Category:Wine trends

Leading wine experts call for ingredient and nutrition labels

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

nutrition labels
Remember when Bonny Doon took the lead in adding ingredient labels to wine? And we thought labels had a chance to spread?

Has the time finally come for ingredient and nutrition labels — given that people with initials after the name agree with the WC?

The past couple of weeks have been filled with demonic news stories about pandemic drinking and the imminent alcoholism of anyone who has ever had a glass of wine with dinner.

How about: “Soaring Pandemic Alcohol Sales Cause Concern For Doctors”!

Or, “America’s all or nothing attitude toward alcohol: Binge or be sober”

And, “As pandemic drinking surges. …”

So what’s the wine industry to do? Obviously, it hasn’t done much of a job reminding people that the U.S. is not anywhere near a collective drunken stupor. As noted here way too many times, there is little evidence we’re drinking more during the pandemic.

Dare the Wine Curmudgeon suggest – once again – ingredient and nutrition labels? And, this time, I’m not the only one who thinks so.

No less than the Institute of Masters of Wine recently held a webinar on the subject – and many people with initials after their name said ingredient and nutrition labels were a good idea.

And imagine my joy when Ines Salpico, writing in a British trade magazine, spared no punches: “Wine has been able keep itself at the margins of a basic consumer right: knowing the full list of ingredients and allergens present in a product. … [G]reater transparency needs to be seen as a key opportunity rather than a threat.”

Her argument makes perfect sense to everyone but the wine business:

• “Transparency will engage a generation of consumers that is data-driven, data-hungry and very skeptic about products without full traceability.” In other words, all those young people who don’t drink wine.

• Labels will make wine seem more like a food product and less like tobacco, a tactic that the neo-Prohibitionists have been using to great success.

• The lack of labels gives the impression that producers “might have something to hide,” and makes it possible for foolishness like clean wine and healthy wine.

So, once more, please: Can’t we offer ingredient and nutrition labels on wine?

TV wine ads: Bring on the Hallmark Channel wine! (Yes, that Hallmark Channel)

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

Only the Hallmark Channel could sell wines named Love, Blush, Jingle, and Joy

Let the jokes and memes begin: The Hallmark Channel has wine. Yes, that Hallmark Channel, home to movies so corny that even those of us who think corny can be a giggle shudder at the mere mention of its name. There are four wines, in fact – Love, Blush, Jingle, and Joy, as well as a commercial to go with the wines.

Sometimes, this stuff really does just write itself.

So, $14 a bottle. Award-winning winemakers. “Custom crafted wines.” Made by Wines that Rock, “the premier lifestyle wine company.” Sold at Cost Plus World Market. …

Ah, nuts to this. How can I possibly write a serious analysis of Hallmark Channel Wine and its TV ad?

So just watch the commercial and marvel at the marketing genius of the people who did this. Because it does seem that they understand their audience and demographic in a way that other wine marketers can only marvel at.

Who else would name a wine Jingle? And, apparently, make money off of it.

More about TV wine ads:
• TV wine ads: San Giuseppe Wines, because you can never have too much bare skin in a wine ad
• TV wine ads: King Solomon wine, because “Tonight … the king is in town”
• TV wine ads: Almost 40 years of awful

Video courtesy of Hallmark Channel, via YouTube

Pop culture wines 2021

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

pop culture wine
All this bubbly needs is a celebrity name, and it will never be lonely again.

This year’s pop culture wines update includes a celebrity wine competition, models who “make” Prosecco, and a rapper-inspired rose

The pandemic has added one more insult to our too many injuries: How about a pop culture wine competition?

“Wine expert Mark Oldman” held something called “Celebrity War of the Luxury Red Wines” earlier this year, in which 328 households used Zoom to judge wine costing $50 or more. Sigh. Who knew Roger Corman’s 1964 classic,  “The Masque of the Red Death,” in which he channels Edgar Alan Poe, the 1 percent, and the plague, was so prescient?

Or, as Oliver Styles described it on Wine-Searcher last year, “The terrible persistence of celebrity wine.”

That’s because pop culture wines, including many celebrity wines, are not about quality. They’re not even necessarily about drinking. One marketer, discussing the perennially sold out “Game of Thrones” wine in 2019, told me they’re “the kind of thing you just put on a shelf for people to look at.”

Is it any wonder I worry about the future of the wine business?

Pop culture wines, with rare exceptions, are made to stroke a celebrity’s ego, to take advantage of cheap grapes and the resulting high margins, and because they get a lot of free ink, cyber and real — and especially from the non-wine media. As one reviewer wrote about a TV series aimed at women of a certain age: “Truth be told, the labels are what really sell this wine.”

So here, in no particular order, are some of the most recent pop culture wines to hit the market. Celebrities seemed to dominate the last 12 months:

• Prosecco, apparently, is a big deal if you’re a super model. Cara and Poppy Delevingne sell two wines called Della Vite that cost $22 and $28. “Being a Delevingne means loving Prosecco,” Cara wrote on Instagram.

• And, of course, rose — this one costing $38 from auto racing’s Danica Patrick. The pink is part of Patrick’s Sominium Wine, which includes three other high-end California labels.  Tasting Panel gave the 2016 cabernet sauvignon 96 points, which isn’t bad for a $185 wine.

• And even more rose, from rapper Post Malone — the $22 Maison No. 9. Because, of course, the world needs another celebrity Provencal rose.

Photo: “Wino Cava (wine)” by praktyczny.przewodnik is licensed under CC BY 2.0

More about pop culture wine:
• Welcome to the wine business, Sarah Jessica Parker
• Update: Dumbest pop culture wines 2020
• Downton Abbey claret — wine merchandising for dummies

The dilemma of wine availability, why you’re so angry about it, and why it just won’t go away

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

wine availabilityBlame the three-tier system for the dilemma of wine availability, as well as some surprising venom from the blog’s readers

There has been a surprisingly venomous strain in some of the comments across several recent blog posts relating to wine availability and buying wine in supermarkets. One reader went so far as to accuse me – me, of all people – of abandoning independent wine shops. Another said it was impossible to buy quality wine at a store that sells laundry detergent.

Damn – how did the blog’s comments start to resemble Facebook before the election?

So let’s try to restore our cheap wine camaraderie, because this is $10 wine we’re talking about. And isn’t wine supposed to be fun?

• The spark that likely set this off – and, in retrospect, not surprisingly – was wine availability. Several readers noted they wouldn’t be moving to the paid version of the blog because it was difficult finding many of the wines I review. This, of course, is nothing new – wine availability is the scourge of the wine business, and we’ve discussed it here many times. It’s now such a big deal, in fact, that the Europeans have noticed it. Wine is not like computers or ketchup; the three-tier system works against that kind of availability. This is a fact of life, and no amount of wishing and hoping will change that. One needs to look for a workaround.

• Which I offered, as I always do, and my advice included checking supermarkets and Wine.com. Because, of course, the three-tier system. Whoops. Who knew that would set off such a conflagration?

• One person accused me of turning my back on independent wine shops in their pandemic hour of need. Maybe I should send him my credit card receipts from Pogo’s and Jimmy’s, Dallas’ two best independents? More practically, all he needed to do was to check the blog to see almost 14 years of posts, podcasts, and words of wisdom about the best place to buy quality wine – independent wine shops.

• This somehow morphed into the supermarket wine conundrum. Is there a lot of crappy wine sold in supermarkets? You bet. Just like there is in every other wine retailer, because that’s the way the system works. But you can also buy this wine. And this wine. And these wines. Each is in the $10 Hall of Fame, and to ignore them because of where they’re sold is as silly as breaking a wine glass before pouring wine into it.

• Finally, know that what makes me different from almost every other wine writer in the world – and makes me worth paying for – is that I visit almost every retail location that sells wine. That’s because I’m a reporter as well as a wine critic. Anyone can sit at their desk and wax poetic about $100 wine. You can’t criticize something you don’t know, and that I know what’s on the shelf at Kroger and Walmart and Target and even 7-Eleven gives me that right. Would that more in the wine business felt the same way.

Photo: “Sunseed Natural Market – Food Co-op” by Rusty Clark ~ 100K Photos is licensed under CC BY 2.0

More about wine availability:
• Can we ever solve the problem of wine availability?
• Wine availability, and how it drives readers crazy, too
• Eric Asimov and the dilemma of wine availablity

The Southern Glazer’s-Constellation deal is one more slap up the head for wine drinkers

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

Southern Glazer's
There’s big, and then there’s really big after the Southern Glazer’s Constellation deal.

Wholesaler Southern Glazer’s will control the No. 1 and No. 3 U.S. wine companies in key parts of the U.S. Can higher prices and less selection be far behind?

One of the most important pieces of of wine news in years went practically unreported in the Winestream Media this week. Because, of course, it had nothing to do with scores and everything do with limiting consumer choice and raising prices. Can’t let wine drinkers know about that, can we?

The news? Southern Glazer’s, the biggest wine wholesaler in the country, acquired the rights to distribute Constellation Brands, the third biggest wine producer, in about one-third more of the country. That gives Southern control of two of the three biggest wine companies in the world – E&J Gallo and Constellation – in some of the most important markets in the U.S.

And that is bad news for wine drinkers. Southern, already powerful, will be immensely powerful with the Constellation addition. Depending on whose numbers you believe, the Gallo and Constellation combination may give Southern a chance to eventually control as much as half of the U.S. wholesale market

In other words, one wholesaler could control half the wines for sale in your city, thanks to three-tier laws that require all wine to sold through a wholesaler. How can that be good for anyone but the wholesaler, the biggest retailers (Kroger, Costco, and the like), and the producers?

Because it’s not good for wine drinkers. That kind of concentration tends to lead to higher prices and less selection – one of the basic tenets of economic theory. Know that retailers, faced with a choice of making Southern happy by buying its wines or making it unhappy by saying, “No, we want something else,” will almost always opt for the former. Who wants to annoy Southern and lose a chance to buy popular wines like Barefoot, Apothic, Kim Crawford, and Woodbridge?

So we’ll see Southern products on store shelves at the expense of those from smaller wholesalers and producers. The result? Imagine a supermarket Great Wall of Wine where most of the domestic labels will be from two producers, and where those domestic labels will push out imports. How much fun will that be?

The wholesalers – and even Southern’s competitors – will claim that that would never happen, and that they would never use their immense economic power to force someone to buy something they didn’t want to buy. Which they may well believe. But I certainly don’t.

I know what I’ve seen at my Kroger – the slow but steady disappearance of French and Spanish wines, combined with the proliferation of Big Wine labels. And that was before the Southern-Constellation deal. I don’t even want to think about how much worse it’s going to get.

The tariff’s damage to the U.S. wine business

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

BoeigtnPeople are losing jobs and taking salary cuts to protect a company whose stock price has soared almost two-thirds in five years

We can quantify the tariff’s damage to the wine business with one sentence: U.S. companies are paying the tariff – how much sense does that make if the tariff is supposed to be punishing European companies?

I was reminded of this during a recent chat with Patrick Mata of Ole & Obrigado, one of the best Spanish wine importers in the world. You can hear the entire conversation as a podcast next week; what’s worth noting here is Mata’s analysis of the tariff: His company’s sales were down 20 percent in 2020 because of the tariff (and, of course, the pandemic). How is that punishing Europe for subsidizing airline manufacturing?

It’s not, and it’s one reason why we’re still talking about this foolishness almost 18 months after it started. Because, as one trade group executive noted, “The only link between aircraft and beverage alcohol is the fact you can purchase a drink on your flight.”

In this, take one look at any of the numbers, and you’ll be able to see the wreckage – not in phony, sound-bite geopolitical terms, but in human terms – and in the middle of the worst world health crisis in decades:

• One family-owned New York City importer has had to pay more than $2 million in tariffs, so it’s in a hiring freeze. Another had to cut salaries by 20 percent for family members.

• The Commerce Department reported that bottled table wine imports fell almost nine percent in 2020 by volume, and a whopping 21 percent in value. Those numbers, and especially the latter, are almost unprecedented.

• France has been especially hard hit. Bottled table wine shipments to the U.S. had recorded 10 consecutive years of volume growth prior to 2020, when they fell by volume and dollars – almost one-quarter of the latter.

So this is where I mention Boeing’s stock price, the company that the tariffs are protecting: It’s about two-thirds higher than it was five years ago. If that’s failing, the blog should fail so badly.

Supermarket wine sales during the pandemic

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

supermarket wine
I need more Barefoot, Josh Cellars, Bota Box, and Stella Rosa!

We’re probably buying more supermarket wine during the pandemic, though we have less to choose from – and we’re likely drinking it with a home-cooked dinner

Supermarket wine seems to be thriving during the pandemic, as we make fewer trips and buy more items – including wine – at one store instead of splitting the trip into two or three stops.

Why seems? Because, as with so many things wine, there are few reliable statistics. As one of the country’s leading supermarket analysts told me, “I’ve heard that’s true, and a lot of people are talking about it, but I haven’t actually seen any numbers about it.”

So what do we know?

• Sales appear to increasing. Kroger reported in December that sauvignon blanc was its fourth most popular purchase in 2020, ahead of bags of chocolate candies and burger patties. In addition, noted the annual Wine Business Monthly study, four supermarket brands — Josh Cellars, Barefoot, Stella Rosa, and Bota — grew significantly in 2020. Stella Rosa, a sweet red, was up almost 108 percent.

• We could buying more private label supermarket wine, according to  the Wine Business Monthly study. This ties into a 2020 food industry report that “three in 10 shoppers said they were buying more store brands than before the pandemic,” and while the report doesn’t mention wine, it does talk about increased demand for all private label products.

• Because price still matters, despite premiumization. The New York Times reported in September that “shoppers are being more economical,” and if it’s true for beans and laundry detergent, it may well be true for wine. That’s my sense, anyway, and especially as I struggle to find cheap wine regularly stocked on store shelves. My Aldi, for example, is regularly sold out of my favorite cheap wines.

• We’re cooking more at home, and it looks like this will continue after the pandemic winds down. And that almost certainly means more supermarket wine sales, as shoppers pick up wine to go with dinner. I was skeptical when I saw this report about home cooking this fall, but more analysts say it looks to be the case. Kroger’s chairman told the Times: “People are moving on to more complex cooking, and we don’t see that going away.”

• Fewer wines to choose from when we do buy in a supermarket, by almost five percent, according to Nielsen. This is part of a larger trend, as retailers cut back on inventory in all departments. Interestingly, that five percent was one of the smallest decreases among the 13 categories in the survey. Is this is another hint at wine’s importance to supermarkets during the pandemic?

• More on-line wine sales. Combine better supermarket technology with relaxed state laws, and supermarket on-line sales probably increased, too. I can buy via Instacart or directly from the retailer’s at half a dozen Dallas grocers. In 2019, there were maybe a couple.