Tag Archives: on-line wine

Winebits 707: On-line wine, sommeliers, Beaujolais Nouveau

on-line wine
Is wine education a key part of the success of on-line wine sales?

This week’s wine news: Ray Isle dissects the on-line wine trend, plus scandal-rocked sommeliers’ group hires an executive director, and an odd lament for Beaujolais Nouveau

• On-line wine to the rescue? Food & Wine’s Ray Isle explains how and why buying wine on-line wine made inroads during the pandemic: “It’s clear we’re on the cusp of an entirely new wine-buying landscape. But what will that mean?” He notes that non-winery wine clubs – and no, not the 12 wines for a $1 that we’ve discussed here – could be more important than ever. That’s because they offer wine education as well; hence, consumers can buy and learn about wine regions, styles of wine, natural wine, and the like, and all from home.

• New executive director: The predominantly male Court of Master Sommeliers, Americas, rocked by a series of sexual scandals last year, has hired an executive director. Julie Cohen Theobald, armed with a University of Chicago MBA and a success as a high-level marketing executive at Procter & Gamble, seems to have what’s needed to reform the Court – if its members are serious about reform. But as the North Bay Business Journal noted, Theobald’s appointment did not mention the sex scandal or the earlier cheating mess, and included some wonderful PR-speak: “the Court of Master Sommeliers, Americas is committed to drive both internal and external change by engaging with its members, stakeholders, and larger community.” Engaging stakeholders, indeed.

• Beaujolais Nouveau: Beaujolais Nouveau, once a November tradition for U.S. wine drinkers, has long been out of favor. This story, from one of the Winestream Media, is the usual sort of marketing-inspired foolishness that passes for wine journalism. The wine’s sales declined, “a victim of its own success in America.” I have no idea what that means, and it obscures a larger issue: Wine quality got worse and worse, so that the wines eventually smelled of overripe bananas and didn’t taste much better. Who would want to buy that?

Photo: Mikel Parera on Unsplash

Winebits 683: Direct shipping, low alcohol, Brexit

direct shippingThis week’s wine news:  We’re buying less expensive wine via direct shipping, plus the demand for low alcohol wine and Brexit wine woes

• Prices drop: The pandemic, which has boosted sales for wine on-line and via direct shipping from wineries, has also cut the average price of wine bought the latter way. Ship Compliant, a winery shipping consultancy, reports that the average price of a bottle of wine bought directly from the winery dropped 9 1/2 percent in 2020. That’s the first decrease in at least a decade. Meanwhile, the dollar value of all shipments increased 14 1/2 percent last year. I wonder: will anyone in the wine business pay attention? Lower wine prices translates to more sales. The average DTC price remains high, about $37 a bottle, but that’s mostly because direct to consumer wines are more expensive to begin with.

• Lower alcohol: One leading wine analyst says the way to boost U.S. wine sales is though lower-alcohol products, like wine spritzers and wine with some alcohol removed. Martin Pasco writes that “Brands should offer lower alcohol wines, i.e. 5-9% [alcohol], to trigger permission to indulge for U.S. Millennials.” This is part of a larger trend in the U.S. wine business, which we’ve noted before on the blog. This could be the first time, though, that I’ve seen the low alcohol trend used to target younger wine drinkers.

• Brexit booze woes: Just when you think the U..S. alcohol laws are the goofiest in the world, someone goes and shows we’re not alone. Amazon had to stop selling some beer, wine, and spirits from its Northern Ireland web site because of the mess surrounding Britain’s departure from the European Union. Reuters reports that new custom rules may make selling alcohol too complicated and too expensive for the on-line retailer to deal with, including double taxation.

Photo: “White Wine Drinking Evening With Girls” by wuestenigel is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Winebits 682: Big Wine, wine writing, on-line wine

Big wineThis week’s wine news: The Winestream Media discovers Big Wine, plus a wine writer discovers conflicts of interest and wine drinkers grapple with on-line shopping

• Big Wine, indeed: This post did not come from the Wine Curmudgeon or one of the few independent voices in wine writing who pays attention to these things. Rather, this harsh look at Big Wine came from the trade site for the Wine Enthusiast, one of the gatekeepers of traditional wine writing. It laments the “corporatization” of the U.S. wine business and even uses the M word – monopoly. This news is not new, of course, and regular visitors here have been reading it for years. But that we’re seeing it on a site that is one of the pillars of the current system may speak to a growing sense of unease with the status quo. And a note to the writer: E&J Gallo accounts for almost one out of every four bottles of wine made in the U.S., which should have been at the top of your story.

• Conflicts of interest: Spanish wine writer Miguel Hudin asks the “massive” question that we don’t ask enough in this business: “How objective can you actually be when you’ve been flown somewhere and put up on someone else’s dime who is expecting coverage which should in theory be positive coverage?” His descriptions of the way the wine writing world works these days is past depressing, including the admonition he got for complaining about food he paid for. It’s good to see the subject brought up by someone who isn’t a cranky ex-newspaperman, and that Hudin understands the uphill road he travels in writing about this: “Oh Miquel, relax and enjoy the freebies! You’re being too critical and difficult!” No, Miquel, you’re not.

• Going on-line: We’ve had several mentions on the blog recently of wine drinkers’ reluctance to shop on-line. But, apparently, the wine drinking demographic isn’t worried about buying other stuff over the Internet, reports the Washington Post: “… one of the most significant and unexpected shifts, experts say, was the almost immediate embrace of online shopping by people in their 60s, 70s and 80s.” Which, of course, is the same age group that still dominates U.S. wine purchases. The next question: How soon until this group feel as comfortable buying wine over the Internet as it does toilet paper?

Winebits 622: Supermarket wine, ingredient labels, Kroger wine

supermarket WineThis week’s wine news: Sommeliers pick supermarket wine, plus another shout out for wine ingredient labels and Kroger expands its on-line wine business

• Interesting choices: Vinepair asked sommeliers to pick quality supermarket wine, and what struck me as how un-supermarket so many of the wines were. How many of us go to the grocers to spend $60 for a bottle of Jordan cabernent sauvignon? And you can tell many of the sommeleirs had not bought wine at a grocery store lately, given the number of hard to find European wines they selected. Still, it was good to see Dallas’ Barbara Werley select Chateau Ste. Michelle and Houston’s Jay Pyle pick the Matua sauvignon blanc, a top $10 wine.

• Thank you: Mike Veseth, The Wine Economist, says “I believe that wine, beer, and spirits will eventually be required to list their ingredients and nutritional data. I wonder what would happen if wine were to take a voluntary step and be more transparent now as a way to shape the narrative?” Which is good news for those of us who have fought long and hard for ingredient and nutritional labels and to convince to join the 21st century. Veseth’s reasoning is well taken: “We might think wine is special — and it is in many ways — but we shouldn’t assume that it is immune to the forces that are making transparency, accountability, and technology more important every day.”

• Good luck: Kroger has expanded its on-line wine store to 19 states and Washington, D.C, offering – get this – some four dozen wines “selected by winemakers and sommeliers for their quality, value and flavor profiles.” I wonder: Is it a coincidence that one of the wines is the Matua sauvignon blanc? You can check out the store at this link – just click on one of the states listed in the menu. Selection is limited, and most of the wines aren’t well known. But it is intriguing that Kroger is trying something that mighty Amazon gave up on long ago.

Winebits 532: Rose is still hot, Coke’s new booze, and grocery store wine

roseThis week’s wine news: Rose growth continues, plus Coke is launching alcopop in Japan and on-line grocery store wine sales

• Bring on the pink: Rose shows no signs of slowing down, despite what some curmudgeonly wine writers might think. This post in a trade publication calls it a “category killer,” which means its sales are growing much, much faster than other wines. According to Nielsen, rose is outpacing overall U.S. wine growth and still growing at double digits – “a rate unheard of in other categories.” I’m convinced (and ignoring the hip factor, which has played a role) that’s because rose represents one of the last values in wine – a quality product at a fair price that tastes like it should.

• One more time: Coke, whose failure in the wine business 30 years ago was almost as big a debacle as New Coke, is launching an alcoholic beverage in Japan – call it alcopop. The BBC reports that Coke wants to take advantage of “the country’s growing taste for Chu-Hi — canned sparkling flavored drinks given a kick with a local spirit called shochu.” The products, sweet and fizzy, have about as much alcohol as beer, three to eight percent. Chu-Hi is especially popular with younger women.

• Directly to your door: A European consultancy says U.S. supermarkets will boost wine sales via on-line and home delivery – shocking news for those of us who have watched the three-tier system have the opposite effect. But a Rabobank report says its “relative irrelevance will not last long. We firmly believe it will develop into the most important driver of on-line alcohol sales.” The reason, says the report, is that alcohol delivery will benefit from projected growth in increased grocery store delivery, piggybacking on its increase. It also cites a huge boost in Google searches for “alcohol delivery.” Which is all well and good, but there’s a long way from a Google search to actual on-line delivery.

Winebits 312: Sales trends edition

? YellowTail growth resumes: Remember all those stories about how the strong Australian dollar and YellowTail’s financial problems were going to mean the end of an era for Aussie wine? Not true, apparently. The biggest imported brand in the U.S. expects 2 1/2 percent gorwth this year, reaching almost 9 million cases. Driving that growth are the brand’s two sweet red labels, including a sangria. That YellowTail has rebounded from its problems says much about its marketing skill, but also speaks about its clout with retailers. How many other brands could have slumped the way YellowTail did, but not lose shelf space and even added space for two more wines? In this respect, Big Wine is becoming more and more like other consumer goods, be they ketchup or detergent, with all the means — good and bad — for the consumer.

? Is craft beer headed for a bust? This matters to wine not only because craft beer competes for drinkers with wine, especially in the younger demographics, but because the growth in craft beer (“But even such a healthy rise in consumer demand won’t be enough to sustain the many new breweries jumping into the marketplace“) has similarities to what happened in California with “boutique” wineries heading into the recession and with the unprecedented growth in moscato and sweet red over the past couple of years. What’s interesting is that someone in craft beer has noticed what ?s going on, while almost everyone in wine was in denial before the recession and during the moscato and sweet red boom.

? If you can sell wine on-line. ..: You can sell a lot of it. That was the experience of the British supermarket chain Tesco, which doesn’t face the three-tier restrictions that U.S. retailers face in this country. The story, on the drinks business trade magazine site, says sales may have gone up as much as 51 percent over the same period last year, and offers all the reasons why that is so. Contrast this with Amazon’s wine marketplace, which after nine months still can’t sell wine in all 50 states.