Tag Archives: wine news

Winebits 823: Ed Auler, booze theft, executive pay

This week’s wine news: Texas wine pioneer Ed Auler died, plus a high-dollar booze theft and too high winery exec pay

Ed Auler helped grow Texas Hill Country wine industry - DailyTrib.com
Ed and Susan Auler

• Ed Auler: Auler, whose Fall Creek Winery in the Texas Hill Country was one of the state’s first, has died. He was 78. Auler and Susna, his wife, were tireless advocates for Texas wine. They started a winery in a renovated garage in 1979, and in 1983, they opened the winery that is there today in Tow, northwest of Austin.  In the blog’s early days, when I spent much of my time writing about Texas and Drink Local, he and Susan were seemingly everywhere, telling the tale of their winery and Texas in general. Auler was instrumental in forming the Hill County AVA, and his work with the Texas Legislature to pass legislation was a key to the state’s growth as a wine region.

• Big-time theft: How does a theft totaling $1.6 million worth of alcohol, using tractor-trailers, from the country’s second-biggest wholesaler, sound? One would have thought it wouldn’t have been quite so easy, yes? The theft took place in July from a Republic National Distributing Company warehouse near Tampa. CNN reports that the thieves took 4,277 cases of alcohol, though the report didn’t specify which brands were stolen. The other thing I like? The trucks seem to have been stolen from a facility down the road.

• Too-high pay: Australia’s Treasury Wine Estates, one of several Big Wine companies with more than its share of problems, may be facing a stockholder revolt over executive pay. The West Australian newspaper reports that around “47 per cent of votes were cast against TWE’s renumeration plan after three proxy advisors advised against it,”  calling the vote “the biggest shareholder rebellions in years over management salary.” Treasury’s performance has suffered substantially over the past several years, thanks to the collapse of its $10 wine business in the U.S. and a Chinese wine tariff that clobbered its sales in China.

Survey: Wine’s biggest competition is soft drinks

group of young people drinking hard seltzer
That’s not hard seltzer; it’s soft drinks.

Price still matters, but green? Not so much

A new survey finds that wine’s biggest competition among younger consumers is not craft beer, hard seltzer or cocktails, but soft drinks.

Yes, soft drinks.

The report, a joint venture between the Business of Drinks podcast and Research & Marketing Strategies, found that both Gen Z and Millennials prefer sodas and colas more than anything else. Three-quarters of those surveyed said they preferred the flavor of soft drinks and two-thirds said they were easy to find (availability, yet again). Finally, soft drinks were the “most versatile” of the beverages surveyed, since they could enjoy them at just about every social occasion.

Frankly, this is stunning news, and offers insights not seen in the hodgepodge of other studies I’ve suffered through over the past several years. It’s especially fascinating that the age groups that are supposedly drinking less booze for health reasons are drinking sugar-laden, calorie-busting sodas instead.

Which, says the man who conducted the survey, was the whole point. The questions purposely asked about more beverages, more occasions for drinking, and more reasons for drinking.

“For example, for wine, much of the previous research I’ve seen discusses wine in the more limited context of beer (especially craft beer) and spirits,” says Roger Brooks of Research & Marketing Strategies. “Sometimes, hard seltzer is examined and, more recently, non-alcoholic beverages. Much of the information is sales data, however, and survey data is fragmented without this breadth and depth.”

Among the other findings:

• Not surprisingly – to me, anyway – is that price was one of the most important reasons for choosing what to drink. So was flavor, which should come as a shocker to a wine industry focused on making bland, sort of sweet plonk to appeal to the widest possible audience.

• Yes, availability matters. If the product is difficult to buy, consumers say they tend to look for something else. Thank you, three-tier system.

• Younger drinkers make decisions about what to buy based on advice from social media, friends, and family. Wine apps, wine publications, and critic scores? Hardly at all.

• Factors like “eco-friendly and organic” as well “low or no calories” were not important in making purchase decisions, For wine, less than 1 in 10 said “low or no calorie,” “non-alcoholic,” “orange wines”, and “eco-friendly” were “liked best.”

A caveat: I’ve worked for the people who do the “Business of Drinks” podcast, so take that for what you will. The methodology: The survey queried 1,300 drinking age U.S.-based Gen Z and Millennial consumers.

Wine’s glass bottle dilemma

glass wine bottle and cork
No, the glass wine bottle — and cork — isn’t going away, if a consumer survey is to be believed.

What do you do when you’ve convinced consumers that “real” wine comes in heavy glass bottles?

Two recent news stories outlined wine’s glass bottle dilemma – if you’ll pardon the following – with crystal clear clarity.

In the first, a group of retailers, including Whole Foods and Naked Wines in the U.S., agreed to try to make the bottles they sell much lighter, given that glass bottle weight is wine’s biggest contribution to climate change.

But in the second, a survey found that consumers cared little about the bottle’s earth-killing carbon footprint. In fact, they saw heavy bottles as a sign of wine quality.

Talk about – sorry again – the glass being half full.

None of this is surprising to any of us who have been paying attention (or who reads the blog). The wine business has worked its way through any number of alternatives to glass over the past 25 years, where each as been declared the next big thing and then quietly faded away – be they boxes, TetraPaks, or cans.

My take, of course, is that the wine business could care less about getting rid of glass bottles, and that the survey is not so much a take on consumer sentiment as it is on the success the wine business has had in convincing us that wine has to come in a bottle – the heavier the better, and with a cork for good measure. Because only cranky ex-newspaper reporters want to drink cheap wine from a light bottle with a screwcap – or, Bacchus forbid, from a box.

So getting rid of heavy bottles is left to retailers.

Yes, some of that is because the retailers want to do the right thing. But lighter bottles will also save them millions of dollars in supply chain costs, and that figures in to their decision as much as anything. And, in one of those ironies that I love so much, the wine business might even benefit because someone else did the work that it didn’t want to do.

Winebits 822: Wine buying, legal weed, Michael Chiarello

Wine Poured; Menu Perused
“Damn, tying to buy wine is so stressful!”

This week’s wine news: Buying wine is — shocking news — stressful, plus the failure of legal weed and celebrity chef Michael Chiarello has died

• Not a surprise: A British survey has found that we’ll pay up to one-third more for wine to impress someone and that almost one-quarter of us find buying wine “stressful.” That comes from UK retailer Lidl, which positions its wine regime as less complicated than elsewhere. Still, I don’t think that skews the results much. Similar surveys from around the world always show the same thing. My favorite part of this survey? “Almost half – 46% – don’t know how to identify a good bottle from a bad one and a third are ‘simply bewildered by wine jargon.’ ” Which is not surprising and hasn’t changed in all the years I’ve been doing this. How else do you sell a $15 bottle of wine for $30 without confusion?

• Hard times: Wine isn’t the only thing suffering these days. So is legal weed in Canada, which was supposed to set the stage for its growth in the U.S. Reports the CBC: “The biggest companies — Canopy Growth Corp., Aurora Cannabis Inc. and Tilray Brands Inc. — have shrunk their footprints, laid off thousands and grappled with balance sheets that reflect a turbulent market and a longer march to profitability than many once imagined. Others weren’t so lucky. They sold their business at bargain prices to a bigger rival, folded or declared bankruptcy.” The kicker, of course, is the cost. It’s still cheaper to meet someone in a parking lot, despite the seeds and stems, than to pay legal prices. Hope the wine business is paying attention.

• Michael Chiarello: Chiarello, who was a Napa celebrity chef during wine’s glory days — he even had his own computer software — has died. He was 61. Chiarello was part of the generation of chefs who made wine part of of what they did, including his PBS and Food Network cooking shows (which still show up on some streaming services). Eventually, he owned a vineyard and a line of cooking and houseware accessories, showing just how important this sort of thing was to the wine business back then.

Photo: “Wine Poured; Menu Perused” by mikecogh is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

 

Winebits 821: Wine lawsuits, tasting room fees, Napa Valley

Corkscrew resembling scales of justiceThis week’s wine news: Yet another wine lawsuit, plus a winery cuts tasting room fees and a wine writer takes Napa Valley to task

• Bring on the attorneys: Few things make the WC smile more than a good wine lawsuit, and this one is: Domaine Carneros has filed a trademark lawsuit against a Southern California winery, Chateau de Reve, over the name “Le Reve.” Wine Business News says that the former produces the sparkling wine named “Le Reve” – French for “the dream.” The name has been registered as a trademark since the late 1990s. Chateau de Reve, on the other hand, uses “Le Reve” and “Chateau De Reve” for its wines, “causing confusion among consumers,” according to the lawsuit. Also worth noting: Chateau de Reve makes still wine and not sparkling, so this should be much fun.

• Wow: Frankly, this was about the last thing I expected. Reports the Wine Enthusiast: High tasting room fees are “creating a barrier to people feeling comfortable to come in and taste wines.  If we want to attract the next generation of wine drinkers, we need to be able to show them the properties, teach them how wine is produced and explain to them why wine costs what it does. If we preclude that opportunity to take them from the age of 21 to 40, they may never come around.” Which sounds more like the WC than highly respected Pas Robles winemaker Matt Trevisan, who cut tasting room fees from $40 to $20 at Linne Calodo Cellars. The story adds that it’s “an about-face for Trevisan, who was once a leader in pushing prices up years ago.”

• Whoa, Napa: No, I did not write : “Napa Valley needs a reality check.” Tim Carl did on his Substack. And if the lengthy story doesn’t exactly live up to the headline,  it does show that Carl understands what is going on in the wine business. He says that a recent study that predicts more greatness for the U.S.’ predominant wine region may be more than a bit wrong. “However, this report — hindered by remaining limitations brought on by the pandemic — may underrepresent key challenges such as fluctuating tourism rates, economic uncertainties, demographic shifts, staffing issues and generational changes.”  All in all, it’s a well done piece.

Winebits 820: Responsible drinking, expensive wine, wine refrigerators

Man drinking wine at a cafe
“Wow. One glass of wine a day isn’t as dangerous as this cigarette?”

This week’s wine news: A Canadian group says moderate drinking is OK, plus a really high-end wine auction and ancient wine refrigerators

• Thank you: Maybe next in the U.S.? “We are an informal association of concerned citizens and industry groups that is dedicated to providing unbiased information and education that encourages responsible drinking and reduces harmful consumption.” That would be the mandate for the Canadian Association for Responsible Drinkers, which wants to offer perspective for Canada’s health authorities about alcohol – as opposed to the “One drink will kill you!!!!” that we get all of the time.

• What an auction: How does an wine auction totaling 25,000 bottles, worth up to $50 million, sound? Then stay tuned — Taiwanese billionaire Pierre Chen will sell the wines over the course of a year through the Sotheby’s action house. Chen, says CNN, is one of the world’s great wine collectors, and is apparently going to sell the wine because he has too much to drink. Several of the world’s rarest wines are listed in the story, so any of you who have an extra six figures to drop may be able to get a Petrus.

• Keeping it cool: Did Roman soldiers have a 2,000-year-old version of a wine refrigerator? Apparently so, reports Ars Technica. “Archaeologists have discovered a 2,000-year-old built-in ceramic structure they believe was used to store wine and perishable foods. It’s a rare find and the second such ‘refrigerator’ to be discovered at a former fortress” at a site in what is now northern Bulgaria near the Danube. The refrigerator was made of ceramic plates, located beneath the floor of a military barracks. Which gives the WC a thought: Can I do something like this to replace my electric wine refrigerator, given Texas’ well known power grid woes?

Winebits 819: Prohibition, ancient wine, wine marketing

Prohibition-era sign
No more of this for Cadston in Canada.

This week’s wine news: A Canadian town goes wet after more than a century dry, plus the origins of wine and one of the “secrets” to wine marketing

• Wet, finally: Cardston, a town of 3,500 in the Canadian province of Alberta, will allow alcohol sales after 121 years dry. The town council has voted to allow restaurants and recreational facilities like golf courses to apply for liquor licenses. But don’t get too excited: the Mormon-majority town will still ban liquor stores and booze delivery service, so no Drizly while you’re binging Nextfix Canada. Most of the rest of Alberta went wet in 1923, but Cardston has remained dry, despite two previous attempts to allow liquor sales.

• The roots of wine: The history of wine – both wine making and grape growing – may be much older than previously thought. Scientific American reports that researchers have found that grape growing may have started 80 centuries before the first estimates. This likely happened in western Asia, where inhabitants domesticated table grapes some 11,000 years ago. In the Caucasus, domesticated wine grapes probably appeared around the same time, although the inhabitants probably didn’t master winemaking for another 2,000 or 3,000 years. The muscat grape, high in sugar, was likely the key to moving toward wine, since it can be used as a table grape and for making wine. One note: The story is not well written (even allowing for the horrible wine cliches and bad puns); I expect more clarity from this publication,

• Pricing and decoys: Yes, I really do worry about the future of the wine business. Consider this, from a prominent wine marketing agency: “A decoy is a pricing strategy that involves offering an option that is not meant to be chosen but influences customers’ perceptions of other options.” That nugget of wisdom comes from a story about pricing wine club tiers, and makes me wonder: What’s the use of all I’ve done over the years to try and get transparency in the wine business?