Is This the Beginning of Juice Box Wine?

May 21, 2013 By Mike Veseth in Barefoot wine, globalization 5 Comments

Juice Box globalization was one of three wine market scenarios that I proposed in a talk I gave in January 2013 at the Unified Wine and Grape Symposium in Sacramento (you can read a brief summary of my remarks here). I was inspired by the Minute Maid apple juice box pictured in the slide above.

You think of Minute Maid as an American brand and goodness knows that we grow lots of apples here, but in fact it has become a globally sourced product. The generic apple juice in that box could come from the U.S. or Argentina, Austria, Chile, China, Germany or Turkey (or any combination of them, I suppose). The brand is the thing here — country of origin is almost literally a footnote and apple variety is a complete non-issue.

Is juice box wine possible — wine pretty much stripped of variety and place of origin? Many heads nodded yes in the audience as I asked the question. Just a matter of time as global sourcing of wine becomes a key supply side factor and strong brand identity continues to grow in importance on the demand side. Juice box wine isn’t the only direction wine is headed, I suggested, but it is one possibility.

Barefoot Makes an Impression

And now it is here (although perhaps not for the first time). Gallo’s Barefoot brand has introduced a new red blend wine, Barefoot Impression, made from grapes grown on four continents, according to a recent report in the Modesto Bee.

Impression Red Blend is the 22nd product from Barefoot, which Gallo has built into the nation’s top-selling brand. The blend includes grenache from Spain, shiraz from Australia, malbec from Argentina and tempranillo from California.

Impression joins 14 still wines and seven sparkling wines, all made from California grapes, in the Barefoot portfolio. Barefoot winemaker Jennifer Wall describes the new wine as “a smooth red blend with dark fruit flavors, framed by notes of sweet vanilla and spice.” It has a suggested retail price of $6.99.

Lost in Space?

A quick trip to my local Safeway store revealed Barefoot Impression on the shelf along with other inexpensive red blends. The purple footprint was part of the typically attractive Barefoot package. But I was more interested in what the package didn’t say than what it did. No vintage year. No listing of the grape varieties used. And no listing at all of place of origin.

Whereas the Barefoot Zinfandel I found proudly boasted Lodi as its birthplace, and “California” appeared on several varieties (the Pinot Grigio in my store was an American appellation), I could not find any geographical designation at all for the Impression. I guess it makes sense — a multi-vintage blend has no year and a multi-continental blend has no specific point of origin (although there would be nothing to stop Barefoot from providing this information if they wanted to).

Message in the Bottle

Will consumers care that there is no vintage year or appellation? Some might question the wine if they look for traditional year-variety-origin references. But Barefoot has created their own narrative (see video below), which is very much in the Barefoot spirit and very appealing, too, and I am sure the marketing team has discovered that at least some Barefoot drinkers respond to the progressive social message more effectively than they would to a more traditional alternative.

Is Barefoot Impression the beginning of an important trend? Impression probably isn’t the first and certainly won’t be the last wine in this category. Watch this space for future reports.

Stein’s Law and the Coming Crisis in Argentinean Wine

May 14, 2013 By Mike Veseth in Argentina, economic crisis, Economic impact, exchange rates 6 Comments

Stein’s Law, named for famed economist Herbert Stein, holds that if something cannot go on forever it will stop. Unsustainable trends ultimately yield to the inevitable in one way or another.

Stein’s Law seems to be simply stating the obvious, but you would be surprised how many people find a way to ignore the obvious when it is in their interest to do so. As Upton Sinclair wrote, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something if his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

Argentina’s Inflation Problem

And so we consider the case of the Argentinean wine industry. It’s not just the wine sector, of course, it’s the whole Argentinean economy, but wine is especially affected. Something’s going to happen according to Stein’s Law, because it can’t go on forever as it has up to now, but it is hard to know exactly what.

The problem begins with Argentina’s high inflation rate. The official statistic puts the annual increase in consumer prices at around 10%, but this number is viewed with disbelief by the international economic community. The Economist magazine quit publishing the official figure in 2012, saying “Don’t lie to me, Argentina” to the officials there. The most commonly cited estimate of the actual inflation rate is 25% per year.

Inflation is a sensitive political issue in Argentina as it is in every country that has ever experienced a hyperinflation crisis (think Germany, for example). Some in Argentina go to great lengths to deny the obvious reality of inflation.

The story (which may be true) is told about a McDonalds restaurant in Buenos Aires that displayed all the usual products on its big backlit menu board except the signature Big Mac. Where’s the Big Mac? Oh, we have that price hidden around the corner so that no one will see it — especially the people from The Economist magazine who use it to estimate the purchasing power of the peso in their Burgernomics index!

Inflationary Squeeze

As a recent article on The Drinks Business website suggests, high inflation is putting the squeeze on Argentina’s wine producers. (The squeeze is made worse, I understand, by government policies that restrict imports of products used in wine production as part of a general policy to control foreign exchange reserves). Production costs (grapes, labor, etc.) may have doubled over the past four years, putting a squeeze on margins.

It is difficult to pass these peso costs along to consumers in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Brazil, the main export markets. Consumers are price sensitive and while the average export price of varietal Cabernet and Merlot wines have risen by 7.2% and 24.8% respectively in the past year, this provides only limited relief from rising costs since Malbec takes the lion’s share of the export market and its dollar export price has risen by just 1% in the last year and by an average of only 2.8% per year since 2009.

Purchasing Power Inaction

The textbook remedy to this situation is for the foreign exchange value of the peso to fall to achieve what economists call Purchasing Power Parity. In a system of market determined exchange rates, according to the PPP theory, a 25% fall in the domestic purchasing power of the peso due to inflation should result in a 25% decrease in its foreign exchange value.

And indeed the peso has depreciated, but not by nearly enough to overcome the inflation difference between Argentina and the four main export markets. The peso has fallen in value by about 20% in the last two years, if we look at the official exchange rate, so each dollar of export earnings brings in more pesos, but inflation-driven peso costs have increased by much more. That puts a real squeeze on margins. This can’t go on forever — something has to give.

[I'm told that the black market exchange rate is 8 pesos per U.S. dollar, far below the official rate of about 5 per dollar. Such a big differential is often an indicator of crisis to come.]

Something’s Gotta Give

What happens when a country gets itself caught in a squeeze like this? Well, the conventional wisdom is there needs to be a sharp currency devaluation followed by monetary tightening to control inflation. This is a painful process and Argentina has been through it before. What if the government ignores the conventional wisdom? Internal adjustment must eventually take place to restore competitiveness if external adjustment through the exchange rate is ruled out.

A recent Wall Street Journal article about real estate prices in Buenos Aires shows one pattern of adjustment. The dollar prices of luxury apartments have tumbled as owners seek to cash out of their real estate investments and buy into the more credible U.S. currency. The WSJ reports that

In May last year, Argentine President Christina Kirchner strictly limited access to U.S. dollars and other foreign currencies in a bid to stem capital flight. With the Argentine peso facing about 25% annual inflation (government figures, widely discredited, set the rate much lower), and an unofficial exchange rate that has effectively devalued the peso sharply, demand is high for dollars.

These days, the main feature that foreign buyers say they look for in a Buenos Aires property has nothing to do with closet space or a wide terrace. It is a seller with a bank account outside Argentina to which they can legally wire funds. This is a way to get around having to convert any dollars wired into Argentina into pesos at the official rate, after which it is nearly impossible to convert back into dollars at the official rate.

Something will have to give in the wine industry, too, if the exchange rate doesn’t adjust and the currency controls continue. In the meantime, I think every effort is being made to control costs and to keep margins out of the red. But, as Herb Stein might say, this can’t go on forever so somehow it will stop.

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Herbert Stein may be best known today as father of Ben Stein, the actor, law professor, and columnist, but he was ever so much more famous in his day as a chairman of the president’s council of economic advisers

Little known fact: the Pabst beer company held an economics competition in 1944 (the year of the Bretton Woods conference) for the best plan to sustain high employment in the post-war era. Herb Stein’s plan was named the winner from among the more than 36,000 entries. He was 28 years old and the prize was $25,000 — the equivalent of $330,000 today.

Extreme Wine South Africa: VinPro Information Day 2014

May 9, 2013 By Mike Veseth in Shameless Self-Promotion, South Africa Leave a comment

I’m pleased to announce that I’ll be returning to South Africa early next year to speak at VinPro Information Day on January 23, 2014. (You can read the agenda for the 2013 Information Day program here.)

VinPro, the service organization for 3600 South African wine producer members, announced yesterday that it will merge with Wine Cellars South Africa, creating a unified wine industry organization. I’m honored to be invited to speak at the first Information Day program for the combined group and I look forward to meeting everyone and sharing what I know about global market developments while learning more about the dynamic Cape wine sector.

My previous visit to South Africa (to attend Cape Wine 2012 and give the keynote at the Nederburg Auction) was eye-opening — my only regrets were that I didn’t have more time to visit and study the different regions and that Sue wasn’t able to join me. Both of these concerns will be addressed this time as we will spend a couple of weeks touring before Information Day. Still not enough time to do justice to the Cape Winelands, but a big improvement!

We are just beginning to plan our visit. Use the comments section below or write to Mike@WineEconomist.com if you have suggestions of where we should go and what we should do.

Thanks again to VinPro for this opportunity. Looking forward to seeing old friends and making new ones at VinPro Information Day 2014.

Tasting Notes for Three Colorful New Wine Books

May 7, 2013 By Mike Veseth in book reviews 2 Comments

A number of new wine books arrived earlier this year. Sensing that I wouldn’t be able to find time to give reviews my full attention while in the final revision stages of Extreme Wine, I offered three of them to my university students for Spring Break reading. The only catch: they would have to write brief “tasting notes” for publication on The Wine Economist.

Celebrating Celebrity Wine.

Kayla asked to review Celebrity Vineyards: From Napa to Tuscany in Search of Great Wine by Nick Wise. This is an attractive volume, beautifully illustrated and printed on high quality stock. The book’s sixteen chapters provide detailed case studies of wineries associated with the A (for Mario Andretti and Dan Aykroyd) almost to Z (Formula One driver Jarno Trulli and football coach Dick Vermeil) of international wine celebrity. (I wish soccer star Zinedine Zidane would start a winery just to make the celebrity wine alphabet complete!) A nice mix of current stars along with figures from the past such as Fess Parker and even Thomas Jefferson.

Here is Kayla’s tasting note for the volume.

This book exhibits an easy-going style of writing that gets down to the core of why these select individuals are involved with wine. His sense of story is sure to appeal to wine enthusiasts as well as those interested in the wines simply due to the fame of their financiers. Wise organized this book in a way that would make it perfectly suitable for those who want to read one section at a time or just place it on the coffee table for guests to peruse. All in all, I found the stories both appealing and well written. Wise brings these iconic figures down to earth with their relate-able passion for one of the world’s most amazing and diverse beverages.

The French Connection

Kelsey wanted to read Into Wine by Olivier Magny and I couldn’t wait to see her “tasting note.” I gave Magny’s earlier book Stuff Parisians Like a very favorable review on The Wine Economist. As I read the first book I kept waiting for him to talk about wines that Parisians like. After all, Paris is the capital of France and France is the capital of wine, so how could Parisians not like wine? But I was wrong.

“It is very easy to spot tourists in a Parisian cafe,” Magny wrote, “They are the ones drinking wine.” Having a glass of wine gives the tourists pleasure. Not drinking wine is what Parisians like to do.

Magny, with obvious frustration since he runs a wine school there, enumerated all the reasons wine has fallen from grace in Paris. Once it was the default choice, he says, but now young people especially understand that they have many choices, most of which are easier to comprehend and have better marketing behind them. Water, beer and spirits — these are the go-to beverages of Paris now.

Parisians may like not like wine, but Magny hasn’t let this discourage him. Into Wine starts with Magny’s introduction to the world of wine as an occupation and then veers off into a number of interesting issues. Here is Kelsey’s note:

In his book “Into Wine”, Olivier Magny introduces the reader to the concept of terroir and highlights its importance throughout the wine-making process— from the vineyard to its consumption. At times, however, it seems like the book was less “into wine” and more into promoting organic lifestyles. It is clear from the outset that Magny is a terroirist, but his account of wine is definitely an eye-opener to the perils and shortcomings of the modern agriculture and wine industries.

The book made me rethink where my wine and food are coming from, what goes into their production, and the negative consequences of modern wine-making and agricultural processes. If you want to know more about what terroir is all about and why it is important, this is a good read. His footnotes (though excessive and sometimes distracting) are entertaining and even once poked fun at the modern-day “hipster”.

Overall, Magny is witty and his book definitely has something to offer those unfamiliar with the concept of terroir and its role in today’s wine industry.

The Color of Wine

Erin picked The Wine Lover’s Coloring Book by Louise Wilson. Her tasting note reads.

The Wine Lover’s Coloring Book by Louise Wilson makes learning about the world’s wine regions appealing and fun for wine enthusiasts and budding professionals alike! Wilson’s book is full to the brim with colorful diagrams and vital information, and the hands-on learning approach is particularly well suited to visual learners. This interactive book is the perfect blend of accessibility and educational content.

I liked the idea of this book quite a lot, but after paging through it twice I decided that I wanted more — more in the art or more in the text. Could the diagrams do more to illustrate the terroir (as opposed to basic geographic lines of wine regions)? Could more be done with the wines themselves? And is it possible to do more while still keeping to the appealing coloring book format? I dunno — maybe not.

But the author is plainly very creative (and a fine artist, too), so perhaps she will think of a visual way to take her readers to the next level in a future volume. In the meantime, as Erin’s note makes clear, this is a welcome addition to the wine education bookshelf.

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Thanks to Erin, Kelsey and Kayla for their tasting notes. Thanks to the authors and publishers for providing the books.

In Vino Veritas? The Truth About Wine in Three Tastings

April 30, 2013 By Mike Veseth in Chile, Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, Trader Joe's, Two Buck Chuck, wine education 8 Comments

In vino veritas — in wine there is truth — this is one of the touchstones of the wine enthusiast world. I like the sound of this, but I admit to being a bit confused by two recent wine tastings that I organized where the wines easily fooled us (or perhaps we just fooled ourselves), but a third tasting helped put things right.

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Mary Thomas asked if I would be willing to speak at a wine tasting that she donated (along with autographed copies of Wine Wars) to the local YWCA fund-raising auction. Yes, of course — and I knew at once what I wanted to do. A flight of red wines made by three University of Puget Sound alumni (Tom Hedges of Hedges Family Estate, Chuck Reininger of Helix and Reininger Cellars and Michael Corliss of Corliss Estates and Tranche Cellars), but first a blind tasting of white wines that figure prominently in Wine Wars.

If you’ve read Wine Wars you know that I end each flight of chapters with a wine tasting designed to explore the themes raised in the book. Three Sauvignon Blancs make up the first flight and thus inspired I put together a tasting of Charles Shaw (a.k.a. Two Buck Chuck) Sauvignon Blanc from California, Robert Mondavi Fume Blanc from Napa Valley and Cloudy Bay Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand.

After tasting the three wines blind in the order given above I asked the tasters to (1) name the grape variety, (2) guess the country or region of origin for each wines, (3) guess the prices and (4) choose their favorite wine from among the three. I am not a big fan of blind tastings, but this one is fun to do in a group. I thought the auction group would enjoy it (and they did).

But first I decided to try out the blind tasting on my “lab rats” — the students enrolled in my university “Idea of Wine” course. Their tasting featured the same blind first flight followed by a different set of reds — a vertical of three Phelps Creek “Le Petit” Pinot Noirs from three years with very different weather. My hypothesis was that students would have more trouble guessing the grape, terroirs and prices of the blind flight than would the more experienced wine drinkers in the auction group.

Things did not go according to plan. After tasting the three white wines the college students were very confused and guessed all the grape varieties they could think of, but not Sauvignon Blanc. For me the signature taste of the Cloudy Bay is a giveaway — Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc — but tasted in the context of the Fume Blanc and Two Buck Chuck wines, which are so very different, nothing seemed to make sense. The common thread that connected the three wines was difficult for these wine novices to detect.

Interestingly, the experienced auction tasters did no better than the lab rat students in this regard. This really did surprise me and I think it was the confusing context that caused the trouble. Tasting the Mondavi Fume or the Cloudy Bay by itself might yield a good guess of type of wine or place of origin, but stringing the three wines together apparently distorted the view a bit too much.

One place where there was a significant difference between the groups was when it came to guessing the prices. The experienced auction group did much worse! How is that possible? Well, the big difference was the Two Buck Chuck. No frugal college student would offer to pay more than $12 for it in the blind tasting, but at least one member of the auction group was willing to pay $25 or more!

Why were seemingly rational people willing to pay so much for such a modest wine? Well, the quality of the Two Buck Chuck must be part of the answer. Wine drinkers of a certain age (and I include myself in this category) remember when cheap wines were really foul and Two Buck Chuck and its bargain priced siblings changed all that. The quality may not be high (only a couple of people in the two groups picked it as their favorite of the three), but it does reach a commercial standard that actually shocked one experienced drinker who had not previously tasted a $2.49 wine.

But the real answer is again probably context. The students are used to me presenting them with wines that are just outside a student budget — wines that cost say $10 to $30. They guessed at the low end of that range, which made sense given their expectations. The auction group’s higher guess also reflected context. Who would expect to attend a charity auction tasting and be served such a simple inexpensive wine? Impossible! So it must cost a lot, the logic probably went, and I just can’t taste the difference! If true, this is a classic case of using price (or expected price) as a proxy for perceived quality.

Which was the favorite wine? The auction group was pretty much divided between the Mondavi Fume and Cloudy Bay. The students were divided, too, but Cloudy Bay received most of the votes. That Marlborough style is so distinctive — like nothing they ever had before — and in a blind tasting context it stood out to them.

What conclusion can we draw from these two tastings? Our perception of wine is sometimes less about truth and more about context and expectations than we might want to think. That’s not the conclusion I thought I would find when I set up this tiny experiment. Fortunately a third tasting helped balance the scale.

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The nice people at Wines of Chile sent us three Cabernet Sauvignons, which we decided to use for a small scale student tasting. Sue and I were joined by Bruce Titcomb, Eben Corliss and Ali Hoover. Ali’s attendance was based upon her study abroad experience in Chile and a paper she wrote about its wines. Bruce and Eben are enthusiastic students of geology and business respectively with a special personal connection — their parents also took classes from me back in the day. It promised to be an interesting tasting. We began with a glass of Sauvignon Blanc (from Chile this time) and then got to work on the Cabs we were sent. Here is the list.

Montes Classic Series Cabernet Sauvignon 2011 Colchagua Valley 85% Cabernet + 15% Merlot 14% abv. Typical price: around $10.
Santa Carolina Colchagua Estate Reserva Cabernet Sauvignon 2011 (from Miraflores in Andes Foothills) 13.5% abv. Around $12.
Undurraga T. H. (Terroir Hunter) Alto Maipo Calbernet Sauvignon 2009 (from Picque in Andes Foothills) 14% abv. Around $20.

We sampled the three Cabs by themselves, with food (savory empanadas) and then with chocolate truffles. The wines were very different from each other and each had its moment in the spotlight. On first tasting, the Montes (the least expensive of the group) was simple, enjoyable, and fun. When Ali tasted the Santa Carolina her eyes lit up — this was Chilean wine as she knew it from her time there, she said — a reminder of her temporary South American home. The Undurraga T.H. lived up to its “Terroir Hunter” name — it was much more precise and focused.

Returning to the wines to pair then with food the Montes was a puzzle — Blake noted a strong caramel aroma when the wine had time to air out a bit. The Santa Carolina seemed to be the best match for the empanadas just as the T.H. was the favorite on its own. Then we broke out the dark chocolate truffles and tried again. This time it was the Montes that stood out — that caramel aroma really worked with the chocolate and made a hard to beat combination.

Which wine was best? Well the T.H. was probably my personal favorite but the answer depended on how you drank it (alone, with savory food, with chocolate) and what you were searching for (for Ali that memory of her time in Chile was pretty special).

So what did we learn from our three tastings. Well, I don’t really want to argue against the idea of in vino veritas, but I do think our impressions of wine are context-sensitive — perhaps more so than we really want to admit.

Blake, Eben and Ali at the Chilean Cabernet tasting.

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Thanks to Emily Denton of The Thomas Collective for providing the Chilean wines for this tasting. Thanks to Blake, Eben and Ali for their help with the Chilean Cab tasting. Photos by contributing editor Sue Veseth.

Book Review: Lewin on Claret & Cabs

April 23, 2013 By Mike Veseth in book reviews 1 Comment

Benjamin Lewin MW, Claret & Cabs: The Story of Cabernet Sauvignon. Vendage Press (to be published May 1, 2013).

What is it about the tension between Burgundy and Bordeaux that casts such a spell on wine enthusiasts? I’m not really sure. They say that in Bordeaux you talk about wine and in Burgundy you drink it. Bordeaux is cerebral — you feel it above the neck according to popular opinion — while Burgundy arouses the senses down below. Maybe that’s what it’s all about.

Jean-Robert Pitte wrote a great book about the “classic rivalry” between the two wine cultures and Master of Wine Benjamin Lewin seems bitten by the bug, too.

That’s So Typical!

Lewin (a renowned scientist — he was the founding editor of the journal Cell), has written a lot about wine in a short time. He began with What Price Bordeaux? (2009) followed by Wine Myths & Realities (2011), which I use in my university class. In Search of Pinot Noir appeared last year and now this book on Cabernet Sauvignon. What prodigious output. Amazing.

Lewin values typicity in wine, so it is not an insult for me to say that Claret & Cabs is typical of his work. Extraordinarily well researched and written, the facts and insights jump off the page in a way that draws the reader deeper and deeper into geography, geology, history, economics, viticulture and so on through all the senses that wine embodies. The discussion of clones that appears early in the book is a good example. It taught me so much in just a few pages — outstanding.

And I like the way that Lewin tells part of his story through the voices of the dozens of winemakers he interviewed on his fieldwork travels. As always, I appreciate that he doesn’t hesitate to take on difficult questions, weigh the evidence, and reach a bold conclusion.

The books on Pinot Noir and Cabernet are as different as, well, Burgundy and Bordeaux. The conventional wisdom (at least on Route Nationale 74) is that Burgundy is Burgundy and everything else is [merely] Pinot Noir, so Lewin scoured the globe for the Holy Grail — a Pinot Noir made somewhere else in the world that could match the highest Burgundian standard, especially in terms of ability to age. He discovered a lot of great wine in the process, but the verdict he reached is that Burgundy reigns supreme, at least for now.

A Different Premise

Claret & Cabs starts with a starkly different premise. It’s not really clear that Bordeaux is now or ever was the uniquely best place in the world to grow Cabernet Sauvignon. The center of the Cab world may well be California’s Napa Valley — or perhaps Bordeaux and Napa should uncomfortably share the global spotlight in the same way that Burgundy and Bordeaux compete for attention in France.

The book divides itself in various ways. There are about 300 pages of generously illustrated text followed by 200 pages of detailed tasting notes. Napa and Bordeaux are the main foci, although the analyses of the other important producer areas — Washington State, the Mediterranean arc that reaches from the Languedoc to Tuscany, Chile, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa — are very thorough.

I haven’t done a formal page count, but I’d guess that Bordeaux and Napa get about equal space in the book (including the fascinating closing chapter on “Cults and Icons”.) But I think that that Lewin leans in on the Napa side of the debate just a bit, infusing it with a palpable (to me) electricity and excitement.

A Burgundian Bias?

Maybe it is Lewin’s Burgundian bias creeping in? Yes, I think that’s it, but not in a the way you might expect. Every Burgundy fan that I have ever known has had a detailed map on a wall somewhere in their house that shows the famous vineyards and climats and so forth. The complexity of Burgundian terroir is reflected in the wines — the best wines, at least — and is an almost irresistible muse.

The Napa Valley is a complicated place from a geologic standpoint. Pressures from three tectonic plates shape the landscape and expose a variety of different different soil types from gravel to clay to volcanic residue and different specific characteristics including the alluvial fans that apparently account for some of the qualities of my favorite wines from Rutherford and Oakville.

If you love the diversity of terroir, as Burgundians do, then I guess you have to love Napa — isn’t that an unexpected thought! And although Cabernet is not generally classified as a “terroir wine” (Riesling and Pinot Noir are usually cited as the defining “terroir wine” varieties), you can tell that Lewin believes that in Napa it really is (or can be in the right hands).

Lewin puts Napa on a pedestal at least as high as Bordeaux’s but — significantly — he doesn’t deny the possibility that Cabernet wines from other regions might rise just as high in their own particular way.

Claret & Cabs is a great read and I think will prove its worth down the road (“age well”) as a reference, too. Bravo!

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Did you know that the British nickname for Bordeaux blend wines — Claret — comes from the fact that they originally were light (clair or clear), low in tannins and light in alcohol (less than 10%)? Nothing at all like the image of Claret today!

Books Covers, Best Sellers and Great News about Savour Australia 2013

April 16, 2013 By Mike Veseth in Australian wine, extreme wine, Shameless Self-Promotion 3 Comments

The conventional wisdom disagrees, but I say what’s wrong with judging a book by its cover? People judge wines by their labels all the time!

OK, so maybe it is a bad idea as a general rule, but I encourage you to make an exception for my next book, Extreme Wine, which is sailing smoothly towards its October 2013 release date.

Check out the recently-finalized cover– pretty cool, huh? Hope readers will think that the book is as good as the cover that embraces it!

Best Sellers Are Made Not Born?

Since Wines Wars was such a success, we naturally have high hopes for Extreme Wine. Wine Wars in its three editions (hardcover, paperback and eBook) has consistently appeared in Amazon.com’s various specialized best seller lists (such as the top 100 globalization books, for example), but didn’t bust through to the really big New York Times kind of league tables. Tough to break into the really big leagues, I guess.

In reading about how the best seller lists work, I discovered that there are some techniques to “game” the best-seller rating system. Some unscrupulous authors and publishers, for example, have apparently purchased large volumes of their own books all at once — creating the sort of sales bump that pushes a book onto the big time lists — only to cancel the order or return the books after ratings have appeared. Mission accomplished, so to speak, and a phantom best-seller created.

Clever, I suppose. But not very ethical. I would never do anything like that (even if my credit card had enough head room to allow me to place such a big order).

A Not Entirely Unethical Experiment

But there’s another technique that is also strategic but not entirely unethical. It involves Amazon.com pre-orders. Apparently all of the pre-orders on Amazon are processed together on the day that a book is released — giving that same sales bump as the phantom strategy, but based upon actual orders, not fake ones. I guess that’s why some of my author friends encourage their readers to pre-order.

I wonder if it would work for Extreme Wine? If you’d like to participate in an experiment to find out, click here to visit the Amazon.com page for Extreme Wine where you can pre-order the hardback (you’ll have to wait for the Kindle version). It’s just a social media experiment, you see, not really Shameless Self-Promotion as you are probably thinking!

Savour Australia 2013: Australia’s Global Wine Forum from Wine Australia on Vimeo.

Savour Australia 2013

Speaking of Shameless Self Promotion, I’d like to announce that I’ve been invited to speak at Savour Australia 2013, Australia’s first global wine gathering, which will happen in Adelaide in mid-September.

You can learn about Savour Australia 2013 by clicking here or watching the video above. The purpose of the program, as I understand it, is to re-launch Brand Australia onto the global wine markets — to replace the down-market Yellow Tail sort of image that evolved over the last dozen years with an up-beat, up-market narrative that connects Australian wine with its regions, food, culture, people, and links it all to wine tourism, which is the best way to have the complete experience.

I think the message is exactly the right one for Australia today and I am looking forward to being part in the discussion.

Here is Your Chance to Tell Me Where to Go!

Sue and I will be staying in Australia for a couple of weeks after Savour Australia 2013. Where should go and who should we visit? If you have suggestions please leave a comment below or email us at Mike@WineEconomist.com.

Looking forward to seeing you at Savour Australia 2013!

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