Today is July 14, France’s national day — Bastille Day — and it is a good moment to consider Rosè and the democratization of French wine and wine in general.

One thing that I like about Rosè is that is symbolizes to a certain degree the classic values of freedom (libertè) and equality (ègalitè).  There isn’t any fixed recipe for Rosè. Winemakers have considerable liberty in choosing grapes, blends, and styles. And Rosè levels the playing field a bit, too, allowing less well-known regions to compete with the elites.

I have friends who tell me they just don’t like Rosè — and I believe them — but which Rosè offends them? There are so many different styles that it seems like there would be something for everyone. If you don’t like Rosè maybe you just haven’t tried the right one yet. Sue and I have sampled Rosè wine all around the world (see this list of global Rosè wines of note from the recent Decanter wine competition) and enjoyed pink wine’s diversity of hues, flavors, and aromas.

 Libertè, ègalitè

French wines are traditionally identified by place, a practice that privileges a few elite regions and their wines. Bordeaux. Burgundy. And especially Champagne. This is not an accident. As I wrote in my book Money, Taste, and Wine: It’s Complicated, the appellation system was more or less invented by Champagne producers to protect their sparkling wines first from copycat wines produced elsewhere and then from sub-standard quality wines made at home.  Only Champagne was Champagne, which consigned many first-class French sparkling wines to the third class carriage.

The famous Classification of 1855 established a pecking order for Bordeaux wines. It is not a big stretch to move to the idea that wine in general is rank-ordered, with the most famous names at the top. France has lots of different wines (even more different wines than cheeses, if that is possible), but they are not equal, at least in the marketplace.

This situation is changing. The popularity of Prosecco has weakened Champagne’s hegemony. Besides, the joyous gatherings where special corks are popped are fewer and smaller in the age of Covid-19. Bordeaux, which priced itself into irrelevance in some ciercles, has descended a bit with softer prices flowing out of this year’s unusual en primeur circus.

The Pink Wine Boom

But the biggest force in the growing democratization of French wine is Rosè. Sales of French Rosè were booming in the U.S. before the crisis and continue to be very strong. Indeed, French wine today rides on a pink wave. This is apparently true even within France, where reports suggest that pink outsells white wine in French supermarkets. Incroyable!

Yes, I know there is a hierarchy within the Rosè world. Provence is a first among unequals in the opinion of some. But even taking this into account, I think that Rosè is the wine of French democracy. What is Rosè after all? It is not a region (Rosè is made all over France and the world). It is not a grape variety, either. Rosè wines from all over France and sometimes all over the world are often displayed together in shops and supermarkets, giving humble appellations and obscure grape varieties an opportunity to compete on their own terms, which does not happen very often in the world of wine.

An Arrogant Frog?

Three wines that we received from Paul Mas illustrate these points very well. Les Domaines Paul Mas is an ambitious family wine business rooted in the South of France. Paul Mas reminds me of Jackson Family wines in California. Jackson is best know for its high-volume Kendall-Jackson wines, especially the popular Chardonnay. But when you look more closely you see a collection of focused, high quality wineries that together explore the complex possibilities of the region’s terroir.

Paul Mas is a little bit like that. You might know it best in the U.S. for its popular Arrogant Frog wines. Labels feature a snooty but suave wine-drinking, beret-wearing frog. The wines were fine when I first encountered them, as I recall, but the marketing was the thing that caught my attention. Arrogant Frog is still with us (there is a Chateau Arrogant Frog) and better than ever, but under Jean-Claude Mas’s leadership the firm has grown and focused its attention on the specific terroirs of Languedoc and Rousillion. We tasted and appreciated several of these wines when we visited Languedoc and Roussillon two years ago. So we were pleased to get the chance to focus on the pink wine portfolio.

Three Shades of Pink

We tasted three very different Paul Mas Rosè wines. The first is the Côté Mas Rosè Aurore, a blend of Grenache, Cinsault, and Syrah with the IGP Pays d’Oc designation. You get a full liter of this fun wine for about $12.99. Full of flavor, the packaging (see image above) emphasizes casual elegance and screams “picnic.” Picnics can be rustic or elegant and this wine would work either way. You would not regret opening this bottle on a warm day in the company of friends (social distanced friends, of course).

Next came Chateau Lauriga, a Syrah and Grenache blend, AOP Côtes du Roussillon, with a retail price of about $20. Lighter, more elegant, a very different take on Rosè, which is as it should be since both the blend and the terroir are different. A bit more serious, too, if you know what I mean.

We enjoyed both these wines with early summer meals, but our favorite was the Domaine Lauriga Le Gris. I’m not sure what made this wine stand out, but we just loved it. Could be the grape variety, terroir, or maybe the older vines (43 years old) made the difference.  Le Gris is 100% Grenache Gris, designated IGP Côtes Catalanes. At about $14 per bottle, it sits comfortably in the Rosè market sweet spot.

A Mind of Its Own

Do you see why I associate these and other Rosè wines with libertè and ègalitè?  Speaking of libertè, there’s one more Rosè wine I want to tell you about.

Our friend Caro Feely (author of several  excellent wine books), invited us to zoom into a virtual tasting with members of Chateau Feely‘s wine club. Chateau Feely is a biodynamic estate in Saussignac, about an hour from Bordeaux. Caro’s books document the challenges and satisfactions Caro and family experienced as they worked endless hours to make their vineyard sustainable in every sense. I recommend the books to anyone who is thinking about buying a vineyard to winery.

The subject was Rosè and the intimate internet audience was pleased to sample two of Feely’s fine Rosè wines, an experience that might have changed how they think of Saussignac, Rosè, or both. One of the wines especially caught my attention.

It is called Libertè. Made with native yeasts from Cabernet Sauvignon grapes (one of the approved varieties for Bergerac AOP), the wine exploited its freedom by taking an unusually long time to complete fermentation, thus earning its designation. It is a wine with a mind of its own. Everyone agreed that Liberty’s taste is something special.

So please raise a glass of Rosè and join me in a toast.  Libertè, ègalitè, Rosè!

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If you want to know more about Rosè you should read Elizabeth Gabay’s recent book on the pink wine revolution. Here is our review. 

Canned wine has been around for a while, but has gained traction in just the last couple of years.  Some observers  are suspicious that it is just a fad — a flash in the pan — that won’t last for long.  If that’s true, then it is an impressive flash. Canned wine sales in the off-premises channels that the Nielsen company measures were $70 million for the 52 weeks ending June 15, 2019. That’s 69% growth for the year. In a market where growth is hard to find, canned wine is a winner.

(The graph above shows Nielsen data for sales through 4/20/2019. I see more canned wine brands and SKUs on the store shelves every week.)

What’s more, Nielsen research suggests that canned wine sales are weighted toward  younger consumers — the ones that many observers argue are so reluctant to engage with wine.  Fad or trend? I think cans are a thing although there might be some seasonality that will distort conclusions until we have more data.

Too Much of a Good Thing?

Cans have many advantages when it comes to wine. Convenience is often cited and it is true that a can of wine is easy to toss into your backpack or picnic basket if you are headed out for an adventure. But cans are more than the trail mix of wine.

Michelle Williams’s Forbes column “Is the Future of Wine in the Can?”   presents an optimistic case for canned wine, giving special attention to wineries in Oregon and Texas, two regions where wine is booming, that have embraced the can.

Amber LeBeau of the Spitbucket blog argues that the traditional 750 ml wine bottle gets in the way for the growing numbers of consumers both young and old who are concerned about limiting their alcohol consumption or avoiding waste. Too much wine to consume at one time can be too much of a good thing.

Smaller bottles are one solution and cans (most of which hold about two glasses each) and premium boxed wine (where you can dispense as much or little as needed) are good solutions. Maybe that’s a reason why the two fastest-growing wine packaging categories are canned wine and premium box wine.

I appreciate the alcohol issue and the fact that smaller container fit a more sober lifestyle. But my friend  Patrick the Wine Guy has the opposite worry — that consumers won’t realize that 375 ml cans hold two glasses until it is too late and they have drained a couple of them as if they were light beer. Yikes!

There’s an App for That

Cans also have potential advantages in the world of app-based food delivery. I am not sure how many UberEats orders include a 750 ml bottle of wine in areas where that would be legal  (not many, I’m guessing), but I can see the potential for single-serve canned wines here. Simplified wine choices, convenient packaging, drop it in the delivery bag, and out the door.

Significantly, delivery orders are the fastest-growing part of the restaurant business, with some entrepreneurs setting up virtual restaurants and “ghost kitchens” focused just on delivery. Add a can of Pinot Noir or Sauvignon Blanc to that order and you are all set.

There is a lot to like about canned wine once you get over the initial shock of the new package. But that’s nothing new. I’m sure canned beer ruffled some feathers when it first appeared. And, switching products, I’ve read that paperback books were once seen as a threat to serious book publishing.  Change is hard — even when it makes sense (Amber LeBeau’s point).

Canned wine has many advantages, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t challenges to be confronted. Here are three problems to consider.

What Goes In Come Out

When we tell people that we are researching canned wines, they almost always ask, “how is the wine?”   Well, the wine you pour out of the can is pretty much the wine that was put into it. That is one thing that canned wine has in common with bottles and boxes of wine. If lousy wine went in, don’t expect anything better to come out.

A recent study of canned wines versus their bottled twins found no significant difference is consumer evaluation. The cans didn’t change the wines in any way that these consumers could notice.

Some wineries such as 14 Hands use the same wine brand for both bottle and can, so they leveraging their bottle brand reputation to promote the canned product. They need to make sure that the wine in the cans is the same as the bottles since an inferior experience would reflect on both types of packages.

Many canned wine brands are priced at the entry level ($4.99 or $5.99 per can or less) and are probably filled with inexpensive bulk wine. Some of these are better than others as you would expect.

Only a couple of the canned wines we have tried so far have been “keepers” that we would drink again.  Most have been under-whelming and over-priced. Since the canning process apparently isn’t the problem, the disappointing wines that we are pouring out of the cans must have been disappointing going in, too.

Our favorite out of about a dozen we have tried so far is the C’est Le Vin Rosé from Washington State producer Barnard Griffin. The label says it is “good Washington wine that happens to be in a can,” which I think sends the right message. It’s the wine that counts. The can is just a delivery system.

No (Canned) Wine Before Its Time?

I always look at the “best by” date when I purchase milk, yogurt, and a few other grocery items. Now I have started checking for dates on cans of wine, too.

Sue and I attended a presentation about canned wine packaging technology earlier in the summer and I was interested to learn about the special lining that is the key to the can’s success. Wine’s alcohol and acid don’t get along very well with aluminum, so a special liner is needed to make the can work.

These linings are typically approved for 6 to 9 months, we were told, depending on the chemical analysis of the wine. The wine might be OK at 12 months or longer, but they are intended for shorter shelf-life situations. You really don’t want cases of canned wine to sit a warehouse for months waiting to be delivered to a retailer.

Many (but not all) of the cans I have seen have a “canned on” date or equivalent code printed on the container and from now on I am going to check that out just as I would a quart of milk and look for wines with less than 6 months or so in the can.

We tried a can of a carbonated orange-flavored white wine spritz and it was a big disappointment. It sounded refreshing  (I was hoping for an Aperol spritz kind of experience), but there was no one home, as Sue said. Not much orange. Not much wine. Plenty of bubbles. Was it the product or was it the fact that it was canned a year prior to our purchase and the can liner had failed in some way?

Confusion Corner

Wine is a famously confusing consumer category, with so many brands and varieties and with such an enormous range of retail prices. Canned wine is not much simpler based on a few retail shelves we’ve studied. There are several can sizes, for example, some sold as singles and others in packs. You’ve got to pay attention to know just how much wine you are buying and its cost per serving.

Some of the wine is labeled by grape variety, but this is less common than with bottled wine. And I don’t think I have seen a vintage date (yet) although, as noted above, the canning date may be more important. This may change if the premium canned wine trend picks up steam.

A lot of the wine is red or white or pink or bubbly. So what’s in the can, Sue asks? What variety or blend of grapes went into the red or white? What should she expect when she pops the top?

At this point, I suppose, the wines are targeting consumers who might find grape blend and vintage date TMI, but that should change if this category doesn’t fall victim to arrested development.

Two Cheers!

Canned wine isn’t going to revolutionize wine, but it seems to have the potential to evolutionize it — to help it evolve in ways that are relevant to today’s consumers. That’s worth a cheer or two in my book.

Why not three cheers? Maybe I am being stingy with my ratings, but it looks like it is still early days for wine in a can and there is a lot of headroom left in all areas including wine quality. I think canned wine has the potential to grow up in ways that will please a broader audience. When that happens, I’ll be the first to add the final cheer.

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Thanks to Danny Brager and Genevieve Aronson of Nielsen, Michelle Williams, Amber LeBeau, and Robert Williams for their insights on canned wine. Go to WICresearch.com for updated canned wine market research.

At the conclusion of the State of the Industry session at the Unified Wine & Grape Symposium each January Nielsen’s Danny Brager announces his Bronze, Silver, and Gold medal wineries. The medals aren’t for the best wine or even for the most wine (Gallo would win that one every year).  The prizes are for market success as measured by sales growth. Here are the 2019 winners.

GOLD – Delicato Family Wines, Riboli Family Wines, Precept Wine

SILVER – Deutsch Family Wines and Spirits, Jackson Family Wines

BRONZE – Duckhorn VIneyards, O’Neill Vintners and Distillers,  Zonin USA, Delegat, Winery Exchange, Jam Cellars

Growth was difficult in the U.S.wine market in 2018, when many categories experienced falling volumes or stagnating revenues. To excel in this environment is noteworthy. The Gold medal is especially difficult to earn because Brager’s criteria require both high absolute growth in terms of thousands of cases and also high percentage growth rates year on year.

Gold medal producers have to have some secret sauce that powers them ahead. Delicato has Bota Box, for example. Riboli has hot-selling Stella Rosa.

Precept Wine‘s recipe for success is a bit different and so worth a deeper look. Precept, founded in 2003 by Andrew Browne and Dan Baty,  is the largest private wine producer in the Pacific Northwest. Wine Business Monthly rates it as the 13th largest wine firm in the U.S. and, clearly one that is growing quickly.

I like to say that Precept has implemented the Willie Sutton recipe for growth. Sutton, a notorious criminal, was famously asked why he robbed banks. I rob banks, he said, because that’s where the money is. Pretty simple logic, don’t you think?

Precept Wine has grown so rapidly by moving decisively into the market segments where the growth is. This sounds simple, too, but it is not. Anticipating growth opportunities requires close analysis of changing market conditions. And then you must have the resources, flexibility, and determination to seize them. Not easy at all, but when you get it right the results can take your breath away,

If you made a list of growing wine market segments in 2018 it might look something like this.

• Sparkling wine
• Rosé wine
• Alternative packaging (especially cans)
• Private label wines
• Low calorie / low alcohol wines
• Super premium wines
• Direct-to-Consumer sales

Precept has made important investments in each of these categories starting with its acquisition of Gruet, the New Mexico-based sparkling wine producer, which has experienced dramatic growth during the recent Prosecco-fueled sparkling wine boom. Gruet sales increased by 25% by value in 2018. Amazing.

Rosé is the fastest growing wine category in the last year and Precept has taken advantage of this with pink wines throughout their portfolio and leveragde for even higher growth by combining pink with bubbles, putting pink in cans, and even putting sparkling pink wine in cans as shown in the image above.

Precept has made a very serious commitment to the canned wine space and I see their House Wine cans in nearly every supermarket. The House Wine cans and Ste Chapelle wine spritz are two of the three top brands in this category.

Private label wines are another area of growth. Many wineries make their own products and also private label brands for retailers. Precept took a major step into this arena last year by acquiring Truett-Hurst’s business. The plan is to ride the wave of private label growth so that it represents 50% of total sales by 2020.

The Truett-Hurst acquisition included a wine brand called Cense, which is endorsed by WW (formerly Weight Watchers).  Low calorie, low carb, and low alcohol wines are still a small slice of the total market, but one that seems likely to grow rapidly as production technology and product quality improve.

The Cense line includes a Rosé (of course), a sparkler, and a Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc. Alcohol is around 9 percent. Look for Cense wine spitzer cans in time for summer. You have only to look at the investments that major brewers are putting into low/no alcohol beer to get a sense (or cense) of the potential for wine.

Precept is also experiencing impressive growth in the premium and super-premium wine categories with their lineup of brands that includes Browne Family Vineyards, Canoe Ridge Vineyard, Pendulum, and Waterbrook.

Can the fast growth be sustained? Prediction is difficult, especially about the future, but I would argue that the particular category growth waves that Precept is riding are trends and not fads, and unlikely to suddenly disappear. Times will continue to change, however, so Precept’s challenge (and a challenge for the rest of us, too) will be to remain nimble and entrepreneurial even as scale increases.

As I noted last week, wine is everywhere in America, or nearly so, and while it is common knowledge that the U.S. is the world’s largest wine market and that wine is produced in all 50 states, the diversity of the wine experience here sometimes comes as a surprise. Case in point …

What if I told you that one of the largest wineries in the U.S., home to what is probably the largest direct-to-consumer winery club program in the world, is based in Illinois, not California?

Illinois? (I can hear you saying this). No way! You’ve got to be kidding? Well, Cooper’s Hawk winery is no joke and learning about it helps us understand how wine is changing in the U.S. and where it could be going.

Top 50 U.S. Wineries

Wine Business Monthly‘s February 2018 issue lists the 50 largest wine companies in the U.S., from #1 Gallo (estimated production 70 million cases) to #50 McMannis Family Vineyards (340,000 cases). Most of the wineries are located in California as you would expect with a few exceptions such as Washington-based Ste Michelle Wine Estates (#8), #13 Precept Wine, and #36 Mesa Vineyards of Fort Stockton, Texas (550,000 cases).

Number 34 on the list with 570,000 case annual production and a wine club that is approaching 300,000 members is Cooper’s Hawk Winery and Restaurant of Woodridge, Illinois. All that wine is sold directly to restaurant patrons and wine club members. It is an interesting case study of wine’s growing (and changing) place in American culture.

A Wine-Centered Lifestyle Brand

The first Cooper’s Hawk location opened in 2005 and the chain, which identifies itself as a “lifestyle brand centered around wine” has grown to 30 stores in the  mid-west (Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Missouri, Wisconsin) plus Maryland, Virginia, and Florida. Five new locations are scheduled to open in 2018. A total of 4.4 million guests visited Cooper’s Hawk last year.

A Cooper’s Hawk experience combines several elements. It is a restaurant, of course, with a wide-ranging upscale menu that encourages patrons to think food and wine with a suggested pairing for each dish.  Bin 70 (Cooper’s Hawk Pinot Gris) is the suggested match for pan-roasted Baramundi, for example, and red wine braised short ribs are matched with Bin 04 (the Cooper’s Hawk Red, a Cab-Merlot-Syrah blend).

Ordering wine by the numbers rather than listing the wine names on the food menu is a way to keep things simple, rather like many people order by number from an Asian restaurant menu. You don’t necessarily need to speak wine to enjoy it at Cooper’s Hawk.

Each restaurant features a “Napa-style” wine tasting room and an “artisanal retail market,” where various food and lifestyle items are sold along with the Cooper’s Hawk wines. The idea is to bring the feel of a wine-country tasting room and restaurant to customers who are attracted to wine lifestyle experiences.

47 Varieties

A total of 47 different Cooper’s Hawk wines are listed on the online wine menu, divided into several categories, including International, Sparkling, White, Red, Sweet Red, Sangria, Fruit Wine, Dessert, Mulled Wine, Barrel Reserve, and top drawer Lux. As the video above indicates, grapes are trucked to the Illinois winery from California, Washington, Oregon, and other regions and the wines made, aged, bottled and shipped to Cooper’s Hawk stores.

Cooper’s Hawk invites its guests to embrace wine and gives them both broad choice and attractive pricing. Bottles of wine sell for what glasses of wine might go for at other restaurants. Retail shop prices begin at under $15 per bottle and top out at $39.99 for the Lux Pinot Noir. Restaurant prices are a bit higher, as you would expect, but the mark-up is surprisingly small. You can have that $40 retail Lux Pinot for $47.99 in the restaurant.

All 47 wines are available by the glass, with prices starting at less than $7. A glass of Lux Pinot Noir or Lux Meritage will cost you $13. How you view these prices depends on context, I think. If you are used to New York City restaurant prices, these wines are incredibly cheap — so cheap you might hesitate to try them. On the other hand, if lower-shelf supermarket wines are your reference, the prices might seem a bit high. It is clear from Cooper’s Hawk’s success,, however, that there is a sweet spot for an upscale casual dining restaurant wine list and they seem to have found it.

World’s Largest Wine Club?

One of the most interesting elements of the Cooper’s Hawk phenomenon is its wine club, which has nearly 300,000 members and is growing at a 25% per year rate. Guests who join the club are offered special “members only” wines plus invitations to various exclusive programs and events. Although there is an option to have monthly wine allocations shipped to your door, the pricing structure strongly encourages members to pick up their wines at the tasting room, which obviously produces repeated visits to the restaurant and reinforces the lifestyle relationship.

I am kind of fascinated by Cooper’s Hawk, which seems to have struck a chord with many American consumers by making wine the central element of a carefully crafted experience. I am therefore disappointed that I have so far been unable to visit one of the locations. Our travels take us many places, but so far the opportunity to belly up to a Cooper’s Hawk tasting room bar has eluded me.

But I have tasted a couple of the wines. The Cooper’s Hawk Lux Pinot Noir was the featured wine at this year’s Screen Actors Guild awards (Cooper’s Hawk is the official SAG wine partner) and we received samples of this wine plus the Lux Chardonnay, which were served at the event’s gala dinner, as part of the promotion of this partnership.

The details of the wines we received are a bit of a mystery — the Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are American appellation (not California or Oregon as you might expect). The Pinot was medium-bodied with a strong oak presence on the nose and palate that eventually faded to reveal varietal character. Perhaps the wine needed more time in the bottle to pull itself together or perhaps this is a winemaking decision to feature more oak on the premium product. The oak was nicely integrated in the Lux Chardonnay, on the other hand, and the wine was very enjoyable.

No one reads The Wine Economist for tasting notes, of course, and I’ve only sampled a couple of the wines. It is clear that these wines appeal to Cooper’s Hawk customers, who order them with meals and come back for more. Very impressive.

Cooper’s Hawk has achieved amazing success by creating or expanding a market that few of us imagined could be so large. Cooper’s Hawk recently announced and growing list of collaborations with famous wineries (Francis Ford Coppola, Boisset Collection) and celebrity chefs (Tyler Florence among others) that promise to expand the brand’s lifestyle appeal.

Is Cooper’s Hawk the future of American wine? No — wine is too complicated to have a single road ahead. But the Cooper’s Hawk phenomenon does suggest several important trails to explore — direct-to-consumer sales, focus on experience not just product, innovative marketing structures, and broadening the consumer base beyond the Wine Spectator reader “usual suspect” base to explicitly include Food Network viewers and foodies more generally. I think there’s a lot to learn about the market for wine in America from Cooper’s Hawk.

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The Wine Economist will pause for a couple weeks while Sue and I are in France to participate in Terroir and Millésimes in Languedoc and Roussillion from April 15-22 and Val de Loire Millésimes from April 22-25. Looking forward to meeting fascinating people, drinking wonderful wines, and learning as much as we can. Full report to follow when we return and have had time to digest our experiences.