Who Moved My Wine? The New Wine Buyers Who Play “Beat the Clock”

“Beat the Clock” was a television game show that made its debut on March 23, 1950 and ran in its original form until 1961 (it returned in several variations over the years and is currently available in a format featuring child contestants).

The show’s lasting appeal lies in the fact that even simple things become difficult, sometimes comically so, when the clock is ticking and the pressure mounts. If you remember the chocolate factory scene in “I Love Lucy,” you already know what I mean.

Who knew that buying wine would become a Beat the Clock challenge? But that’s what it has happened.

Supermarket Beat the Clock

Trying to beat the clock is fun and games on television, but it can be serious business in the real world. That’s why wine companies need to understand that supermarket wine shopping has changed in many ways — and the ticking clock is part of the problem.

I learned this by reading “How to Reach the Ever-Changing Beer Shopper” by Peter Frost on MillerCoors’s “Behind the Beer” blog. It is an interview with Jeff Long, MillerCoors’s “chief commercial solutions officer” (I’m guessing that has something to do with sales and marketing). Long notes how supermarket shopping’s clock has shifted in just a few years.

“Seven years ago, more than one-third of grocery store trips were for a stock-up. Shoppers would spend 45 minutes to an hour in a store, pushing a cart up and down the aisles and preparing for the week,” according to the article.

5 aisles, 10 items, 14 minutes … Go!

“Today? The stock-up represents less than a quarter of trips. A full 75 percent of all grocery trips take less than 14 minutes, with shoppers entering fewer than five aisles and buying fewer than 10 items.” And, I need to note, they are doing this while glancing (or more) at their smartphones.

Does this sound right to you? I have never timed myself, but I think my shopping tends more toward “strategic strike” than casual stock-up. So I guess I’m playing Beat the Clock.

The ticking clock affects beer purchases, according to Long. Instead of pausing at the beer wall and considering the dozens or even hundreds of options, he says, many buyers have already narrowed down their choices by focusing on the intended type of occasion. Then they make a lighting strike and move on.

Selling beer in this environment requires having a clear identity and making it obvious for the fast-moving consumer. “All of this combines to present new challenges for retailers to convert those visits into purchases and for suppliers to reach them before they get there,” according to Frost. “As center-store shopping shrinks and shopping trips become quicker,” Long notes, “front-of-store and out-of-aisle merchandising that plays off occasions is critical.”

What About Wine?

Since this is The Wine Economist and not The Beer Economist we need to think about what lessons this might have for wine and I think some of them are pretty obvious. Wine buyers and beer buyers are often different people, but they live in the same world and make buying decisions in same environment. Which means that they play beat the clock when they come up again the wine wall.

Two observations come quickly to mind. The first is that buying wine isn’t easy if you are playing beat the clock. Sorting through the hundreds of choices at prices that might range from less than $4 to more than $100 (based on my last visit to our local Safeway) requires focus. Beer is complicated, too, but it is easier to navigate than wine and, apparently, beer people know that the clock is ticking and respond accordingly. (I wrote about other types of problems of buying wine a few weeks ago.)

So maybe rushed consumers go for beer instead of wine. But maybe they don’t purchase either of them. In any case, it is easy to understand why buyers get anxious or confused, as one reader reported (see comments section of this recent column), when wines are moved around or changed. It upsets their well-planned strategy and wastes previous time. Who moved my wine! Arrrgh!

The second observation is that wines with clear, simple identities have an advantage when time and attention are scarce. Maybe this is a reason why branded wines seem to be winning the Land versus Brand battle these days. Safeway had a big stack of Butter Chardonnay right by the entrance near the deli when I stopped in today (that’s an example of the “front-of-store, out-of-aisle” display mentioned above). I’ll bet a lot of shoppers grab a bottle or two here rather than confronting the complicated wine wall selection.

Fortunately all consumers aren’t playing beat the clock when they go to buy wine and supermarkets do their best to slow them down as they enter the store. But time is an issue and people who sell wine need to take this characteristic into account along with many others if they want to ring up strong sales.

And Beat the Clock may not be the biggest problem wine faces. While some shoppers want to minimize the time they spend in stores, other don’t want to go there at all, preferring home-delivery. Wine buying is changing and wine selling needs to keep up.

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Special thanks to longtime reader Ken B. for suggesting the I look at the Behind the Beer story.

What Next? Wine Industry Mid-Year Report & Preliminary Brexit Analysis

July 12, 2016 By Mike Veseth in economic crisis, Economic impact, exchange rates, Supply and Demand, wine, wine distibution, wine markets 1 Comment

economist-cover “What next? was the question I asked to open my report at the Unified Wine & Grape Symposium‘s “State of the Industry” session in January. Risk and uncertainty were my forecast for 2016.

Bernie, Donald, Zika, Brexit. Look out! Anything can happen, I told the audience, although I ended with a Frank Sinatra theme. It could be a “Very Good Year” if we can dodge the many potential hazards.

I wasn’t the only one who was worried. Four speakers in a session on wine industry investment were asked about their expectations for 2016. All four said that the prospects for the U.S. wine industry were bright … unless something happened to the economy.

Cautious Optimism?

We are halfway through the year and the cautious optimism expressed earlier seems justified. The U.S. remains one of the few large economies to be growing, for example, and unemployment rates are low. The June jobs report offered evidence of further recovery. But confidence in economic growth seems very fragile and the Federal Reserve has hesitated repeatedly to raise key interest rates.

One worrisome indicator is the yield curve, which tracks the difference between short- and long-term interest rates. The yield curve has become unusually flat recently, a pattern that is sometimes associated with economic slowdowns. A recent Deutsche Bank analysis of the yield curve forecasts a 60% chance of a recession in the U.S. in the next 12 months. Yikes!

Interest rates around the world are so low (and sometimes even negative) that policy makers are worried. What if something goes wrong? How can we push interest rates even lower? Would it make any difference if we did? With fiscal policy handcuffed by political chaos in many countries and monetary policy seemingly out of ammunition, there is concern that a crisis in one country could easily spread to others.

What next? That’s still the right question, both in general and when it comes to wine. While the U.S. wine market continues to grow and attract the attention of international competitors, the Nielsen figures reported in the July 2016 issue of Wine Business Monthly suggest caution. Off-premise wine sales increased by a rate of just 1.1 percent overall in the four weeks ending April 23, 2016, indicating a possible deceleration of earlier more healthy growth.

Brexit’s Many Potential Impacts

The list of potential challenges and threats is very long but the U.K.’s vote to leave the European Union (a.k.a. Brexit) is at the top of most lists. What does Brexit mean to the wine business? The answer is that it is too soon to be sure, but here is a quick guide to what to look out for and the impact on wine.

The biggest impacts of Brexit to far have been political, with the heads of the Conservative Party and the nationalist UKIP group both resigning (for very different reasons) and Labour’s leader under sharp attack from his own members. Since British tax policy has been a significant burden on wine sales there in recent years, the uncertainty about the who will lead and where she (Theresa May will take over as Prime Minister in the next day or so) will want to go is significant for wine.

The partial political vacuum in England has seemingly increased the influence of Scotland’s talented leader Nicola Sturgeon, who suggests that Scotland might once again consider leaving the U.K. (a Scexit?) in order to remain closely linked to the E.U. Sturgeon has taken strong anti-alcohol positions, which could affect wine policy, although this is way down the list of things to worry about if Scotland breaks away and the U.K. breaks apart.

Financial markets react to news more quickly than the “real” economy and the rise of the U.S. dollar and fall of the British Pound are the most visible effects so far. The Pound has tumbled dramatically as the graph above show and some observers believe that it will continue its descent although this is far from certain. newfx

Short Run: Exchange Rate Effects

The falling Pound is important because, as this table of U.S. exports for the first quarter of 2016 from Wine by Numbers indicates, the U.K. has become a more important market for U.S. wine exports in recent years. The U.K. is second to Canada in U.S. bottled wine exports and first in the bulk wine market.

The falling Pound makes imports from the U.S. and other wine nations more expensive in the U.K. U.K. consumers are notoriously price sensitive, so the falling Pound could produce substantial wine demand impacts, especially if there is a U.K. recession, as many expect, due to falling investment (see below).

brexit

The exchange rate effect will hurt U.S. exports to the U.K., but the biggest impacts will be on other countries that rely upon the British market to a greater extent than we do. Australia, South Africa and of course European wine producers will take a bigger hit.

The problem is compounded by the fact that supermarkets are a critical sales vector in the U.K. and much of the food they sell is imported and will therefore be more costly to source. Supermarket margins are likely to be squeezed as they attempt to pass on higher costs to consumers with uncertain economic prospects.

Don’t be surprised if this puts pressure on foreign wine suppliers to cut their wholesale prices to British supermarket buyers and thus absorb some of the exchange rate impact. That is an incentive to develop alternative markets … such as the U.S. The margin wars are just getting started.

So the wine news is not very good in the U.K., where wine prices are likely to rise, incomes could fall, wine taxes may also increase, margins come under attack, and prohibitionist forces may be strengthened. Bad news for the British who drink wine and bad news for others including U.S. producers who want to sell it to them.

Long Run: The Vultures Circle

But the biggest impacts are likely to be the long-term structural changes that will be required if and when Britain or England or whoever is left leaves the European Union and the single market. The U.K. is an important wine center both because of the large British domestic market and also because of its essentially unrestricted access to European markets and resources. It is too soon to know how this will change for wine, but it is instructive to watch other sectors to get a sense of the dynamic.

There is already concern about disinvestment in British steel and automobile manufacturing, for example, if resources are shifted into other E.U. zones. Much of British auto production is exported and would be disadvantaged if the U.K. loses its open access to E.U. markets. Voters in Sunderland may eventually rue their strong Brexit support if Nissan moves production (and some of the current 7000 factory jobs) away from its big plant there to new homes in the E.U. heartland.

And everyone in The City, London’s big financial center, is openly concerned, too. London residents voted overwhelmingly to remain in the E.U. in part because of their desire to protect The City’s economic standing (and their jobs), which would diminish if movements of capital and skilled workers to and from the continent were restricted.

Any major disruption in The City will have widespread impacts on wine, especially the on-premise trade but not limited to that. The vultures (in the form of European cities hungry for those high-paying finance jobs) have already started circling.

I am still cautiously optimistic for the U.S. wine economy and for Britain, too, but there are lots of risks to consider. That question — What Next? — still applies.

The “Demolition Man” Syndrome: A Vision of the Future of Wine in America?

June 28, 2016 By Mike Veseth in economic crisis, Economic impact, new normal, New Zealand, Rabobank, restaurant wine, Supply and Demand, wine, wine markets 4 Comments

I’ve been catching up on my wine industry reading and one report that grabbed by attention is Rabobank’s May 2016 Industry Note, “The Premiumization Conundrum”.

The gist of the analysis is that the premiumization trend in the U.S. wine market isn’t simply a case of what Paul Krugman calls “up and down economics” — in this case demand for $10+ wine is up, demand for cheaper wines is down –but rather it needs to be understood in the context of a broader set of wine market changes.

Not Just Up and Down

The Rabobank report examines five important tensions that are part of the premiumization syndrome:

Demand for premium vs. basic wine grapes
Securing long-term premium grape supply vs. managing return on capital
Wholesaler consolidation and retail “chainification” of wine vs. premiumization
Traditional retail vs. DTC vs. NIMBY
Domestic wine vs. imports

As I was reading the Rabobank report I began to wonder how these trends might unfold if continued at their present rates well into the future. In other words I was doing exactly what economists are trained not to do, which is engage in straight line projection. The future is out there somewhere, but it is almost never on a straight line that connects the last few dots on your time-series chart and then continues on out to infinity … and beyond.

But humor me with a little thought experiment. What might the future look like under the admittedly unlikely “straight-line trend projection” circumstances? Take today’s trends as Rabobank reports and fly them straight out to wherever they take you.

Pondering this thought, I unexpectedly found myself channeling a 1993 Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes, and Sandra Bullock film called Demolition Man. Stallone plays a police officer named John Spartan who was put into suspended animation only to be awakened 36 years into the future in 2032 in order to catch Wesley Snipe’s bad guy character.

All Taco Bell Now

Stallone’s updated Rip Van Winkle encounters a lot that surprises or shocks him including, as in the film scene above, the inconvenient truth about retail consolidation run amuck. Invited to dinner and dancing at a Taco Bell, he can’t help but think, Taco Bell? Really?

But it really is, as Bullock’s character explains. Taco Bell was the only chain to survive the franchise wars and now all restaurants are Taco Bells. “No way!” Way!

Rabobank’s report notes a number of important trends that, if taken to a ridiculous Taco Bell kind of extreme, might produce something that Demolition Man would recognize. Here are three that I can’t help pondering.

All MoVin Now

The fictional John Spartan goes shopping for wine in 2032 San Angeles and the first place he sees is a big box MoVin store, bigger than the biggest wine-beer-spirits stores of the past, but recognizably the same concept. He continues on in search for a small, specialist shop, but soon runs across another MoVin. And then another and another and slowly it comes to him that just as all restaurants are Taco Bell, all wine is now retailed by MoVin. 1353026500232-577831165

How did this happen? Well, as the Rabobank report notes, all of the growth in off-premises retail sales of wine in the U.S. in the last couple of years has come through retail chains, not independent shops and stores. Take away BevMo, Total Wine, Costco and other multiple retailers (I assume Kroger fits here, too) and Rabobank’s data show off-premises wine sales would be flat.

Follow that trend to its illogical extreme, with the chains seizing market share each year, add logical pressure to consolidate and — hey, presto! — you have a retail wine monopoly.

How did MoVin win this fictional competition over other chains? Because, in this made-up universe, they drew upon the growing consolidation in distribution channels (another Rabobank finding).

Yes, all wine is sold by MoVin in 2032 because they are a wholly-owned subsidiary of NSEW (North-South-East-West), the only company to survive the vicious distributor wars of 2021.

All Kiwi White Now

There are lots of different super-premium brands on offer at the big box wine store of the future, but the vast array of colorful labels and fictional names actually disguises a certain sameness. Much of the wine comes from the same few large producers, the ones who were able to able to secure reliable quality grape supplies in the grape wars back before 2022, when the last independent North Coast vineyard was swallowed up.

The imperative to lock up vineyard resources is another of the trends that Rabobank spotlights and it is natural to wonder where it will all end. But that isn’t the only source of concern. affiche2

When John Spartan looks closely at the super-premium white wines that he favors (because they pair so well with his favorite Taco Bell fish tacos), he slowly realizes that they are all made by a few large multinational firms in New Zealand. Just as Taco Bell conquered food, the Kiwis were the victors of the white wine wars.

The one constant of U.S. wine import statistics in recent years has been that New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc imports will grow, often faster than any other import category. I keep waiting for the run to end (and I know Kiwi producers who hold their breath and cross their fingers because they are worried, too). But nothing has stopped or even seriously slowed down New Zealand wine imports so far. And you know where that can lead!

You Want Grapes with that Wine?

What about inexpensive wine? Glad you asked because that’s where John Spartan had his harshest shock — it made him want to give up wine altogether. It seems that as grape supply became less and less secure and falling prices pushed basic grape producers to other crops like almonds and pistachios, wineries were forced to weaken links to particular regions and then to grapes themselves.

Appellations and geographic designations generally are an expensive luxury if you’re not sure if you can buy the grapes you need to maintain a region-specific brand, so they had to go. And then wine companies gave up specific grape variety designations for the wines for essentially the same reason. All inexpensive wines in 2032 are now proprietary blends. No one knows what might be in the bottle, box or can or where it might have come from. Not many seem to care.

Absent place of origin and clearly-identified grape variety components, inexpensive wines evolved into branded alcoholic beverages and, once consumers accepted that, there wasn’t any reason why they had to be made out of grapes any more. The laws were re-written to allow inexpensive wine-like products to be made and marketed and people lapped them up. Wine for the masses endured, but in an ersatz Taco Bell kind of way.

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Or at least that’s where bad economic analysis (and not enough sleep) takes you if you follow recent trends to ridiculous extremes, which I have done here just for fun, but the Rabobank report definitely avoids.

The future? Taco Bell? No Way! That’ll never happen. Don’t worry. Go back to sleep. G’night!

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Thanks to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who indirectly inspired this column. He told the story of the “Demolition Man” Taco Bell scene in his best-selling 2000 book about globalization, The Lexus and the Olive Tree.

The “Big & Hot” Guide to Best-selling U.S. Wine Brands

August 18, 2015 By Mike Veseth in brands, Supply and Demand, wine, wine brands, wine markets 1 Comment

The August 2015 issue of Wines & Vines magazine is full of interesting and useful information as usual. One article that caught my eye provides IRI off-premise wine sales data for the top 20 U.S. wine brands. What are the best-selling off-premise brands? What’s hot (and what’s not)?

Bigfoot Barefoot?

The best-selling brand in the IRI league table is Gallo’s Barefoot, which accounted for an incredible $622 million in sales in the 52 weeks ending on June 14, 2015. That’s 5% more than the previous year in value terms and a 7% increase in volume. Congratulations to Gallo on their great success with this popular-priced ($5.64 average) wine. It is commonplace to say today that the sub-$9 wine category is in a slump, but Barefoot is the obvious exception to the rule

Sutter Home from Trinchero Family Estates is #2, but a long way back at $356 million sales. The rule does apply here — value is down 2% on the year and volume is down 3%. The Wine Group’s Franzia Box is just behind with $325 million in sales on the year, flat in value terms and down 5% in volume. Franzia’s average price per 750 ml equivalent is up 11 cents to $2.17 compared with Sutter Home’s $5.25.

Who are the other big players? Here are the remaining members of the top ten listed in order: #4 Woodbridge by Robert Mondavi (Constellation), #5 Yellow Tail, #6 Kendall Jackson, #7 Beringer (Treasury), #8 Chateau Ste Michelle, #9 Cupcake (The Wine Group), and #10 Mènage à Trois (Trinchero).

The next ten largest brands includes four Gallo product lines (Gallo Family Vineyards, Apothic, Carlo Rossi and Livingston Cellars), four from Constellation Brands (Black Box, Clos Du Bois, Robert Mondavi Private Selection and Rex Goliath) plus 14 Hands from Ste Michelle and Bogle Vineyards.

Clearly the Big Three companies (Gallo, Constellation and The Wine Group) dominate the list, but note how Trinchero and Ste Michelle punch above their weight. Kudos to Bogle for their success, too.

Hot N Cold Brands

The biggest wine brands are not always the hottest brands and the IRI data reported in Wines & Vines bears this out. As noted above, many of the top brands are experiencing slower sales in value terms including Sutter Home (-2%), Yellow Tail (-5%), Gallo Family Vineyards (-2%), Carlo Rossi (-3%), Clos Du Bois (-2%), Mondavi Private Selection (-4%), Livingston Cellars (-5%) and Rex Goliath (-4%).

These declines are matched by some spectacular gains elsewhere on the wine wall, often at much higher price points. Mènage à Trois tops the Hot List with 24% growth in value and 23% increase in volume, continuing its incredible market run. Black Box is right behind with 23% value growth. Gallo’s Apothic is next 21% value growth.

Continuing down the Hot List (among the 20 largest brands) is 14 Hands (+17%), Bogle (+15%) and Chateau Ste Michelle (12% value growth).

When you’re hot you’re hot, I guess. While Beringer and Clos Du Bois have experienced falling average prices according to IRI (-11 cents per bottle equivalent for Beringer and -27 cents for Clos Du Bois), Mènage à Trois has seen its average price rise by 10 cents while Apothic’s average price holds steady at $9.58.

Remember that these are data for off-premise sales only and all data sources have limitations, so draw conclusions cautiously. Thanks to Wines & Vines for publishing this interesting snapshot of the U.S. wine market in transition. What will the final picture look like? Stay tuned to find out.

Speaking of Hot N Cold …

California Conundrum: The Best of Wines, The Worst of Wines?

July 14, 2015 By Mike Veseth in Rabobank, Supply and Demand, wine markets 5 Comments

“It was the best of wines, it was the worst of wines (apologies to fans of Charles Dickens). The global wine glass seems both quite empty and full to the brim.”

These are the opening lines of my 2011 book Wine Wars and if you change “global” to “California” they apply very well to the situation today. That’s why I will be in Napa Valley next week, speaking at the California Association of Winegrape Growers‘annual meeting summer conference (I’ll paste the conference program at the end of this column). There’s good news for California wine these days and bad news, too.

When is a Drought a Good Thing?

The good/bad – best/worst situation exists in several dimensions. Take the case of water. The on-going drought in California is on everyone’s mind, but its impact has been very different in different regions. The recent news from Napa Valley, for example, is that the drought can be beneficial in terms of wine quality. Smaller grapes, the story goes, produce more intense wines. Good news for those who drink or make Napa Cabernet, we are told.

I can’t tell you how many of my friends have told me how amazing it is that four years of drought are actually good for California wine! Really? Well, I’m amazed too, but because there much more to California wine than Napa Valley. To focus just on Napa and the North Coast as many articles have done is misleading about the overall situation.

Napa Valley produces a lot of wine, but it is more or less a drop in the bucket compared with the huge wine production in other parts of California where the drought situation is very different. Higher costs and lower yields are not good news to most California producers, who are less able to extract a quality premium and suffer falling margins.

Many winegrowers have grubbed up their vines, in fact, switching to higher-value crops in the face of poor winegrape profitability. Paradoxically, however, some farmers are actually switching into grapes from other thirstier or less drought-tolerant crops, presumably because they see scarce water as a long term trend. It’s a complicated situation.

Demand and Supply Apply (As Usual)

Changing market conditions add to the good news/bad news conundrum. Rabobank reports that the current excess supply situation for under-$10 California value wines (as opposed to higher-price North Coast and mid-price Central Coast wines) is likely to go from a worrisome problem to a real crisis in the next few years, as this graphic suggests.

A recent report by Allied Grape Growers reinforces this message. AGG President Nat DuBuduo noted grape prices as low as $15o per ton in the San Juaquin Valley and as high as $6000 per ton in the North Coast.

Part of the problem is that, for reasons I discussed earlier this year on The Wine Economist, the momentum in wine demand has shifted to premium and super-premium wines with lower-priced wine sales stagnant or falling. At the same time, however, potential production of value wine is about to increase dramatically because of vineyard decisions made a few years ago when market conditions were much different.

Rabobank estimates that 100,000 acres of currently non-producing wine grapes will come into production in the next three years. That my friends is a lot of wine to sell. Where is the increased acreage? Don’t look in Napa Valley, where rising demand and limited supply push prices higher and higher. Some of it is in the Central Coast, according to Rabobank, where demand is rising to potentially match the larger supply.

A lot of it is in the Central Valley when California’s value wines are produced and where prices are already low. This emerging wine lake will add to the current problem of full tanks and lackluster sales of value wines. Bad news for Central Valley winegrowers who are most affected by this pattern.

Best of Wines and the Worst, Too

Best of wines, worst of wines? The Rabobank report suggests a building crisis in one part of the California wine industry while it’s happy days in the North Coast with Central Coast wine seeking to balance rising demand and supply.

My job at the CAWG meetings will be to analyze the international and global aspects of the complicated situation and my remarks will suggests that this is a time of great uncertainty on these fronts, with important risks that might not come from usual sources. Combined with what the other speakers will offer I think it will be a great discussion.

Here’s the agenda for the sessions. Hope to see many of my California wine industry friends in Napa.

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CAWG’s Annual Business Meeting & Conference, on Thursday, July 23, 2015

Wine Market Update and Insights explores the interplay between current trends in U.S. wine consumer behavior, the influence of foreign wines in the U.S. market, and what California growers and wineries need to do to stay competitive. Mike Veseth, Editor of The Wine Economist and John Gillespie, Wine Market Council president, will speak.

How Do We Grow the Market for California Wines? Wine consumption in the United States continues to grow, but that growth is unevenly distributed and competition in the domestic beverage alcohol market is fierce. California winegrape growers must compete with foreign wine growers, and domestic producers of craft beers and distilled spirits. This session will consider the current trends, conditions and future views on wine industry growth, consumer demand trends and how growers and wineries must position themselves to compete and grow market share here and abroad. Amy Hoopes, Chief Marketing Officer/Executive Vice President, Global Sales, Wente Family Estates and Rob McMillan, Executive Vice President and Founder Silicon Valley Bank Wine Division, will speak.

Update from Washington, DC will highlight a variety of federal policy issues, including taxes, water, immigration and more. Louie Perry, CAWG’s federal lobbying team member from Cornerstone Government Affairs in Washington, DC, will provide the update.

The View from Trinchero Family Estates will be the luncheon keynote address from Bob Torkelson, president and COO of Trinchero Family Estates. Mr. Torkelson will share his insights and analysis on leading industry trends and issues.

The 41st Annual Business Meeting will take place after the speaker program, during lunch.

Trading Up? The New Conventional Wisdom About the U.S. Wine Market

April 7, 2015 By Mike Veseth in economic crisis, new normal, Supply and Demand, wine brands, wine markets, wine price 9 Comments

Last week I wrote about the unexpected state of the U.S. wine market today, where sales of wines above about $9 are strong and growing while the below $9 segments are stagnant or in decline. Thinking back to the dismal state of the wine market a few years ago, with trading down and heavy discounting, the current situation comes as a big surprise.

What accounts for the transformation of the U.S. wine market? And is this the “new normal” that we should expect for future years? Let’s look at the emerging conventional wisdom on these questions.

Trading Up?

I don’t know many people who think that the shift toward more expensive wines is a simple reversal of the recession years’ trading down, although that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen. Consumers seem as price sensitive as ever, which is why store shelves are still papered with “shelf talkers” like the one shown here that beckon buyers with discounted prices.

Yes, discounting is still going on, although perhaps not quite at the same level as during the Great Recession. The best argument for trading up is that consumers who had an opportunity to sample better wines during the deep discount days and liked them now are feeling more economically secure and are continuing to buy them at higher prices. I’m sure that this is happening to a certain extent, but I don’t think it is the whole story. Consumers are simply too focused on price to have suddenly changed.

Price resistance means that most consumers aren’t willing to pay more for the same or similar wine, but they are willing to spend more for something different. Who is doing this?

The Millennial Theory

One theory holds that the changing shape of the wine market is driven by younger wine drinkers — we often call them the millennials here in the U.S. but I have also seen the term “echo boomers” used and Constellation’s latest Project Genome study calls them “engaged newcomers.” As a group they tend to buy wine less frequently than some other groups (they also drink spirits, craft beers and so on) but spend more per bottle. This is the opposite of my behavior as a young wine drinker and probably a good thing.

If what we think we know about millennials is true, then they can account for some of the trend towards higher price wine sales, but they are certainly not the whole story. They don’t explain the shift away from lower-priced wines because they were never the driving force there. And they cannot account for all of the upmarket shift because at this point they don’t buy enough wine to move the whole market this way. Millennials are part of the story, but not the whole answer. What else?

The Bad Wine Theory

One very interesting theory is that the relative quality of wine below about $9 has fallen, driving customers away in search of something better to drink. They have found it, too, in craft beers, ciders and spirits.

W. Blake Gray recently made this point in a column titled “Wine under $10 sucks. Should we care?” Tim Atkin made a similar point about wine in the UK market. It’s very difficult to find decent wine below £5, he says, which is a change from the past.

A recent article on Bibendum’s website tells the sad UK story, which this graphic illustrates. If you want to get value in wine in the UK, it seems you have to move upmarket. The actual cost of the wine is more than a third of the total cost of a £20 bottle, but less than 10% of the cost of a £5 wine. Shocking!

This deteriorating value of inexpensive wines, if true, is a surprising situation. Only a few years ago we experienced something of a revolution when the character of commercial quality wine improved quite dramatically (I called it the Miracle of Two Buck Chuck in my book Wine Wars). A structural surplus of decent wine and grapes on the U.S. and world markets made it possible for winemakers to assemble products at low price points that rivaled some brands in higher price segments. The unexpected value they provided drew millions of consumers into the wine markets Is poor quality and value pushing them away?

Well, poor value is certainly part of the answer in the U.K., where high wine duties have distorted the market and undone much of the miracle of the past. And I have some friends in California who complain that cheaper and lower quality bulk wine imports are now filling bottles of California-brand wine. The brand is associated with California (like Barefoot, for example) but the wines themselves come from many places (and are so-designated on the packaging).

Have quality and value suffered? I’m an economist not a wine critic, so I will leave it up to you to decide, but some of my California friends think that’s what’s happened. If this is true, then where is the better California wine going? Some of it is sitting in tanks, which are pretty full after a couple of generous vintages in a row. The rest? Some of it, I think, fills the bottles of wine brands specially created for the new market environment.

The Branded Age

This supply-side theory holds that smart wine executives have noticed that many consumers are willing to pay more for something different (and are put off by the commodity wines) and they have responded by creating new brands to fill specific upscale market niches. This helps explain the great proliferation of wine brands and even virtual wineries on the scene.

Each year I enjoy Jon Fredriksen’s talk about the state of the U.S. wine market at the Unified Wine and Grape Symposium, but recently I have noticed that his list of the hottest wine brands is full of unfamiliar (to me) names. These aren’t new wineries, simply new brands created by innovative existing large- and medium-sized wine firms.

Jon’s data suggest to me that these are some of the wines that are attracting buyer interest and pulling the market along. An example? Take The Wine Group, which is the second largest wine producer in the U.S. with 57.5 million case sales according to Wine Business Monthly. A few years ago I thought of them in terms of brands like Almaden and Franzia wines, which are in that lower market tier that is stagnating today.

Now when I think of The Wine Group I think of Cupcake Vineyards, which at 3 million cases is small compared to Franzia’s 26 million, but perfectly fits that upmarket profile and is often priced right at or just above key $9-$10 threshold along with Apothic, 14 Hands and other hot brands.

Which Theory? The New New Normal?

No single theory explains what has happened and the market is full of special cases. Take Argentinian wines, for example. Customers are buying more expensive products from Argentina now in part because the cheaper labels have disappeared. With inflation still soaring and the exchange rate stuck, many Argentinean firms cannot afford to export cheaper Malbecs to the U.S., which shifts the center of gravity upmarket.

All these ideas (and others, too) are part of the explanation of today’s transformed market. It’s a perfect story of effects (or a train wreck, depending which end of the market you are in). Is this the new “new normal” and, if so, how long will it last? That’s a question for next week.

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Thanks to everyone who commented on last week’s columns — great ideas! Keep them coming.

Wine Vision Takeaway Messages

December 2, 2014 By Mike Veseth in Supply and Demand, wine brands, wine markets 1 Comment

Click on the image above to view my interview with BeverageDaily.com editor Ben Bouckley at Wine Vision 2014.

I’m back from Wine Vision 2014 and reviewing my notes in search of the most important takeaway messages. Not an easy task in this case, because the content stream was so rich and varied. Not sure whether the best ideas came from the formal program or casual conversations. That’s a sign that the organizers did their job of assembling a critical mass of thinkers and doers from inside and outside the global wine trade.

Many of the points that participants found particularly useful focused on new or emerging trends. Lots of discussion of new consumers (millennials, for example), new marketing opportunities (direct-to-consumer both generally and via in-home “meet the winemaker” type events), and new competitors within the alcoholic beverage category, some of which are so “innovative” that they seem poised to “jump the shark” into oblivion.

We were informed and entertained by presentations on what to do and — more critically — what not to do in social media relations (lots of cringing at the dumb things that smart people can do on Twitter and Facebook). And we were introduced to packaging and label innovations, including my first experience with Amorim’s new “twist off” Helix cork stopper/bottle package. Something for everyone at this conference.

Big Bang Theory

My presentation probed four powerful forces that have shaped the wine world of today — the “big bang” of global wine production that has redrawn the world wine map, the new “lingual franca” of wine, which now defines the competitive landscape, the forces of disintermediation that have changed the game from monopoly to monopsony, and the “new wine wars”realignment of interests within the wine business.

Reading through press coverage and Twitter comments, I find that different people focused on different elements of my presentation, which is probably as it should be. In the video above, for example, BeverageDaily.com editor Ben Bouckley drills in on the importance of authenticity and the new wine wars and, in response to a question, I highlight LVMH wine chief Jean-Guillaume Prats‘ comments about sustainability. Lots of interesting ideas in the air.

UK Wine Trade at the Crossroads?

Wine Vision disappointed me in only one respect — not what was said but what wasn’t. In the run-up to the event I suggested that this was the perfect time and place for an open discussion of power dynamics in UK supplier-retailer relations. The Tescogate financial scandal seems to have nothing to do with the wine trade, I wrote, but it has created an opening where a discussion of power in the UK wine world might be usefully and openly engaged. As a recovering liberal arts college professor, open discussion is in my blood, so naturally I wanted to see it happen here.

But it didn’t happen and perhaps it never will. I tried to open the door in my presentation, drawing a parallel between UK wine retailers and Amazon.com in terms of power dynamics. But no one really jumped at the opportunity and in any case I was whisked off the stage before anyone could comment or ask a question. Time was up, I guess.

Pernod Ricard UK chief Denis O’Flynn attempted to suggest that supplier-retailer relations were at a “crossroads,” but without any more success than I had. A panel on supplier-retailer relations managed to almost entirely avoid the topic. Interesting! It felt like a “Voldemort” moment (“he who must not be named,” for those of you who are not Harry Potter fans).

Race to the Bottom?

Maybe, as a friend suggests, it was just British politeness — must not say anything that might make someone uncomfortable. Or maybe it was, as the wise Adrian Bridge suggested, simply that nothing was going to change. Might be better to invest energy in areas where progress is possible. He’s probably right and I’m probably wrong.

But I really think that something has to change. Retailers cut price to increase market share (in the process training consumers to think of wine as just another 3-for-£10 commodity). Then they push suppliers for lower costs to restore margins before another round of price cuts kicks in. The fact that the UK Treasury’s excise tax share of the transaction has increased so much only makes matters worse, eroding margins and accelerating the downward spiral spin.

The UK wine business is caught in a dangerous race-to-the-bottom cycle and it isn’t going to turn around unless and until something changes. Is it impolite to talk about this? Denial, as I like to say, isn’t just a river in Egypt.

I’m on the “State of the Industry” panel again in January at the Unified Wine & Grape Symposium in Sacramento. Look for further commentary there.

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The issue of supplier-retailer relations isn’t just about Tesco, but the fact of Tescogate puts that firm, the world’s largest wine retailer — in the spotlight. Dan Jago, the head of Tesco’s wine department, was originally scheduled to speak at Wine Vision, but withdrew when he, along with other department heads, was suspended pending the investigation. (It is now rumored that Jago will leave the company.) Laura Jewel MW, the head of Tesco’s wine development program, stepped in to replace him but a week after the conference she seem poised to leave Tesco to take a position as UK and Europe director of Wine Australia. As Jancis Robinson said on Twitter, “Who’s left at Tesco?” Good question. Maybe some of the UK insiders at the conference knew about these upcoming changes and so avoided any situation where they might have to comment? Pure speculation.

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Thanks to Wine Vision for inviting me to speak! It’s a well-organized and very successful event — worth the long flight from Seattle to London. Thanks to participants and fellow speakers for making this such an interesting and worthwhile conference.