SIPPED: gilding the lily
Ah, spring is in the air. And with it come California winery newsletters offering their wines for $74 a case–just the shipping, that is.

SPIT: California values
The Bay Area NYT is the latest to ponder the question of why are there so few tasty value wines from California.

SIPPED: Buffett’s billions
Warren Buffett is getting into the wine biz. Not as a producer, but as a distributor. Through his subsidiary McLane, Berkshire Hathaway is buying the Georgia wine and spirits distributor, Empire, reports Wine & Spirits Daily. I guess Buffett knows where the profits are in wine.

SIPPED: spurious variable?
Wine drinking women don’t get fat! But is it wine consumption that explains the slower weight loss among women in a study? Not necessarily. [Globe and Mail]

SIPPED: subway reading
A twenty-something male in office clothes was spotted reading Wine Politics on the F train! Good thing it wasn’t on Kindle or the Cover Spies wouldn’t have known! [CoverSpy]

Chile has a large, export-oriented wine industry. Some of infrastructure, particularly in the regions of Maule and Rapel (including Colchagua), has been damaged or destroyed. Contacted via email, Lori Tieszen, executive director of Wines of Chile USA, says that Jose Manuel Ortega reports “devastation” in Maule and that his winery sustained some damage; Julio Bouchon of J. Bouchon, “is safe but his beautiful old winery is leveled,” Tieszen writes. In 2006, the Oxford Companion to Wine described Maule as “slowly changing its reputation of growing only bulk wine.”

“One can smell wine along the roads in front of the wineries. Tanks laying, collapsed buildings, barrels and glass everywhere,” winemaker Sven Bruchfeld told James Molesworth, wine critic for Chilean wine at Wine Spectator magazine.

Molesworth has been tweeting what he hears from wineries (follow his feed for the latest). Another source told him, “Big damage to the industry. Millions of liters on the floor.” He also tweeted that Montes and Lapostolle were hit hard in Colchagua, an area that had seen lots of investment in the wine indsutry. Feel free to add news in the comments if you have updates.

Depending on the region and grape variety, the harvest has already started or was scheduled to start soon in the country.

AFP reports that generic red wines fetched 45 euros (about $62) per one hundred liters while the premium pinot noir fetched 97 euros. One of the firms involved had been paying 58 euros for the wines it sold to Gallo. The accused made seven million euros ($9.5 million) in the scheme.

The defendants, from two firms, received suspended jail sentences and fines between 3,000 and 45,000 euros. Reuters reports that one firm, Sieur D’Arques, had to pay a fine of 180,000 euros.

Gallo issued a statement saying that they were “deeply disappointed” to learn of the fraud at one of their suppliers. The statement continued: “We believe that the only French Pinot Noir that was potentially misrepresented to us would have been the 2006 vintage and prior.” They also added that there was no health risk and that they would be withdrawing the wine from the market.

On the Red Bicyclette website, they tout the pinot noir as “world acclaimed” and point out that the 2006 vintage received a score of 83 points from Wine Spectator and the 2005 received various medals at wine competitions, including a bronze San Francisco International Wine Competition and a silver at both the Taster’s Guild International Wine Competition and Finger Lakes International Wine Competition.

“If Americans lose confidence in French wine production, particularly the Languedoc region, which is already going through a serious crisis, the consequences could be terrible,” Francis Battut, the prosecutor, told AFP.

A lawyer for one defendant told AFP “Not a single American consumer complained.” Another defense lawyer said that the wine had delivered “Pinot Noir characteristics.” On Marketplace Morning Report this morning, a commentator said that consumers don’t even know what pinot noir tastes like.

But it hardly seems like consumers’ fault. Does $9 pinot really taste like pinot noir? It’s worth noting that federal regulations allow blending of up to 25 percent other varieties into a wine labeled by its grape variety.

What does this faux pinot ruling mean for you? What with counterfeits on the high end and Brunello blending, rule-breaking and fraud seem to be making the rounds in the wine world.

It’s hard to know from that quote if a presence on Facebook and Twitter is a part or all of Grgich’s social media strategy. But, as we’ve discussed before, social media are no panacea for wineries, especially since they are too often a regurgitation of marketing pabulum. At best, social media are a part of (Napa) wineries’ new efforts to reach out to consumers directly and bypass the distributor tier, which can lead to increased profits for the winery. The NYT story cites a “meager” 10 percent of average winery sales in Napa are direct to consumer, via tasting rooms and mailing lists.

One thing that businesses can do well via social media, particularly since the demographic skews younger, is to alert consumers to deals. Unfortunately, deals are in scarce supply from wineries directly. The story cites the 2006 Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars merlot available at the tasting room for $45 when it is available at Target in the Bay Area for $31.99. Will Stag’s Leap be tweeting about this? Doubtful.

The article alludes to a “curious time warp” with winery tasting room practices and pricing. More evidence of the pricing time warp came last week when a Napa cab from Stephane Derenoncourt launched at $220. While the pricing showed a tin ear to the current economy, the press release contained something unusual that may have been a sign of the times: a plea to write about the new wine.

If Derenoncourt were releasing a $20 Napa cab, that would be worth tweeting.

“Try the Red: Napa Learns to Sell” by Katrina Heron.

Joe Alter and Amy Lafontant own The Bottle Shop in Wilmette, IL. Joe responds:

How long has your store been open? Amy and I opened the store December 15th 2005. 4 years, 2 months and counting.

How many wines do you have? Less than 300 wines (SKUs). We’d like to be even smaller. Smallish, smaller and tiny producers where possible. Avg price $15. Low $8. High $45. Less IS more (esp. vs. the BIG BOYZ)

Do you sell food, beer, cigars or have an ATM? We sell beer, microbrew and imports, mostly. We added a wine bar, so we sell by the glass and serve small plates, cheese, cured meats, that kinda thing. We call it Amy’s Wine House. Other than the wine bar we don’t sell food. No cigars. No ATM.

How many locations do you have? One location. Would consider expanding, but not actively pursuing the option.

Please describe your “shelf talkers.” Don’t use them except for a few Champagnes because the kind of Champagne we carry — R.M. — needs a little explanation, in which case I print out the product page from our website and lay it underneath the bottle. Small print. Customer would have to pick up the bottle to read it. Background info written by us, the importer, mainly Terry Theise, and some reviews from Galloni, Tanzer, Meadows. such as this one for Henri Billot brut rosé.

What would you say is the secret of your success in a state where people can buy wine at supermarkets? We try not to carry grocery store wines. We call attention to the fact that we don’t carry icky grocery store wines. It’s a good will gesture. New customers often say they don’t recognize any of our labels to which we say, “Awesome, that means we are doing a good job!”

Approximately what percent of your sales are done via the internet? Less than 1%

Any advice for NY wine retailers as they brace for a possible era of increased competition?
Be a merchant in the old fashioned sense of wine merchant. Have opinions. Supermarkets and big chains, such as we have here — Binny’s, Sam’s (R.I.P.), Wine Discount Center (my alma mater) and even Whole Foods — sell based on price, press and points. It’s as faceless as buying a washing machine from Best Buy. People come to Amy’s and my shop because we offer personality if nothing else. It makes (some) wine buyers feel better about themselves and their purchases to have a relationship with a merchant rather than a score or the lowest price. I empathize with small business people facing off against big box stores, but more COMPETITION IS GOOD. I’m all for anything that chips away at the scope of Amendment XXI ’cause god knows it ain’t going to be repealed. Free at last.

Craig Heffley, co-owner of Wine Authorities in Durham, NC and the “Grand Poohbah Wine Swami”

How long has your store been open? Two years

How many wines (SKUs) do you have? 450-500 selections of estate wines under $50/bottle from small, up-and-coming, family-owned wineries. No corporate brands, no fake brands. The selection is skewed toward typicity of varietal, region and style. We stock these 450 selections heavily, with hundreds of them case stacked and several end-caps. When somebody steps in, they understand that we’re there to sell them wine before we even say a word. No wines are carried as “shelf dressing.” If we’re going to carry it, we’re committed to moving volume. One last note of interest. All wine in NC is sold from distributor to retailer or restaurateur C.O.D. only! We have no terms, and own every bottle. Spirits are sold at NC State-owned liquor stores and we cannot carry them.

Do you sell food, beer, cigars or have an ATM? We have a limited selection of domestic craft beers available chilled by the six-pack (about 25 selections). We also sell local artisan: salami & chorizo, chocolate, cheese, biscotti, bread and locally roasted coffee from Counter Culture Coffee. 97% of our business is wine though. No cigars, no ATM.

How many locations do you have? One location and considering another.

Please describe your “shelf talkers”? Our shelf talkers are core to making the shopping experience less perplexing and more enjoyable for our customers. They are easy to ready and identical in format. We print them ourselves on photo paper. We break our wines up into three color coded price categories: Daily Wines for everyday drinking (under $12), Weekly Wines for that once-a-week splurge ($12-$19.99), and Monthly Wines for special occasions like Thanksgiving, Birthdays, Anniversaries, etc ($20-$49.99) They also decipher the label so customers can understand the basics like which word is the region, and which is the grape, etc. We write every shelf talker ourselves instead of relying on copy from wineries or critics reviews. They are fun and informative and don’t give the customer useless info that they can’t talk about over a meal. They’d rather discuss the origin of the winery or something special about the wine instead of its oak regimen & ph. There are no ratings anywhere in the store. Customers don’t really need them if the staff is knowledgeable and can make recommendations based on the context of how the wine is to be enjoyed. Is it a wine to be consumed like a cocktail on its own, or is it to be paired with a meal? Most wine critic’s points don’t take this into consideration and are typically skewed favorably toward wines that are more powerful and more cocktail-like. The stores that surround us use points to sell their wines, but we are only asked about scores once every few months. Really, the consumer is not looking for them unless a retailer has “trained” them to shop that way. All of our talkers have food Serving Suggestions.

What would you say is the secret of your success in a state where people can buy wine at supermarkets? We created our store to stand out distinctly from any other wine shopping experience they’ve ever had. It’s fun, informative, comfortable and empowers the consumer to track their purchases from our website. We only carry wine that we are 100% proud of, and would drink ourselves. And we’re wine geeks! For a store that focuses on wine under $20 a bottle, that’s saying something.

Approximately what percent of your sales are done via the internet? Right now only 5%, but about a third of our customers use our website to track their purchases, rate them and keep notes. Our internet sales are starting to take off though and by the end of this year, we should have a much more significant amount. One problem is that our store is so fun to shop in, many people just don’t want to skip a visit just for the convenience of online ordering. We hear that regularly.

Any advice for NY wine retailers as they brace for a possible era of increased competition? Don’t steal our ideas! Just kidding. Be original! Think from the customers perspective. Overcome hurdles that make the wine buying experience difficult for them. Make them really want to return. If you blow them away, they’ll talk about your store to their friends who will become customers who will tell their friends, etc. Do great things that big stores will never be able to do, and that will distinguish you.

Roberto Rogness, general manager, Wine Expo, Santa Monica, CA
How long has your store been open? 18 years

How many wines (SKUs) do you have? About 2000 of which well over half are Italian, one quarter are Champagne and the rest is split between Spain, Portugal, beer and spirits.

Do you sell food, beer, cigars or have an ATM? Yes on Beer, no on others

How many locations do you have? One

Please describe your “shelf talkers”?See here:
http://blogs.laweekly.com/squidink/wine/wine-expo-best-of-la-tequila/ (source of above image)

What would you say is the secret of your success in a state where people can buy wine at supermarkets? Providing far superior service, a more interesting range of products and better value.

Approximately what percent of your sales are done via the internet? 15%

Any advice for NY wine retailers as they brace for a possible era of competition? What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger!

Thanks to shortfalls in state budgets, state authorities are increasingly looking to liberalize liquor distribution according to a piece in the WSJ yesterday. The issue is in play in at least Washington State, Virginia, North Carolina, Mississippi, and Vermont.

Privatization could be a mixed bag for wine enthusiasts. Consider the story of Chicago parking meters.

In early 2009, without much debate, the city council decided to sell a 75-year lease to operate the city’s parking meters. A private group led by Morgan Stanley paid $1.2 billion (about 60 times 2008 meter revenues), a portion of which helped plug the immediate budget shortfall. The first thing the group did was raise the meter rates. Then the group raised rates again, quadrupling in some areas during year one. In the first few weeks, there were reports of vandalism of the meters, a lack of repair from the new authority, confusing new meters, a lack of response to citizens and journalists who called with questions, and a higher incidence of parking tickets (the revenue from which the private group keeps). A poll last fall found that nine out of ten Chicagoans didn’t like the deal and Mayor Daley (“mayor for life”) saw his approval rating drop below 35 percent.

This example has a couple of lessons for wine. First, privatization does not equal liberalization: slothful monopolists who raise prices and limit choices can be either public or private. So as states contemplate privatizing alcohol distribution, the key aspect is fostering competition that allows niche distributors to emerge to sell fun, small production wines from the Cote Chalonnaise, or wherever. And why not take liberalization all the way and mandate out-of-state shipping from both wineries and retailers at the same time, with a mechanism to secure tax collection? Or allow ways for innovative retailers, restaurants or wineries to handle their own sourcing or supplying of wines, free of a middle tier? Or allow multiple distributors in a state to carry the same wines?

Further, privatization can easily be botched by the short-term thinking that drives most politicians: Don’t sell a 75-year lease for something that the private firm(s) can recoup in a fraction of that time. Privatization would also create more private profits that could be cycled back into electoral campaigns for politicians, further entrenching the prevailing three-tier system. Whether or not you want to raise a glass to that may depend on where you live.

2009—great vintage or the greatest vintage?
Whoa! A Stephen Colbert question! I can’t pick a side! I don’t know. I’ve tasted too few. The only things I’ve tasted is what we have here. Certainly in Champagne, they are over the moon about it. You know, Tyler, honestly, when the reports started coming in about 09, I found myself not especially eager to read them. I’m not sure that the market is really kind of dilated to receive another superb vintage. All of us merchants are contemplating that fact that we used to be able to rely on a vintage bounce if the vintage was perceived to be exceptionally good. But there have been so many good vintages cheek by jowl that at this point that somebody for whatever reason is not ready to buy wine is left completely cold by the argument that it’s a great vintage. That person will just say, “Hey, there’ll be another one in a year or two. I’ve got no money or no space in the cellar or whatever, I’m just going to miss it.”

So I just looked at 2009 in Germany at least and said, short crop: will have upward pressure on prices. Outstanding quality, which means there won’t be very many of the wines of the types that I need. So I just kind of looked at and thought, hmmm. I’m sure when I taste them I’ll come back excited by them. Irrespective of the quality of the wines, speaking from a purely mercantile sense, it is the wrong vintage for its moment. Mind you, 2008 was the right vintage for its moment and thankfully there are still plenty of 08s available. Plentiful, not overripe, gave a reasonably decent sized community of wines that could retail for under $25 and was what we really needed—and still need.

On that note, Riesling is very popular now, but how about Riesling over $30?
Still a very difficult sell. I would say two things to that. First, I think the popularity of Riesling is occurring in the echo chamber of people who like Riesling and like talking about it and writing about it but don’t necessarily like purchasing it, particularly in its dry form. I think there’s more chatter about Riesling—which is good—than there is real discernible commercial activity. That being said, we’re selling three times more Riesling than we did in the nineties, so all these things are relative. For public attribution, obviously one wants to be able to say, “yay! It’s gung-ho! Everybody’s crazy about it! We can’t keep them in stock!” But Riesling is a niche market. It is a growing niche. It has room to grow more. The question is whether it will or should emerge from the niche. And it’s really important to keep that “should” in that sentence. Dry Riesling is a niche of the niche.

Why is dry Riesling less popular?
I wish I knew—I truly don’t understand it. I can only infer from experience: even drinking great dry Riesling is an experience that seems too cerebral for a mass audience. I don’t see it that way. I like cerebral wines. But that’s not my sine qua non. I also like sensual and hedonistic wines and there are plenty of dry Rieslings that are sensual and hedonistic. Look at Brundlmayer or Hirsch or the best of Nikolaihof or the best among the Germans as well. My own sense is that five to 10 years ago, Riesling was definitely in on the ascent. Right now, it’s kind of flying in circles, it’s in a holding pattern. It doesn’t really have a landing vector yet. It’s still being talked about but the chatter is not being reflected in the kind of numbers that would give me the impression—look, we’re doing well, more than surviving. Look around you. But let me put it this way: you have a lot of people who have eagerly come here to taste Riesling. But when they go back to their stores or restaurants, and they start looking at what they order, suddenly the budget parameters start to shrink and they lose their courage, they lose their nerve. They’ll say “this is the only slot we have for Riesling,” or “It’s only this amount of shelf space,” or “it only has this amount of wine list space.” To which I would say: make it more! You have a lot of wine that you don’t need on your list.

I was in a restaurant in New York last night—I won’t say the name—overwhelmingly a fish-oriented restaurant. The wine list was half and half red and white wine. What’s all that red wine doing on that list? It doesn’t belong it doesn’t work with the food? Why is it there? Eat a piece of branzino and have a Gruad Larose with it? I shudder to think about what’s going on in people’s mouths. Why is it there? What we need to see is people who are saying we have 35 chardonnays on the list and six Rieslings. We’re going to have 27 chardonnays and 13 Rieslings. And that is something that we’re not really seeing. It used to be that we’d see people with two Rieslings on the list and now they have seven. Great. But when you actually look at the best value for money, the wine works best with the food, the thing that will be the most nourishing for everybody in the process from an emotional, spiritual, and intellectual standpoint, it’s not reflected in what’s out there.

Négociant champagnes have been having a tough time right now; what about grower champagnes, by contrast?
We’re doing all right. We had a surprisingly good year. It was not quite as good as 2008. But we all know the figures: we see the CIVC shipments are down by whatever it is, 30%, but we were down nominally, a single digit. Our sales have been pretty good. So in that sense, from the marketing standpoint, having been doing grower champagne for 11 years, the campaign has been successful. If you just look at the numbers, there were 33 RMs [a designation on the label for those who grow grapes and make wine -ed.] when I started, there are now almost 180. It was 0.62% of the market in 1997; it’s now 3.05% of the market. So that’s been completely successful—I have no complaint whatsoever about my grower champagne business or the willingness of people to embrace the idea. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it has been shooting fish in a barrel but it has been the easiest sale I’ve ever made.

Why?
It’s French and not German. It’s champagne. It was the right idea for its time. It was the right idea period. It was the last place in France that was dominated by negociants, everywhere else in France, wine drinkers had learned to seek out the best domains. So that’s all you had to do, is ask why stop at Champagne? It was an easy argument to make for journalists particularly because it was a great story. I remember I told someone who was doing a trend alert for TIME magazine and we were on the phone, and I was riffing, and said “Champagne is the last place in the wine world where you can watch the proletariat taking back the means of production.” And she was like, “Whoa! That’s a really good quote! How do you spell proletariat?” It was an idea that was immensely appealing, especially to Americans with our love of the underdog.

Then the fact that the big houses continued to conduct themselves in such an incredibly cynical and smarmy manner, just played into our hands. So with my farmer fizz biz, I’m like totally cool. Thank you. You all get it. I love you. Thank you for sticking your necks out. I appreciate it.

One-liter bottles appear a trend now with many good ones here today. A wine for the times?
Very much so. Easy drinking, good value. One thing that I like about the one-liters especially the ones with crown caps, is that they emit an aura of unpretentiousness. [Such as Hofer and Berger --ed.] But when you taste the wine, it’s surprisingly good. It’s been for us, mostly an Austria phenomenon and mostly a Gruner Veltliner phenomenon. It’s mostly been a way for people to easily enjoy and appreciate Gruner Veltliner in its lighter echelon. You don’t really see liters of Riesling in Austria because there’s not enough Riesling made. But we do liters of Riesling and Silvaner from Germany. They do okay. But they don’t do as well as the Gruner Veltliners do. Again, I think it has to do with it being Riesling. I could have utterly delicious, dirt cheap outstanding dry Riesling from Germany and it would be twenty times a harder sell than the Austrian Gruner Veltliners. I don’t know why!

So that’s why you hear me sounding a little bit cynical about hearing all these people talking about Riesling: why aren’t they kicking some ass?

It sounds like it was actually a good year for you last year. Yet for your tasting catalogue last year, you appeared topless but this year, in a bathrobe. Why the modesty?
I think that there were still some people who were getting over the nervous and psychological shock of seeing me topless and I just don’t want to be responsible for people having somatic breakdowns. So yes, we decided it was going to be a Riesling for breakfast theme. And I don’t eat breakfast in the nude, sorry.

SIPPED: Jancis, rocked
A German sommelier who goes by the nom de internet of Finkus Bripp drops by Jancis Robinson’s house to interview her. No exploding microwaves, sadly, but worth a look nonetheless. [Wine on the Rocks]

SIPPED: slim bottles
The wine bottle makes good on its resolution to lose weight: Tesco introduces an ultralight glass bottle that weighs just 300g, or, significantly less than normal bottles. That means more wine shipped around the world, and less packaging. Take a look at the bottle over on wineanorak.com.

SIPPED: more freedom of shipping
A federal appeals court affirmed a lower court’s ruling that Massachusetts law could not offer free shipping to in-state wineries over 30,000 gallons a year while preventing out-of-state wineries from shipping. Wineries producing more than the 12,618 case limit rejoiced at the ruling–as did free trading consumers. [AP]

SIPPED: the “new normal”
What’s in store for the wine biz? “Slow growth, lower prices and younger fans who are drinking more at home than at fancy restaurants.” [Wines & Vines]

SIPPED and SPIT: new wineries
The number of new wineries in the USA increased by six percent, according to Wine Business Monthly. Although this is up, the growth slowed to from 15 and 10 percent in 2006 and 2007, respectively. It was the same growth rate as last year. Related question: does the US need six percent more wineries?

SIPPED: Discussion
Randy and Kaz, the hosts of WineBizRadio invited me on last week to talk about my post about wine samples at the Wine Advocate.

SIPPED: logistics photos! Mmmm!
The Daily Mail published photos of 36 million bottles of wine in an English warehouse. Although their Christmas angle was different, they do note two interesting things: first, that Constellation self-distributes in England, unlike the US; and, second, they ship wine not glass by bottling all the wine in the UK after importing it in 25,000 liter bulk tanks.

SIPPED: ultra-premium wine
Want to upgrade from Kendall-Jackson Vintner’s Reserve wines? The Sonoma-based wine group now offers something new: customers who drop $30k get to taste and talk with the KJ head winemaker who will learn their wine preferences and produce a case of wine (12 bottles) with custom labels. Only $2,500 each! [Luxist; ht @ItalianWineGuy]

Photo via Facebook

When the St. Pierres began importing wine, after buying a Hong Kong shelf company called Asia Solutions Corporation, the also created a product of their own. The family was Canadian by birth, but St. Pierre figured, “God damn, let’s use our French name.” Chateau St. Pierre was California bulk red wine, bottled at a factory in Beijing. It bore a label with the stencilled image of a chateau, which the importers had copied from a coffee-table book. No bottle cost more than forty-five yuan–less than six dollars at the time.

At the beginning they also had a fantastically successful promotion selling two bottles of wine and tie gift boxes. Now they also import Gaja, Penfold’s Grange, and Guigal among many others.

The story provides a small window into wine consumption in China too. Red wine has been called “red liquor” if only to distinguish it from baiju, a “ferocious grain alcohol.” But in the 1990s, the authorities wanted to divert grain back to food production, the story reports, and upgrade the quality of domestic wine. Baiju was banned at ministerial banquets and wine import duties were lowered. But in this video on the newyorker.com, Donald St. Pierre, Jr. says culture of alcohol consumption write large often takes that the ultimate sign of respect for a guest is to down the drink in a single gulp, a tradition known locally as “ganbei.” And apparently for decades, Chinese wine was made in “enormous, state-run industrial wineries [that] blended grapes with chemicals and coloring.” Hmm, doesn’t sound like something worth sipping.

The picture to the right is of Don Sr via Grape Wall of China, an English-language site about the wine scene in China. (Update: Jim Boyce of Grape Wall posts some useful insights in the comments section)

SPIT: double standards
Speaking of the FTC, Blake Gray, former wine columnist for the SF Chronicle, has a lengthy post decrying the fact that the new FTC regulations come down harder on blogs than they do traditional media. [Gray Market Report]

SIPPED: funding freer trade
Frustrated by interstate shipping laws that thwart the ability to purchase wine out of state for 47 states? Consider bidding on wine lots in an auction to benefit the Specialty Wine Retailers Association, which fights legal battles for freer trade.

SIPPED: red wine
Chocolate milk, of all drinks, tries to muscle red wine out of the health news headlines: According to recent research as reported in the NYT, “flavanoid-rich cocoa” found in chocolate milk appears more effective at reducing inflammation that leads to atherosclerosis than regular milk! But the effects still aren’t as pronounced as with red wine. I can see it now: the choco-cabernet smoothie!

SIPPED: symbolic pricing
Joe Montana’s 500 acre estate that spans the Sonoma-Napa county line, is up for sale. The former 49ers QB, who also has a wine label, listed the property at $49 million. [WSJ]

SPIT: symbolic pricing
7-Eleven, the chain of 15,000 convenience stores, has announced their own wine label, Yosemite Road. Instead of pricing it at $7 and $11 a bottle for symbolic purposes, it will retail for $3.99. Aha! Maybe this will be the home of the choco-cabernet Slurpee? [AP]

SIPPED: another city winery
Hong Kong eclipsed New York City as the wine auction capital of the world this year, that we know. But this just in: Hong Kong has had a winery in the city limits since 2007. [CNN]

SIPPED: web voting
The website Foodbuzz recently distributed some blog awards and this blog won the category “blogger you would most want to be your personal sommelier.” Thank you for your votes but my question is, true to blogger stereotype, does that mean I have to pour wine in my pajamas? [Foodbuzz]

Diageo Chateaux & Estates was a major buyer of Bordeaux futures for the better part of the last three decades. In fact, according to one California wholesaler quoted in an AFP article, their buying (along with Costco), created “an artificial level of implied demand from the US — the wine estates set their prices based on this perceived demand.”

But things changed. The wines of the rainy 2007 vintage received weak reviews on the whole and demand slackened for pre-buying during the recession. Diageo Chateaux & Estates had committed to the vintage as they had in the past. Now, they are left with a large inventory of wine that needs to be significantly discounted as it arrives in the US. According to the AFP story, they are dumping the 2007s and previous vintages on the US market to such an extent that trucks are even coming from Mexico to scoop up bargains!

While lower prices sounds like good news, the AFP story neglects the question of future vintages. The low prices of the 2007s may be fleeting because Diageo has now decided to get out of the Bordeaux futures business. As of the 2008 vintage, US retailers have had to pursue different, smaller scale strategies for buying Bordeaux wines as futures to the extent that there has been demand. Now the 2009 vintage has gotten huge advance praise and financial markets have rallied, replenishing the bank accounts of some Bordeaux consumers. So while the demand side for future vintages may be coming back, the economies of scale that DC&E had on the supply side have been removed making a tempting conclusion that prices will move higher.

However, if the Diageo demand was “artificial” as witnessed by the current dumping, the prices could remain lower for several years. And with so many lavishly praised recent vintages already available in the market, Bordeaux buyers may think twice about the need to buy futures on unbottled wine. Indeed, American buyers are “skeptical” according to a recent article on Dectanter.com.

For any retailers out there, what is your recent experience with Bordeaux futures and how will Diageo’s bowing out affect the way you do business? And for consumers, is it “game over” or “game on” for Bordeaux futures?

Well, last week I met that consumer, Robert Kenney (right), whose dogged pursuit of Jay Miller popped the cork on this saga. Kenney purchased 48 bottles of Sierra Carche and has opened 18 of them, “hoping for a good one” but instead has found Jay Miller’s term “undrinkable” a more apt descriptor. I joined Kenney and a dozen other tasters for a blind tasting organized by Daniel Posner, a partner in the wine store, Grapes The Wine Co. in White Plains, NY.

Posner greeted the tasters in his apron as he pulled burgers off the grill outside the store. But his real work had happened well before the tasting even started, coordinating the lineup. He managed to find four bottles of Sierra Carche from two different lots of the wine (astute readers may recall mention of a third lot, #7033, but bottles from that small lot/bottling proved elusive). Posner selected similar wines, including wines rated 93 – 99 by Jay Miller at the Wine Advocate ranging in price from $6 to $150.

It was the worst tasting I have ever attended. Although the burgers and company were good, the wines were abysmal. I’ll spare you the play-by-play (if you want it, see Dale Williams’ funny account–I was sitting next to Dale). Suffice it to say, among the wines, there was one note that kept recurring: “Nasty, VA meets green pepper with a dash of jalepeno overlaying a bed of silage.” Other terms bandied about included burnt rubber, bacterial issues, fermenting/rotting hay, roadkill, and roadkill with burning rubber that ends up in a hog “lagoon.”

Here is the complete lineup:
#1 2005 Sierra Carche (lot 8114) WA 96
#2 2005 Espectacle (Monsant) – about $150 (unrated, but 2004 was WA 99, 2006 WA 96)
#3 2004 Pico Madama WA 93
#4 2008 Edgbaston Pepper Pot (South Africa), $14, unrated
#5 2005 Sierra Carche (lot 8114) WA 96
#6 2005 Pasanau (El Vell Coster) Priorat WA 97
#7 2005 Sierra Carche (lot 8114) WA 96
#8 2005 Mollydooker Carnival of Love WA 99 (17% alcohol)
#9 2007 Emilio Moro, Resalso (Ribera del Duero) WA 90
#10 2007 A1 Mouvedre $12 unrated
#11 2007 Panarroz (Jumilla) $6 (Unrated by JM, but RP gave 2003-2006 all WA 90)
#12 2008 Oriol (Emporda) $12 unrated
#13 2001 Clos Fonta (Priorat) WA 94
#14 2005 Sierra Carche (lot 8113) WA 96
2005 Pico Madama (corked, not served) WA 95+

Someone in the group speculated that the 2004 Pico Madama was the same wine as the 2005 Sierra Carche, both from the same importer. (Marc Clinard of the Well Oiled Wine Co, the importer, was planning on attending the tasting but canceled two days prior with a back injury.)
The labels are similar as the photo shows (click to enlarge back labels). And retailer Gary Vaynerchuk had a bad experience with the 04 Pico Madama on camera (around 14:12), dumping it out and dropping his glass on the table out of frustration. In our tasting, the 04 Pico Madama was not quite as bad and neither wine appeared heat damaged; but neither wine was great and the Sierra Carche exhibited consistently bad notes with a surprising green character. There was something possibly bacteriological in the Panarroz, the worst wine of the day.

The importer’s laboratory analysis of the various lots of Sierra Carche is still pending. Parker tasted one bottle of lot 8114 in mid-August and gave it a score of 90; Miller, another taster, and Mrs. Parker also tasted the bottle and scored it 91, 92, and 93 points, respectively. He also wrote of possibly tasting more bottles on his video blog. In a summary statement, in mid-August, he also wrote that with “over 300,000 wines tasted….bait and switch tactics MAY have happened a maximum 20 times…in reality a lot less I suspect…we only taste with conscientious people in the wine trade.”

Such are the findings from a paper published in the current issue of the Journal of Wine Economics. Robert Hodgson (pictured), the paper’s author, is a professor emeritus of oceanography at Humboldt State University. He also co-owns Fieldbrook Winery in Humboldt county, which “normally produces about 1000 cases per year. Though small, the winery has earned distinction by winning many awards in state and national competitions.”

In fact, it was his personal experience winning medals and then coming up empty handed that led his quantitative analysis of 13 wine competitions as he told Reuters. The paper says that there are about 29 wine competitions in the United States; for the 13 that he studied, entry fees exceeded $1 million.

Other research has shown that consumers’ buying decisions are slightly but positively influenced by medals, which placed sixth out of thirteen variables (ahead of front labels and shelf talkers).

What do you think explains this disparity: something inherent to wine competitions, the nature of blind tasting, or a lack of consensus of quality wine?

Links to abstract and full paper in pdf

“With sales falling, producers may be ordered to leave up to half their grapes to wither on the vine in an attempt to squeeze the market.” [timesonline.co.uk]