Tag Archives: podcasts

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Winecast 68: Clara Klein and restaurant wine after the pandemic

Clara Klein
Clara Klein, Sunday Vinyl: We have challenges, but we’re dealing with them.

Clara Klein: “The restaurant wine business is good.”

Know all that bad news we’ve heard about restaurant wine prices? Clara Klein, the lead sommelier at Sunday Vinyl in Denver, says it’s not necessarily so.

Klein, the blog’s official restaurant wine expert, returned to discuss what she is seeing as the restaurant wine business works its way out of the pandemic. She is seeing some significant changes in restaurant wine, including better pricing and more choices. “It’s important not to dumb it down — we’re having too much fun,” says Klein.

Among the subjects we discussed:

• Rose season should proceed on schedule, with prices more or less the same and decent selection. Which, of course, is good news for the blog’s 15h annual rose extravaganza next week.

• She is working diligently to keep pricing fair and selection high. How about a quality bottle of restaurant wine for $35? Sunday Vinyl also has expanded its wine by the glass offerings and has added tasting flights for some of the most expensive bottles on its list. That way, says Klein, customers can get a chance to taste rare wines they would not otherwise be able to afford.

• Working conditions have improved as well — health insurance and 401K plans included. In this, she says, the restaurant has been able to attract more and better qualified employees.

Finally, you’ll notice what is perhaps the first discussion of Greek wine on the blog. Which, as I note, is almost surely the last discussion, given how difficult it is to find Greek wine in most of the country.

Click here to download or stream the podcast, which is about 19 minutes long and takes up 13 megabytes. The sound quality is very good to excellent.

Photo courtesy of 5280, using a Creative Commons license

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Winecast 67: Felicity Carter on what wine drinkers want

felcity carter
Felicity Carter: “There will be a lot wine on the shelves, but where it will come from is whatever buyers can get their hands on.”

Felicity Carter: We don’t know what’s going to happen next in wine — “all is in chaos.”

Felicity Carter is the former editor of Meininger’s Wine Business International, one of the industry’s leading trades, and is currently the executive editor of the The Drop, a consumer wine newsletter. Which means she probably knows more about the wine business than many of the so-called experts. (And, in the interest of transparency, I have written for her at both sites.)

One example of how Felicity sees things others don’t: Her take on consumer wine trends. Two decades ago, Yellow Tail’s slightly sweet red wines were all the rage. Today, the trendy wine style is the slightly sweet red blend. In other words, the same wine in different packaging.

We talked about a variety of consumer wine trends and even got in a shot at wine writers. The podcast, which is about 13 minutes long and takes up 9 megabytes — download or stream it here (and ignore what seems to be me shouting):

• Consumers seem to be split into two groups. Some of us are looking for more interesting wines, as well as sustainable and natural wines (which makes this the longest natural wine discussion in blog history). Others, meanwhile, still want cabernet sauvignon, rose, and sparkling wine. In addition, low alcohol and “healthy wine” seems to be gaining attention.

• Climate change is starting to affect wine production, so how and where we get the wines we want is becoming more difficult to figure out.

• Most foreign producers want to sell their wine in the U.S. which help fill shelves here. Why do they want that? Because we’re willing to pay higher prices than everyone else.

• Many of the wine trends we hear about come from wine writers trying to impress and aren’t necessarily actual trends. When’s the last time any of us had a blaufrankisch?

• And shiraz is pronounced, “sheer-azz” Down Under.

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Winecast 66: Tim McNally and the airline-ization of the wine business

Tim McNally
Tim McNally: Pricing wine for the wine industry’s benefit, but not for the consumer’s.

Tim McNally: Wine has copied the airline business — it’s not about selling the most seats, but raising prices and selling fewer seats to make more money

New Orleans’ Tim McNally is a radio host, a wine judge, and an award-winning author. As such, he has followed the wine business closely — and his analysis seems to be spot on. Wine, which once used to sell its product at all prices, is increasingly focused on selling its most expensive products to the detriment of everything else. In this, it has copied the airline business, which once tried to sell as many seats as possible at the lowest prices. Today, it sells fewer seats, but at higher prices and makes record profits when there isn’t a pandemic.

In other words, premiumization.

Tim and I have known each other for almost as long as I have been doing this, and I highly respect his opinion. We talked a lot about the airline comparison in the podcast, which is about 15 1/2 minutes long and takes up 12 megabytes — download or stream it here. Included in the discussion:

• The parallels between wine and the airlines are obvious, once you make the connection — both have focused on consolidation and cost cutting.

• The difference is that the airlines offer a more or less indispensable service. We can do without wine, and that seems to be the consumer reaction to premiumization

• Tim doesn’t see a solution to this, given the short-term profitability that premiumization offers.

• He is also pessimistic about finding a way to attract younger consumers to wine, noting that wine can be difficult to figure out and that the wine business, which has never much cared about educating its customers, isn’t much interested these days, either.

• And, of course, the first Mardi Gras in New Orleans in two years.

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Winecast 65: Fred Peterson on owning a winery, making wine in California, and staying in business

fred peterson
Fred Peterson: “This is the golden age for the wine drinker. It’s more challenging for small wineries.”

Fred Peterson has either made wine, grown grapes, or owned a winery in California for about as along as there has been a modern California wine business. Which leads to some funny stories and an interesting look at how the wine world has changed.

Fred Peterson’s self-named California winery, today run by his son Jamie, is about as typical as a U.S. winery gets. It makes about 7,000 cases a year, has limited distribution outside of California, and sells about half of its wine out of the tasting room. In other words, challenging economics: It costs about $60 a case to produce one of its reds, but the wine sells for $90 a case. Most experts recommend that it should sell for $120 a case for the business to be successful.

So the winery starts in a hole even before it sells anything.

“Making the wine, growing the grapes, that’s the enjoyable part,” says Fred, who has spent almost 50 years in wine. “It’s hard work, but it’s definitely fun. Selling the wine is the real work.”

We talked about the upside down economics of the wine business, in which the only real profit for small producers comes when they sell. Included in our discussion:

• The value of his property in Sonoma’s Dry Creek Valley was about $10,000 an acre in the early 1980s. Today, it’s worth as much as $150,000 to $200,000 an acre — but there’s no way to get the money out without selling.

• The price of quality, old vine zinfandel has quadrupled in 30 years, but so has the cost of growing the grapes. So, despite that increase, growers are essentially in the same place they were in the 1980s — breaking even unless they farm thousands of acres.

• Big Wine makes money because it sells tens of millions of bottles, and can settle for lower margins. Small producers don’t have that luxury — Peterson’s 7,000 cases a year may be fewer than some of the biggest producers give out annually as samples.

So why does Fred keep doing it? “Because I can connect to people who love wine, which is why we all really want to do this,” he says.

Click here to download or stream the podcast, which is about 18 minutes long and takes up 12.5 megabytes. Quality is excellent (and overlook Fred’s couple of slips with words we don’t usually use on the blog).

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Winecast 64: Paul Tincknell and wine’s failure to address the neo-Prohibitionists

Paul Tincknell
Paul Tincknell: We need to talk about wine and health honestly — the good and the bad.

Wine marketing guru Paul Tincknell returns for another podcast, in which we rant about wine, health, and the wine business’ failure to deal to with all those people who say wine with dinner is binge drinking.

Paul Tincknell, a partner in the Napa marketing consultancy of Tincknell & Tincknell and the blog’s official wine marketing expert, wants the wine business to honestly talk about wine’s health problems — and its benefits. Otherwise, he says, we’re stuck with campaigns that claim anyone who drinks wine will get breast cancer.

His point: Drinking is not a black and white health issue, even though the temperance movement paints it that way. And if the wine business doesn’t call the neo-Prohibitionists on their false claims, no one will.

Included in our discussion:

• Why no one in the anti-drinking movement is going after Starbucks and its 370 calorie, fat and cholesterol bomb better known as the Caffe Mocha.

• The infamous back label drinking warning, and how it does almost no good.

• That wine needs to promote moderate and responsible drinking, which is much different from the binge drinking that wine with dinners has called.

• Wine ingredient and nutritional labels in Europe, why wine in the U.S. needs to adapt the same thing.

Click here to download or stream the podcast, which is about 18 minutes long and takes up 12 megabytes. Quality is excellent. And yes, I know I didn’t properly introduce Paul, since I was so eager to denounce Starbucks. And his calm rationality throughout is a fine counterpoint to my ranting.

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Winecast 60: Mike Dunne and quality, affordable California wine

mike dunne
Mike Dunne: Egos and the high cost of doing business make it difficult to find quality, affordable California wine.

Mike Dunne: It is difficult to find quality, affordable wine — but some do exist

Mike Dunne, the long-time wine and food editor at California’s Sacramento Bee newspaper, has often chided the Wine Curmudgeon for not including more California wine on the blog. Hence, this podcast: Mike and I talk about why there isn’t more quality, affordable California wine —  and how to find what there is.

The reasons for these wines’ scarcity? They start with California’s high cost of doing business and include– not surprisingly — winery ego. Interestingly, many quality, affordable wines never make it out of California because they sell out in the state.

Mike suggests looking for wines from less well-known parts of California, like Lake County and Monterey, and varieties that aren’t cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay — chenin blanc or petite sirah, anyone?

Among Mike’s wine suggestions:

• J. Lohr’s Wildflower, a red wine made with the quite rare valdiguie grape (about $10). Serve it chilled — a perfect porch wine.

• The Shenandoah Special Reserve Zinfandel (about $11). Mike raves about this red — brambly, fruity and delicious.

• Korbel’s Blanc de Noir (about $14) and one of the blog’s old pals, the Barefoot Bubbly (about $10). These California sparkling wines, says Mike, provide more value than you’d think. He also told a fine story about dust mops and the E&J Gallo sales staff; Gallo, of course, owns Barefoot.

Click here to download or stream the podcast, which is almost 17 minutes long and takes up about 12 megabytes. Quality is mostly excellent, save for a couple of static-y bits toward the end.

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Winecast 59: Eric Orange of LocalWineEvents on wine drinking, wine tastings, and wine events post-pandemic

eric orange
Eric Orange: “There will be a surge.”

Eric Orange: It may be mid-summer or fall before we see a surge in wine events, but we will see a surge

What do you when your business is completely dependent on local wine events – and there aren’t any local wine events?

Not much but hope for the best, says Eric Orange, the founder and CEO of LocalWineEvents, which is a calendar, listing service, and perhaps the ultimate resource for finding wine events in 500 cities around the world.

“That’s when 5,000, 6000 postings a week just paused,” says Orange, who started LWE almost 21 years ago. “Everything just went off a cliff. … that was a tough week.”

Since then, Orange – who I’ve known since Drink Local Wine days, when he was a huge help publicizing our events – has been hoping for the best. The site adjusted, of course, running listings for virtual tastings, wine education, and the like. But there wasn’t much else to do with wineries, restaurants, and local events shut down because of the pandemic.

Hence, he is convinced wine drinkers are ready to end their isolation.

“Much of it will depend on the mask mandates,” says Orange. “But I think there is a lot of pent up demand, people who want to get out. There will be a big surge. I think it will return to a more normal existence in the fall.”

Among the other things we discussed:

• Virtual tastings were not a success for LWE, and he wonders about the future of those kinds of events. On the other hand, virtual wine education might continue after the pandemic.

• Wineries, many of which have already resumed outdoor tastings, may lead the wine event revival. They don’t have to worry about social distancing, for one thing.

• Restaurant events, including winemaker dinners, should come back in a big way, says Orange. His only concern? The extent of the damage to the restaurant business from the pandemic.

• Spirits tastings, including bourbon and Scotch, might do even better as we come out of the pandemic.

Click here to download or stream the podcast, which is about 17 minutes long and takes up almost 11 megabytes. Quality is good to excellent. Zoom cooperated once again, save for an odd voice telling me I was recording – and then stopping – our conversation. Which led to a bit of a giggle from the two of us.