More layoffs for Sonoma County winery powerhouse?

There are several rumors circulating (with some very well informed parties providing me with confirming info just last evening) that there are more layoffs in the works for at least one major Sonoma County winery....

Ready to guess which?

• one which has already had a few large rounds of layoffs in the past 18 months...
• and has scaled back (mothballed & consolidated) a few of its properties recently....
• and has management which currently seems to know no other answer to flagging sales than to cut its workforce...
• management which also saw fit to raise the price of their main bread and butter product at the beginning of the recession...despite knowing the recession was on the way, and would negatively impact the next few quarters as their sales dropped due to the higher prices and the fact that distributors packed their warehouses at the lower prices, and then didn't deplete their stock like they had in the past.

Time's up! 
Put your pencils down, but don't worry, if you didn't guess you'll find out when it hits the paper...

*****

The continued trend of consumers not to "trade back up" from the lower priced tiers they have gone to in the past 18 months is contributing to many changes in our industry - especially regarding wineries which used to seem beyond the grasp of such trivial things as market fluctuations....

Many people have suggested that this is mainly just a matter of time, and that given enough time the industry giants will rebound to the same stratospheric heights they used to occupy. Though many readers of this blog in the past will know that I don't give the Titans the same respect they do, and for good reason.

I was lucky to have realized long ago how much of the current fluff regarding the hierarchy of wines & wineries is just that...."fluff". People (consumers), have "traded down" for financial reasons, but quite a few have found enjoyment at the lower tiers (~$15/btl) which they used to think only existed at the $30/btl range.

I really don't think they are ready to go back yet, and the wineries which aren't looking to price their wines at a price to move right now are missing the boat. Any talk of "not losing price point" (read that as "prestige" & "ego") is not really realistic. To be sure, many will weather the storm even with that attitude, but the healthier ones will be - in my opinion - the ones which make it through the storm without having to sacrifice facilities and product lines to get there. Witness the recent changes with Beaulieu and Sterling being sold/leased by Diageo....these are some of the previously "untouchable" storied wineries now leased-back to provide "nimble" and "entrepreneurial" business opportunities for the Diageo group.

The bad news for the producers whom are filling the market needs now will be expected by consumers to continue providing these $15 wines which drink like $30 wines for the foreseeable future.

2010 won't be a smooth start...

2009 was a really rough year for the wine industry.  While early indicators show that wine sales will be up (in volume and dollars) over 2009, the sales generated per case fell for nearly every domestic winery and imports suffered from trying to maintain already sensitive price points (thanks to the weak dollar).  Every winery owner or sales manager that I talk to tells a similar story:  distributors are focusing more and more on the big guys, even to the point of allocating time and effort based on how much revenue each suppliers provides for them, and retailers are asking for more and more aggressive pricing.  One general manager told me “every time I offer what I think is a killer deal, somebody comes along and beats it”.  Many distributors are already reviewing their portfolios based on Q4 (Oct-Nov-Dec) performance and will be booting those that don’t cut it.  They will in turn move to smaller distributors and so on until, eventually, some are left out in the cold with no wholesale distribution at all.  They can go rely on their tasting room and club business (and try to prop it up by Facebooking and Twittering like everybody else), but I hear of wineries who have lost 50% of their retail business….ugh!

Wineries have survived for 15+ months on the strength of their balance sheets (and some are not as strong as others) and have drawn as much as possible on their bank credit lines.  The piper is drawing near and he wants to be paid.

Banks are caught in the middle as they have (quite honestly) allowed wineries to borrow more than they should.  Now, the more aggressive banks are caught with loan portfolios that are full of over-valued wineries with bloated inventories on the books for more than the wine will sell for.  If they move on one to foreclose, they risk being forced to write down the value of other loans.

Owners, meanwhile, are looking to sell like never before.  The problem is supply and demand – sellers are abundant and buyers are biding their time, waiting for better prices.  A drop in price, however, will often mean that the owner walks away with nothing once he’s paid back the bank (the one that let him borrow too much in the first place). Historically this is where we would see the larger players of the industry (Constellation, Gallo, Jackson, etc) stepping in to snap up desired properties as they came on the market.......however, even those keenly honed teams are eerily quite at the moment. There is enough unease about where we are in the recovery cycle to make even the biggest predators pause for thought. It's somewhat like seeing a bleeding man in the water, yet the sharks not only aren't circling, they're nowhere in sight.....

All in due time, it WILL happen, just not while those larger wineries still can't forecast where they'll be in a year.

Napa is particularly feeling the pinch as they've been raising prices to the point where everybody and their cousin has a $125 Napa Cabernet offering.  The problem is that consumers have been drinking cheaper Cabernet in the last year and they’ve found out that Napa is overpriced.  Generic Napa Cab isn’t worth $40 and the good stuff isn’t worth $125. (I was talking the other day with a wine newbie who wanted to know what the production cost difference between $20, $50 and $125 bottles of wine really was: the difference for the $50 bottle is $30 of "ego" I said, and the difference between the $50 & $125 bottles is an additional $75 of "stupidity"....). Now, everybody (and their cousins) will be forced to discount their precious juice to half price and now they don’t have the case inventory movement to buy the new French oak and pay the exorbitant prices they’re paying for custom crushing in a Napa facility, not to mention the $35 they’ll need to come up with just to package and bottle a case!

So what will 2010 bring, widespread panic?  Cabs and Dolcettos sleeping together? (sorry, that was just plain bad)

I suspect we will see the wineries who got in last get out first, unless they have pretty deep pockets.  Banks will have to move in some cases, and opportunistic buyers will snap up some real deals.  Prices for vineyards, grapes and wine aren’t likely to rise, so some will be forced to sell and there will be some bankruptcies, even some prominent ones.  The good news is that the thinning of the herd is a good thing for the long term, even if it’s painful for some in the short run. For the consumer who can afford wine (and hopefully that's still a large percentage of those who were buying two years ago) the discounts will continue.......

Rain, rain...go away....

A little over an inch by the time I got up this morning.

September was a charm - 12 days had high temps in the 90's (two days it hit 100+) and 18 days with fog, avg hi was 85°, avg low was 48°, with sunny afternoons making for perfect ripening conditions.

I'm one of the lucky ones - I got my last fruit in the cellar early afternoon on Saturday. (I should qualify that, I brought in the last of the fruit I had budgeted for this year...that's off from what I SHOULD be normally doing by -15% due to the economy. Much of that was accomplished by green drop, not that I like to do that, but it was what I thought was the lesser of two evils. The other being letting it rot on the vine - though I probably would have found myself doing exactly what everyone else is, selling it for pennies a pound when it was worth more than a dollar a pound.) I know more than a few people who had buyers that couldn't get financing this year. Banks wouldn't lend them scratch to buy more fruit as they were unbalanced with what the creditors thought was too much inventory from past vintages...

Sadly, much of the fruit which was still out there was (is) some of the best. Late ripening Cab and Zinfandels that were worth the long wait. Many blocks will be offered to home winemakers this year as it either won't have a contract buyer, or will be deemed "compromised" by the rain we're having right now. If you're a garagiste, then this could be your year to shine, if you're ready to work around some low sugars - depending on what the next few weeks bring us....

So?

For wineries, the spot market prices for grapes was already dropping like a stone with demand off as much as it was. Add to that the fact that many wineries can't fulfill the fruit contracts they had due to financing woes, and the market prices fall further. Then throw a big heaping spoonful of rain on top of that and it gets even worse...

Prices aren't just dropping into the basement, they're heading for the abyss.

The irony of years when there are great crops available which wouldn't be available otherwise is that you're either at full production capacity, or you have no money available to snap it up.

Mystic Rhythms

"...The more we think we know about
The greater the unknown
We suspend our disbelief, And we are not alone...
We sometimes catch a window, A glimpse of whats beyond
Was it just imagination Stringing us along?
More things than are dreamed about, Unseen and unexplained
We suspend our disbelief, And we are entertained..."

RUSH, Mystic Rhythms 1985

What, didn't anything front-page-worthy happen on Saturday October 10th, leaving the paper scrambling for something to fill the void?

 Kudos to the Press Democrat for giving away yet another front page spread - this time to Biodynamics.

Yet more free press for the Benzigers, and another shot of their comments as fragments left hanging for the public to absorb, without much in the way of explantion of the oddities they practice, and why or why not those practices should work. I do feel Guy Kovner was trying to write something that presented both sides...but it doesn't seem he understood the foundations of Biodynamics himself, or perhaps the editors didn't give him enough space to present it...

More likely it was the first. I doubt many people wold suffer through Steiner's Agriculture lectures if they didn't have to...I almost didn't finish it, and I had reason to read the damned thing! Maybe this reporter wasn't given enough time to research fully.

Shall I go into the multitude of errors he made in his farming philosophy? Maybe, but what I really want to focus on is the way wineries which practice this "spiritual science" -even though it has nothing to do with science- can capitalize on the articles it generates. Witness the quote by Mike Benziger:

“I can't look you in the eye and say it's better,” said Mike Benziger, head of the family-owned winery. “I can say it's different.”
Making biodynamic wine isn't about “technical perfection,” Benziger said. “It's about an authentic vintage, an authentic place.”

Notice that?

See the way in which he disarms you and "doesn't" throw mud in your eye, but then throws mud in your eye at the same time?

It's NOT about it being better...but it IS about BEING BETTER than the rest. The slight is that everything else is NOT AN AUTHENTIC vintage, and doesn't REPRESENT an authentic place

Answer me this Mike Benziger....if Biodynamics is so great, why is it you only bottle up ~30,000 gallons as BD certified and not ALL your production?

Is it because you don't have to risk your entire production volume this way, yet still get all the talking points?

Beware!

Large companies are starting to take notice of the BD movement, and are looking to remove your talking points! For example, I have heard from several sources within Kendall-Jackson that they (one last year, and again this harvest) are now starting to farm using Biodynamic methods. I doubt they will convert their whole vineyard empire over to the practice, or even to get the certification, but undoubtedly they will have a few blocks they can use as a talking point. There are a few articles out in the past about how the Jackson empire had approached Biodynamics years ago [Alice Feiring], but passed on the idea of implementing it at the time.

Hopefully this move by large companies will sully the image enough for the "true believers" to abandon their odd ideas...

Read the article by Smith & Barquín at Fine Wine Magazine.com listing well thought out criticism of the movement, and link here to follow up on it with the comments.

In the meantime, I'll leave you with my past posts about the subject [link here].

More trouble on the horizon

There are many indicators that the recovery for the wine industry is NOT on the doorstep right now for some of the larger wineries. Normally, this time of year sees frantic bottling as wineries across the state try to get tanks emptied for use in the coming harvest. Not so this year....

Several larger wineries have suspended bottling of their wines off and on over the past 8 months. This is due to lackluster sales keeping the products in the warehouses instead of heading out to the consumers. If your warehouse is plugged full, you have nowhere to put the product. If you're going to have hold wine in a warehouse due to slow sales, the rule of thumb is to avoid the extra expense of putting the wine in the bottle in the first place. This saves the headache of needing to either decant the wines for bulk wine sale or remove the labels at the very least for another winery which might buy your wines from you to generate cash flow.

Some of the larger wineries I know have crews which are near panic, as they turn the proverbial spigots off and on again to drain tanks for the coming harvest. Also, there's only so much cleaning you can do when you're supposed to normally be bottling. Then there's a cascade effect as the wines normally to be trucked from one place to another no longer need to be shipped - so more truck drivers stand idle, and trucking companies start hurting. Wines no longer on the fast track to the bottle don't need as much work done to them, so the cellar crews start looking like they have too many people on them to the bean-counters, and discussion starts about cutting them back or temporarily having them work only partial weeks (if not to lay them off entirely until the next harvest starts). Lab analysis also is put on a back burner, so testing companies like Vinquiry or Enologix might be seeing reduced work loads. Then there are the companies providing labels, bottling glass, glue, corks, capsules, etc....all of which also feel the pinch from the lack of forward momentum on the bottling lines.

And it goes on from there....

The problem is that tanks should all be emptied for the harvest which has already started, and winery management will be trying hard to minimize capital outlay for bottling, while they create space needed for the incoming fruit. It is a very delicate balance to maintain, and requires a great deal of communication between the vineyard, cellar and the marketing teams.We all would have been better served by Nature if the current harvest was a bit smaller than normal, which it isn't. The only silver lining to our plight is that the harvest may run a bit longer than normal, and we may have time to turn the tanks over for another round without having to "short vat" too much of the initial onslaught due to the hot weather we're having.

What's it mean to the consumer?

There are some wines being discounted, but that shoe is only now starting to hit the floor. The bigger concern is for the financial performance of the wineries. This is their "stress test", where we will learn if their high paid marketing and promotion staff are worth their salt. But they hold a double-edged sword, as dropping the prices moves more product, but cuts the amount of revenue they generate (doubtless they had more profits penciled into their business plans, and one thing owners and bean-counters abhor is the dreaded "write down" of inventory valuation). Another problem for large wineries is that almost all of them have tried to position themselves up-market in the past few years, and that's the sector which is hurting the most. All we need to do is look to the article in the Press Democrat today to see many of the higher end wineries feeling the crunch. The tone of the article is spot-on, but some of the concluding thoughts are a bit optimistic...

Fred Reno is right that this isn't a 1~2 year dip...and three years is a bit too short also. I don't see the high end ever fully recovering...well, at least not until the next generation of wine drinkers hits the market. And even then, that prospect is "iffy". 

I'd say it's more likely to be "near" to where it was before this mess started within a decade, but owners and marketers will have a tough time getting the same people to buy the highest priced wines when their eyes have been opened to great tasting wines at lower prices. I liken it to my grandparent's need to have "mad money" in their pockets after they survived the depression, or their need to have a well stocked pantry decades after the end of those difficult economic times ("mad money" was their name for the $20~$50 they always had on hand in cash for quick purchases - people told them they were mad not to put all their money back into the banking system, which was deemed "bulletproof" after the government regulations were in place). Even though the danger was long since removed, they had a difficult time getting their heads back to the spend-freely attitudes they had prior to the bad times. I don't see the current purchasers going back in that direction, not that the sales of Two-Buck-Chuck will always be booming like they are now, but they won't go back to buying wines priced as high as they had purchased in the past.

What - and wine sales are down in restaurants? Because people don't want to pay double the price they'd pay in a retail environment to get the same wine? Do tell!

People are going to be much more frugal as they come back into the market. Wine sales in the high end are seeing something that should've happened a long time ago: a correction to deflate some of the ego driven inflation that has injected itself into the process.

So what if someone starts a winery from scratch and wants to put the first vintage out at $100/btl? 

I say let 'em fail. It's not pretty, but if you're stupid enough to put wines out there at that price right now, then you are getting what you deserve to see them stagnate and not move at all.

After all, it's frickin' fermented grape juice, nothing more....so why were people paying those incredible prices to begin with?
If you're a winery owner or marketing type who asks me today what's going wrong with your business plan the first thing I'll ask you is, "why aren't you discounting more heavily?"

"Inglenooking" revisited...

I have been doing far too much traveling for brand promotion and sales these past few months. Sales are finally starting to creep upwards again though, so hopefully the recession is on the way out.

Anyway, I was looking through a list of "Top Wines form Argentina" while on a flight back to California, and was somewhat amused to see Inglenook as the #3 brand (Chablis, same wine is in the #13 spot as well).

Inglenook? Really??

I had lost track of that brand a few years back when it was still low-end California bulk wine. Anyway it still shows up in the #10 spot (for Burgundy), #15 (Chianti Classico), and finally in the #20 spot (Rhine). Not bad to have your brand in 4 of the top 25 positions....but even so, it is still extremely sad when you remember the rich heritage of the Inglenook name.

Inglenooking is a term used within the industry referring to a high-end brand which is then shifted down-market to capitalize on the previous successes. In the case of Inglenook, it was once the highest end Cab from Napa Valley, with the 1941 Inglenook Napa Cab having a perfect 100 score retrospectively bestowed upon it by the Wine Spectator. Bottles of that vintage can still fetch almost $25,000 each. (Yeah, that's right...$25k for each bottle!)

Now THAT's a brand....top of the Napa wine heap....or at least it was for a while....

It was relegated to California plonk as the brand was expanded and moved in larger format bottlings onto the lower shelves of the supermarket displays. Now it seems to have been further globalized by its corporate handlers...

The body's not even cold yet

I can't believe that City Winery is already trying to make money off of the death of Michael Jackson. To wit, I have the latest email from them (7:46 PM last night - a scant 5~6 hours after MJ's passing):

Granted they want to do this tonight, and they feel they have to work fast at it...but really, do we have to do this?

I suggest we rename the event "City Winery's Tasteless Tasting", and the subtitle should be "How to Milk the Legacy of a Dead Celebrity"...

From the email:

5 Wines paired with 25 songs, $25

City Winery will celebrate Michael Jackson's career with a mix of music and wine by paying homage with a wine pairing—listening to 25 of his classic songs with wines paired with 5 eras of his music. As Michael has touched the entire world with his music, City Winery brings its own special way to honor him with loud music from the venue's concert sound system accompanied by 5 selected wines for this once-in-a-lifetime memorial. Starting with a toast to the King of Pop, to a young period with the Jackson 5, smooth textures, developing into deep and complex personalities, and funky tastes. Michael Jackson's flavors will be lingering in our minds and age for long after he is gone.

Needless to say that Michael Jackson's connection to wine was, shall we say, "infamous" as it came to light during testimony in his trial for child molestation....and that's not really the sort of thing we should be remembering him for. What will be "lingering in my mind" is the poorly thought out marketing idea this was/is, and the aftertaste of desperation it leaves on my impression of City Winery. They get $25/head for playing some music & capitalizing on a dead celebrity.


Quite frankly, this is as offensive as it gets. Maybe South Park got away with their Steve Irwin joke only 2 weeks after his death, but pairing wine with MJ?
What, will it be served out of soft drink cans and be called "Jesus juice"?


And dudes - the guys' body isn't even cold yet. Talk about disgusting.

I'm open to anyone from City Winery who'd like to rebut this. Feel free to pony up & let us all know how you justify this sordid event...

And for those of you out there who feel like I do, here's their email address from their website (I've already forwarded this posting to them):
 info@citywinery.com.

France "dysfunctional"

Well, IT'S ABOUT TIME! 

Top wine industry insiders have labeled France (and Bordeaux in particular) as "dysfunctional".

I've been saying that for years....maybe they don't read the Zinquisition?

Highlights from the Vinexpo conference via Decanter.com:

'Bordeaux should be selling everything,'says Tony Spawton, an associate professor for wine marketing at  University of South Australia.

This is blatantly false...he's implying that just because it carries a Bordeaux appellation it should sell, but there are always less desirable wines from any locale, and just because it's Bordeaux doesn't make it GOOD wine...

'The fact the world's leading wine region is having to distill wine is a bad sign,' said Spawton.

What? They've been doing it for years...why wasn't it a bad sign back then? Weren't they paying attention??
C'mon, I've been blogging about the perpetual "crisis distillation" program and its ill effects since 2005....

Another speaker, UK wine writer Robert Joseph - who produces wine in France - said dysfunctionalities in Bordeaux, and France in general, existed at many levels.
He cited a 'lack of wine branding, poor marketing - with the exception of Champagne' - and the fact that Bordeaux customers are 'blackmailed' into buying.

No $hit...again, something I've been saying since '05...

Well, who knows. maybe they'll get their act together and finally move into the 20th century. Then they'll only have one more century to make up for to be on par with the rest of the world!
I've saved the best quote for last:

'The biggest change will be producers actually asking themselves who is drinking, why, and questioning the blind assumption that there is a market out there for this kind of wine.'                 -anonymous French wine producer

 Yeah, that would be a change for the better, wouldn't it?

Nobody "makes" Wine Anymore

Have you noticed how nobody "makes" anything anymore?

Take a look at the picture of Heinz Ketchup, and pay particular attention to the "Grown Not Made*" slogan  below the tomato:

Compare these two statements:

      "Wine is made in the vineyard"

      "Ketchup is grown, not made"

Say, where in either of those statements is there room for the person who takes the ripe fruit and processes it into the end product that graces your tables? I can see an argument for the farmer being present in either case, but not anyone else, and this is not right.

Originally I had contemplated posting on the "Death of the Rock Star Winemakers", a breed which has declined over the past 5~7 years. Sure, there are still many big names out there, but the frequency you used to hear about all but the top hoity-toity "rock stars" has all but died off. And while I feel this is still a valid topic I might get around to in the future, one of the reasons winemakers roles are being downplayed actually eclipses the topic completely. But I do see the point, after all who needs a winemaker if the fruit has done all the work already?

I was going to start by mentioning how the last few years have had more involvement from owners, with winemakers public exposure as "rock stars" diminishing. The main reasons were the need of the owners to make sure that if/when a winemaker left their brand, that the "loyal" following that had migrated there with them didn't then leave. But I think the real reason is that winemakers as a whole are being displaced by the rush back to authenticity and naturalness - by the need to be greener than the next guy - even to the point that we remove ourselves from the equation entirely...and I mean ALL of ourselves, not just winemakers!

And that is why something as common and kitsch as ketchup is now modeling itself as having been dropped into the bottle by Mother Nature herself, without any interference from mankind at all!

The "authenticity" debate maximizes value of non-intervention while minimizing role of the winemaker and cellar staff. This also allows the owners of the brand to maintain the focus of the trade upon what THEIR vision is, and not that of the winemaker (who was making sure the fruit was harvested properly, fermented correctly, then blended, filtered and bottled correctly). We see the people who do all the heavy lifting get the shaft in the PR/Media, while the brand continues forward as an unblemished rose or virgin snowbank, neither of which had been contaminated by the Human hand.

But WE ARE part of Nature...and we DO need to make decisions about how fruit is handled, and what the final taste should be...so why can't we acknowledge that? 

I'll acknowledge here that we are the only species which has developed the earth (for both good and ill) to the extent it's been changed...

But why is it that Mankind isn't allowed to "make" wines anymore? Why is it preferable that "we" haven't made anything? Why does "manipulate", which foremost means "to handle, manage, or use, especially with skill in some process of treatment or performance", get used in nothing more than its negative connotations when referring to foodstuffs - and wines in particular? Certainly there are reasons people have gone this route, and there have been numerous times in the past that fraud has occurred - and no doubt it will happen again in the future, and not just with the highest priced bottles...but I fear we've gone a bit overboard in our reaction. Listen carefully to all the winery representatives talk up their wines at the next big tasting you go to. Likely that the majority of what you hear will be about how fantastic the vineyards are and how "the wine is made in the vineyard"...

I know many people who read this blog will have gotten tired of hearing this explanation, but much of this is rooted in the 17th century Romanticism and the back-to-nature movement it spawned. However, it now goes to lengths that dismiss many natural treatments which were in play back then as well as now: isinglass, egg whites, milk protein (casein) are all now somewhat vilified in the popular wine press as "manipulation" (only negative connotation). 

Filtration, too, is a victim of the authenticity drive, and is spun by many producers as a evil process which robs the wine of fruitiness, structure, or both. Frankly I don't let anything I work on go out the door without filtration - it's your last chance to secure the wine from subsequent spoilage of microbes present in the wine. And that means better consistency for the consumer, which is never a bad thing. Does filtration diminish your wines somehow? Not in my experience. But I do take good care to educate all the staff on how to do it properly, as its when its done wrong that you can screw up your wine. If everyone is vigilant and well versed on how to get it done, then there shouldn't be any problem - though I'll acknowledge that there's quite a spectrum of opinion on this subject, and you'll no doubt hear from well educated people on the other side of that argument as well.

They'll have different experiences, and I can respect that and their different opinions here.

But I still don't think you can separate Man from Wine. 

Wine just doesn't exist without willfull interference from mankind, any less than ketchup could exist without mankind. Raise a glass in honor of your favorite cellar, and remember ALL the people it takes to bring that product to your table - from the vineyard through to the grocery store.

In Tweetum Lucrum?

I had the misfortune recently of having to sit through a few presentations on how wineries can use social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, etc. to further their own marketing ends. Maybe it was the sheer lack of data in the presentations, but frankly I don’t buy it and my read from the other attendees suggested that they felt the same way. I just don’t think that wineries will be able to effectively use these sites to sell their wines, at least not in enough quantity to justify the investment of time and money. 

And certainly not enough to justify spending $10k/Mo for 6 months as some people are looking to do!

Let me give you my reasons:

1. Wine consumers crave an authentic experience. Without a doubt, the continued proliferation of wine brands and the inertia of the industry to consolidate as beer and bourbon have done is the ability of a winemaker or winery owner to give a consumer a genuinely personal experience. The only way for this to happen in web 2.0 is for winemakers and winery owners (not heads of the marketing department!) to commit several hours each day to blogging, facebooking, tweeting, etc. I know lots of winemakers and lots of winery owners and exactly zero of them have the time to commit to this. Even during a strong economy, these people are working non-stop and have no time for that “instant-response” needed in social media. I see many wineries start down this road with the best of intentions, but then they can’t follow through with something so minor as a simple blog update, due to time constraints. My own Twitter personality suffers form exactly this...maybe when I'm on the road I can tweet occasionally, but otherwise I just don't have the time to post in a stream-of-conciousness fashion.

2. As a corollary to the above, concepts like Murphy-Goode’s (a brand owned by Kendall-Jackson) are doomed to fail because they lack authenticity as well. Wine consumers want to hear from the winemaker or the owner, they don’t want some hired gun whose full-time job is to tweet and give status updates to be selling them on a brand made by somebody else. They want Mr. Murphy or Mr. Goode (neither of whom is involved in the brand anymore) to give them updates and tell them about their “honest” “artisanal” and “hand-crafted” wines. In the Jackson’s favor, they do have David Ready Jr. as the winemaker (the original partners being Murphy, Ready & Goode), but even so the tweets they get more than likely will be from the person they hire and not him. This also invites the consumer to look for Murphy-Goode's winery in the hopes of finding the authenticity they desire, only to sadly have them realize that the M-G team sold the brick & mortar facility they had to a Sonoma custom crush company and the wines are now made at various K-J wineries instead.

[2a.  In the application legalese fine-print for the job referenced above, there is a nice clause about how the "Winery" doesn't need to hire ANYONE if they don't feel they have the right candidate in their applicant pool. Now this is boiler-plate standard release clause for the "Winery" to back out of the deal should they feel it isn't going in the right direction...but should they actually NOT HIRE anybody for the position then they risk losing any sort of authenticity and credibility they might have otherwise. I mean, they've already reaped the rewards of this whole stunt, right? I have seen many, many Tweets, articles, emails and blog postings about what appears to the outside world as a Dream Job in the wine industry (and its been described as such in many articles)...if they then DON'T hire, they look like they've been shilling the brand the entire time because of all the media buzz they've collected to date. Plus, they're owned by K-J which just laid off 15~20% of their workforce a few months ago, and let's face it, there's already enough bad feelings in the industry regarding the business moves that Jess Jackson and his team have made in the past 25 years. Add to that impression a guy who sacks his labor, continues to buy expensive horses, and then pays $60k to someone to sing like a canary (Tweet!) about his wines. Albeit that they were apparently solid business decisions which have put them ahead of the pack in many ways (some might say ruthlessly), but a failure to cement this carrot-and-stick-type-PR-event would do nothing but reinforce the already jaded consumer that K-J was more interested in the mighty $$ than in the reality that people now expect them to make good on the reward they offered for keeping this brand in the public consciousness for the past few months. And why do I use "Winery" in quotes when I mention this topic?...because the "Winery" is K-J, not the M-G that many people might associate with the brand on the face of the offer. The stakes are high for a failure to complete the deal...]

3. How to close the sale? I can see social networks generating fans and followers, but how do you get a fan to stay brand loyal when your wine is $14.99 at Safeway and Gallo’s new brand is running a deal for $11.99? Wine consumers, due to the 9,000 wine brands in this country, are notoriously fickle and have been increasingly “trading down” lately to lower-priced wines. I don’t see how you convert followers into sales, and most importantly, how do you measure the conversion from one to the other?

4. You say the answer to #3 is not to sell through Safeway but to use the internet? The internet in general has not been a boon to wine sales. Yes, there are successes out there (Wine Library), but there have been some big failures too (the first several iterations of Wine.com). Further, ask a winery owner or winemaker if they’re able to rely on web-based marketing, eschewing travelling the major wine markets like they were 5 or 10 years ago. Those that I run into say they’re having to do it more than ever due to the challenges of the economy as well as lack of distributor commitment to any non-corporate brands. I know I'm travelling much more than I have in the past for just this reason. Few wineries sell more than a single-digit percentage of their monthly sales through their website and most all will tell you that club sign ups come from their tasting room, not from the web and this after most wineries have had websites for 10 years or longer. If not by now, by when?

5. Being marketed to is a turn-off on the internet. Web users are increasingly bombarded with ads and messages, most of which are ignored. Overt marketers are shunned. The social network proponents concede this up front and will tell you that you have to engage on a different level. Tell your story less directly, interact with wine pages and sites other than your own, be personal not preachy, etc. Frankly, I think that just dilutes your marketing story and makes you a friend – the type of friend whose parents own a winery and whose parents expect to get free tastings and other comps when they show up. Me, I rarely buy wines from friends in the business because I expect them to bring some when they come to my house….If I’m going to buy your wine, I’ll buy it because I like the quality and/or price, not because you ‘friended’ me. 

6. In support of #5 above, I feel the need to mention the sheer lack of any sort of "style" or "etiquette" by wineries when dealing with the web currently - blogs in particular. I'll hold up a comment on my post the other day by "Trecini", which appears to be nothing but a veil blogger ID from a company shill of the same name...

I was "honored" with a comment on my post the other day by said blogger, and the entire 188 words were nothing more than a PR note re their wines. What a turn off! Talk about how NOT to do it...it was clumsy, just outright clumsy!

And if we want to make it appear that we've "just been to a blind tasting party and discovered the wines" from said winery, maybe you should choose a blogger ID name which isn't so obviously transparent. (BTW, tracking down this ID brings you to a "blog" which was created within the past week and touts 2 [yes, TWO!] posts; the first is a word-for-word repost of the 188 words left in my comments section, the second is an ad for a wine brokerage.)

In case you're looking for the comment proper, don't bother yourself as I've already deleted it (I have a copy in my email of the original).

Now I’m not suggesting that wineries give up and ignore web 2.0 altogether, but I think it should be approached with a healthy skepticism until someone actually demonstrates that they can convert followers into consumers. Today’s wine environment is more challenging than I can remember and one’s focus needs to be on getting the best sales results for one’s time spent.

Maybe following the sales performance of Murphy-Goode would be the bellwether here. I’ll check back in six months and let you know how they’re doing.

News from the trenches

After a few weeks of traveling to visit several key account markets (Sonoma County, San Diego, Phoenix), I have compiled some notes regarding what actual servers in restaurants have been experiencing. Note that none of this is scientific data or taken from scanner data reported by retail stores, rather from first-hand reports of day-to-day observations by servers.

Overall, the concerns of the public aren’t the same as those of us in the industry. The topics which seemed most important didn’t cover cult winemakers, hang time, acid and yeast additions, biodynamics or organic wine methods, etc. Because of this I find it refreshing to hear it directly from the people who are serving the public from time to time. Some of this is due to the economy, some is seasonal, and hopefully a bit of it is the wine drinking public becoming more informed about wine.

The restaurants I was talking with are mainly in the middle of the price range spectrum, though maybe 25% were more on the high-end side than true mid range. All were stand-alone restaurants; I wasn’t talking with any chains. Here’s what I heard - please remember that these are generalizations from ~24 establishments:

• Zinfandel sales seem to be holding where they always have been, but are flat otherwise (this always seems to be the case, but was interesting when you consider that many people are experimenting with reds other than Merlot and Cab Sauv and Pinot…)
• Sauvignon Blanc sales are gaining on Chardonnay sales (some of this is seasonal), a lot of people reporting the public is tiring of 100% malo-lactic white wines
• Patrons don’t appear concerned with high reputation wines as much as they want to get some “tasty juice on the table” at a decent price, and to this end “cult winemakers” and “image/ego buys” are not the deciding factors when patrons are ordering , though some “conspicuous consumption” is still taking place (before you flood the comments section with hate-mail, let me say “yes, this is a generalization”, and I imagine the impression would have been different had I talked with more higher-end establishments)
• The public is starting to catch on that high prices don’t automatically confer a high coefficient of enjoyment, and are increasingly drawn to wines which actually taste good and haven’t been priced out of the stratosphere
• French wines are down overall right now, while the Italians and Spanish are replacing them (price for quality drinking is in play)
• French Champagne sales are down while Prosecco is on the rise (sadly, California Sparkling isn’t filling the void instead…not that I find anything “wrong” with Prosecco…)
• Syrah seems to be the new experiment for patrons who have had enough Cab and Merlot…as one wine buyer said “people are looking for more ‘bang’, but with approachable wines…not over complicated and with tannins which are easier on the palate”…another made it a bit over-simplified and said “people want something purple, that tastes “purple”, without having to think about it to enjoy it”…(we've seen this before; I don't recall how many times I've heard about how Syrah was going to be the next "hot" varietal, only to have it slip back to "ordinary" status...)

The most shocking news that I have to report is that incidences of corked wines seem to be up across the board – regardless of the price range of the bottle or country of origin. In fact, this is the one thing I heard repeatedly while I was out and about. Some reported it’s now double or triple what it was just a few years ago. The majority of the accounts I talked to seemed to think the wineries were switching to lower grades of corks to save money, and this may or may not be true but I imagine the respective wineries would point the finger back at the cork suppliers. That it seems to be across the board leads me to two thoughts: that more people are cognizant of what cork taint is and are willing to send those wines back, and that there might be an actual increase in the number of bottles with defective corks as well.


In the end you and I can talk 'til we run out of breath about vineyard blocks and additions to must or wine, or about how Mark Squires may have traveled to and from various tasting events, but the public seems more concerned with getting the best tasting wine for the buck.

an EARTH DAY present from Randall Graham

From Eric Asimov's The Pour (New York Times):

...[f]or Mr. Grahm, that means owning a vineyard, embracing biodynamic viticulture and farming without irrigation, as the best Old World vineyards are farmed. “Dry farming is absolutely crucial,” he said. “It’s more important than anything — biodynamics, schmiodynamics.”

And...

“I actively resorted to all manner of marketing tricks,” [Randall Graham] said, as if standing before the congregation to confess.

 "Biodynamics, schmiodynamics....”!

"...marketing tricks..." !!

For anyone who's been asleep at the wheel these past 10 years, the truth is now out in the open! Now Randall implies that perhaps the entire thing (biodynamics) was a mistake, and he should've been paying attention to the amount of rainfall his vineyards get and how deep the local aquifers are instead of stuffing cow horns with "poo".

Well I saw that for what it was!

Simultaneously sad and funny to see, but here's the story: a man who set himself up as the advocate of this preposterous method of agriculture for marketing purposes is now backing away from his previous positions to focus on his NEW MARKETING position: Dry Farming!

Unfortunately, Randall hasn't given up all his old ways...

He seems to be relying on a geomancer to evaluate his newest vineyard acquisition's water potential, rather than hiring a certified hydrologist or geologist.

C'mon, Randall!  Make a clean break and purge your soul...

...you're so close to redemption!

A voice of Reason in these dark times...

 

Huzzah! for Stuart Smith of Smith-Madrone Winery!

I just got through reading his letter to the editors of the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat, somewhat taking them to task for the nonsensical video of Mike Benziger on the PD site touting his Biodynamic philosophy. I've clipped the letter he wrote here, as well as provide the link for the PD letters for Fri April 17th...

The best lines have to be...

"...People today make all sorts of assertions with little or no connection to the truth, and biodynamics is no different. Show me the scientific experiments that prove biodynamic soils and vines are healthier and biodynamic wines are better.
... in my opinion, biodynamics is a hoax and deserves the same level of respect we give to witchcraft. On Earth Day or another day, animal sacrifices (a biodynamic farming practice) should not be an acceptable practice of modern day agriculture or our society."

Damn!

That's poetry. And my heart is warmed that people out there are starting to take notice of this mis-represented farming practice which wants everyone to think it naught but "peasant agriculture".......

A BIG thanks to Mr.Smith for his letter of reason!

A word about the economy

"Prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue."  - Francis Bacon

"A penny saved is a penny earned."   - Benjamin Franklin

Ok, so this is more about saving money than the economy in general. Actually, I'm still dumbfounded that it's taken an economic crisis of this magnitude to really put the brakes on sales of top end tier wines. Were we as a society really all that happy about ourselves going out and buying wines at prices ranging from $100 to $1000+ per bottle?

Was the wine really that much better than a $45/bottle wine, or were we "compensating" for something?

People are dropping the higher end wines from the shopping lists, generally, in favor of lower priced relatively "bargain" wines, and the results from near and far afield are a boom in the sales of the remainder of the market. This isn't the end-all indicator of the economic turn around, but hearing that the CA wine industry has boosted its shipments of wine by 15 million gallons in 2008 is a sure sign that people who are drinking wines aren't stopping their consumption, just looking to drink those which "fit in" with their new budgets. And it is an interesting difference to see three main EU players dropping in market share while upstarts like the Californians and Argentinians shoot upwards....

Sadly, this also comes at a time in the EU where the wine industry has been under attack in France(!), by the French themselves. In the past decade, French legislators and firebrands have changed the wine consumption habits of its' people directly via laws restricting advertising, and indirectly through cultural campaigns to curb drinking period. This has been a huge contributor to the French producers' angst and has no doubt helped them to get themselves into the rioting mood these past few years. As the French Giant has nodded off, Italy has passed France in wine consumption, with the US now nipping at its heels. In a way that shouldn't really come as a surprise given that there are ~3 times as many Americans as Frenchmen, but with the US consumption of wine only a paltry 8.7 litres of wine in 2005 compared to the French per capita rate of 55.8 litres that same year it is quite a feat! Converted to cases of wine per year, the US would be slightly under one case per person in 2005, while France was at nearly 6.2 cases per person annually.

And that's not too bad of a deal when we look and see that 2008 had an overall drop in global consumption of almost 1% of the previous mark in 2007...

It will be interesting to see how long it is before the high-end tier recovers once the economy does get its legs back under itself. 

Of course at that time we'll see what happens to the lower end of the market as well, but hopefully people in the US are continuing to embrace wine as more of a necessity than they have in the past. Even if they are at a price-point they thought they couldn't/wouldn't like as much...

A good show (dinner not included)...

I found this on the web while looking up a few points for this post:

"You do not 'believe' in science. Science is not a BELIEF SYSTEM. Science is a method of inquiry. If you do not know what deduction and induction are you need to LOOK THEM UP. Don't try to burn Galileo, you villianous Heathen!"
         - Angry Pontiff

All the same, put this on your calendar:
Friday April 24th, 7 PM @ the Jackson Theater, 4400 Day School Place, Santa Rosa...keep critical thinking points like that above in mind while attending...

Why?

Because this location is hosting an evening of Biodynamic Q&A put to a trio of proponents [link]: Alan York (BD consultant), Paul Dolan (winegrower), and Jeremy Fox (chef @ Ubuntu...uhhhm, so how's he fit into this exactly?). Tickets are $20 in advance/ $25 at the door, and the proceeds go to the Sonoma Co. Wine Library, which is housed at the public library in Healdsburg. This is the type of theater which is most amusing, and my suggestion to you all is to read up on a bit of the BioD nonsense and then ask the hard questions of those assembled on stage, to wit: "exactly what forces are those that we are 'concentrating' by using these BioD preparations?"...

After all, these are the 'experts' - hell, York charges MONEY for those types of answers everyday! - and if they don't have clear answers to these questions, or if they conflict with each other, then we can draw one of three conclusions~

1. they don't have a clue...
2. they know, but don't want us to know...
3. there is no answer because there really aren't any forces being concentrated, and to say such would expose the farce that biodynamics is.

 Personally, after about a decade of trying to fathom what-the-Hell BioD actually is doing in the vineyard by talking with growers & proponents, I believe the answer is a combination of 1 & 3. You can witness this firsthand by viewing the video below of Steve Beckmen of Santa Barbara "explaining" what they do at his vineyard...and "why"... 

This last part is the most telling, due to his rambling answers and lack of anything concrete. How someone can produce a video where the "expert" being talked to can stumble when trying to relate what "forces" are being "excluded" or "enhanced" is beyond me. Why anyone would then post that video w/o cleaning it up first to make sure it made sense is even further beyond me (c'mon! you've got all the time on your hands to make it as authoritative as possible, and ensure it flows smoothly...why not do a couple of takes and get it right?).

A few high points of the video are: 

• Steve telling us about how his magic plywood box (lined with peat) keeps out unwanted "energies" from his BioD concoctions (sadly, those "energies" remain unnamed)...
• relating the "art" of dynamization, and his confession that although hand stirring is best, he uses a machine to do the job so he doesn't have to hire 8 people to get the same job done...
• that they CAN'T get the job done by following the biodynamic calendar, because you only have 2 days out of every 8 where the system allows for the work you need to do to actually get done - so they wrap the work onto other "similar" types of days ...
  
• ...and many more!

And look here, you can actually see the potent cosmic-type energies escaping the box when it's opened!

http://www.sbwinemakers.com/Beckmen-interview.php

Well, we're back to the beginning again, just like the snake eating its own tail, no closer to the real answers about what this system is really trying to do, or better yet "how it gets those things done". And why when people ignore the doctrines of that system it continues to deliver the wanted results. As I've said before - if you can delete or ignore certain parts of the system, did they really contribute to the overall results in the first place? 

Did any of it ever contribute to the results??

Hmm. Reminds me of a post from back in March '06 where a writer had published all sorts of nonsense re BioD and their silly calendars (don't forget to plant your potatoes this coming Monday after Easter...unless you're Greek Orthodox, when the best day will be the Monday following THEIR Easter Sunday...).

I have an experiment I tried a few years ago, but it might be time to try it again...providing it doesn't implode and cause a black hole to form! [See the link for details!]

Do you need a winemaker for wines under $2?

Well......do you?

Is it really all that important to shell out hard earned cash for a "Certified Master of Wine" [CMoW] to produce wines at the $1.99 price point?  TESCO is doing just this, though the winemaker will be in charge of wines in the range of  $2~$40/btl.

But really, I mean how many people would return a wine that was $1.99 if they found it a bit "off" or "different" from a previous bottle? How many cases of the stuff would you need to produce (and sell) to recoup the salary you're going to give that winemaker? Certified Masters of Wine don't just fall off the trees, now do they...

Fresh & Easy to Launch 25 New Wines (TESCO)


"Over the next three months, Tesco's small-format U.S. grocery chain, Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market, will introduce 25 new wines, 15 of which will be exclusive to Fresh & Easy, and crafted by a Certified Master of Wine, the company said.
The new local and imported wines range from $1.99 to $40 per bottle.... [t]he new wine selection includes a California Cabernet from Sonoma, a Malbec from Argentina, sparkling wines from Italy, and a Tempranillo-Shiraz and Ribera del Duero from Spain..."

I'm assuming the CMoW will be involved with each of the 25 wines to be carried...and I don't want to totally deflate the reasoning behind having the CMoW involved as there are more pricey wines in the range, but the MoW designation is vastly different than a MS or PhD in Enology or Viticulture [see here for a good description]. What this implies is that neither TESCO nor Fresh & Easy will be getting into the wine business by owning a winery...rather that they will be sending their CMoW to various existing wineries with the mission of having said businesses make custom wines for their exclusive retail. Think of the symbiotic relationship between Trader Joe's and Two Buck Chuck. One produces, the other sells exclusively.

This is a double-edged sword. While the winery might sell more of the low-end wine it produces with this scheme, it could also end up cutting the consumer base it normally relies on. If the wine is of decent enough quality, some of its' prior consumers may opt to "trade down" and purchase the cheaper wine with the idea the price is low due to lack of a national marketing program or need to support a brick-n-mortar winery facility.

Custom made wines have been in play for quite some time, from restaurant specific offerings, to airlines, cruise ship companies, tour groups, etc. I don't know of a winery which ever went out of business by participating in these deals before, so the threat of this sort of thing going badly for the winery seems very limited...in fact wineries would prefer to do this in a way because the retailer is contracting with them for the wine, and thus wineries see the cash for the transaction without having to figure out how to get it out the door.In the end, the wineries are happy, the retailers involved tend to be happy, and the consumer - who gets wine of a quality they like at perceived basement prices - also is happy.

Another worthless item to buy for your winery

Much has been made of "dynamization" of water by Rudolph Steiner and his biodynamic followers. The theory is that water as we see it today is disorganized and somehow "unnatural", needing to be corrected by applying dynamism (forcing a vortex to occur in the water by mixing it rapidly in one direction, then reversing the flow by stirring in the opposite direction)

At the site below you'll see yet another of the devices which supposedly delivers better water (to your house-winery-vineyard so that you can experience better heath and nutrition: the much anticipated "Vortelys"® (Terre de Lys®)....

And it's so easy to use:

"The main application of the Vortelys is the revitalization of drink and food. Earth is the planet of water. The human body consists of 90%-70%...."

Hmmmmmm....I think they're off by a little bit. I've never met anyone who was 90% water!

It continues....

"...Our development is done in a liquid medium. Our food contains between 50 and 80 % of water..." 

They obviously haven't been over to taste Mrs.Johnson's grilled burgers (dry as a witches teat, and only slightly more palatable than a hockey puck...a point I never waste mentioning to her as I sprint to the grill to take charge of the burgers before she does!). Anyway these points are really non-sequiturs. Again....

"The water molecule made of 2 hydrogen atoms and one atom of oxygen. Oxygen is the pole of communication. Hydrogen is at the same time the referential and the regulator. This unit is governed by very complex natural laws. The technologies and techniques of Terre de Lys respect natural dynamics, which are the source of well being. The use of Vortelys requires as a preliminary treatment of the electric pollution using the CHL01 protect which treats the electromagnetic pollution. To regenerate the water of the house, the Vortelys is placed near the water meter."

All the incorrect physics and pseudo-anthropomorphism ascribed to these elements aside, I believe they intend it to be "in-line" with your water service flow. Notice how their product "respect[s] natural dynamics" and is implied to do the same for the "very complex natural laws", which remain undefined in the sales pitch. And I've absolutely no idea what the referenced "CHL01" is, but I imagine they'll SELL you one whatever it might be...

"Consequently all the water consumed is revitalized. All water usage such as drinking, cooking, liquid used in healing, gardening and the others benefit from the treatment. In the same way the environment benefits from the discharge used water which has undergone revitalization: Little by little the ecosystem is regenerated. If you wish to benefit from the revitalization of food, and the drink wine, fruit juice etc.), it is enough to place for few minutes the products to be regenerated on the Vortelys. This will greatly enhance the taste of water/liquids and foods. Other applications are taught within the framework of BioSyntonie during our Biosyntonic seminars."

Ah-ha! We see what they really want to do is sell you this item so they can charge you to learn how to use it! And apparently just placing the item you want corrected upon the Vortelys is enough to impart the powerful "electric decontamination" effect, as they state you can do that with wine, juices, foodstuffs, etc.

Ha! What a load of manure this all is.

No cold stabilization on red wines

I was reading an article this morning by Dan Berger and I thought it was a little vague on the point of cold stabilizing red wines. (The article is carried by the Press Demo from Creators Syndicate, so I don't have a link to post...)
What Dan reports is that on a recent trip to the Paso Robles area to taste wines from Justin Winery, the winemaker there (Fred Holloway) stated "I don't cold stabilize my reds". Bully for him. 

Cold stabilization is the process of super-chilling a wine down so that it is unable to hold any extra acid, and then adding a very small amount of potassium bitartrate (cream of tartar) to force the excess acid to drop out of the wine and deposit on the bottom of the tank. This is usually done for white wines, which a consumer can look into the bottle and see the crystals inside if they exist. Frequently, the crystals form after a customer puts the bottle just purchased into the freezer to quick chill for use that same day/night. It's common to then get busy with other things and forget the wine, allowing it to sit there for hours in the freezing cold. At this time, excess acid can naturally form crystals and drop to the bottom of the bottle. Many people, uninformed of the true nature of these harmless particles assume from their appearance that they are really particles of glass, and either don't purchase the wine in the first place, or worse yet, if it "pitches" or "throws" tartrates after spending some time in their freezer or fridge - pour it down the sink or return it to the store they brought it from. That consumer then usually avoids the brand of wine in the future...
In the end, wineries use the technique because it is easier to do this than to mount a huge consumer education program to let people know that these crystals are natural and harmless.
Frankly, as I recall I've never met anyone in the California wine biz who DID cold stabilize their reds. White wines are commonly put through the process for the reasons stated above, but reds are fairly opaque, the green tint of the bottles helps combine with the red color of the wine itself making it harder to see into the bottles, and let's face it - not too many people are throwing their red wines into the freezer. So the issue rarely comes up, and when it does the consumer can usually tell the crystals in red wine aren't glass due to the reddish color of the crystals (some of the wine is trapped within the crystals as they form), which white wine crystals don't have (these are usually slightly off-white).


On another note.....

This is also one of the main acids in wine which is responsible for the crystals left over when the wine is poured into a petri dish and evaporated (the other main players are malic, lactic and citric acids). This experimental process, usually used for what is euphemistically called "sensitive crystallization", which purportedly tells one everything they need to know about how the wine is balanced, integrated and "wholesomeness".

Frederic Koeppel [is this really necessary?]  blogs about one of Bonny Doon's labels (similar to the one on the right) that...

"...[t]he strange objects on these labels, which look like condoms wearing little fur coats, depict the “sensitive crysallization”[sic] of the individual wines. The press materials don’t reveal how these “sensitive crystallizations” occur, but when Grahm writes, of the Muscat 2007, “well-defined vacuoles reflect the powerful aromatic potential” and “finely textured crystals reach out to the end of the periphery reflecting the vine’s connection to the soil,” I cannot help thinking that “sensitive crystallization” is a synonym for “smoke and mirrors.”

Ha! Condoms wearing little fur coats! 

Sounds like something stolen from the Playboy mansion....and is about as informative to why the wine will taste like it does as the back-label drivel that Randall Graham throws onto it!

It's also simmilar to the comment on one of my posts deriding sensitive crystallization where someone suggected the photo towards the top of this post looked like a "pecan pie"....
Do they really expect anyone but an April Fool to believe this sort of thing?

California still on top where it counts

This in today from the Napa Valley Register's Jack Heeger:

"The famed 1976 Paris Tasting wasn't a fluke.
California wines came out ahead in the 2009 Westchester Wine School tasting in Rye Brook, N.Y., too. The 2009 tasting wasn't quite as decisive nor will it be as famous as the one in Paris, and the 25 judges weren't all wine professionals, although they were described as wine afcionados. But when the results were tallied, California wines proved they can stand proud among the wines of the world."

What I love about revisiting this topic is that it continues to hold true when done in a blind tasting format - meaning people aren't subconsciously biased by what they think they should like....
That this round was done with "lay people" is all the more meaningful in my eyes. After all is said and done, these are the people whose opinion matters more than any professional wine reviewer or blogger (myself included), because they're the one who will be purchasing the wines and spreading their observations, likes and dislikes to the world.

The "fly in the ointment" moment for the French is the line about the...

"...difference in prices led to one woman saying that her husband bought expensive French wines because he thought they were superior, but now she figured he wouldn’t spend as much on wine."

Meaning he isn't going to be buying French wines blindly anymore, and it sounds as though if she gets her way, he'll be looking at a lot more California wines. That says it all right there, Baby!

Heeger continues by stating:

"California wines not only fared better in the scoring, but they were easier on the budget, too. Towle said the average cost of California whites was $32, while the French wines weighed in at $170 average. California reds averaged $75, compared to the French at $170."

So...you're telling me I can get better tasting whites, and buy 5 times as many bottles for the same amount of scratch than if I buy French whites, and get better tasting reds on average while spending less than half what I would on the same number of bottles of French reds! Quite nice news with the economy as shaky as it is.

So why is it the French keep touting their "terroir"?
Sounds like they're continuing to lose this battle......

Go Cal!

Take your bagette and shove it!

Why?
Why do this to yourselves when your market is already hurting? The French (and the EU) are poised to try again to restrict use of even more place names, processes and other sheer nonsense in the name of Intellectual and Geographic Property. (The EU proposal describes these as "PGI" [Protected Geographic Indication] and "PDO" [Protected Designation of Origin]...see this link for more though the details aren't on that site...see here instead for detail.)

This is but a sampling of the original April 2008 text, and is in itself a good sentiment preparing to go horribly wrong:

"(38) Certain terms are traditionally used in the Community and convey information to consumers about particularities and quality of wines complementing the information conveyed by designations of origin and geographical indications. So as to ensure the working of the internal market and fair competition and to avoid consumers being misled, those traditional terms should be eligible for protection in the Community."

I see it as foolishness on a grand scale. And I blogged about it back in 2005 when it was first being put to the vote, and later over the years (see here [French Angry], and here [EU subsidies reform]).

If the Italians want to limit the use of "Prosecco", fine. If the French want to restrict the use of "Burgundy" or "Bordeaux", again, I'm fine with that too. But now we cross the line of logic and find ourselves faced with a country(-ies, in the case of the multi-headed Hydra that the EU has now become...) which would have us stop using ALMOST ANY of the words we've borrowed from their language - EVER!

Yes, I refer mainly to France, which if all goes well in their eyes, we heathen Nouveau Monde upstarts would be prohibited from using words like "clos", "vintage", "chateau", etc. But a question remains...where does this all end?
Will we be prohibited from naming restaurants "Chez"? (think "Chez Panisse" for example...)
Will brands of French bread such as "Parisien" be outlawed?
Will "French bread" itself be renamed "EU-style yeasted wheat foam" to avoid confusion with the continental product??

The real problem is that the French - once proud that their industry led the world in both product sales and ubiquitous verbiage to describe not only the wine itself, but the process by which it is made, as well as practices in the vineyard, are now wanting to rescind their lease of words we seem to have borrowed...
And please note: the word "vineyard" is yet another potential casualty in this war. "Martha's Vineyard" will soon become "Martha's Orchard For Grapes" (BTW "orchard" is safe to use due to its humble beginnings in Latin...).

And what other words may be in danger...?
Brace yourselves! How about Chardonnay, Cabernet, Sauvignon, Pinot, Noir, Gamay (not that anyone uses that anymore), Blanc, Sirah, Petitte, etc...
Yup, you guessed it, all first coined by the French and then adopted by the unwashed hordes and used throughout the world to describe wines. Why should they stop just with place names or winemaking styles? This is a very slippery slope they want to place us on.
And what of words like "bleu"? Words which we culturally associate with French, but originating from Germanic and Norse language words before the French picked it up.
Will France be required to drop those words in a nod to the cultures it stole them from? Really, where will this process finally peter out...there seem to be so many layers it depends on where people finally become fatigued and stop the bureaucratic nonsense.

In the meantime, how will we deal with this - do we all have to learn Latin and use that? Certainly there aren't any members of the Roman culture still around to protest the use of a language which has been considered "dead" by top scholars for many centuries....

We need to stand up for "generic" and "semi-generic" terms now, or face the future consequences of a few determined, but closed minded imperialist Frenchmen...
Perhaps soon the French will be the only ones allowed to speak French at all, and will see their world shrink as well as their wine sales...