Tag Archives: winery sales

Winebits 228: Wine experts, wine sales, phone apps

  ? "Why do they buy wine?" The wine business would benefit if it listened to experts outside the industry on marketing its products. That's the opinion of Helen McGinn who used to buy wine for the British Tesco supermarket chain, who told a conference that the wine business is too insular in its approach.  ?The golden ticket," she said, "is thinking why does someone want to buy a bottle of wine in the first place? Who are they drinking it with? Is it a celebraion or special dinner? And then giving them options. ? This will not come as a revelation to regular visitors here, and I think it's especially significant in the wake of the industry's shock that the wine buyer for Costco isn't awed by wine as much as they think she should be.

? Direct-to-consumer wine sales: Wine drinkers buying directly from the winery could well be a key part in the future of the wine business, says the Wine Intelligence consultancy, tripling over the next decade. But there are a couple of caveats. First, the indsutry must still struggle with draconian shipping laws left over from Prohibition. Second, it's a tiny, tiny part of wine sales — just 30 million Americans buy direct in a six month period, and it accounts for just one bottle in 50 sold in this country.

? The failure of iPhone apps: Writes Paul Mabray of VinTank in Palate Press: "Why are wine iPhone apps not succeeding when other niche apps like Foodspotting are doing so well?" The piece offers a couple of good reasons, including and most imporantly the lack of wine drinkers who want to use them. It's not so much that wine drinkers are interested, says Mabray, but that there just aren't a lot of wine drinkers to use them, and especially when compared ot food apps. Since everyone, after all, eats and only 60 percent of the U.S. population drinks wine.

Winebits 208: Winery sales, old bottles, underage drinking

? Recession forcing winery sales? That's the question the Wine Spectator looks at, and the answer is yes, kind of. "It ?s far from a fire sale, but wineries in California are changing hands while others are quietly taking on new partners. The surge of deals follows two years of slow business activity ?the struggling economy meant plenty of wineries were struggling but no one wanted to rise to their financial rescue." Now that the wine business can see an end to the slowdown, the story says, deep-pocket investors — the story cites Fiji Water and Boissett Family Estates — are buying brands that the investors thinks are good values. Also going on, but with much less publicity: Well-known wineries are taking on partners to shore up the books after four years of slow business.

? Oldest Charles Krug bottle: A search for the oldest Charles Krug-Peter Mondavi Winery bottle of wine in existence hasn't found much yet. Krug, which is owned by the Peter Mondavi family, was founded in 1861, and the winery is looking for a really old bottle as part of its 150th birthday celebration. So far, though, no bottle much older than the 1940s has turned up. To complicate matters, there don't appear to be any records existing from before the 1950s, making it harder to track old wine.

? The French failure? NPR ran a story that said underage drinking in France was increasing, despite the country's long history of alcohol use. This is not supposed to happen in countries like France, according to people like me, where drinking is accepted and not taboo, like it is in the U.S. Then, in practically the next sentence, the story explains that the French have recently tightened their drinking laws, as well as setting a new minimum age. Is this how bad journalism has become, that a cranky ex-newspaperman has to lecture a media outlet like NPR on a wine blog? If the French have changed their laws and made drinking more difficult, like here in the U.S., why should we be surprised that binge drinking and underage drinking are going on? And it's a crappy headline, too. Harrumph.