Category:Wine trends

TV wine ads: John Gielgud makes a quick buck plugging Paul Masson

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

This early 1980s John Gielgud Paul Masson TV commercial is no “Arthur”

Did John Gielgud see a chance to play off his Oscar-winning role in “Arthur” and make a ton of money for very little work? Because, otherwise, there’s very little that makes sense in this early 1980s commercial for Paul Masson.

It’s not especially funny — ridiculing modern art was tired and old even then. And, as wine marketing guru Paul Tinknell has discussed on the blog, it makes the same mistake most TV wine ads do: It doesn’t focus on those of us who actually drink wine, but tries to make wine something that it isn’t. Most of us drink wine with dinner. Most of us don’t drink wine at art openings; in fact, most of us don’t even go to art openings.

The other oddity here? The wine business’ use of noted Shakespearean actors like Gielgud and James Mason for TV commercials through the mid-1980s. It’s probably an attempt — a very weak attempt — to make ordinary wine seem more high end. All it does, of course, iPauls make it look silly.

Video courtesy of Sean Mc via YouTube

More about TV wine ads:
• TV wine ads: Drink Black Tower, invade a foreign country?
• 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?

Putting canned wine in perspective

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

canned wine
Somebody bring the rose. The socca is ready.

No, canned wine is not the end of the universe. So why do we keep hearing that it is?

A recent trade magazine story asked the question, “How seriously should we be taking the rise of wines in a can?” To which my answer was, “Who cares?’

The story was mostly the same winebiz-speak we’ve been seeing for the past couple of years as cans have become more popular. To wit: The wine business is shocked to discover that consumers will drink wine out of something other than a 750-ml bottle with a cork-style closure, so it’s obvious that cans are going to take over the wine business. So we need to do something!!!!!

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

We read the same stuff when Tetrapaks were au courant and boxed wine was supposed to be the next big thing. And nothing changed – 75 percent of the world’s wine still comes in a 750-ml bottle with a cork-style closure.

So why the panic now? Yes, the quality of much canned wine is suspect. But why should that bother an industry that turns out vast quantities of plonk in bottles?

Because the wine business, and especially the wine business in the U.S., has so much time and money invested in keeping wine exactly the same way it has been since the end of World War II. So anything that threatens the ancien regime is to be feared. And it’s to be especially feared given the current wine climate of flat sales and increased sobriety. Even if, in the end, canned wine won’t make that much of a difference to flat sales and increased sobriety.

So why can’t we just drink wine – canned or otherwise – and enjoy it instead of rending garments and gnashing teeth about the future of the wine business? I recommend this blog post from food writer David Lebovitz. He is discussing socca, the chickpea flour pancake and or crepe thing famous in southern France, and his point is most welcome (as is his socca, one of my favorite Saturday night appetizers):

And for any wine snobs out there that think it’s folly to serve wine in cups instead of glasses haven’t had the pleasure of standing near a wood-burning oven, eating a blistering-hot wedge of socca with a non-recyclable tumbler of wine. Preferably served over ice, Marseille-style.

Photo: “FR’Nice 11’0925 – 13” by karendelucas is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Chianti producers: We need to make our red wine more sweet

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

chianti producers
“These wines aren’t soft enough — let’s add sugar!”

Chianti producers are tinkering with 800 years of success to chase consumers who don’t exist

Chianti, perhaps the quintessential red wine – earthy, tart and oh so dry – is going to become more sweet. Why? Because Italy’s Chianti producers want “to sweeten its appeal to attract more women and a new generation of young consumers. …”

Is it any wonder the Wine Curmudgeon worries about the future of the wine business?

This approach is so pathetic on so many levels that I don’t even know where to begin to criticize it. Chianti is wine, not Hawaiian Punch or a rum and Coke. Why make it taste like something it isn’t?

More importantly, it works from a false premise: That women and younger consumers don’t like dry wines, don’t buy dry wines, and only want to drink sweet wines. Where do otherwise intelligent people (yes, this includes you, Bogle) get these ideas?

The world wine market is worth more than $300 billion, and almost all of that is dry wine. Why, suddenly, are those sales figures irrelevant?

Well, says the president of the group that represents Chianti makers, “When we participate in wine fairs in Brazil, America or in Asia, people often tell us Chianti is a great wine but too hard, with too much tannin.”

Ah, that’s it – anecdotes from other people who work in the wine business. Chianti producers are going to tinker with an eight-century success story because someone who sells wine told them what they heard from someone else who sells wine, who heard it from someone else who sells wine. Talk about hearing what you want to hear and disregarding the rest.

That’s an even worse reason to do something than a focus group.

The only good news in this is that the current legal residual sugar levels in Chianti are so low that the new, higher level is still less sweet than many California dry red wines. But that’s troubling, too, since the Chianti group president made the same point: ““It will still be a dry wine. The limit we have will be the same as other famous Italian wines like the Brunello and the Barolo. It won’t taste any sweeter.”

Methinks thou doth protest too much.

I wrote a guest piece for an Italian wine magazine in the blog’s early days; I was asked to offer my insight into the U.S. market and how Italian companies could continue to sell lots of wine here. Because, as the Italians never seem to remember, they sell more wine in the U.S. than any other foreign country.

I wrote: “Make Italian wines in Italy. Don’t make Italian wines that taste like they were made in France or California. What’s the point of that when people can buy French wines and California wines?”

I guess I need to find that piece and send it to the Chianti producers group.

Photo: “radda in chianti 012” by _gee_ is licensed under CC BY 2.0 

New study: We’ll happily pay a premium for wine when it comes to Drink Local

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

drink localHigher prices imply better quality for consumers who drink Drink Local

Don’t worry that local and regional wine tends to cost more than comparable national brands, which is something that has been hurting Drink Local’s growth. That’s because a 2019 study has found that consumers are happy to pay more for local wine, beer, and the like.

“We have not studied whether local wine and beer is now on a par with local food in terms of consumer acceptance,” says Ashok Lalwani, PhD, one of the report’s co-authors and an associate professor of marketing at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business. “But, based on our results, I would speculate that consumers would be more likely to infer higher quality from higher priced wine and beer that is locally produced, but not as much for wine and beer that is positioned globally or not locally produced.”

This is huge news for Drink Local. First, it has always lagged behind local food in acceptance, the idea that it’s worth buying just because it’s local. Second, that consumers perceive a quality difference between local wine and Big Wine may be even more important, since Drink Local has been fighting the quality battle for as long as it has been around.

In fact, says Lalwani, the study results hint that consumers are less likely to associate price with quality for national brands, and are more likely to buy cheaper products since they all seem the same regardless of price. But the reverse seems to be true for local wine; that is, consumers equate higher price with better quality.

Again, an amazing development given all that Drink Local has had to overcome in the past couple of decades. It’s also not clear what’s driving this change in attitude. Lalwani says the study didn’t look at age or other demographics, but my guess is that the explanation lies in younger consumers and their distrust of multi-national brands and their preference for local.

Finally, the study quotes several multi-national marketing executives, none in the alcohol business, who sort of see this local thing, but are baffled by it: The “executives considered local or global communities in their pricing decisions, [but] none knew when such strategies were effective or why.”

Who knew those of us who believe in Drink Local knew more than lots of people with MBAs?

Photo courtesy of skeeze via Pixabay using a Creative Commons license

Who needs a corkscrew? Pump that wine cork out!

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

Wouldn’t a screwcap be easier to use than paying for a gizmo to pump the wine cork out of the bottle?

Regular visitors know the Wine Curmudgeon’s long-running and Quixotic quest to convince the wine business that screwcaps can help save wine from itself. If we eliminate the wine cork, we make it easier to open the bottle. So won’t more people drink wine?

Which, of course, is advice that has been consistently ignored. And, as I always note, advice that aggravates blog visitors to such an extent that several always cancel their email when I write about this.

Nevertheless, I keep going. The wine cork is problem enough, but what may be worse is the other foolishness it has engendered. See the video for something called the Airly, which pumps the cork out of the bottle: “Gone are the days of broken corks, broken cork screws, floating cork bits in your wine, and for a lot of us…the pain of opening a bottle of wine!”

Pain, indeed.

To me, the pain comes when someone invents yet another gadget of limited value when the solution to the cork problem is simple: screwcaps. Twist and open. Twist and open. Twist and open. And no tools or expense required – just like craft beer and spirits.

The Airly, not surprisingly, apparently didn’t last much past the year-old video. I couldn’t find it for sale. But – and also not surprisingly – Amazon sells at least four similar products. Two of them have one-star ratings of about 20 percent; given’s Amazon’s reputation for inflated scoring, that should speak to how well the things work.

So cancel if you feel you must, but know that as long as wine corks and gizmos like the Airly exist, I’ll keep tilting at the windmill. Would you expect any less?

Video courtesy of GearDate via YouTube using a Creative Commons license

More about wine corks and screwcaps:
• Corks: The most dangerous wine closure in the world
• It’s not the quality of the wine – it’s the sound of the cork popping
• Chehalem, pinot noir, and screwcaps

Follow-up: Paul Tincknell and the woes of wine marketing

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

More examples showing that wine marketing lacks imagination and doesn’t focus on why people drink wine

Last week’s podcast with Sonoma wine marketing guru Paul Tincknell elicited a fair amount of comment, especially since it ran at the end of the summer when most people have other things to do besides listen to podcasts about the decades-long failure of wine marketing.

As one reader emailed me: “Commercials showing people drinking grocery store wine at swank parties? People get paid for coming up with that stuff?”

Paul received some feedback, too. A colleague shared data with him about a 2009 wine consumption survey: “The results,” Paul emailed me, “are fascinating and confirm that – guess what! – people drink wine with family and friends at meals or in casual situations.” The colleague told Paul that the survey results were given to almost every important wine marketing and trade group in the country, but that, “of course, the industry immediately ignored their work.”

In other words, the business has known for at least a decade how U.S. consumers enjoy wine and the best way to market to them: Show people drinking wine at dinner with their friends and family. That hardly seems like a creative reach. (And we’re not the only ones who have seen this — check out this rant from Paul Mabray, who is generally regarded as one of best wine and consumer experts in the country).

Instead, we get epic silliness like the Kim Crawford “Undo ordinary” commercial, a long-time favorite of blog readers. And, no, it didn’t get an almost unprecedented 33 comments or become one of the blog’s most visited posts because everyone thought it was cutting edge genius.

In fact, Kim Crawford (owned by Big Wine’s Constellation Brands) seems to go out of its way to show up in these kinds of analyses. Paul sent me two especially foolish commercials; the one that made me giggle the most is at the top of this post, called “Make it Amazing.” Who knew I had sway my butt just so to be a cool, sophisticated wine drinker? The other, called “Elevate the Moment,” looks like something from a short-lived 1990s PBS series about rich people.

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

Video courtesy of Kim Crawford Wines via YouTube using a Creative Commons license

Wine prices, razor blades, and premiumization

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

razor blads
“Dude, shaving is so old school.”

“Lower shaving frequency” is a fancy way of saying razor blades cost too much, which means men don’t shave as often

More men are apparently growing beards, costing one of the biggest companies in the world $8 billion this year. The reason? “Lower shaving frequency,” according to the financial analysts. I prefer the reason given by one of the Millennials quoted in the story in the link: Razor blades cost too much money.

In other words, men aren’t shaving as much; they’re shaving better. Sound familiar?

In this, the wine and razor businesses are eerily similar. A handful of big companies control each category, which means oligopoly pricing. A razor and two or three blades can cost more than $20, and there’s no way the actual cost of a little metal and some plastic is anywhere near that.

And razor-speak can be as indecipherable as wine-speak: “Gillette Fusion ProGlide Razor Handle with FlexBall Technology,” for example. Can anyone who doesn’t work for Gillette’s ad agency explain what that means?

The high cost of shaving

Obviously, there’s more going on here than the high cost of shaving. Most importantly, the culture has changed; the days of coats and ties and offices, where men had to shave every day, are something for TV shows like “Mad Men.” My beard dates to the late 1980s, and even then they weren’t common. And we certainly didn’t grow them to be hipsters, a common occurrence these days.

But you can’t ignore the cost of razors and blades. Says a Millennial in the MarketWatch story: “I don’t love the $5 price for a replacement blade, since it equates to a yearly expense of more than $200 — an amount equal to a good dinner at a decent restaurant, even perhaps with a bottle of wine. And trust me: I’d much rather be dining in style than shaving.”

In all, the men’s shaving products market has shrunk by more than 11 percent in the past five years. This dovetails with a recent Nielsen survey, comparing the drinking habits of Millennials, Gen Xers, and Baby Boomers.

Overall, a little more than two out of five Millennials don’t drink for health reasons and almost one-third don’t drink because it’s too expensive. Drill down, and Nielsen finds that the youngest group is 11 percent more likely to not drink because it costs too much, compared to their parents and grandparents.

High wine prices, decreased consumption. High razor blade prices, decreased use. Does anyone else see a pattern here?