Tag Archives: W. Blake Gray

In Defense of Jargon

Published on January 26, 2020

If you’ve been floating around the Wine Twittersphere anytime the last few weeks, I’m sure you saw The Tweet.

Like a Chia Pet doused in Miracle-Gro, the brew-ha over wine lists, anti-intellectualism, gatekeeping and winesplaining kept sprouting into sub-threads and subtweets.

A few readers asked for my take on the ordeal but I was too busy studying for upcoming exams to give it much thought.

Besides, the many different angles of this Twitter-controversy were more than covered by Robert Joseph, Esther Mobley, and W. Blake Gray‘s excellent summaries. I’ve never been a fan of regurgitating “hot takes” that’s already been aptly taken by folks more talented than me.

So I wasn’t going to write anything unless I could move the conversation forward, or maybe in a slightly different direction.

Then a recent cab ride took me by surprise.

Asking to go to St. Pancras for my train home, my cabbie responded by offering his congrats. In a split-second of paranoia, I wondered if he somehow worked part-time on the WSET Awards Panel, but no.

Instead, he was impressed that, despite my very clear American accent, I didn’t ask to go to St. Pancreas–a daily occurrence for him. (Though, apparently, this is not a mistake made by only Americans.)

The linguistic compliment was out of the blue because, usually, I am that American who horrendously mispronounces everything.

Ah, GRAV-oize Park–or GRAV-oy if you’re fancy.
Definitely not how the French (or most anyone else) would say it.

Growing up in Missouri, my tongue was certainly not taught the Queen’s English. It took many years of living in other areas, such as Washington State and Paris, to learn to stop “warshing the dishes” or that places like Creve Coeur and Carondelet are not pronounced as Creeve Core and Cah-ron-duh-let.

Lord knows that I’ve baffled more than a few London cabbies asking to go to the WSET School on Beer-mond-see. But eventually, I started getting the hang of Bermondsey (Berm-zee) and those interactions got easier.

Beyond pronunciations, I also got used to standing in a queue, instead of a line, and asking where the toilets are instead of the restroom, ladies’ room or bathroom. I learned that an entrée is only a bite or two, not the main course as it is in the US.

When someone in Europe tells me something is on the second floor, I know that’s a bloody lie because it’s actually on the third floor. But if I need help with my bags, I should use the lift instead of the elevator. While seeing dates like February 1st written as 1-2-2020 will still have me backtracking to January, I’m slowly starting to adopt those habits too.

All of these things are the “jargon” of everyday life.

And while it is embarrassing, intimidating and even shame-inducing to make mistakes, those moments are fleeting. Just because I’m not familiar with Britishisms and European quirks of language, doesn’t mean that they’re wrong.

The important thing is whether or not the interaction produced results. Did I get my cab to Bermondsey? Was I directed to the bathroom? Do I have the right ticket for next Saturday’s train ride or do I need a time machine back to January 2nd?

Now, yes, a dickish cabbie, waiter or ticket attendant could amplify the shame, panning my ignorance of the local jargon and customs. But they’re probably going to be a dick anyways even if I had perfect pronunciations and total acclimation. That’s just how some people are.

It’s not the jargon or customs that are wrong. Sometimes an asshole is just an asshole.

And sometimes a crappy wine list is just a crappy wine list.

Bold typeface is your friend.

Going back to the Helen Rosner tweet, many people noted that simple design fixes like bolding keywords and a better layout would have helped.

Folks like Robert Joseph brought up that the thread was a good reminder that we shouldn’t forget what the purpose of a wine list is.

Ultimately, it’s to sell wine. It’s a tool to communicate.

So is jargon.

Like any tool, it can be used poorly or effectively.

On the sales floor, I actively listened for jargon from my customers. Because it clued me in on what level of familiarity they might already have with wine. This better focused my questions and gave me a good idea of how I should proceed.

In this way, jargon is like shorthand or a schema.

Someone coming in and telling me that they don’t like “bretty wines” gives me a completely different starting point than someone telling me that they don’t like wines that “smell weird.” Or they use terms like acidic and sour compared to bright, fresh or “crunchy.” (That last one provoked another interesting Twitter thread which eventually won me over to the value of “crunchy wines.”)

It’s the same thing when people tell me that they love “Burgs.” Their shorthand familiarity lets me know that I probably don’t need to insult their intelligence by making sure they know that Pinot noir and Chardonnay are the grapes of Burgundy.

However, if someone says they’re a Chard fan, I may still need to feel around more to see where they’re coming from. Here too, peppering my words with a measured amount of jargon (minerally, malo, oaky) could help in seeing how they respond.

But the onus on me, as the salesperson, is ultimately to understand and communicate with my customer. Especially if I want to actually make a sale. Just as it doesn’t help the London cabbie wanting the fare to get dickish or “play dumb” over St. Pancreas or Beer-mond-see, there’s no value in a sommelier or wine steward belittling a customer who isn’t familiar with our language and customs.

Yes, wine is complicated.

If you want the perfect example of a “crunchy wine” seek this out. A crazy delicious Pinot noir, Pinot Meunier and Pinot gris (yes, really!) blend from the Adelaide Hills.

Yes, it’s littered with neologisms and strange parlances that make normal folks want to flee. There’s always going to be a cottage industry trying to make wine simple and accessible to those normal people.

We should be mindful of the language we use and whether or not we’re communicating effectively. But that doesn’t mean we have to ditch the jargon completely to be able to talk to less wine-savvy folks. Likewise, Europeans don’t need to “Americanize” the pronunciations of places or change their terminology to accommodate tourists and transplants.

Instead, we should be like cabbies–trying to understand just enough so we can get our consumers to their wine destinations. Eventually, if they keep coming back, they may pick up a bit of our jargon–making future interactions easier.

And who knows? Maybe someday they’ll even enjoy a Burg on Bermondsey.

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Wine Above Replacement (WAR) — Hard Seltzer

Amber LeBeau in Millennials, Wine marketing

Published on March 28, 2019

It’s Opening Day for Major League Baseball. Unfortunately, I had to deal with my St. Louis Cardinals sleepwalking through their opener with the Milwaukee Brewers, so I’m looking for a good distraction. Thankfully, that mental break came from revisiting a Facebook thread about my Winery Moneyball article.

Spiked Seltzer

In a tongue-in-cheek comment, the Sierra Wine Guy wondered When will wineries start using WAR [Wins Above Replacement]?

That got me thinking, what would be a good wine industry equivalent to WAR?

What is WAR?

I’m not going to get into the nitty-gritty sabermetrics here. But WAR is essentially the calculation of a player’s value to the team above that of the typical bench player or minor-leaguer. Instead of focusing on just one aspect of a player’s game (like offensive stats), WAR aims to calculate their total value including defensive runs saved, baserunning and pitching.

Taking all these metrics together, WAR presumes that having a player like Mookie Betts on your team (10.9 WAR in 2018) is worth almost 11 more wins than signing Joe Schmoe off the waiver wire. In contrast, it may have been better for the Orioles in 2018 to sit Chris Davis and eat his $161 million contract instead of trotting him out on the field to deliver a -3.1 WAR. Ouch!

Though far from perfect, WAR stats have dramatically changed the evaluation of players in baseball (for better or worse). The reason is that, at its core, WAR doesn’t look at each player as a monolith. It tries to look at the bigger picture by recognizing that the needs of baseball teams are multi-faceted (hitting, pitching, base running, defense). It then tries to see how well each player fits into that jigsaw puzzle.

How does this apply to wine?

And the under $9 category is starting to look really Chris Davis-y.

Like a baseball team, wine consumers are multi-faceted. They have a multitude of needs beyond just being thirsty that wine aims to fill. But wine is also similar to a ballplayer in that it’s not monolithic either. It is more than just a mixture of alcohol and water.

Which makes it kind of ironic that wine is losing “throat share” (particularly with Millennials) to things like hard (spiked) seltzer–which is literally just alcohol and water.

While wine sales in the US are expecting to level out, or even decline, in 2019, producers of hard seltzer like White Claw and Truly are looking forward to a gangbuster year. And why shouldn’t they? They had already seen growth from $85 million in sales between 2016-2017 to more than $250 million in 2018.

In the metric of Wine Above Replacement, the WAR of hard seltzer is rising while that of wine is most definitely falling.

Why?

Photo By Mwinog2777 - Own work, Uploaded to Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 3.0,

Maybe I would have enough to buy a new Goldschmidt Cardinals jersey.

It all goes back to consumer needs and if they’re being met. Admittedly, dissecting the needs of the typical wine consumer is not cut and dry.

It’s certainly not as easy as looking at the St. Louis Cardinals leading the league in errors last year (133), and thinking that maybe they need some defensive help–like, perhaps, a Gold Glover at first base?

Decades of marketing ink has been spilled studying wine consumers and breaking them down into various segmentations based on needs. If I had all the answers, I’d be a wealthy woman. Well, actually no, I wouldn’t be wealthy because no one really pays for wine content anymore.

But, as W. Blake Gray has noted, Millennials are talking about what they want. Maybe the hard seltzer industry is simply doing a better job of listening?

A few of the things that Gray highlights in his piece are Millennials’ interest in healthier products, transparency, our aversion to boredom as well as our cravings for personal experiences. One other item that I would add is the sense of value and getting a good bang for the buck that is important to many Millennials.

Let’s see how hard seltzer is tackling these needs.

1.) Healthy

Believe it or not, a fair amount of consumers actually believe that hard seltzer is healthier than wine. Part of this is slick marketing from the big players in the seltzer industry (including the non-alcoholic leader La Croix). But this is also a failing of the wine industry in not counter punching the recent spate of negative press about wine and health issues.

Rob McMillan makes this latter point extremely well in a recent blog post.

We as an industry have lost our way in our daily quest to sell our production. We stopped talking to the consumer and stopped defending [against] the junk science out there. We stopped supporting the decades of science that proves there are health benefits of consuming wine. Our consumer is reading the press and without a rebuttal, they no longer believe moderate consumption [is] part of a healthy diet. — Rob McMillan, I Can’t Take the Lunacy!, 3/28/2019

Meanwhile, Truly and White Claw are peddling the “Vodka Paradox” that just because something is clear and low in calories, then it must be good for you.

2.) Transparency

Though if more wineries adopted Ridge’s approach to transparency and labeling, that would be a positive step.

Gray does an excellent job of illustrating the dichotomy of back labels between hard seltzer packaging and most wine bottles.

I’m not entirely sold on the idea of extensive ingredient lists and nutritional labeling on wine. Ultimately, I think it will bury small family wineries in bureaucracy more than it will expose mass-produced and additive laden commodity wines. But, I will concede that the labeling (or lack thereof) does provide a stark contrast.

However, the perception of the wine industry as opaque and obtuse is also not helped by our myriad of grape varieties, wine regions and laws that require an insider’s knowledge to untangle. This is another stark contrast with hard seltzer.

Even with the sleight of hand “healthy” marketing, any consumer buying hard seltzer knows what they are getting. Water and alcohol. They don’t need to attend classes, buy books, read blogs, subscribe to magazines or attend special tastings to understand what they’re drinking. That transparency of “getting it” is something that wine is never going to match.

But this doesn’t have to be negative. Keep reading.

3.) Interesting

As soon as hard bacon seltzer hits the market, the shark-jumping will commence.

Right now, hard seltzer has the “cool factor.” It’s not boring and it is certainly not what your parents are drinking. It’s the Instagram to wine’s Facebook.

But that shine will eventually wear off, leaving exposed how transparently simple hard seltzer really is. Yeah, it’s water and alcohol with some flavoring added. It’s flavored vodka for newbies. Been there. Done that.

Eventually, Millennials are going to get bored as there are only so many flavors and fancy packaging that the industry can come up with to keep entertaining them. When the market moves on to find something new, wine’s “weakness” of its complexity and diversity can be a strength.

That’s when the wine industry needs to be the heavily tattooed guy streaking on the field in the middle of the game. Folks might not know what the heck is going on, but they know that something is going on. And no one is taking their eyes away until the naked dude gets tackled.

4.) Personal Experience (relatability)

But what do we do when the Millennials’ eyes are finally upon us? How do we bump up our WAR to make wine more enviable over the many options clamoring to replace it?

Show them our tattoos. Tell them our stories. Give them a reason to connect with wine on a personal level.

Here is where wine can smoke its competitors.

This is where we can get WAR separation as an industry. This is where we are more Mookie and less Chris Davis.

The industry is chockful of so many compelling personal stories (check out this terrific write-up of Dirty & Rowdy’s Hardy Wallace for one example) that we don’t need to resort to gimmicks like Bon & Viv Spiked Seltzer’s “made-up” female founders.

AB InBev’s SuperBowl commercial featuring Bon & Viv’s “founders” was a big hit. But this quote from an AB InBev vice-president shows how patronizing and nauseating that ad really was.

“It has two females in a founder position and presented in a different way than we have ever seen alcohol present females characters before,” [Chelsea] Phillips says about the fictional founders depicted in the commercial. “The strength of these women is very important to me. As a female VP, I want to see more of that representation in this space, but I didn’t want it to be a trope. I just wanted it to feel natural… versus more of an overt statement.” — Greg Morabito, Eater, 2/3/2019

Instead of actually promoting a brand founded by women, you make up some female founders to show them in this powerful position? Right….

So much for transparency, eh?

5.) Value

Spiked water–not seltzer, not sparkling. Just boozy water.
Though, is this really that far off from cheap, bulk Pinot grigio?

I can not bang this drum loud enough. The wine industry sucks at Millennial Math.

Not only do we do a poor job of conveying value at all levels of the pricing scale, but we’ve also virtually abandoned the bottom shelf of budget-priced options to craft beer, cider and, now, hard seltzer.

For less than $10, a Millennial can buy a 6pk of dozens of different flavors of various hard seltzers. What kind of sub $10 options is the wine industry giving them? A plethora of mass-produced (and often highly manipulated) Cabs, Chards and Red Blends that all virtually taste the same.

Yeah, eventually all those different hard seltzers are going to start tasting the same too. But then the Millennials can move onto hundreds of craft beer options or cider or cannabis or kombucha or cocktails or who knows what comes next.

The Moral of WAR in the Wine Industry

If you’re not producing–if you’re not fulfilling multiple needs–there is always a replacement.

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Sip or Spit — Looking at Wine Predictions for 2019

Amber LeBeau in General, Millennials, Wine marketing

Published on December 14, 2018

This time of year, a lot of smart folks in the beverage industry lay down their cards to predict what major trends can be expected next year. As with pop culture and sports, these articles are fun to read but you don’t want to put too much stock put in them. (I mean, come on, you really thought Bryce Harper and Manny Machado would sign during the Winter Meetings?)

Sip or Spit? How seriously should we take these wine predictions for 2019?

Of course, the value of such predictions rests in the quality of the source. I’ve always found the folks at Wine Intelligence, a UK consulting and research firm, to be sharp tacks. So I ascribe a little more weight to their assessments than I do other sources. Still, while there were some thing from their Five Predictions for 2019 worth sipping, there were others I certainly spat out.

1.) Alcohol intake will continue to fall in developed world markets (Spit with a little sipping)

As I noted in my article The Kids Will Probably Be Alright — Looking at Generation Z Trends, I don’t buy into the idea of Gen Z as the “teetotaler generation”. It is far too early and too small of a sample size to make that assessment. For Christ-sakes, 95% of them are still under 21! I surely hope that most of them are teetotaling right now.

However, I do think that the trend of “Drinking Less, But Better” that we’re seeing in the Millennial generation will continue with Generation Z. Alcohol is expensive and is full of calories. It’s clear that my generation, and likely the following one, have been adopting the mindset that if we’re going to spend the money and calories on something, it better be worth it.

Which is a good thing and something that should serve as a curb to the idea that moderate consumption of alcohol (like wine) is incompatible with a healthy lifestyle. That “incompatibility” seems to be the crux of the scare reports of Generation Z and Millennials turning away from alcohol.

From keg stands to Brose´

Ramen–the lifeblood of the broke Millennial. Also a great pairing for under $15 Cru Beaujolais and Chenin blanc.

Yeah, we might be turning away from weekend keggers, cheap jug wine sangrias, Smirnoff and Fireball jello shots, but what we’re turning to is more mindful moderate drinking. Younger generations, like myself, are not drinking for the sake of drinking. We’re looking for something more than just a buzz.

Growing up in the age of technology and easy access to knowledge, we’re aware of the risks of binge drinking. But we’re also aware of the benefits of moderation. Plus, our “foodie” nature is far more incline than past generations to embrace the role of a glass of wine in enhancing the pleasure of even everyday meals—like ramen noodles.

So while bulk and mass producers may have reasons to worry about the upcoming generations, I don’t think quality minded producers need to fret as much.

2.) Overall knowledge levels about the details of wine and where it comes from will decline (Spit)

This prediction is based on Wine Intelligence’s 2018 US Portraits report of wine consumers. I don’t have an extra $3500 to buy the full report and dive deep into what methodology led to that conclusion, but on the surface this doesn’t pass the “sniff test”.

When you look at other observations and reporting, the level of wine knowledge among the average consumer has never been higher. For one, enrollments in wine certification programs have been booming. Google “Wine Appreciation Class” and you’ll get over 34 million hits, confessing to a wide interest among consumers to learn more.

This is something that I touched on in my article It’s Raining Masters, about the influx of successful Master Sommelier candidates. (This was before the cheating scandal broke) We are in the midst of a golden age of wine knowledge.

Yet, somehow, we’re getting “wine dumber”?

Even the post’s author, Richard Halstead, acknowledges the counter-intuitiveness of his prediction.

Over the past couple of years we have started to see an interesting and counterintuitive trend. More people in more markets around the world are saying they care about wine, that the category is important to them, that they take their time when buying wine – sentiments which we bundle up into a collective measure called “involvement”. At the same time, overall objective knowledge about the category – understanding of grape varieties, countries of origin, regions, and so on – has been in decline: people know fewer things about wine any more. — Richard Halstead, Wine Intelligence, 12/12/2018

One theory they propose is smartphone reliance. That does makes some sense and has been debated in other contexts before. There is also the idea that the globalization of wine has brought more stuff to the table for the average consumer to know about.

More to Discover, More to Learn, More to Enjoy

Photo taken my self and uploaded to Wikimedia Commons as User:Agne27 under CC-BY-SA-3.0

Once pursued only by the wine trade, now more and more wine lovers are signing up for advance certifications like the Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET)

It’s no longer Napa, Champagne, Chardonnay, Cabernet and Pinot grigio. Now we’ve got Coonawarra, Franciacorta, Fiano, Touriga Nacional, Chenin blanc and so much more.

I suppose when you consider how much more is out there to learn and explore, the average wine consumer’s “overall” grasp of details may go down.

But that is like comparing the “knowledge level” of a middle schooler with that of a college student. The former is exposed to far less. Of course, it is easier to “master” more of that knowledge within their little world. However, the later’s exposure to exponentially more gives the potential for even greater knowledge.

While I’m open to hearing more thoughts on the matter, there so much counter-intuitiveness about this prediction that I’ll remain skeptical now.

3.) Vegan wine will become a thing (Sip)

This I buy completely. It’s a topic that I explored earlier this year with my article What’s fine (and not so fine) about Vegan Wines.

I have no doubt that we are going to see more wines labeled as “Vegan-friendly”. But I am concerned with the obsession over fining agents. Especially for people who adopt a Vegan-lifestyle for ethical reasons, it seems like a bigger quandary is to be had over viticultural practice like biodynamics that regularly employ the use of animal products. Furthermore, there are issues with what alternatives wineries may use to produce highly manipulated (though “Vegan-friendly”) wines.

Are the most “vegan-friendly” vineyards the ones being farmed with heavy saturation of pesticides and chemical fertilizers? It seems like it when you compare it to organic and biodynamic vineyards with high insect MOG and animal-derived fertilizers.

Mass produced wines like the PETA recommended Sutter Home and Moët & Chandon often employ these conventional, chemical dependent styles of viticulture.

While avoiding using animal-based fining agents to remove excess tannins and haze forming proteins, big mega-corps can use other tricks to manipulate the wine with things like lab designed enzymes, oak adjuncts and Mega Purple which will “smooth out” bitter tannins and cover up off-flavors. — What’s fine (and not so fine) about Vegan Wines 2/25/2018

4.) Wine brands with sustained investment strategies will prosper at the expense of second-tier competitors (Sip)

Unfortunately, this is a sad reality of business. Branding often trumps quality and care. W. Blake Gray had a great article on Wine Searcher recently that highlights this as part of the Gloomy Outlook for Smaller Wineries.

Gray ended the article with a very ominous quote from Dale Stratton of Constellation Brands.

“The game is going to be stealing share,” Stratton said. “The pie is only as big as the pie is. The game is going to be stealing share from other places.”

Watch your pie, small wineries. Watch your pie. — W. Blake Gray, WineSearcher.com 12/7/2018

While not every winery can afford a fancy marketing department, it is imperative of every winery to focus on what makes them unique.

For the small winery competing against the big mega-corps, your “brand” is your story and all the tidbits that set you apart from the mass-produced wines that line supermarket shelves.

It’s simply not good enough just to make good wine. There are thousands of producers across the globe making wine as good, if not better, than yours. But what those wineries (and certainly what the big mega-corps) don’t have, is you and your story.

Finding ways to weave yourself into the narrative of your brand is only going to become more important for small wineries to succeed. That is one of the reasons why it is a shame that many wineries have abandoned or don’t know how to successfully use social media platforms like Twitter.

5.) A mainstream producer will introduce cannabis-infused wine (Sip and then toke)

Does cannabis have terroir? We’ll probably be discussing that over the next decade.

This is probably the surest bet that any prognosticator can make. For an industry that will happily dive into whiskey barrel aging and weird coffee-infused hybrid wines, you know that development is already well on its way towards releasing a cannabis-infused wine.

The only question is, who will be first? Gallo or Constellation Brands?

Gallo has been leading the way on a lot of these trends with their Apothic brand. They’re a solid contender and a likely choice. Part of the fun is guessing what they’ll call it. Apothic Blaze? Apothic Kush?

However, Constellation Brands does actually have its own investments in the cannabis industry to the tune of $4 billion.

I’d be more incline to wager on Constellation developing a stand-alone brand for cannabis-infused wine. But I honestly wouldn’t be surprised to see them roll it out under an established label, like Robert Mondavi, to try to give this trend more legitimacy.

When that happens, be sure to pour one out for poor Robert spinning in his grave in St. Helena.

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Wine Geek Notes 3/6/18 — Reverse French Paradox, Damaged Wines and Washington Vineyards

Amber LeBeau in Geek Notes, Shopping for Wine, Washington wine, Wine Knowledge

Published on March 6, 2018

Here is what I’m reading today in the world of wine.

Interesting Tweets and Weblinks

In France, is wine still a national treasure? Or is it a health risk? by James McAuley at The Washington Post. Brought to my dash via Eric Orange of LocalWineEvents.com (@worldwineevents)

Apparently the health minister of the country that gave us the French Paradox is railing against the consumption of any type of alcohol, including wine, touting the bold statement that “’In moderation’ shouldn’t be used anymore”. Yikes! Needless to say French vignerons (and the French President) aren’t pleased.

Personally, I think that while we shouldn’t sugarcoat the negative impacts of alcohol consumption, I firmly believe that “In Moderation” is a vital outlook for all things in life–including wine.

Damaged Wines to Hit the Market by W. Blake Gray (@wblakegray) for WineSearcher.com (@WineSearcher). Brought to my dash via Rabbit Ridge Winery (@RabbitRidgeWine).

Kind of like with used cars, wine buyers should be mindful of the possibility of hurricane, flood and fire damage wines hitting the market. Gray gives a lot of great tips from expert Maureen Downey (@moevino) on what to keep an eye out for. I found this quote from Gray the most helpful.

I would probably give wines that survive an earthquake a few weeks to recover from the “bottle shock” as well.

It’s important to note that heat-damaged wine is not immediately ruined. Heat affects the tannin structure of wine in unpredictable ways.

Some wines might even taste better shortly after being exposed to heat, but they will not last long in the cellar. Downey said when she knows she has a heat-damaged wine, sometimes she shrugs her shoulders, drinks it and wonders what it might have been if properly stored.

— W. Blake Gray, March 6th, 2018

This is a takeaway you can use even if you have the unfortunate incident of “wine trapped in a hot trunk” during the summer. Accept that you probably lost some positive attributes. Give it at least a week to settle from the shock and plan to drink it soon. While miracles do exist and potentially the wine could still age and give pleasure, it’s better to err on the side of caution and enjoy it sooner rather than later.

Taste Washington Wine Month

While doing some research for my 60 Second Review of the Gifford Hirlinger Malbec, I stumbled across the very cool website Everyvine.com! I haven’t fully explored the site yet but I totally geeked out on their vineyard search feature.

Here is a detailed Google Map image of 102.55 acres of Ciel du Cheval Vineyard on Red Mountain.

Here’s Owen Roe’s Outlook Vineyard.

Here’s Pepper Bridge Vineyard.

You can zoom in on particular blocks and see where the different varieties are planted, get details about climate, topography and soils. Lots of fun stuff!

Washington wine grape 2017 harvest down by 16 percent by Andy Perdue (@GreatNWWine) for Great Northwest Wine. Brought to my dash via WinesNorthwest (@WinesNorthwest).

The headline sounds more jarring than it really is. Yes, the 2017 harvest was down but it was down compared to the record setting 2016 harvest that was the largest in Washington State history. Even Perdue notes in the 2nd paragraph that 2017 still tied 2014 for the second largest harvest in state history.

In a tweet reply, Lagana Cellars from Walla Walla (@LaganaCellars) highlights this and also gives some great insight about the vintage.

I’ll tell you why. It was a really cold and snowy winter-> some bud damage especially in Malbec and Italian varieties. Also, 2016 was a record year with amazing fruit set -> huge crop versus normal crop. #WAWine is still rocking!!

— Lagana Cellars (@LaganaCellars) March 6, 2018

BTW, if you are not following Lagana Cellars on Twitter, you should. Like Rabbit Ridge Winery that I linked to above, I find lots of great content and behind-the-scene perspective from these winery accounts. They have great social media people running them. If you are in Washington, definitely check out Lagana’s wines as well. They were one of the stand-outs at my recent Walla Walla tasting. Haven’t had Rabbit Ridge yet but I’m sure I’ll rectify that in April when I’m down in Paso Robles.

But, headline and tweets aside, the big reason I linked to the Perdue article above was this fascinating little nugget about Riesling.

Riesling fell to 33,000 tons from 41,300. This is widely viewed as a market correction by Chateau Ste. Michelle, the world’s largest Riesling producer.

Whoa! When Chateau Ste. Michelle is pulling up Riesling vines, something is going on. I kind of get the idea of “market correction” but it doesn’t feel like we’re at a market saturation point for Riesling. If anything, I would think we’re getting close to being over saturated with Cabernet Sauvignon but Cab is Still King and still being planted like crazy.

This thing with Riesling is something worth exploring a little more. This year’s Riesling Rendezvous is in Australia with the event coming back to Chateau Ste. Michelle in 2019. I wonder if we’ll have more clarity about this “market correction” by then.

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Wine Competitions — Should Wine Drinkers Care?

Amber LeBeau in Shopping for Wine, Wine Knowledge, Wine marketing

Published on February 28, 2018

The 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang has wrapped up. However, the medals will be flowing all year long in the wine world.

So far this year we’ve had the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition give out over 4000 gold, silver and bronzes. Meanwhile, the American Fine Wine Competition announced 14 pages worth of winners. Oh and the Winemaker Challenge International Wine Competition also gave out a hefty haul of hardware.

Still to come:

Finger Lakes International Wine Competition (March)
Sommelier Wine Awards (March)
California State Fair Commercial Wine Competition (March)
Seattle Wine Awards (April)
International Wine Challenge (April)
International Rose Championship (April)
Decanter World Wine Awards (May)
Los Angeles International Wine Competition (May)
Dan Berger’s International Wine Competition (May)
Concours Mondial de Bruxelles (May)
International Women’s Wine Competition (July)
And oodles and oodles and oodles more.

There are so many competitions out there giving wineries boatloads of awards that I’m honestly surprised that Oprah has not gotten in on the action with her own wine competition.

YOU get a medal! YOU get a medal! Everybody’s getting a MEDAAAAAAAAL!!!

God knows how many medals the Tasters Guild International Wine Judging gives out.

Unlike the Olympics where there is a finite amount of medals awarded for each event, wine competitions can give out virtually a limitless number–which stack the odds in a winery’s favor.

In 2015, Victoria Moore of The Telegraph noted that of the nearly 16,000 wines entered in the Decanter World Wine Awards, around 70% won some kind of award. At the International Wine Competition (IWC) they gave out 490 golds, 2,110 silvers, 3,426 bronzes and 3,668 commended awards.

For their 2012 event, W. Blake Gray of Palate Press highlighted that the San Francisco Chronicle Competition (one of the largest and most recognized wine competitions in the US) gave medals to more than 80% of the wines entered.

Who benefits from all these competitions?

I don’t think you can be blunter than Master of Wine Sarah Jane Evans in her article “So you want to be a wine judge?”

Remember that ultimately you are doing the judging for the winemaker and brandowner. They want to enter or remain in your market, and the medals and scores enable them to do so. Like a good parent or teacher, try to find the good points in any wine. — Sarah Jane Evans 2/20/2018 WSET Blog

Wine competitions are all about marketing for wineries. Paying a $55-175 entry fee per wine and sending in 4 to 6 bottles is pretty darn cheap economics if you happen to strike gold (pun intended). Even a lowly bronze medal has benefit for wineries.

Not Mortally Flawed.

Granted, it mostly plays off the ignorance of wine consumers who assume that winning a bronze medal meant that the wine was the 3rd best out of thousands. Most folks don’t realize that a bronze often says that a wine was “not mortally flawed”–as Lenn Thompson of The Cork Report describes. In that same post, Thompson goes on to explain why he and his team no longer participate as judges for wine competitions.

Plus, you can take that obscure award you won 7 years ago and use that sticker for everything.

Think of how much mileage that Gallo has gotten off of touting the 2000 medals that their Barefoot brand has won from entering practically every wine competition in existence? It doesn’t matter if they were gold, silver, bronze or whatever. Likewise, Constellation Brands widely advertises their 50+ gold medals (from whom?) for their Black Box wines.

Gallo and Constellation didn’t become multi-billion dollar companies by throwing away money. They know there is a benefit in flooding wine competitions with their wines.

There is also a strong argument that the competitions themselves are the biggest beneficiaries–generating revenue from not only entry fees but also sponsorship & naming rights (for instance, the San Francisco Chronicle Competition is not run by the newspaper, they’re merely a sponsor), tickets to tastings featuring award winners and selling medal stickers to wineries.

Is there any value for consumers?

A little…

The shiny stickers are very pretty though.

You have to start with acknowledging that, as Ronald Jackson notes in Wine Tasting: A Professional Handbook, the purpose of wine competition is to increase market awareness for wineries–to get your attention. They don’t exist for the benefit of giving you an unbiased and objective recommendation of what to drink.

It’s okay to give them that attention and maybe even buy their wines to try. Just like with everything in life, you will never know how much you like something until you try it. If being curious about a medal winner is a reason for you to trade out your same ole, same ole for something new then go for it.

But you should keep a few considerations in mind.

1.) Know that it’s okay to disagree with the results — because most likely the judges themselves disagreed after 30 minutes

Any post about wine competitions would be remiss without acknowledging the studies by Robert Hodgson into how inconsistent judging is at competitions and how seemingly random the results are. Wines that were gold medal winners in one flight of tasting were just as likely to be scored as bronze winners in the next flight by the same judges.

Tasting wine is highly personal and extremely subjective. There are so many things that influence how we perceive a wine and whether or not it gives us pleasure from the ambiance of the room, the glassware, our mood that day, the wine we just had before, etc. Wine itself is also a moving target that not only changes in the bottle but changes in our glasses as well. Plus, just as some of us weren’t great “test takers” at school, some wines simply don’t show well being “tested” on their own and often need the context of food and social occasion to give pleasure.

That is why you have to view wine awards (as well as critic scores) as only a single snapshot of how that wine tasted at that moment to that particular judge. Just like if your friend had this one great bottle of wine at dinner that you have to try, take a wine competition result with the same “your mileage may vary” caveat. While that wine may have been great for them at that one moment, that doesn’t mean it’s going to be great for you and your moment.

2.) Pay attention to who gave out the medals

A Platinum winner that was likely judged by at least 2-3 MWs and Master Sommeliers might be worth taking a look at.

With no offense to Podunk State Fair, there is a bit more cache to having your wines judged by a panel of Masters of Wine and Master Sommeliers that competitions like the IWC, Decanter World Wine Awards, TexSomm and a few others regularly have.

Even if MWs & MS are stacking the juries, there is still something noteworthy when you look at the lists of judges for competitions like San Francisco Chronicle Competition and Seattle Wine Awards and see acclaimed writers, sommeliers, educators and winemakers.

Yes, these events still give out way too many medals. Yes, the judging of even highly trained professionals is still subject to vagaries. But if you are going to pay attention to the results of any competition, it’s worth having an idea of who was doing the judging.

Be extremely skeptical of any competition that doesn’t have a published (and updated) list of who their judges were and their credentials.

3.) Give Double Golds a double look

In the Seattle market, the high esteem of the judges and caliber of wines entered into the Seattle Wine Awards gives their Double Gold and Best of Class winners a fair amount of cache.

While all the caveats above about wine competitions being just a single snapshot of a wine hold, there is something to be said when that snapshot involves all the judges of a panel unanimously thinking that a wine is worth a gold medal. This

Then you have “Sweepstakes Winners” and “Best in Show/Best of Class” that often require the wines going through another round of judging with different tasting panels. This is like a second snapshot taken. If a wine does well there, you know that it had to have impressed around a dozen or so people.

The wine still might not be your personal style but the odds of a Double Gold/Sweepstakes winner from a reputable wine competition being “junk” is fairly low.

Don’t be afraid to try the highly touted “Award Winners” but still keep a healthy amount of skepticism–especially if someone is giving you a hard sell on their bronze medal winning wine from the Podunk State Fair.

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Wine Geek Notes 2/27/18 — Wine Competitions

Amber LeBeau in Shopping for Wine, Wine Knowledge, Wine marketing

Published on February 27, 2018

I’m doing research on how effective wine competitions are for wineries and how much they may benefit consumers. This is what I’ve been reading today.

Interesting Weblinks

Understanding Wine Competitions (Nov. 2006) by Lisa Shara Hall at Wine Business Monthly.
Great PDF file at the end with listings of several major American Wine Competitions.

The truth about wine awards: why medals don’t mean great bottles (May 2015) by Victoria Moore at The Telegraph.
Interesting stats about the medal award rates at the Decanter World Wine Awards and International Wine Challenge (IWC)

Marketing Matters: Wine Competitions That Help You Sell (October 2007) by Tina Caputo at Wines & Vines.
A pro-wine competition slant, especially in the case of regional wine competitions.

We Won’t Participate as Judges in Wine Competitions: Here’s Why (August 2010) by Lenn Thompson at New York Cork Report.
Talks about some of the behind the scenes vagaries with judging. The story about different judges responding to Brett in wine had resonance for me.

How American Consumers Select Wine (June 2008) by Liz Thach at Wine Business Monthly.
Downplays the role of medals in influencing American consumers’ decision to buy wine. The fact that the #1 influencer for both retail and restaurant consumers is previous tasting experience with a wine is something worth exploring more. Bookmarking this link because this has a lot of good info.

Photo by Concoursmondial © Concours Mondial de Bruxelles - Giuseppe Napoli. Released on Wikimedia Commons under CC-BY-3.0

Tasting at the Concours Mondial de Bruxelles competition in 2010.

Wine Competition: For Whom the Medals Toll? by W. Blake Gray at Palate Press.
More behind the scenes judging insight and differences in American vs European competitions. Also pointing me in the direction to read more about Robert Hodgson’s studies.

An Examination of Judge Reliability at a major U.S. Wine Competition by Robert T. Hodgson on wineeconomics.org.
The aforementioned study with interesting charts.

Good Ole Fashion Books

Wine Tasting, Third Edition: A Professional Handbook by Ronald S. Jackson.
Chapter 6: Qualitative Wine Assessment goes into the value of wine competitions for wineries and the importance in having judges who are trained in sensory evaluation and experienced in the wine styles they are judging.

The Business of Wine: An Encyclopedia by Geralyn and Jack Brostrom.
Section F: Festivals, Trade Shows and Competition goes into the usefulness of wine competitions for marketers and retailers. Also emphasizes the importance and qualification of the judges.

Wine Marketing & Sales, Second edition by Janeen Olsen, Liz Thach and Paul Wagner.
Chapter 8: Wine Budgets and Pricing goes into the cost associated in entering competitions and their potential impact on wine pricing. Also makes the interesting point that for supermarket wines, having a floor stack is far more valuable than a gold medal.

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Under the (Social Media) Influence

Amber LeBeau in General, Millennials, Wine marketing

Published on February 13, 2018

Photo from U.S. Department of Agriculture. Uploaded to Wikimedia Commons under CC-BY-2.0 Social Vignerons just published their list of the 2018 Top 40+ Wine Influencers: Who to Follow on Social Media?. It’s worth taking a gander at.

The value in gauging “influence” is always going to be imprecise. You can base it on the number of followers that one has on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram but that metric is easily gamed with purchased followers, bots and other “tricks.” Digital influence metrics like Klout scores have their own issues with Social Vignerons noting that they stopped using Klout for their rankings because changes in social media platforms have made the score less relevant.

What are Social Media Influencers?

A standard definition of a Social Media Influencer is “an individual who has the power to affect purchase decisions of others because of his/her authority, knowledge, position or relationship with his/her audience.” These include celebrities, recognized experts in a field, journalists, bloggers and “micro-influencers” who are regular people with a sizable social media following within a particular niche.

Marketers value these influencers because they believe that they can deliver on the 3 Pillars of Influences–Reach, Resonance and Relevance–to steer potential customers towards their brands.

Social Media Influences in the Wine Industry

Still got a lot of mileage and helpful info out of these books though.

In many ways, the use of social media in wine marketing and sales is Star Trek territory. Wineries and marketing firm are exploring strange new worlds where the old rules often don’t apply.

When I was working on my Wine Marketing & Sales degree at the Northwest Wine Academy and the Wine Business unit of the WSET Diploma Level, many of my wine business textbooks (such as Liz Thach’s Wine Marketing & Sales, Moulton & Lapsley’s Successful Wine Marketing and Brostrom’s The Business of Wine) gave scant to no mention of how to utilize social media. However, though Thach, Olsen and Wagner are releasing the 3rd Edition of Wine Marketing and Sales in May 2018 that may tackle the subject.

At the core of Marketing 101 is that to be successful you need to reach new customers so even if wineries have to learn how to utilize social media influencers via trial and error, it is still an endeavor worth taking. That is why lists like Social Vigneron’s Top Wine Influencers is worth looking into but it’s also worth thinking about critically as well.

What Influences Me?

As a married millennial adult with no kids and plenty of disposable income, I’m squarely in the crosshairs for many wine businesses. I also understand that I am influence-able and will spend money on new wines, travel to new wine regions, attend wine events, etc. based on interactions I have on social media. That is why I’m selective about the sources I follow because for a social media influencer to fulfill the 3 Pillars of Influence and “reach” me, they need to demonstrate Resonance and Relevance.

Resonance

Are you creating new content that excites me? I’m a wine geek. I want to read about new wines, wineries and regions. Sure, your opinion can be helpful in adding color, but everyone has an opinion. I need more than just that.

Some social media influencers don’t create new content but merely “retweet” or “repost” content created by others. That can be useful to some degree, especially if you are bringing to my attention something that I may have missed. But I often end up following and paying more attention to the original content creator than I do to the reposter.

And speaking of reposting, PLEASE don’t repost the same thing multiple times a day! Once, maybe twice, is fine after several hour intervals to hit online audiences that are active at different parts of the day but few things get me hitting the ‘Unfollow’ button quicker than seeing the same post tweeted out three times within a single hour.

Relevance

Be credible (i.e. “know your shit”) and be on topic. The first is easy. I’m not going to follow an account that passes off blatant errors and marketing crap as fact–like Champagne Masters and Their Bull Shit. The article that inspired that post came across my timeline via Food & Wine magazine. While I will give them a mulligan, I have no interest whatsoever in following any of the author’s social media platforms. But if Food & Wine keeps publishing shoddy pieces like that, then they will no longer reach me as a willing audience.

The second part of staying on topic is a little grayer. While I know we are all humans who lead multi-faceted lives, if you are going to be a Wine Social Media Influencer, be a Wine Social Media Influencer. A few comments here or there about trending topics is par for the course, but too many off-topic posts about politics, TV shows or posts about your pets gets boring quickly. The beauty of platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter is that we can create multiple accounts to engage our varied interests. The short of it is this–I’m following you for your wine content which is the area you are most able to influence me so focus on that area instead of off-topic stuff.

My Social Media Wine Influencers

I am one of 267,000 that belong to the J-Hive.

Looking at Social Vigneron’s list, I saw many wine influencers that I already followed. But more than half were individuals that I’ve never heard of prior. I started following several of them, but if I find that I’m not getting any Resonance or Relevance, I will unfollow them and move on.

Among the ones on the list that I currently follow and have positively influenced me include:

Jancis Robinson — The Beyoncé of Wine, IMO.
Decanter Magazine
Tim Atkin
Jamie Goode — One of my favorite tools
Chris Kissack
Wine Folly

Vinepair
Alder Yarrow
Jon Thorsen
Wine Spectator
Wine Enthusiast

The common theme with all of the above is that they are content creators. These folks regularly produce compelling content that I want to consume. They also clearly “know their shit”. Other content creators not included on Social Vigneron’s list that I follow include:

The Academic Wino
Mike Veseth – The Wine Economist
W. Blake Gray
Terrorist
Jeff Leve — The Wine Cellar Insider
PalateXposure
Wine Business Monthly

Perhaps these lists will be updated to include some of the new names I discovered from Social Vigneron’s Top 40+. Just like with trying a new wine, I’m open-minded and hoping to be pleased. But if I’m not finding what I get very compelling, I have no qualms spitting it out.