Monthly Archives: August 2022

Using Food to Drive Wine Sales the Italian Way

August 30, 2022 By in Italian wine, restaurant wine, wine Leave a comment

The conventional wisdom holds that wine and food are a match made in heaven — wine was food in many cultures in the past and still is in some places.

We would call food and wine complements in economics terminology. Products that are complements tend to be purchased together. Beer and pizza. Hot dogs and mustard. Burgers and fries. Get consumers to buy more of one and the sales of the complement will follow.

Problems with the Conventional Wisdom

There are always problems with the conventional wisdom, of course, and it is true that most food is eaten without wine (the US wine-drinking population is relatively small) and much (most?)  wine is imbibed away from the dining table. But the logic of pairing food and wine still holds along with the potential to exploit the complement relationship to broaden the wine drinker base.

Yet, apart from those supermarket wine displays throughout the store and restaurant wine pairing suggestions, I wonder how much effort has gone into exploiting the food/wine link? Certainly there are some worthy efforts — popular magazines like Wine Spectator and Food & Wine routinely feature chefs and restaurants as well as winemakers and wineries. Sometimes there are recipes and wine pairing suggestions. Wine selling food. Food selling wine.

But there are obvious missed opportunities. How many cable food programs bring wine into the frame, for example?  Last year I complained bitterly that Stanley Tucci’s CNN series on food in Italy was ignoring the obvious connection with wine! The preview episodes of the second season suggest that this situation has improved, but it is only a small victory.

Food needs to be treated as a key lever in developing a sustainable wine culture in the U.S. Regular wine drinkers are a small group, but everyone eats food. Most people love food. Some people (you know who you are) think about little else. Wine needs to find ways to insinuate itself more fully into that dynamic. Herewith two interesting approaches.

The Italian Dinner

Sue and I were invited to a dinner at Assaggio Ristorante in Seattle organized around the theme “From Italy to Your Table” as part of the Italian Denominations of Origin 2022 U.S. tour. Most of the usual suspects of the Seattle wine scene were in attendance and, although wine wasn’t the main attraction, a really useful food-wine connections was made.

Anyone who is interested in the wines of Italy soon comes to appreciate the many protected designations — DOC, DOCG — that define the national wine treasury (and also the often-exciting IGT wines that sprout up in the gaps that the DOC structure creates). Well, the gist of the dinner is that there is a world of food products in Italy with similar protected status and that pairing the food and the wine is a way to explore and understand Italy’s complex culinary world.

Thus, for example, a spaghetti al pomodoro with Pasta di Gragnano IGP and San Marzano DOP tomatoes was paired with a Chianti Classico DOCG wine. And a rather spectacular risotto al tartufo highlighting carnaroli rice IGP and Pecorino Romano DOP (plus black truffle, of course) paired with a Montepulciano d’Abruzzo DOC.

Like its neighbor France, Italy has made a point of recognizing its many special foods. Do you think there are a lot of DOC, DOCG, and IGT wine designations? Trust me, there are many more PDO and PGI food products. Sue started a list that ran from various sorts of meats and cheeses (of course) to garlic, olives, saffron, olive oil, vinegar, oranges, asparagus, basil, bergamot, turnip, artichoke, capers, chestnuts, cherries, spring onions, mussels, dry beans, flour, farro, hazelnut, figs, licorice, apples, aubergine, plums, breads, pistachios, and tomatoes before she gave up and poured herself a glass of wine.

The dinner was very successful — thanks so much to the chefs and the great service staff at Assaggio — but it wasn’t just that the food was good and the wines were good and pairings were tasty. It was also that the idea made sense. A room full of wine professionals was coaxed into thinking more seriously about their food using the familiar vocabulary of designated origin.

The next step is to switch things around and help foodies (and there are millions of them) translate their passion more directly to wine!

The Cheese Box

Wine and cheese are an obvious pairing — one local supermarket has located the cheese counter directly opposite the wine wall. Wine should sell cheese. Cheese should sell wine. Both offer a world of interesting choices. The combinations are almost endless. But curious consumers might need a little help get started.

This is what the people at curdbox and The Italian Selection have done with their curated wine and cheese offerings. curdbox offers monthly subscription shipments of cheeses and associated products to introduce consumers to different elements of the world of cheese (the September box features cheese selected in consultation with Food Network celebrity Justin Warner). Each $49.95 box contains

• 3 artisan cheeses
• 3 specialty food pairings
• Pairing info card with wine suggestions
• In-depth blog post
• Themed Spotify playlist
• Curdcast podcast

Cheese subscribers can add wine to the mix, which is where The Italian Selection comes in. Add wine to the subscription and The Italian Selection will send two bottles of Italian DOC or DOCG wine chosen to pair with the cheese selection.

We received the July 2022 curdbox, organized around the theme “Born in the USA.” Our box included

The Cheeses:

  • Hoop Cheese by Striplings General Store
  • Grand Cru Surchoix by Roth Cheeses
  • San Geronimo by Nicasio Valley Cheese Co.

and The Pairings

  • Speck Americano by La Quercia
  • Michigan Blueberry Preserves by Brownwood Farms
  • Everything Goes Nuts by Bobby-Sue’s Nuts

Here is a List of past curdbox seelections.

I was impressed with the thought that went into the wine pairings. We received a white wine (Cantine Terre Stregate “Trama”  Falanghina from Campania) and a red (Quartomoro di Sardegna “Òrriu” Cannonau di Sardegna). I asked the folks at The Italian Selection why they picked these particular wines and received a detailed reply.

The wines have the general characteristics that pair well with wine (no hard tannins, for example, good acidity) and also particular attributes of note. The floral notes of the Falanghina were cited as adding a feature to the pairing, for example, and the fruit of the Cannonau could play the role of fruit usually included on a cheese tray, too.

So what did our test crew think? We liked the cheeses quite a lot and enjoyed tasting new and different varieties. If the point of curdbox is to nudge subscribers to think outside the box a bit, we think it works.

We liked the wines, too, and enjoyed the pairings. The Falanghina was an immediate hit with everyone and changed with each bite of cheese. The Cannonau took a while to show the fruit we were looking for, but it came around eventually. The Falanghina was the discovery for us, however, and demonstrated clearly how curdbox subscribers might come for the cheese and stay for the wine.

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Many thanks to curdbox, The Italian Selection, and our friends at the Italian Trade Agency for their help making this column possible.

Wine Book Review / North Adriatic: Three Countries, One Terroir

August 23, 2022 By in book reviews, wine Leave a comment

Paul Balke, North Adriatic: Friuli Venezia Giulia – West Slovenia – Istria – Kvarner.   Wine & Travel Atlas.  Order the book via email: paulbarolo@gmail.com

Anyone who has seen Charles & Ray Eames’s famous 1977 video of “Powers of 10” (see below) understands that the way you see the world depends in part on how you choose to look at it.

In the video an everyday scene is examined first from steadily expanding scales (rising by a power of ten each ten seconds) and then deconstructed by repeatedly drilling down (by powers of ten again). Which view is correct? Why all of them, of course, it just depends on what you are looking for.

Bigger and Smaller

One view makes things seem bigger and the other makes them seem smaller (an Alice in Wonderland situation). It is important to keep perspective along the way.

The bigger/smaller problem applies to wine in many ways. Tasting notes, for example, have for a long time focused on breaking down wine flavors and aromas into their elements, like the second part of the Eames video, which is useful enough unless you are more interested, as many consumers may be, in how it makes you feel (a higher-level perspective).  The whole, we hope, is greater than the sum of its parts, but that doesn’t always come through.

Here in the United States one trend has been to try to break the terroir of wine=-growing regions into smaller and smaller American Viticultural Areas as wineries and regions seek to communicate their distinctive features and to build solidarity among producers. But deconstructing terroir in this way is not the only story and sometimes not the best one.

Or at least that is Paul Balke’s argument in his colorful and informative book, North Adriatic, and he makes his case in a way that will remind you of the Eames film. First, he steps back repeatedly, probing what connects the people and territory of the North Adriatic, with chapters on the trans-national regional history, geography, climate, and gastronomy (this volume is meant to double as a travel guide, so food is never far from the surface!)

Central to this section of the book is Chapter 4, which is a very short essay on borders. Its purpose is to make you think about borders, fences and divisions in an age of globalization.

Down the Rabbit Hole

The book soon reverses course with very detailed chapters on the wine regions of the North Adriatic. Each chapter is an enticing rabbit hole (another Alice metaphor) full of photos, maps, facts, and analysis.

The wine regions are Colli Orientali, Collio and Brda, Isonzo, Grave, Aquileia, Karst, Vipava Valley, Istria, and Kvarner. There are also chapters on the many grape varieties and orange wines, which are very much a thing here. Wine is the focus here, but not just wine. Given the first part of the book, it is impossible to see wine without taking in elements of the broader context.

It is not a criticism to say that these chapters are so full of interesting images and ideas that it is possible to get lost. The images of chefs and their food made me hungry.  Balke intends the book to be both a reference resource and a travel guide and I think he achieves his goal. I learned something new on each page.

What you won’t find here are detailed reviews of individual wines and profiles of specific wineries. That would require another book. This one is already bursting at the seams.

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Anatomy of the Provence Pink Wine Tide

August 16, 2022 By in wine, wine exports, wine markets 3 Comments

I don’t have to buy rosé. That’s not how I’ll earn enough to buy a little stone house overlooking the Mediterranean. Nor do I have to put up with the incredulous expressions on my clients’ faces when in the shop I recommend a rosé. “What do you take me for, a hick?” their expression demands. Or “Try that one on the next sucker, mister.” Or, “Let’s move on to something more serious.”

In the course of my buying trips I run across excellent wines with a rosé color. I don’t look for them. They appear. What can Ido?

So wrote wine importer extraordinaire Kermit Lynch nearly 40 years ago (quoted in the August 2022 issue of the famously readable Kermit Lynch newsletter). Pink wine is the People’s Choice in many markets but struggles for legitimacy among some wine drinkers.

I have read that Rosé outsells white wine in French supermarkets, for example, and American wine drinkers of a certain age will remember when the best-selling imported wines were Rosés from Portugal — Mateus and Lancers.

Rosé is once again getting a lot of attention. The Rosé tide has risen relatively speaking (the wine market has been pretty chaotic in the last few years), especially after 2021’s logistics struggles delayed some imports until the very end of the summer season or even later. Ugh.

The wines are even getting the critical attention they deserve. First Elizabeth Gabay MW published her 2018 book Rosé: The Pink Wine Revolution and now she and Ben Bernheim have released Rosés of Southern France.   Taken together these two books provide anyone who wants to explore the Pink Wine World with a clear and critical roadmap.

50 Shades of Pink?

Gabay and Bernheim’s focus on Southern France in the new book is appropriate. Although Sue and I have enjoyed Pink wines from all around the world, France is the obvious reference point. France is the largest producers of Rosé wines in the world and the largest consumer of them, too, although they tend to export upscale Rosés into the global markets and import less expensive Spanish wines for ready drinking.

Southern France is general and Provence in particular is at the center of the action. Provence and its pale pink wines define the Rosé category for many consumers, although I agree with Gabay that focusing on a pale shade of pink is a waste of time. I think I remember that Tavel Rosés were popular when I first started paying attention to wine and they still have much to recommend. I like, therefore, the playful design of Gabay and Bernheim’s new book, which emphasizes the appeal of a range of hues.

The U.S. is the largest export market for Provence Rosé, accounting for more than a third of export sales. Recent NielsenIQ data reported in Wine Business Monthly places the average Rosé bottle price at $11.39, which is higher than Cabernet Sauvignon, for example, and much higher than the market average of $8.48.

American consumers might once have confused Rosé with “blush” wines like White Zinfandel (average bottle price $4.40), but that’s no longer true. Just look at the pink wall at your local wine shop or upscale supermarket and you will see what I mean.

Three Faces of Rosé 

Sue and I were encouraged to probe deeper into the world of Provence Rosé when we received three editorial sample wines from Vins de Provence. The wines were sourced from the region’s three main appellations. Château L’Escarelle Rosé (in the Bordeaux-style bottle on the left) is from the AOP Côteaux Varois en Provence. The Ultimate Provence (UP) in the distinctive bottle, center, is Rosé AOP Côtes de Provence. And the attractive wine in the Burgundy-style bottle on the right is Famille Ravoire Costeval Rosé AOP Coteaux d’Aix-en-Provence.

These are premium products. Based on internet sources the price points appear to range from mid-teens for the Famille Ravoire Costeval to the high twenties for the Château L’Escarelle. It is not really fair to make a single wine represent an entire appellation, but Sue and I were game. Were the wines good representatives of Provence? Were they distinctive?

We paired the Ultimate Provence Rosé AOP Côtes de Provence with sausages and grilled vegetables from our garden. The Famille Ravoire Costeval Rosé AOP Coteaux d’Aix-en-Provence was paired with a Niçoise salad (grilled garden vegetables again) and the Château L’Escarelle Rosé AOP Côteaux Varois en Provence was terrific paired with a salad of fresh Dungeness crab and ripe garden tomatoes. Very different wine-food combinations.

Three Faces of Provence

We enjoyed all three wines — they represented Provence very well. They were very different from each other, however, as you would expect, so Provence isn’t a simple thing. The terroirs were different, of course, but so were the wine grape blends. Grenache led the list of grapes for one wine, and combinations of Syrah, Cinsault, and Grenache in the others. The Ultimate Provence, which was probably our favorite wine for its fruit and bright acidity, even included a bit of Rolle (aka Vermentino)!

Bottom line. Wine is pretty in pink. There is much to like if you just want to sit back and enjoy, but also a lot to learn if you take the exploration of regions, grape varieties, styles, etc. seriously. No wonder the Provence Pink tide is rising.

 

Wine and the No-Recession Recession

August 9, 2022 By in economic crisis, Economic impact, wine, wine markets 2 Comments

Are we headed for a recession here in the United States? Or are we already there? What about the future — the second half of 2022 and 2023?

If you follow economic news reports you have encountered all sorts of answers to these questions. And you can be forgiven for being a little confused and maybe quite a lot frustrated that the answers to these important questions are not clearer.  Herewith a brief guide for the perplexed with implications for the wine sector.

The Recession Question

The “rule-of-thumb” definition of a recession is when there are two consecutive quarters of falling gross domestic product (GDP). The U.S. economy is in a recession now by this definition because GDP fell in both the first and second quarters of 2022 (second quarter data subject to revision). By this measure, many of the world’s most important economies are either in recession, too, or teetering on the brink.

The two-quarter rule is very useful, but it is not the final world. The National Bureau on Economic Research (NBER) more formally defines a recession in a way that stresses depth, diffusion, and duration:  a recession is a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and lasts more than a few months.

The NBER’s more nuanced definition is better than the two-quarter rule, but it has some downsides. How significant is significant, for example? And how widely spread need the decline be? There is also the problem, unavoidable with lagged economic indicators, that a recession can only be declared well after it has started and will probably be over before the conclusion is called.

So we might be in a recession now — one that started months ago in fact — or we might not. We will only know for sure later on — perhaps when the recession (if there is one) is already over. Argggh!

Up, Down, Twist

If you follow business and finance news you will find evidence to back up any hypothesis you may have about a recession. Prices in some sectors are rising quickly (have you bought a airline ticket recently?) and plunging steeply in other areas.

There are plenty of stories of firms with squeezed profits, declining sales, and employee lay-offs. But there are also stories about rising sales and profits and, of course, the labor market puzzle, where the number of unfilled positions is about twice the number of people who say they are looking for work (but apparently cannot find it).

Last week’s job report was unexpectedly strong — the unemployment rate is only 3.5% and total employment is back to the pre-pandemic level — suggesting that the U.S. is not currently in recession, despite what the GDP figures say. Ironically, some analysts speculate that this good jobs news actually increases the odds of bad news in the near future. The reasoning is that the Federal Reserve will be forced to raise interest rates even higher now in order to slow control demand-driven inflationary pressures.

What’s the story? Is the economy up or down? The correct answer (which applies to wine, too) is … yes. If you are looking for a generalized answer to the recession question you won’t find it. Maybe it is best to say that the economy is twisting. The devil is in the details here and the answer you get depends upon where you look and how.

The Price is Right?

There are several reasons for this complicated picture. One of them is that the economy — like the wine market — is never all one way or another. Like the climate, it is always running hotter in some areas and colder elsewhere.

But another, particular to this moment, is the fact of rapid inflation because an inflationary economy works by different rules. In an economic system with stable prices, consumers cut back purchases when employment falls or when there is fear of unemployment. In an inflationary economy, the pressure to cut back spending affects a much broader set of consumers who find their budget squeezed by rising prices of necessities. Higher energy and housing prices (although moderating somewhat in recent weeks) have put the squeeze on millions of households regardless of job market status.

And so that’s what we are seeing now. So maybe the recession question isn’t the right one to be asking.

The Squeeze: A Tale of Two Worlds?

The conventional wisdom is that wine is recession-proof. Maybe. But an inflationary squeeze and the twist it creates is different and I don’t see how wine sales can escape unscathed.

Under these circumstances it is more important than ever to know your customers and the product chain that connects them with your business. Based on recent quarterly reports, for example, it looks like selling wine into mass market Walmart World’s part of the retail spectrum, where both the retailer and its clients seem to be really feeling the squeeze — is much different from selling wine into high income Costco World, where the squeeze is still on but the impact seems more moderate. So far.

Wine and the Dollar: Big Mac Index Update

August 2, 2022 By in exchange rates, wine, wine markets 3 Comments

The Economist newspaper’s most recent analysis of global exchange rates was released a few days ago and the results are noteworthy, especially for those of us in the wine trade where exchange rates are an important factor in both import-export flows and in the cost of imported bottles, corks, equipment, etc.

No News is News?

Exchange rates are in constant motion — most currency values change at least a bit — and sometimes quite a lot more! — on a daily basis. It is a fact of life in international trade and finance. But sometimes there is a strong secular movement that shakes things in a big way and the recent sustained rise in the U.S. dollar’s value is a good case in point.

There are dozens of forces that can shift exchange rates — I used to joke that the worst job in the world was the person who had to write the “exchange rate” headline for the Wall Street Journal every day because he or she had to boil down dozens of factors into a few words. I remember one headline that read “Dollar Rises on No News.”

There is plenty of news right now to explain the dollar’s appreciation relative to most of the world’s currencies and the most important explanation are rising U.S. interest rates that the Federal Reserve has implemented and is expected to continue this year. Rising interest rates attract short term investment funds from abroad. The dollar strengthens as the investment funds pour in until the point (to simplify quite a lot — experts please forgive me!) where the dollar is so expensive that the risk that it will reverse course and fall exceeds the interest rate premium that it earns.

Econ 101 Impacts

That’s what is happening now and the Econ 101 impact is that the strong dollar makes imports relatively cheaper for buyers in the U.S. but makes U.S. exports more expensive for foreign buyers. Imported wine will be cheaper because the currencies used to buy them are cheaper in dollar terms. U.S. wine exports will face a headwind because the strong dollar raises their cost to foreign-currency buyers.

A strong dollar is not, therefore, particular good news for U.S. wine businesses that compete with imports or have export aspirations. It is, however, potentially good news for U.S. importers of foreign wine and the owners of U.S. brands that rely upon bulk wine imports to fill their bottles, boxes, and cans. This bit of good news has been tempered recently, however, by international trade logistics issues that make imports more costly and delivery less reliable. The dollar’s value is just one factor in the complex web of wine trade.

The interest rate effect diverts the dollar from what is called the purchasing power parity (PPP) level, which is the exchange rate where the currency’s buying power is the same inside the U.S. as it is on the international markets. A currency that is at or close to its PPP level does of itself distort trade. If you have travelled abroad and thought the prices there were a lot cheaper (or more expensive) than back home, you have encountered a PPP distortion.

Big Mac Index Update

The Economist calls its Big Mac Index a “lighthearted” attempt to estimate the PPP level of exchange rates in order to see which are over-valued and under-valued using the ubiquitous fast-food hamburger’s price in local currencies as the foundation of analysis. It seemed like a silly idea when first revealed back in 1986, but the Big Mac Index has proved to be fairly accurate overall in its assessments. More often than not, major currencies have tended to converge over time towards their Big Mac PPP exchange rate.

So take a close look at the table at the top of this page (click on the image to enlarge it). The U.S. dollar is so strong that there are only a small number of major currencies — Switzerland in particular — that are over-valued relative to it. Most other currencies, including the Australian dollar, Argentine peso, and Chilean peso — are undervalued, which means their wine exports have an exchange-rate based competitive advantage in the U.S. market.

The euro is undervalued as well, but by much less than I might have guessed given that its value has tumbled toward dollar-euro parity in recent weeks.

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The Economist has also released an updated Big Mac index shown here, which is adjusted for differences in per capita GDP. The idea, in simple terms, is that many prices (especially for non-traded goods and services) will be higher in countries with higher income levels, so PPP settings need to take this into account.

Argentina and Hemingway

This adjustment is significant for some countries, as the table above shows. The Argentina peso, for example, is now calculated to be very much over-valued, not under-valued, and I think this is probably accurate. A Financial Times article published last week reports that peso’s black-market rate, which had been steady recently at about 200 pesos per dollar (compared with the official rate of about 130 pesos), has suddenly plunged toward 350 pesos. Such a shift is often a sign of a developing currency crisis.  Will the peso do a “Hemingway” — first decline slowly and then suddenly collapse? Stay tuned.

The currencies of Australia and Chile along with South Africa are still under-valued after the GDP adjustment, but the euro is shown to be over-valued, suggesting that, further depreciation is possible.

The U.S. is experiencing historically high inflation just now, which by itself would argue for a PPP-driven decline in the dollar’s value. But other major currency countries are having the same problem. And, in any case, rising U.S. interest rates, for as long as they last, will likely keep the dollar strong in the medium term.

The Bottom Line?

The bottom line? These are tricky times for exchange rates, with inflation pulling one way and interest rates the other. The dollar could continue to strengthen or, as expert Barry Eichengreen argued in a recent Financial Times, column, reverse course and fall.

Wine businesses that are sensitive to exchange rate changes need to be cautious indeed. You cannot control the exchange rate, but there are ways to hedge against unfavorable shifts using either forward exchange markets (you lock an exchange rate today for a set transaction in the future) or foreign exchange options (giving you the option to make a purchase or sale at a fixed future price).

Hedging is important if a business has significant costs or revenues in a foreign currency. Recent earnings reports suggest that some large and sophisticated businesses have not fully hedged their positions, however, with the result of unexpected earnings (or costs) due solely to exchange rate adjustments on otherwise stable transaction.

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What is a “Hemingway?” I have coined this term to characterize a particular pattern of decline. One of the characters in Hemmingway’s The Sun Also Rises is asked how he lost his fortune. Slowly and then suddenly, he replies.