Tag Archives: wine sales

Winebits 213: Wine prices, wine scores, bootlegging

? Cheaper wine and traffic accidents: States with higher wine consumption have fewer traffic deaths, so why not make wine more easily available? A new study suggests that wine is more socially responsible than beer or spirits, so why not push consumption toward it and away from the others through legal supermarket sales? Said one researcher: "Wine is more likely to be consumed with food. That has an impact. We also suspect that there are different demographic groups that consume this alcohol. Maybe the audience that consumes wine is less likely to drink and drive and be in a traffic accident." A fascinating thought, though the Wine Curmudgeon notes that the study was conducted by researchers in New York state, where there is a huge fight going on over wine sales in grocery stores.

? Because we can never get enough about wine scores: David Duman in the Huffington Post takes on wine scores, calling out two leading members of the Winestream Media, Jon Bonne of the San Francisco Chronicle and Steve Heimoff of the Wine Enthusiast: "… it was discouraging to see their defenses of the system utilizing those same tired arguments used by lesser critics." That's about as harsh as it gets in this business, but Duman didn't stop there. He sounds almost Wine Curmudgeonly: "If you want to be a wine critic who remains relevant for the next thirty years you might want to ditch the rating system now, lest you be stuck wearing the wine writing equivalent of acid-washed jeans and feathered hair a decade too late."

? Consumers and state stores: Here's a shocker: Wine drinkers will break the law to buy cheaper wine if all that means is shopping out of state. Regular visitors here will remember that the Pennsylvania state store system, in which the state runs the liquor stores, has been under attack for being inefficient, bloated and poorly run. This on-line survey says that 81 percent of respondents would rather break the law and bootleg their wine and liquor across the borders than suffer state-mandated price hikes. Bootlegging? Does this mean shoppers will start wearing Wine Curmudgeon-like fedoras?

Winebits 207: Wine sales, Gruet, wine names

? What wine companies think: We spend a lot of time on the blog talking about why wine producers do what they do, but we rarely get an inside look as revealing as this, an interview with the man who runs the company that owns Seghesio and Pine Ridge, among others. Says Erle Martin of Crimson Wine Group: "The recession has given consumers an opportunity to explore outside their comfort zone. If they used to fill the cart with $50 Napa Cabernet, now Argentine Malbecs are looking good, or Garnacha from Spain, or other full-bodied alternatives retailing at $10 or lower." The business jargon might slow the piece down a bit, but if you stay with it, you'll get a good sense of how these guys think and why they make the decisions they do.

? Gruet off the hook: A judge has ruled that New Mexico's Gruet Winery can't be included in the lawsuit to recover money from the the 2010 Cap*Rock bankruptcy auction debacle. That's when Laurent Gruet, whose family owns the winery, bid money he didn't have and won the auction to buy Cap*Rock. Walt Nett in the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal reports that the judge said the winery didn't actually participate in the auction and didn't give Laurent permission to bid on its behalf. The trial for damages is supposed to start Dec. 21. Who knew bankruptcy could be this much fun?

? Wine names and labels: An odd story in the New York Times detailing the trend towards cute wine labels and names, including several wines called Bitch. Why odd? Because this has been a trend for at least a decade, and there's nothing in the Times story that is especially new. And it fails to mention Randall Grahm, who pretty much invented this sort of thing. It's one of those stories that one reads and wonders why it was written; nothing in it is especially new. The cranky ex-newspaperman in me wonders if someone from the Times was wandering through a liquor store, saw a wine labeled Bitch, and thought it would make a good story — not knowing that it has been a good story for a long time.

Update: Wine prices and the recession

The weather has finally cooled off in Dallas, and one local sales guy asked me if that would help business. "Everyone's mood has improved, right? So they'll spend more money on wine?" Because, he said, it looked like he was going to need all the help he could get going into the holiday season.

The wine business has been eagerly awaiting the end of the recession, and almost every news story that has come out over the past nine months has been forecasting a return to the good old days, when the price of wine didn't seem to matter to consumers. The reports have been heralding every quarter-to-quarter increase in sales as soon as it has been reported, and you could almost hear the sigh of relief from retailers, distributors and producers.

But that enthusiasm seems to have been wishful thinking (and it has been even worse in Texas, oddly enough, since we've supposedly handled the recession better than elsewhere). More, after the jump:

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Consumers like wine if they like the label

A German-Australian study has discovered that consumers decide whether they like wine not necessarily because of what it tastes like, but because of what the label looks like.

The study, noted in Australia's Food magazine, found that "[w]hile both taste and extrinsic attributes influenced a consumer ?s liking for a bottle of wine, packaging and brand were the biggest influences. … While the study shows extrinsic attributes such as packaging can play a more significant role in determining consumers ? liking of wine than taste, [the study found] the best advice for food and beverage producers is to ensure taste and packaging are equally as good."

More, after the jump:

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Barefoot and the wine magazines

Last week, Barefoot was annointed as the No. 1 wine brand in the country by SymphonyIRI Group, which tracks wine sales. At more or less the same time, the Wine Enthusiast ran a story that said restaurants “are where wine trends are generated and brands are built.”

Can any two statements be more contradictory? Barefoot, which costs about $6 a bottle, is the ultimate anti-restaurant wine, a brand that has made its mark in grocery stores and is rarely seen in restaurants — and certainly not the kinds of restaurants that the Enthusiast writes about. This difference in perspective is Kakfka-esque, and it demonstrates once again why the wine industry is at odds with itself, and why wine continues to lag as the drink of choice among Americans.

The Wine Curmudgeon has noted this contradiction more than once. The Winestream Media, which insists it is the voice of the consumer, pays almost no attention to brands like Barefoot, which are the wines most of us drink. Barefoot, reported SymphonyIRA, sold almost $260 million worth of wine in the 52 weeks ending June 12, but you’d never know it be checking the leading wine magazines. A Google search turned up nothing from the most important wine magazines about this, though the listings did show Decanter stories about Gina Gallo’s babies and Pinot-gate (E&J Gallo owns Barefoot).

How can this happen? And no, it has nothing to do with the quality of Barefoot’s wines. Instead, it’s about the people who drink Barefoot wines. The Winestream Media doesn’t think they’re good enough. They don’t make enough money, aren’t educated enough, and don’t have nifty enough jobs. For example, the Enthusiast’s average subscriber is a 47-year-old man with a household income of about $200,000.

In other words, the magazine is geared toward four percent of the U.S. population. Is it any wonder most Americans consider wine to be elitist? The irony here is that even that demographic drinks cheap wine. My numbers, as measured by Quantcast, are just below those of the Wine Enthusiast, and about the only thing our editorial content has in common is the word wine.

I’m not making a value judgment about who the magazines write for. They want those Lexus ads, and they’re certainly entitled, under our system, to get them by appealing to middle-aged men with six-figure incomes. My point is that this approach limits wine’s audience. The Wine Magazines, whether true or not, are seen as the public face of the wine world. And it’s not a welcoming face for newcomers and aspiring wine drinkers. The winespeak is bad enough, but the bigger obstacle is the wine they write about, which is pricey and often hard to find.

The result? We have two wine worlds — the wine people drink and the wine that the magazines write about. Which is bad enough. What’s worse is that too many wine producers figure the latter is more important than the former. They live to get a good score, even if it’s not necessarily going to help them sell more wine.

Everyone in wine talks about how beer is slumping, and how wine will eventually overtake beer as the U.S. beverage of choice. Really? Then why is per capita beer consumption almost four times more than per capita wine consumption, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism? I’m convinced it’s not cost, since a six-pack and a cheap bottle of wine are about the same price and provide more or less the same buzz. Rather, it’s barrier to entry. You don’t need to decipher the beer world to pop open a cold one. And the wine business doesn’t seem to have any desire to lower that barrier to entry.

For more on Barefoot wine:
• Barefoot wines (again): Value or just cheap?
• Barefoot wines: Value or just cheap?
• Wine of the Week: Barefoot Riesling NV

Winebits 188: Deborah Whiting, French wine, wine business

? Top regional chef dies: Deborah Whiting, a New York chef who was one of the leaders in that state's local food and local wine movements, died last week in an automobile accident. There were any number of eloquent tributes to Whiting, who ran the restaurant at Red Newt Cellars in upstate New York; her husband, David, runs the winery, and I can't begin to list them all. Know that Dave McIntyre at the Washington Post wrote that "David had become one of the Finger Lakes ? top winemakers and Debra the region ?s leading chef, championing the 'locavore' movement by featuring ingredients from nearby farms. She is widely credited with sparking the restaurant revolution in the Finger Lakes wine country, which had been dependent on fast food." McIntyre's post includes links to several other pieces about Whiting, all worth checking out.

? Too much attention for French wine? French wine has continued its downward sales trend in the U.S., yet it seems to be one of the stars of the wine cyber-ether. French wine, despite an almost 10 percent sales decline over the past year, generates what Nielsen calls a disproportionate share of buzz on the Internet through Twitter, Facebook, and the like. This is not surprising, given the incredibly overwhelming coverage on the Internet about Bordeaux. I have not see the Neilsen stats, but I doubt seriously that it's made up of coverage like mine, writing about $10 bottles. Instead, it's almost certainly from places eRobertParker.com, the Wine Spectator, and Decanter and their NFL-like coverage of anything related to Bordeaux. Also amusing: Nielsen reports that consumers don't trust alcohol advertising, and prefer to get recommendations from their friends. Which is a fitting segue to the next item.

? Shooting itself in the foot: Or, as The Italian Wine Guy says in a recent post: "[L]ately it seems like we are doing everything we can to kill the wine business in the world. Actively." Among the culprits are Bordeaux, which seems hell bent on destroying its traditional markets so it can all of its wine to China. Which, as the IWG points out, is probably not the smartest long-term strategy. He also takes on the Italian government and several other of the maroons who try to tell us what to drink when they really aren't interested in what we want.

Winebits 183: Law & Order, Hispanic drinkers, wine sales

? Wine glasses by the stem: The most recent episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent was loosely based on the controversy surrounding Robert Parker and a German wine collector. How loosely? Only a major wine geek would have noticed. Which, I guess, is one of the reasons why I'm here. Of more interest to the Wine Curmudgeon, though, was one of the opening scenes, when the characters were tasting what was supposed to be a 250-year-old red Bordeaux owned by George Washington — and every single one of them was holding the wine glass by the stem, just like big deal wine tasters would. I was impressed; that level of detail usually escapes TV producers.

? Wine's new demographic: The Wine Curmudgeon, in one of his other lives, used to write a lot about marketing, and marketing in the past decade meant selling products to the U.S.' fastest-growing ethic group, Hispanics. (Ask me why so many Spanish-language ads have grandmothers in them.) So what's the newest advice for wine markets? Target Hispanics.  Better late than never, I suppose. Of course, since the wine business does such a lousy job of marketing to everyone, why should we expect it to be current in this phase of its approach?

? Good news on the sales front: Especially if you sell cheap wine. Sales rose almost 5 percent through the first four months year, according to Symphony/IRI, and among the leaders were Barefoot and Bogle (and most of the brands listed were $10 or less) How zeroed in are consumers on less expensive wines? Sparkling sales, traditionally the most expensive part of the market, were up almost 10 percent, and led by some of the least expensive — prosecco and asti from Italy. The wine world is changing significantly around us; is anyone in it noticing?