that I got this?

But what really gets me is that the product – which no one really needs and which is never really described – costs $200. Hell, even I could buy a nice bottle of wine for $200, and we know how much I don’t want to do that.

The most depressing part of this? That this may be how the rest of the world sees wine drinkers — that we’ll drop $200 for no particular reason other than that we have the money to do so.

Video courtesy of etowine via YouTube

Follow-up: Finally, some perspective about wine and health

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

Can we finally agree that wine with dinner won’t kill us?

Two women drinking red wine
“A toast to moderation! And please pass the couscous and parsley salad.”

Yesterday’s post, detailing the 50-some year history of wine and health, offers the wine business a chance to take the high ground about drinking in moderation.

It’s OK, and it probably won’t kill you.

As Tim Requarth wrote in Slate: “A middle-aged man’s baseline risk of dying of any cause in the next five years of his life is 2.9 percent. If he upped his drinking from a few drinks a week to a few drinks a day, this risk would rise to 3.6 percent, or an absolute risk increase of 0.7 percentage points. What this means is that if 143 middle-aged men drink once a day, there might be, in the near-term, one additional death, while the remaining 142 men would be unaffected.”

Now, whether the wine business will do this is doubtful; it has shown absolutely no interest in defending itself from the neo-Prohibitionists.

But that quote, along with this one — “An older man with a history of heart problems conceivably could benefit from very light drinking, whereas a woman at high risk of breast cancer might not” – should give it all the evidence it needs to demonstrate that a couple of glasses of wine with dinner almost certainly won’t kill anyone.

In other words, don’t drink to excess. Don’t smoke. Eat sensibly. Exercise.

In fact, that may make wine part of a healthy lifestyle. Requarth wrote a little about this when he mentioned the Mediterranean Diet, which most experts still cite as the key to a long, healthy life: Avoid animal fat. Also avoid processed foods, since they include too much sodium and sugar. Use olive oil. Focus on grains, fruits, and vegetables. Even the august Cleveland Clinic includes wine in the Mediterranean Diet.

Which brings up something that I’ve always found ironic: We spend so much time castigating wine in moderation but ignoring other, even more dangerous, food choices. I saw lard – yes, lard – defended on an episode of “America’s Test Kitchen,” even though I can still hear the hospital nutritionist when I was a young reporter: “I can’t believe people still cook with lard.” And “plant-based food,” while perhaps a noble calling, still isn’t as healthy as eating your greens. One piece of that kind of sausage has 25 percent of the recommended saturated fat and 22 percent of the sodium, plus 190 calories.

So yes, wine – no sodium, no fat, 125 calories — with dinner. Would that the wine business figures this out.

Photo: Andrea Piacquadio via Pexels

TV wine ads: Crown Royal understands its audience

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

If a pricey blended whiskey can make a terrific ad, why can’t wine?

Crown Royal – once a whiskey for the aging wine demographic – has made surprising inroads with younger consumers. Why surprising? The basic, 750-ml bottle costs $25, which we’re told is more than they want to spend on wine.

So how has Crown Royal done this? With ads like this 2018 effort, which strikes me as funny and unpretentious in a way that almost no wine advertising has managed. Plus, it shows young people having fun without an adult looking on to grant permission. (Since the ad is about alcohol, you’ll need to sign in to YouTube to see it.)

Compare it to this Bread & Butter Wines ad, which tries desperately hard for the same vibe, but can’t help itself and includes an adult lecturing about wine. Because, of course, with wine, we have to tell young people what to do.

Trust me, wine business. Young people know how to drink; the last thing they need is an adult explaining how to do it. Would that wine figures that out before it’s too late.

Video courtesy of  Ben Vereen via YouTube

More about TV wine ads:
• TV wine ads: When in doubt, use sex
• The history of wine advertising and reaching younger consumers
• TV wine ad update: Does Stella Rosa’s sweet fizzy red commercial do what Big Wine can’t?

Thank you, La Vieille Ferme, for some good news about cheap wine

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

La Vieille Ferme rose 3-liter box
Would that I could buy the 3-liter box of the La Vieille Ferme rose in Dallas

The experts tell us no one cares about cheap wine, but La Vieille just keeps growing

The blog’s 16th annual rose extravaganza — featuring lots and lots of pink wine that most of us can afford to buy – is just about a month away. So why not some good news featuring one of the blog’s favorite roses, which is especially welcome given the doom and gloom in the rest of the wine business?

The second-largest French table wine brand in the U.S. is not some premiumized plonk, a snooty wine snob brand, or a 94-point label that is only available in three stores (none of which are near where anyone lives).

It’s our old pal La Vieille Ferme, all $7 a bottle of it. Or, as my mom calls it, “the rooster wine.”

La Vieille sold almost 630,000 cases in the U.S. last year, which would rank it among the 30 or so biggest U.S. producers. Most importantly, its growth – up about one-third over the past five years – was led by its rose. And regular visitors here know just how much the WC appreciates the La Vieille rose – wine of the week more often than I can count, a long-time member of the Hall of Fame, and a finalist for the Turner award a couple of times.

And why not? It tastes like rose – dry, fruity, crisp, and refreshing, and neither sweet nor smoooth. It has maintained its quality over the past decade when so many others have not, giving in to cost cutting or marketing foolishness.

And, perhaps most importantly, La Vieille thrived during the Trump wine tariff. The man who runs its U.S. importer told me that he didn’t raise prices because he didn’t want to lose market share; which not only worked, but also got La Vieille new business from retailers who were impressed by the brand’s long-term determination to stay relevant. When’s the last time you heard that about a wine brand?

So drink a toast to the La Vieille – whether from the 750-ml bottle, the 1.5-liter bottle, or the 3-liter box. Because quality can win out, even when it doesn’t cost very much.

Five days drinking $20 wine

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

woman holding wine glass
“Boy, the WC got this one right. I’m never buying a $35 rose again.”

Yes, the wine was better – but twice as better? Hardly — and I was surprised

The Wine Curmudgeon, who always tries to keep an open mind, spent one working week last month drinking only wine with dinner that cost $18 or $20 (or more). The goal? To see if the wines were truly twice as good as the $10 and $12 wines I usually drink.

And you know what? They weren’t. Which actually kind of surprised me.

This is not to say that most of the wines weren’t well made and interesting. They were. But compared to the quality $10 wines I usually drink, they didn’t especially stand out. For example, I spent $18 for a Spanish rose and $30 for a white Bordeaux, and both were enjoyable wines. But the rose was not $18 worth of nice, and as was terrific as the white Bordeaux was, it wasn’t $30 worth of terrific.

How is this possible, given the regular drumbeat from producers and the Winestream Media that we’re spending more money and drinking better?

A variety of reasons:

• Higher prices for the more expensive wines, thanks to the Trump tariff, pandemic supply chain woes, the war in Europe, and inflation. That means a wine that might have been a value at $18 but now costs $23 isn’t a value any more. This hasn’t necessarily been the case with my cheap wines, where producers have been more reluctant to hike prices.

• Marketing, marketing, and more marketing. It’s just not about the wines I noted last week; rather, it’s about shelves of wines that have been created to cost $20 or more because premiumization. When’s the last time anyone spent $I8 on a Chilean chardonnay or a $35 California rose? Yet that’s what I got as samples recently.

• Most importantly, the $10 and $12 wines that I drink – and recommend on the blog (subscribe now!) – are not supermarket plonk. It’s easy to “drink better” by spending more money if the cheap wine you’re drinking tastes cheap. But what if you’re drinking this? Or this? Or this? It’s much more difficult.

Photo: “drink more wine” by wrapped4good is marked with Public Domain Mark 1.0.