Category:Wine trends

TV wine ads: Black Box targets younger consumers – but still doesn’t get it right

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

Adam Scott is funny, but why is he reinforcing the same old snotty wine stereotypes?

This new ad for Black Box, E&J Gallo’s best-selling boxed wine, does something that almost no wine ad does – targets consumers who aren’t old white guys.

For which it is to be commended. Unfortunately, that’s about the only thing different here. The rest of the ad is little more than the same tired, cliched stereotypes that have plagued wine advertising since Orson Welles. In this, the ad bears more resemblance to this sad, four-decade old effort than something created in the age of TikTok.

But that’s the wine business for you.

So, yes, Adam Scott is funny, and he is familiar to the younger consumers the wine business so desperately needs. But what he’s doing is more or less the same thing that John Gielgud did in the aforementioned Paul Masson ad – reinforcing wine’s snobbery.

This is boxed wine. Why do we need a paneled library? Why is Scott dressed like someone in a 1940s English movie? And why oh why oh why does an agency type use the word “savviest” in some marketing-speak statement describing the ad’s brilliance? Wine isn’t savvy – wine is fun, damn it.

Know what would have been funnier and more effective? Put Scott at a picnic bench (he starred in “Parks and Recreation” after all), corkscrew in hand, trying to open the box. Then, proceed from there.

Because, as the blog’s official wine marketer told me when we discussed the ad, “This doesn’t break any new ground, even falling back on the gold medal awards cliché. And that was done poorly — the snark of the ad implies the medals are a sham, too.”

And he isn’t alone in that. The Gielgud ad’s co-creator left a comment on the post saying, yes, it was a lousy ad, no matter how well-intentioned it seemed at the time. Would that the Scott ad agency had seen his comment.

Fortunately, they can see it now.

Video: Black Box Wines via YouTube

More about TV wine ads:
• TV wine ads: Bring on the Hallmark Channel wine! (Yes, that Hallmark Channel)?
• Wine business: Watch this beer spot to see how TV wine ads should be done
• What was James Mason doing making a Thunderbird TV commercial?

Wine history lesson 4: Those damned high prices

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

1970s Bordeaxu prices
Who knew that the 1970s wine prices that retailers complained about would seem almost too cheap today? Right click on the image for easier viewing.

Think the WC complains about high prices? Listen to retailers’ laments about skyrocketing prices 50 years ago

Consider this quote:

“There will at least be a leveling‐off in prices and perhaps a slight drop in the less expensive wines.”

Hard to believe, given what we know about how the wine business works these days. Prices don’t go down; the entire point of wine is for prices to go up. But this comes from a time when the law of supply and demand still applied.

The quote is from a November 1970 story discussing French wine prices for that vintage, which wouldn’t be released for a couple of years. It notes that prices for the past couple of vintages increased because of short supply, but now that supply was more in balance, “leading retailers in New York say there probably will be some adjustments. The cost of a premier cru Bordeaux should, at worst, be no higher than the ’69, while the lesser chateaux may fall further.”

And, if it’s possible to believe, those high prices are 10 to 20 times less than what they are today. Talk about The Twilight Zone.

How was that possible, 50 years ago?

• Much, much less demand for French wine in the U.S. — and, actually, wine in general. Most wine sold in this country until the 1980s was sweet and dessert wine; the market for table wine was limited to big cities like New York.

• In fact, a limited market for French wine outside of France and Great Britain. Wealthy Chinese and Russian consumers (then the Soviet Union), who have done so much to drive up wine prices, were hardly factors at all.

• No Robert Parker, and all that he did (as well as those who followed him) to send prices on their upward spiral. Parker’s first Wine Advocate, with its 100-point scale, appeared in 1978, but he didn’t make his mark until 1982, “the vintage famous for launching the career of the world’s most successful wine critic.” Parker, the first mass market wine critic (more or less), made Bordeaux – and all wines eventually – accessible to people who may not have known about them. Talk about increasing demand.

The other irony about all of this? One important retailer in the story  lamented the high price of Bordeaux, complaining that there had been dramatic increases since the mid-1960s.

Which has led us to where some retailers charge $20 for the red Chateau Bonnet; similar wines probably cost less than a $1 back then.

Photo: Sherry-Lehmann Wine & Spirits Co. May 1978: Old, Rare Bordeaux Letter

More wine history lessons:
• Wine history lesson 3: Bring on the French wine!
• Maynard Amerine on quality, price, and value
• Wine business history: The more things change, the more they stay the same

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.

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

The Golden Age of Zinfandel

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

zinfandel
“Man, I wish I could find some of those quality, cheap zinfandels the WC wrote about.”

Or, how we almost had a cheap, well-made every day California red wine like Chianti and Beaujolais – and then we didn’t

One of my first great crusades as a wine writer in the mid-1990s was California zinfandel. There were any number of cheap, well-made, and delicious labels, and it seemed like zinfandel had the chance to become the U.S. equivalent of Italy’s Chianti and France’s Beaujolais – a quality, every day red wine that everyone could afford.

How different would the wine world have been if that had happened?

But, of course, it never did. Because, wine.

So check out this freelance piece for Pix.wine, where I discuss how and why that happened. Needless to say, it was a great joy to write (despite the crummy, SEO-oriented headlines) and reminded me that California can make the best wine in the world — and even the best cheap wine. Among the highlights:

• Talking to Joel Peterson, one of the nicest guys in the wine business and a terrific winemaker, as well as the always entertaining Carol Shelton, another top-flight zinfandel maker.

• Recounting the history of zinfandel in California, where vines planted more than a century ago are still used to make wine.

• Ranting about high-alcohol wine and how Robert Parker not only destroyed quality, affordable zinfandel in the U.S., but didn’t much help Australian shiraz in the long run, either.

• Finding a connection between overpriced Napa cabernet sauvignon and what became too many overpriced California zinfandels. Or, as one long-time wine guy told me, “Follow the money.”

Artificial intelligence and wine recommendations

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

cooper's hawk
Drinky is embarrassed that his AI brethren think the WC likes buttery California chardonnays.

Wine marketers are betting millions that algorithms will help us find wine we like

Most computer-generated wine recommendations have traditionally been pretty much worthless. There’s this, which we’ve noted before on the blog. But there’s also this, from wine.com, which arrived last month: The email said I would like a $64 bottle of Veuve Clicquot (I think not), as well as a $20 Kim Crawford sauvignon blanc (I think not, again), as well as a $12 California pinot noir and a $12 sweet red blend (I really, really think not).

That’s because the formulas used to put these recommendations together depend on things that aren’t necessarily related to wine – like income, age, and gender — and use past purchase information probably more than they should. Just because I bought wine A doesn’t mean I’m going to like it enough to buy wine B. And AI-generated recommendations have been notoriously lousy at using price to determine what we’ll like.

In addition, most algorithms have not been able to effectively process the wine-related criteria that do matter, like style, alcohol levels, and so forth. And I’m not sure that marketers understand the challenge. One highly-touted AI effort in 2021 said the the goal was “to personalize wine recommendations based on individual preferences, for example: Is the subscriber a red wine or do they prefer white (or maybe a little of both)?” Which seems more of a 1990s approach than something in 2021.

Another, the BottleBird app, asks a series of questions to find out what we like, including “How do you feel about the smell of flowers?” How we answer, says its publicity, will make sure we “never buy a bad bottle of wine again.” So, of course, when I tried the app, I got a 97 percent match with two Fre non-alcoholic reds and two buttery California chardonnays. Hardly the WC’s kind of wines, are they?

The process is so difficult, in fact, that a friend of mine who has written extensively about the subject once told me the only way AI wine recommendations could be successful is if they included information from human tasting panels. Which hardly sounds very AI.

So why have wine marketers spent millions of dollars trying to find a way to teach machines to make wine recommendations? My hunch is that it’s not so much about helping us find wine we like as it is selling us wine. Which, of course, is not necessarily a bad thing – if they work. But when they recommend wines I wouldn’t buy even if they were free, what’s the point?

A few words about “healthy” wine

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

healthy wine
“So what kind of ‘healthy’ wine can I pair with this?”

No, wine is not healthy, and any attempt to make it so does a disservice to wine and to health

How do we know something bizarre is going on in wine? Because “healthy wine” is all the rage. Or, as a wine marketing friend told me recently: “I’m receiving an insane amount of press requests (and coverage) about low-calorie / keto / sugar per content wines from lifestyle media. And I am quite confused, to be honest.”

Never fear. The Wine Curmudgeon is here to make sense out of the nonsensical.

Diets and diet fads are like fashion – someone is always reinventing the hemline, and what was au courant 20 or 30 years ago is au courant again. Keto, for instance, bears more than a passing resemblance to the infamous Atkins diet, and Atkins may well have its roots in something especially nasty – the so-called diet plate of cottage cheese, canned fruit, and hamburger patty that was the rage from the late 1950s to the early 1970s.

And who can forget when pizza and beer were diet food?

So no, it’s not surprising that lifestyle writers – whose knowledge of trends is much more detailed than their knowledge of wine – are agog over “healthy wine.” After all, lifestyle writers gave us “Mommy wine,” as well as the neo-Prohibitionist terror that alcoholic mommies, zombie-like, are walking among us.

In this respect, “healthy” wine makes sense. Why not tell people that they can drink wine and still maintain a healthy lifestyle? It’s what they want to hear, for one thing, and it sort of, maybe, kind of, has a little medical validity. Everyone should consume fewer calories and less sugar, and the idea behind “healthy” wine is that it has fewer calories and less sugar – mostly because it has less alcohol.

That wine is not healthy – that it can be addictive and kill you — is just a minor inconvenience that the lifestyle writers will be sure to mention in a sentence or two about three-quarters of the way down the story.

A friend of mine, who writes about this subject with the same passion and crankiness that I bring to wine scores and ingredient labels, has said that the entire idea of “healthy” wine is not just a fraud, but a disservice to wine. If you want to drink wine and be healthy, then drink wine in moderation. Why buy special wine that almost certainly won’t taste as good (low- and no-alcohol wines are notoriously noxious) and will cost as much as traditional wine?

Because, as I learned as a young newspaperman, there’s only one way to lose weight and to be healthy: Eat less and exercise more. Everything else is just lifestyle writing.

Photo: Restaurant-ing through history