License to Steal 2024: Forging Best Practices in Wine Marketing

March 5, 2024 By Mike Veseth in wine, wine education, wine markets 1 Comment

I will be in Syracuse, New York, next week to speak at License to Steal, a national wine marketing conference that is being held in conjunction with the Eastern Winery Exposition.

License to Steal? Well, it is all about wine industry people gathering to talk about their marketing experiences, encouraging each other to “steal” strategies that have worked as a way to grow the total market pie. This would be called “sharing best practices” in consultant-speak. It is a great idea whatever you call it and very important today when the wine industry faces many headwinds.

License to Steal is nearly 20 years old. It started when seven state association directors (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania) got together. It is a national conference today, providing an important grassroots forum for wine marketing information.

Donniella Winchell, Executive Director of the Ohio Wine Producers Association and Conference Chair, describes License to Steal as “a place where wineries, growers, and ancillary entities willingly share, collaborate, and contribute to the future strength of the grape and wine communities across the nation. Sessions are lively, interactive, and led by some of the most exciting marketing minds in the business.”

I am looking forward to seeing everyone in Syracuse, learning as much as I can, and contributing a few ideas of my own, Here is the program agenda. Lots to talk about, think about, and plenty to steal, too.

Wednesday, March 13
8:15 – 9:15
Mike Veseth, The Wine Economist
Secrets of the World’s Most Respected Wine Regions
Wine economist Mike Veseth probes the world’s most respected wine regions to uncover the
secrets of their success and reveals how these secrets can be applied to wine regions around the
world.

9:25 – 9:55
Karen Thornton, AVA Program Manager
Avoiding AVA Petition Pitfalls
This presentation will help applicants move through their application with a minimum of
mistakes and resulting subsequent delays in the approval process.

9:55 – 10:10
Jim Trezize, President, WineAmerica
How WineAmerica represents your interests in Washington
Learn how this dynamic organization serves as a sounding board, represents your interests and
helps to protect the industry’s future as we deal with the coming pressures from the neo
prohibitionists, shipping issues, including the coming Farm Bill as is crafted in Congress.

10:10 – 10:25
Michael Kaiser, Vice President, Wine America
Legislative and Regulatory updates from Washington
An update from Washington on issues of concern to the American Wine industry including
Ingredient and Nutrition Labeling, Interstate shipping issues, and music licensing.

10:25 – 10:40 Coffee break

10:45 – 11:25
Ankita Okate, Chief Growth Officer, Beverage Trade Network | USATT
Using AI to take your winery into the techno future PRE-RECORDED
This topic encompasses the current impact of AI on the business, future AI trends, and
opportunities, preparing for the AI revolution, personalized recommendations, predicting market
demand and consumer preferences, quality control, compliance with regulations, enhancing the
sensory experience, sustainability, inventory management, and the future of the industry.

11:25- noon
Steal Session – Identifying New “on-ramps” For Our Industry
As boomers age and the Z generation’s affinity for RTDs and bourbon is ever-growing, we need
to find new ways to build new ‘on ramps’ to maintain the vitality of our industry

Lunch and visit the trade show

2:30 – 3:15
Maureen Ballatori, 29 Design Studio
Algorithms Reward Accounts That Share Videos
As social media moves more and more toward entertainment, algorithms reward accounts that
share videos. Video content tends to receive more impressions and a wider reach. In this session,
we’ll go beyond the basics to look at what truly moves the needle on social media.

3:15 – 3:30
Roger Brooks – Destination International – video PRE-RECORDED
Words that work
As marketing programs are designed, using the ‘correct’ words will provide the foundation for
success.

3:40 – 4:20
Clint Bradley, the Bradley group
New Customer Experiences & Inter-Generational Connections
What’s Old is New will focus on opportunities for the wine industry to capitalize on current
societal and demographic trends. Hint: it’s about creating new customer experiences and
building intergenerational connections by introducing young people to wine in ways that touch all
the 5 senses.

4:20 – 4:40
Steal Session
Refreshing Events: Festivals, Trails, Dinners, Wine & Food Pairings
As wine festivals and events are experiencing diminishing attendance numbers, we will explore
new ideas and approaches to rebuild and re-imagine these marketing tools.

Thursday, March 14
8:20 – 9:20
Chris Puppione, Regional Account Manager for Coravin
Part 1 of a 2-part workshop
What I Talk About When I Talk About Tasting Rooms
Welcome to the modern world of hospitality, where customer loyalty is not good enough; we
must dedicate ourselves to transforming those we serve into passionate advocates. In an era when
the bar for hospitality in tasting rooms is set painfully low and satisfaction will not suffice, we
must redefine the game. We will discuss the power of listening, creating unforgettable moments that elevate experiences, and how to make it effortless for your customers to love your brand

9:30 – 10:30 –
Chris Puppione
Part 2 of a workshop
By mastering the art of influence, rapport-building, and storytelling, learn how to fulfill your
guests’ core needs while fostering a sense of belonging, status, and self-fulfillment. We will
discuss impactful ideas that help keep things fresh in developing exclusive experiences and will
make everyone want to be a part of your tribe. In this session, we will explore our current
hospitality economy and discuss how you can be the answer to building lasting cultures where
teams and customers stay for years, making it stunningly simple to get it right.

10:30 – 10:40 Coffee break

10:45 – 11:45 Bennett Caplan, FIVS and FIVAS Adbridge
What Does “No Safe Level” Or “NSL” View Of Alcohol Mean For The Wine Sector
There are those who are effectively reconceptualizing alcohol in terms of a view that any level of
alcohol consumption is associated with preventable diseases, such as cancer and heart disease.
What does this “no safe level” or “NSL” view of alcohol mean for the wine sector?

Lunch and visit the trade show

2:30 – 2:45
Steal Session: The WHO’s Wine as “Carcinogen” & the Neo-Prohibition Movement
Sharing ideas about the pressures from the re-emerging Neos: tactics, and potential action plans
to counter their efforts

2:45 – 3:30
Kathy Kelley, Penn State University, professor of Horticultural Marketing and Business
Management
Using Emotion to Engage and Build a Connection with Your Customers
Learn how to use emotion to enhance your customer relationship and improve your brand
commitment. Attendees will discover ways that positive feelings about a brand can significantly
impact consumer loyalty.

3:40 – 4:40
Roger Brooks
“Sell the Experience, not the Amenities” – video PRE-RECORDED
Research indicates that stories sharing engaging, interactive experiences will sell an attraction to
every generation while pretty, but mundane pictures of wine and tasting rooms will not sell them
effectively.

Wine Hits the Language Barrier

January 10, 2023 By Mike Veseth in Unified Wine & Grape Symposium, wine, wine critics, wine education, wine markets 7 Comments

What do we talk about when we talk about wine? How does the way we talk about wine affect the way we think about it? Does the language of wine create a barrier to entry for consumers?

Last week’s Wine Economist focused on what we say about wine in terms of the information revealed on the label. The European Union is implemented new regulations that will require wine to be more like other consumer products with respect to ingredient lists and nutritional analysis.

Should the U.S. follow suit, either through regulation or via voluntary initiative? That’s a controversial question, for sure. Some worry that people will be less interested in wine if they know what’s really in the bottle. Others think it might work the other way.

Wine’s Language Barrier

But there is another concern that is in some ways even more basic — and might help account for the wine market malaise we all worry about. How does the way we talk about wine affect the way that we (and potential customers) think about it? This is the topic of a seminar that will take place in two weeks at the Unified Wine & Grape Symposium in Sacramento. Meg Maker will moderate a panel that includes Miguel de Leon, Erica Duecy, and Alicia Towns Franken on the topic of A New Lexicon for Wine. Here’s an excerpt from the description of the panel on the Unified’s program.

The best way to get to know a wine is to taste it. Another way is to talk about it. The wine industry relies on the ability of wine communicators to persuade consumers to taste, but today’s wine lexicon falls far short of its objectives.

What’s the problem with the way we talk about wine? The panel prompt outlines the problem.

For starters the vocabulary is heavily Eurocentric, reliant on metaphor and analogy unfamiliar to swaths of global wine lovers and curious newcomers. It also tends toward absolute pronouncements: “this wine is this” versus “this wine feels like this.” Formal wine education reinforces these protocols, perpetuating them for new generations of wine pros. The ever-popular numeric score says precisely zero about a wine’s aesthetic impact—even though that’s sometimes all you see. The net effect is both intimidating and gatekeeping to new wine drinkers, alienating them at a time when the industry tries to address its shrinking footprint.

Mastering the Dialect

There are of course several language of wine, not just one, as there are in most industries. There is the “inside” language we use when talking with on- and off-premise accounts about price points and marketability. Then there is the “outside” voice we use when speaking to consumers directly along with the different dialects necessary to connect with different types of consumers such as investors, collectors, or relative beginners. One size does not fit all when it comes to the language of wine.

Language can be a plus or a minus when it comes to opening doors to wine. Ironically, wine is not a very transparent product from the consumer point of view. It is difficult to know if what’s inside the bottle will make you happy until you taste it. But the idea of buying and opening that opaque multi-serving bottle can be intimidating, especially when prices are high relative to income and to other options.

Economists call wine an “experience good” — you won’t know if you’ll like it until you try it — hence the importance of tastings and the focus on tasting notes to simulate the tasting experience. This is why it is important to think clearly about how and what tasting notes say. Many wine consumers, I believe, are really interested in how the wine will make them feel. There are both intellectual and emotional responses, to be sure, but feeling trumps thinking for some of the people all of the time and for all of the people some of the time, don’t you think?

Tasting vs Feeling

If you ask people why they like Champagne, for example, they almost always talk about the way it makes them feel, not the details of the way it tastes. I did a tasting with some university students a few years ago and it taught me a lot. Champagne (or sparkling wine generally) was something they all were familiar with from various family celebrations. They knew it, liked it, and had good memories associated with it. But when they followed the usual protocols of formal tasting, they were surprised. It didn’t necessarily taste the way it had made them feel. Do you know what I mean?

Tasting notes that list a dozen or sometimes more flavors and aromas, many of them quite esoteric and requiring practice or training to detect, are only really useful to a few specialized consumers, but they are the lingua franca of wine. For a lot of people the lingo-equivalent of an emoji — expressing an emotion or feeling — would be more useful. Subjective descriptions of personality may communicate better than lists of seemingly objective properties.

Wine experts are expected to master all the details (as this very clever video from Richard Hemming illustrates). Many wine consumers are more interested the harmonious melody than the many notes.

The Humpty Dumpty Problem

Deconstructing wine into its components (flavors and aromas in most cases) reflects a more general trend of thinking of products in terms of their parts rather than the whole. Hence the focus on lists of ingredients and nutritional elements rather than the qualities of the food or beverage itself. I call it the Humpty Dumpty problem. If we insist on breaking product experience into pieces, we can’t be sure that customers Ieven with help from the King’s horses and men) can put them together again.

For wine, as for many other products, it is actually the balance of forces and they way the whole comes together that is the key feature. In Humpty Dumpty terms, consumers are interested in the egg and we keep talking about the pieces as if they are what matters.

Given wine’s intimidating language, it is perhaps no surprise that retailers have adopted a sort of least-common denominator approach to talking about wine. I’m thinking about the “shelf talkers” that hang below wines on store shelves. Shelf talkers come in many forms, but the most common are the simplest. Many supply an expert’s numerical score (JamesSuckling.com 93, for example) while others simply announce a discounted price.

Shelf-talker language may or may not be better than nothing, but its wide use perhaps reflects the inability to speak to consumers in other ways with any consistent success.

And the Solution Is …

Wine, by its very nature, can get lost in translation and there is no simple solution to this problem. But there are steps to take to lower the barriers for current and potential wine enthusiasts. The Unified Wine & Grape Symposium’s session mentioned at the top of this column is a worthwhile beginning. We in the industry need to think critically about the languages of wine and resolve to be more effective.

And I think it is useful to consider the challenge of talking about the emotional impact of wine. In this regard I am inspired by the haiku tasting notes written by W. Blake Gray. I find that they make me stop, think, and try to imagine the wine.

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Can it be true that the Unified Wine & Grape Symposium is only two weeks away? Hope to see you all there. I will be moderating the annual “State of the Industry” panel on the morning of Wednesday, January 25.

Wine on the Nile: Wine Goes to the Movies (and TV)

March 15, 2022 By Mike Veseth in popular culture, wine, wine education, wine markets 2 Comments

One of my pet peeves is wine’s lack of impact in popular culture. Celebrity chefs get lots of traction — even fictional cartoon rodent chefs (have you seen the Disney film Ratatouille?). Celebrity winemakers? Not so much.

Wine shouldn’t try to simply imitate food, of course, Watching Michel Rolland micro-oxygenate a tank of Merlot will never be as much fun as watching Julia Child throw together a pot of Boeuf Bourguignon. If we want to reach potential newbie wine drinkers, I think wine needs to go where they are and to connect in as many ways as possible.

Wine is so often an afterthought. I bemoaned the fact that wine had no particular pride of place in Stanley Tucci’s hit television series Searching for Italy, for example. A wasted opportunity for sure!

Bordeaux on the Nile?

So I am pleased to see the efforts that Bordeaux producer Chateau Malartic-Lagravière, which is working very hard to position its fine wine where it can be seen and appreciated by a diverse audience. The white wine, for example, appears in the second season of the Netflix series Emily in Paris. And the red wine is featured in the recently released big-budget 20th Century Studio version of Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile.

Why Death on the Nile? A press release suggests that the Bonnie family that owns the Chateau connects with the film’s chief protagonist, fellow Belgian countryman Hercule Poirot. Perhaps. But I have to think the luxury setting in which the film’s action unfolds is an appealing frame for a luxury Bordeaux wine.

Consumers need a nudge to put wine on their minds and I congratulate Chateau Malartic-Lagravière for taking the initiative. Product placement, however, is just one element of a potential initiative to connect wine culture with the interests and lifestyles of today’s consumers.

Wine First, Please!

Sue and I have been impressed for the early efforts of a group producing a public television series called Wine First, for example. The idea, I think, is that when most people go to a restaurant they pick their meals first and then choose a wine. But when YOU dine out, I’ll bet, at least some of you study the wine list first, choose the wine you want, and they pick food to go with it. Wine First.

The series format takes a wine first approach. The hosts visit a wine region (the Mosel, for example), stopping at three wineries to choose wines that captures the essence of each place — plus a regional food ingredient. A local restaurant chef is then challenged to prepare dishes that will highlight the wines — the wines are the star. The local wine producers evaluate the imaginative pairings that result and render a wine first verdict. Sue and I really enjoyed the programs and hope the multinational series comes back for a second season.

So far so good. But there is a lot more work to be done to get wine more clearly on the radar of the next consumer generation. In the meantime, remember that it is not telling the world how wine tastes (or is made) that will be the key to future growth. What’s important is how it makes you feel.

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I thought you might enjoy viewing the trailer for Death on the Nile.

Three Things I Learned About Wine Marketing from Kevin Zraly

November 16, 2021 By Mike Veseth in wine, wine education, wine markets Leave a comment

Eric Asimov‘s recent “The Pour” New York Times column on Kevin Zraly and his career in wine is titled “The Accidental Wine Educator” and it is required reading for anyone interested in making or selling(or drinking” wine. It is a fine tribute to Zraly, an iconic figure who has done (and is still doing) so much to shape the American wine market.

Zraly is forever linked to Windows on the World, the fantastic restaurant at the top of New York’s World Trade Center back in the days before 9/11. His work there produced the Windows on the World Wine School, and a popular and influential book, The Windows on the World Complete Wine Course.

My first experience of the Zraly magic happened many years ago. Sue and I had the pleasure to dine at Windows on the World just once — in the company of her parents, Mike and Gert. I can remember everything about the view (the Statue of Liberty seemed like a bright little jewel down in harbor far below us) and the company, but alas nothing in particular about the food. I’m pretty sure that the wine we drank was a modest cru Beaujolais — a choice that Zraly (who probably put the wine on the list) would approve because of its ability to pair with many meal choices.

I finally met Zraly and experienced his magic in person in 2015 when I spoke at an Italian wine conference in New York City. The weather outside was terrible — one of those frigid winter blasts — so we were all holed-up in the Waldorf-Astoria hotel — we pretended it was a cruise ship filled with Italian food and wine — best voyage ever!

Zraly was there to give a seminar on Italian sparkling wines and it was the hottest ticket on the program. A big crowd struggled to fit into the room and when I looked around the audience was a who’s who of wine. No one — me least of all! — wanted to miss whatever Kevin Zraly had to share with us.

But Zraly fooled us. He looked out at his audience and decided to “flip” the classroom, deftly orchestrating and organizing a terrific seminar where the audience took the stage, with Zraly as the wise stage manager and conductor. There was a ton of wine IQ in that room, but I think everyone came out knowing more than when they went in. And it was Zraly what did it. Amazing.

Asimov’s NYT column gave me a chance to remember and appreciate those moments and it also made me think about the secrets of Zraly’s success and how those secrets need to be constantly remembered and refreshed. Here are three things Zraly taught me.

Wine Won’t Sell Itself

I suspect that most people who came to the Windows on the World restaurant were interested in having a bottle or glass of wine with their meal. It was part of the experience. But that doesn’t mean that they didn’t need help. Zraly realized that the success of his wine program depended on his staff, their knowledge of wine in general and the restaurant’s wine list in particular, and their ability to answer questions and guide diners towards that three-star wine experience they were seeking.

And so he became a wine educator offering classes first to his own staff and then, eventually, to the public through the Windows on the World Wine School. Zraly’s evolution from wine expert to wine educator in order to sell wine reminds me of someone I met at the Walla Walla Saturday Market a few years ago. He was selling organic meat (goat and chicken, as I recall). “I’m a redneck educator,” he said by way of introduction. His products sold for premium prices and he understood that consumers wouldn’t pay those prices unless they understood the benefits of his free-range organic goods. So he had to educate them before he could make the sale.

No one has to buy a particular wine or wine at all, but the more they understand about wine the more likely they are to be drawn into the world of wine. Zraly has probably helped sell millions of cases of wine over the years through his work as a strictly-not-redneck wine educator.

See Wine Through the Consumer’s Eyes

If you want to get a sense of Zraly’s wine class, simply pick up a copy of his best-selling Windows on the World Complete Wine Course. The book is based on the course and you can sometimes hear Kevin’s voice as you read it.

A lot of wine books are organized around geography: old world regions, new world regions, with sections on wine grape varieties and other topics. But people aren’t thinking about the world atlas when they sit down in a restaurant to order, so if you want to reach them you need to start from a different place.

Zraly’s book is organized around a restaurant wine list. Red wines, white wines, sparkling, Rosé, and so on. The goal isn’t to make the reader a wine expert, it is to make them comfortable choosing a wine from a wine list and knowledgeable enough to make pleasing choices. Indeed, as Zraly reveals in the Asimov article, some of his first students signed up because they were intimidated by the wine list or were afraid to make poor choices.

This is a great example of meeting customers where they are, not where you might want them to be. If the problem is dealing with the wine list, then make the wine is list the focus of the effort. You don’t have to have advanced WSET credentials to enjoy wine with dinner (at least I hope not).

When Consumers Move, Follow Them

When the covid pandemic hit many wineries had to shut down their tasting rooms and find other ways to connect with customers. Some had more success than others and it will be interesting to see which of these practices and strategies endure as the world of in-person experiences re-opens.

Zraly has followed his customers, too, and in the process has entered a global arena. When wine consumers moved on-line during the pandemic — to Zoom meet-ups and web-retailers — Zraly shifted gears to form a partnership with Wine.com for a series of one-hour classes that have run through the fall (the final class in December is on Pinot Noir). Tuition for the Pinot class is $100 and the wines, purchased through Wine.com, are about $300 more. Not inexpensive, but not too costly, either, given the quality of the wines and the rare opportunity to have a Kevin Zraly experience, albeit virtually. I hope Zraly and Wine.com continue their partnership in the future.

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A thousand thanks to Kevin Zraly for all he has taught us about wine and how to sell it. And thanks, too, to Eric Asimov for his NYT profile of this great wine educator.

Wine Book Review: Invisible Pignolo Revealed

June 8, 2021 By Mike Veseth in book reviews, Italian wine, wine, wine education, wine history Leave a comment

Ben Little, Pignolo: Cultivating the Invisible. 2021. Available exclusively from The Morning Claret Shop.

Pignolo: Cultivating the Invisible is quite a fantastic multi-media exploration of one of Italy’s (and the world’s) nearly forgotten grape varieties. My first impression of the book was fascination — so playful, so colorful. I just had to thumb through it to discover what was on the next page. Then there was puzzlement, because I would read short passages and it wasn’t really clear what was going on.

First fascination, then puzzlement, then — finally — enlightenment. Ok, that might be too strong, but I went back and read it from the start and it all made sense.

First comes the history of Pignolo in the context of the history of its native region, Friuli Venezia Giulia in Italy’s upper right-hand corner. A really interesting explanation of how Pignolo, wine, and the region evolved. Then the history shifts a bit to author Ben Little’s personal experience with Pignolo, which started only a few years ago (2016) but developed quickly and soon involved many others. There is much of a technical nature to learn through Little’s first person reports.

And then there are the lessons that Pignolo teaches us, inspirations, meditations, not sure what to call them. But by the time you get there you are ready to slow down, let the flow carry you, and absorb them, which might not have been the case at the start. Colorful graphics act as signposts along the way.

Little’s notion that Pignolo is an invisible grape variety works. It was always there all along, you just didn’t see it. That’s how it happened for him. At first he thought that there were just a few people in Friuli growing the grapes and making wine. But once word got out that there was interest, more and more plantings and producers began to appear until there were enough to fill a room (which Little did, with a little help from Pignolo’s friends).

Pignolo might be invisible to you, too. That’s how it was for us. Did we ever taste Pignolo during our trips to Friuli? I had to think and use the ample resources of Little’s big book. We might have tasted Pignolo when we visited the Cormons cooperative, but there were so many wines there it is hard to know. Possibly when we stayed at Il Roncal. Bastianich makes an IGT blend called Calabrone, which is includes a splash of Pignolo as a key ingredient. When we didn’t have time to taste it at the winery Wayne Young wrapped up a bottle for us to take home and I’m very glad he did. Amazing.

We staying in one of the rooms at Borgo San Daniele and I remember distinctly the tasting where Mauro Mauri poured his Arbis Ròs Pignolo from magnum. What an amazing wine. I tried to get him to sell me some bottles, but it was all gone. Only that magnum was left. And the memory, too.

Our final taste of Pignolo was at Paolo Rodaro and that’s when we met Ben Little. Little was nice enough to help with some difficult translations, but you could tell even then, not too long after his Pignolo journey had begun, that his focus was on the particular wine and Rodaro’s version was especially intense and interesting. There was another connection that I only learned about by reading this book — like me, Little is a recovering student of economics and can’t resist adding his insights to the blend.

Having read Little’s book, I want to go back to Friuli and visit the small region of Rosazzo, which seems to be Pignolo’s spiritual home. Pignolo was pretty much invisible to me a few days ago, now that I see that it has been there all along, I want to ask it a few questions.

In the meantime, I couldn’t resist trying to track down a bottle of Pignolo here in the U.S. and refresh my memory. I was able to find the 2005 La Viarte Pignolo Riserva at Kermit Lynch‘s online store. We pulled the cork and paired the wine with Caesar salad and a prime-grade dry-aged steak — clearly this was a special meal. The wine lived up to the occasion. The first glass was a bit wild, but it settled down and developed along several axes over the next two hours. Sue said that the wine really pulled itself together when the food arrived just as it was meant to do, I think.

Some wine experiences are delicious but not especially interesting — you know what you are getting. Others are interesting, but not necessary delicious — you are happy to stop after the first glass. The Pignolo was both, so it is easy to understand Little’s fascinating with it.

Pignolo: Cultivating the Invisible is a highly personal memoir of and tribute to a very distinctive grape and the people who have nurtured it as it nurtured them. More than a book, it is an experience. Highly Recommended.

Save the Dates: Wine2Wine 2020, WineFuture 2021, Unified Symposium 2021

October 22, 2020 By Mike Veseth in Shameless Self-Promotion, Unified Wine & Grape Symposium, wine, wine education, wine markets Leave a comment

The Wine Economist’s World Tour will be back on the (virtual) road in the next few months. Here are preliminary details about upcoming events that might be of interest to readers of this newsletter.

Wine2Wine 2020

The 7th edition of Wine2Wine, Focus 2020, will take place November 23-24, 2020. Usually held in beautiful Verona, this year’s program will be virtual. The wine business in the post-COVID-19 era is the over-arching theme.

Focus 2020 features a quite fantastic group of speakers and topics. The program is wide-ranging and of course economic topics are accorded due attention. I will be talking about the problem of unstable exchange rates in the new normal economic environment, for example, and another session will analyze the prospects of peace in the US-EU trade war, where wine is caught in the crossfire.

WineFuture 2021

WineFuture 2021 is an ambitious event designed to help wine industry actors make sense of the perfect storm caused by simultaneous economic recession, COVID-19 pandemic, and global climate crisis. The event is scheduled for February 23-25, 2021. I’ll be speaking about economic challenges and opportunities. The list of speakers is a who’s who of the wine world, so I’m flattered to be invited to participate.

Although the official event is a few months away, the important issues that need to be discussed won’t wait, so WineFuture is organizing a pre-conference series of free weekly webinars on key topics. Rabobank’s Stephen Rannekleiv and I will analyze some of the key economic issues in the first webinar on November 4, 2020.

Unified Wine & Grape Symposium

The Unified Wine & Grape Symposium is North America’s largest wine industry gathering. Both the conference and trade show, scheduled for January 26-29, will be on-line in 2021. The program, still in development, will be released in a few weeks and I get the impression that it will be even more ambitious than in previous years if that’s possible.

I will once again be moderating the State of the Industry session and making brief comments about the global wine economy. I wish we could all meet up in person in Sacramento, but that’s not really an option this year. So I look forward to seeing everyone on-line.

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Use the links above to learn more about these events and check back frequently to get updated information.

Book Review: Getting to Know Saké

October 20, 2020 By Mike Veseth in book reviews, The Next Big Thing, wine, wine education 1 Comment

Brian Ashcroft (with tasting notes by Takashi Eguchi), The Japanese Saké Bible (Tuttle Publishing, 2020).

Saké has always been a mystery to me. I have only been served it a couple of times and never with much in the way of introduction. Lacking background and appreciation, I have generally defaulted to beer on occasions when Saké might have been the more interesting choice.

Getting to Know You

I never got over the first hurdle. The upscale supermarket down the street (the one that I wrote about in Wine Wars) displays Saké over in the corner next to the Port, Sherry, Madeira, and Vermouth. This is not necessarily a poor organization, since Sakés are generally fortified, but there is a certain ghetto effect, too.

I was surprised when I looked closely at the Saké wall and discovered more than two dozen choices, including two craft Saké selections by Momokawa in Oregon. Lots of choices –big bottles and very small ones at all sorts of price points. And while some of the terms on the bottles were familiar enough, the language barrier was impossible to ignore.

Clearly a resource like The Saké Bible is needed to open the door to understanding and appreciation. The book, colorfully illustrated and written in a casual, engaging way, provides a good introduction for newbies like me without ignoring the interests of more experienced Saké drinkers.

Getting to Know All About You

We begin at the beginning. What is Saké? It isn’t beer even though it is brewed and it isn’t rice wine as is sometimes said. Saké is Saké. It is made with five ingredients, according to Ashcroft, but in ten thousand ways. The ingredients are rice, water, koji, yeast, and soil (so terroir is part of the story for some Saké). Koji is a fungus that breaks down the rice’s starch into sugar during the brewing process. Each ingredient has many variables and options, adding to the product’s complexity.

I found something interesting on every page of this book. Some of my favorite parts are the chapters that trace the evolution of the Saké industry from temple to small breweries to producers with global reach. Craft Saké is a thing now, as you might guess, and so both tradition and innovation are flourishing in Japan and around the world (Saké is brewed in Brooklyn these days — of course!).

I was also fascinated by the chapter on tasting Saké and pairing it with food as well as the detailed tasting notes for 100 top drawer products. The tasting notes encouraged me to think in terms of wine, which I found comforting. But there were some complications because Saké can be enjoyed at many different temperatures — and getting the chill right can be important.

One of my favorite tasting notes explained that a particular Saké displayed a brightness when chilled, but evolved with syrupy apricot sweetness at warm room temperature. Served piping hot it had a mellow silkiness like milk chocolate. But in between room temp and hot was a no fly zone — “rather unpleasant” according to the notes. Interesting.

Getting to Know What to Say

The Saké Bible tells you everything you need to know about Saké in theory, but where do you begin in practice? From a practical standpoint, which of the many Sakés on the shelf is best for a newbie consumer? The cheapest? The most expensive? The one with the prettiest bottle or label? (Some of them are very attractive).

I wrote to author Brian Ashcroft for advice and he told me to begin at the beginning, just as most of us did with wine when we were starting out.

The drink itself is incredibly approachable and unintimidating. To be honest, start there. Try sake. Drink it. Don’t get bogged down. Find what you like. If you enjoy a specific type or brand, make a note and remember it for next time. But as with wine, always be willing to try more. For any food or drink, your senses are your best guide, and the more experience you have with the drink, the more you’ll appreciate the various brands and styles. The good thing is that there is lots of breathing room in how you enjoy the drink because one of the best things about sake is just how flexible it is–you can drink brews at a variety of temperatures, in different style cups and glasses, and with a range of food. Experiment. Explore. Have fun.

Have fun! That sounds like good advice. So, armed with The Saké Bible, I returned to my upscale supermarket in search of a particular style of Saké called Ginjo. Ginjo is made with highly polished rice, giving it a more delicate and refined flavor. It is good both at room temperature and chilled. Expect fruity or floral flavors.

Getting to Like You

The clerk at my store told me they sold quite a lot of Saké. My choice was a 300 ml bottle of Shirayuki Junmai Ginjyo Saké made by Konishi Brewing Co. in Hyogo Prefecture, Japan, which is a historic center of Saké production. Ginjyo is the style, Junmai means that it is made with rice only in the classic tradition.

Served chilled, the nose was full of melon aromas, with melon and cream on the palate. Creamy texture. I could sense the warmth of alcohol, but no harshness. Surprising and much different from my vague memories of previous Saké experiences.

I don’t know how far I’ll go in my exploration of Saké. I feel like I have only scratched the surface of wine and that wine not Saké is likely to be my focus for years to come. But, for me, trying to get up to speed with Saké is important because I think it might help me understand something about the barriers that wine consumers face when they start out.

Things I’m Learning About You

Think back to your first experience with wine. Unless you had a patient guide you probably stumbled over hurdles of various sorts and sizes, including vast number of choices, wide range or price points, foreign terminology, government health warnings, and the occasional need for specialized equipment just to open the bottle.

Everyone is a newbie at some point and maybe the wine industry needs to give a bit more attention to lowering hurdles for the next consumer generation. Jamie Goode recently pointed out that, for most people, the first taste of wine wasn’t a thrilling experience. How can we give newbie consumers the confidence they need to take a second sip?

Two Buck Chuck worked a miracle drawing a generation of cautious consumers into wine. Now I wonder if they might go for hard seltzer instead, which is far from a gateway to wine.

Have fun! Are there other things we can learn from the success of Saké and its growing global following? Food (or maybe drink) for thought!

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Getting to know you? Here are the singing Lennon Sisters, just in case you didn’t catch all the musical references above. Enjoy!

Book Reviews: A Hedgehog and a Fox Walk into a Wine Bar …

October 13, 2020 By Mike Veseth in book reviews, wine, wine education, wine research, wine science 3 Comments

So a hedgehog and a fox walk into a bar and they naturally fall into a debate about wine.

The clever fox, as anyone who has studied Isaiah Berlin’s famous essay will remember, knows many things and sees wine in terms of its complex contradictions. The hedgehog knows one big thing and returns to that again and again. The conversation ebbs and flows and many insights are revealed as the glasses are drained and refilled.

That’s the way I imagined this book review column developing although, as you will see, the plan breaks down a bit (for the better, I think) in the end.

The Fox: 50 Shades of Red

The fox in my story is Jamie Goode, the respected wine authority who frequently draws upon his science background to help us analyze and understand the world of wine. That’s what he did in his 2016 book I Taste Red: The Science of Wine Tasting. The literature on sensory science is broad and deep and Goode does what he does better than just about anyone — he makes the science clear and applies it to questions that wine enthusiasts will find interesting and important.

The title of the book — I Taste Red — teases the reader a bit. How can you taste Red? Red is a color, not a flavor. How can that be? But taste is pretty complicated (a foxy kind of thing) and, while we assume that it is all about what goes on in your mouth, sipping and slurping, the brain actually uses a lot of clues to come up with what we think of as flavor.

Sue and I have experienced this in simple but memorable terms on a couple of occasions. We put clothes-pin devices on our noses during a multi-sensory perception demonstration at The Shard in London for Wine Vision 2014, for example, and popped jelly beans into our mouths. Nothing. No taste whatsoever. Then we removed the pins and suddenly flavor overwhelmed us. Where did that come from?

On another occasion we listened to music selected by post-modern winemaking guru Clark Smith. He switched tunes while we were tasting a particular Chardonnay and the flavor of the wine changed in our mouths from sweet to bitter. Incredible. I guess the part of the brain in charge of tasting wine overlaps with the part that enjoys music and sometimes they work in harmony but other times (like this one) dissonance erupts.

Topics covered in Goode’s book include wine and the brain, wine flavor chemistry, individual differences in flavor perception, and why we like the wines we like. He even analyzes the language of wine to see if what we say about wine affects what we think and what we taste — and if cultural differences enter into the picture. This chapter reminds me of my newspaper editor friend David who, upon tasting a particularly nice wine, complained that he couldn’t fully appreciate it until he developed a richer vocabulary.

So the science of taste is pretty complicated and interesting and I recommend Jamie Goode’s book to anyone who wants to know more about it. Which brings me to the hedgehog in this story, who is Nick Jackson MW, author of the new book Beyond Flavour: The Indispensable Handbook for Blind Wine Tasting.

The Hedgehog: To Flavour … and Beyond!

Nick Jackson worked very hard to prepare for the blind tasting part of the Master of Wine exams, but he was unhappy about his progress. He was pretty good at getting the right answer, he tells us, but he wasn’t confident. He couldn’t shake the sense that he was often just guessing. Flavor was his guide and, as the fox knows, flavor is not a simple reliable thing. But what else is there to serve as a guide in identifying wines?

His ah-ha! moment came when he realized that tannins (for red wines) and acidity (for whites) were fundamental building blocks. White wines can be known by their level of acidity, for example, the type of acidity, and the shape of the acidity. Chenin Blanc, for example, has high, bracing acidity with a crescendo shape. Crescendo! Think about that.

Chardonnay, on the other hand, has a more linear acidity structure — it remains the same during the act of tasting, pulling the fruit forward with it. Sauvignon Blanc, on the other hand, has jagged acidity. Think about your experiences tasting these wines. Do these descriptions make sense? Jackson provides similar analysis for tannins in red wine. Structure, in Jackson’s able hands, is a tool that reveals important wine traits — grape variety, region of origin, even vintage, with special sections on sparkling, sweet, fortified, rosé, and orange wine.

Jackson’s book is intended as a guide for wine enthusiasts who are studying for blind-tasting exams like those in the Masters of Wine program. That would seem like a pretty narrow audience, but a peek at the book’s Amazon.com page reveals strong high sales ratings and more than four dozen reader recommendation. Maybe the world of people who need to identify wines in a blind tasting situation is bigger than I thought.

Or maybe there is another reason this book is so popular. I find the focus on structure instructive and that it adds to my enjoyment of wine. I rarely taste wines blind, but I always like to think about them and acid/tannin structure adds a new dimension.

Contradictions?

I said at the beginning that the fox and hedgehog dichotomy doesn’t completely hold here and it is true. I’m not disappointed, however, because that’s actually an important point in Isaiah Berlin’s original essay. While Jamie Goode tells us all the different perspectives that science reveals about wine taste, in the end he has some doubts. All these factors are there, he says, but isn’t a person’s taste ultimately a single thing? Does it really help to break down taste into so many pieces when the actual experience of wine is or should be a harmonious whole? The fox theorist is drawn haunted by a hedgehog ideal.

Jackson makes a convincing case for his focus on structure and his students, many of whom are studying for the MW exam, benefit and sing his praises. But, towards the end of the book, he moves beyond identifying a wine to assessing wine quality. Is this wine good? Excellent? Great? He tells us that many students struggle with moving from objective to subjective. It is a more complicated issue that needs to be approached in a different way.

A hedgehog and a fox walk into a bar and come out a few hours later understanding more than you might guess about wine … and themselves.

Einstein’s Law & Washington Wine

July 7, 2020 By Mike Veseth in Washington wine, wine, wine education 2 Comments

Einstein said that everything should be made as simple as possible … but not simpler. At some point further simplification loses the essence of whatever is being studied. I am pretty sure that he was talking about physics, not wine, but I think the concept applies here as well.

I was reminded of Einstein’s Law when I learned about what the Auction of Washington Wines is doing to try to spread the word about this region’s dynamic wine scene. Usually the auction is an in-person event and so the impact is limited a bit by attendance constraints. This year, however, they’ve gone virtual, which opens up expanded possibilities. And they’ve partnered with the world-class story-teller, Karen MacNeil, to spread the word, simplify the story, but not too much.

The Signature Grape Syndrome

The temptation to violate Einstein’s law is strong. Wine people look at the success of New Zealand and Argentina,. for example, and decide that a single signature grape is the answer. I have argued that a signature variety is no silver bullet and, in any case, what grape variety would Washington choose? Riesling makes sense. Chateau Ste Michelle is the world’s largest producer of Riesling wines. Merlot had proponents for a while (pre-Sideways).

Cabernet Sauvignon was the recent favorite, but too much was planted both in Washington and parts of California, and it is not the easy sell it once was. And there are lots of other contenders including Syrah, Grenache, Cabernet Franc, and rising Tempranillo. No one grape variety rules them all … or should.

Washington’s wine diversity is a blessing for consumers, but a problem for marketers. No wonder the Washington State Wine Commission went to the other extreme in choosing a new logo. Some of my wine friends admire the austere graphics, but I think it simplifies too far. What story does it tell? Einstein would not approve, although I am not sure what alternative he’d suggest. He’d probably just pour another glass of great Washington wine and leave it at that.

Happily the new logo is part of a useful package of resources to help wineries tell their (and Washngton’s) story. And I don’t think anyone will mistake WA wine for the logo of Wawa, the Pennsylvania-based gasoline and convenience store chain.

Washington Wine Storybook

Karen MacNeil and the Auction of Washington Wines have to simplify, too, but virtual platforms allow more depth and detail. They’ve organized a series of on-line interviews and tastings, each with a particular theme. Wines for each session are available for purchase.

A webinar on Washington wine “trailblazers” (originally web-cast on June 18 but you can still watch the video) brought together pioneers Allen Shoup, Rick Small, and Marty Clubb. Shoup, Small, and Clubb have seen the Washington industry grow from just a hand full of wineries to over 1000 producers. MacNeil begins the conversation by asking, did you always know this was going to be a success? Good question. Click on the image to hear their answers.

The second webinar, which first appeared on July 2, focuses on the next generation, giving a sense of the dynamic of this young industry. Andrew Januik, Rob Mercer, John Bookwalter, and Caleb Foster are featured.

Next up (on July 16, so you still have time to place your wine order) is a program on women in Washington wine featuring Leah Adint, Lisa Packer, and Jessica Munnell. The status of women in the wine industry is one of Karen MacNeil’s particular concerns, so this session is an opportunity to add this important issue to the mix. Hopefully future programs can explore issues of diversity and inclusion in even greater depth and breadth.

Three Ps: It’s Complicated

Other programs in the series will explore the topics of terroir (Red Mountain) and grape varieties. There’s no way they can tell the whole story of Washington wine any more than the previous sessions could, but they aren’t likely to violate Einstein’s Law, either.

Sometimes complicated things need to be understood in complicated ways, so there is plenty of room for future webinars to examine the great diversity of Washington’s “Three Ps,” the people and their distinctive visions, the places (the varied terroir), and the plants (the grape varieties that thrive here).

Wine Book Reviews: Vino, Économie, Le Guerre & Leonardo’s Vines

February 11, 2020 By Mike Veseth in book reviews, wine, wine education, wine history, wine science 2 Comments

torcoli

Four wine books with intertnational twists for your reading consideration.

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Alessandro Torcoli, In Vino Veritas: Praticamente tutto quello che serve sapere (davvero) sul vino. Longanesi.

Billy Joel tells us that wine is a simple thing. A bottle of white? A bottle of red? Perhaps a bottle of Rosè instead? Alessandro Torcoli wants us to know that wine is actually complicated, but not so complex that we can’t enjoy it. And that’s a good thing.

Torcoli is editor of Civiltà del Bere, a leading Italian journal of wine and culture, and an aspiring Master of Wine (there are no Italians on the current list of MWs — incredible!).

I am not fluent in Italian (or French, either — see below), but wine is a universal language and that plus some extra effort allowed me to read and enjoy Torcoli’s new book, In Vino Veritas. My efforts were well rewarded.

In Vino Veritas, as the subtitle promises, provides the reader with “pretty much everything you need to know (really) about wine,” which is to say that it is a survey of the most important topics in wine. I might be wrong, but I imagine that the book came out of Torcoli’s MW studies and represents his thoughtful reflections on the world of wine. Two things especially impressed me about this book.
First, the writing style is so fluid that it is a pleasure to read even, as I noted above, when struggling a bit with translation. Some of this is no doubt because it is written in Italian, which is a beautiful language. But it is possible to write poorly in Italian, too, so most of the credit must go to Torcoli, who is a poet as well as wine expert.

Although Torcoli’s book has global reach, analyzing both old and new world wines, it is written for an Italian audience and so uses Italy and its wines as the reference point. I didn’t realize how important the shift in perspective (from France in many cases) would be and how much it would help me understand and appreciate both Italian wines and those from other places.

This is an enticing book with much to offer both novice and professional. Highly recommended.

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cardebat

Jean-Marie Cardebat, Économie du vin. La Decouverte.

Jean-Marie Cardebat is a wine economist who teaches at the University of Bordeaux. Although my French is only a little better than my Italian, I found this book accessible because it draws on both the language of wine and the lexicon of economics.

Prof. Cardebat’s book is an introduction to the economic analysis of the wine industry and successfully straddles a certain kind of line, telling economists about wine and wine people about economics without leaving either group behind.

Because of this the book’s organization is very different from that of a standard wine guide. Forget about the typical arrangement based on grape varieties and wine regions. We start instead with the determinants of the supply of wine and move to demand, the market structure, and price, drawing on relevant data and published research along the way.

The tone becomes much more analytical in the final chapter, perhaps because this is where Cardebat’s own research is most relevant. Well written and clear with many fine passages (although understandably not as poetic as Torcoli’s essays). A worthy addition to your bookshelf. You might also consider James Thornton’s American Wine Economics, for an American perspective on the topic.

lambrusco

>>><<<Attilio Scienza & Serena Imazio, Sangiovese, Lambrusco, and Other Vine Stories. Positive Press.

The third book on this list is provided in English translation of the original Italian, which is helpful since its topic can be dauntingly technical.

I have had the pleasure to be on programs with Prof. Scienza in both the New York and Italy and to appreciate that he is quite a legendary figure in viticulture research. It is easy to see why.

This book analyzes the origins of and the relations between many of the most important indigenous Italian grape varieties using DNA analysis. An important topic, to be sure, but it can be quite technical and somewhat tedious for the novice like me.

So it is significant that Scienza and Imazio interweave the stories of the vines with human stories, drawing upon history and archaeology to help understand how the vines and the wines developed and how they gave us the wines and grapes of today.

One of my favorite chapters explores the family tree of Moscato and Malvasia. Along the way we are introduced to Zibibbo, which the authors compare to a sailor who has a son in every port because this somewhat obscure grape was instrumental in the evolution of so many other wine grape varieties.

We also learn about Leonardo Da Vinci’s personal vineyard in Milan, which still exists and has been somewhat miraculously reconstructed. How do they know what grapes were grown then and are therefore planted again now? Elementary, dear reader. DNA analysis — plus some human detective work that would make Sherlock Holmes proud. We can say with confidence that Leonardo favored sweet wine. Sweet wine? Perhaps that is part of the secret of the Mona Lisa’s mystical smile.

Hard to resist a book with so many fascinating insights.

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hitler

Christophe Lucand, Hitler’s Vineyards:How the French Winemakers Collaborated with the Nazis. Pen & Sword History, 2019.

Originally published in French as Le vin et le guerre (Wine and War), the English translation’s title really grabs your attention. Hitler’s Vineyards? Hard not to pull it down from the shelf to learn more.

This isn’t the first book I’ve seen about wine and World War II. One of my favorite wine books of all time is Wine and War: The French, the Nazis, and the Battle for France’s Greatest Treasure by Donald and Petie Kladstrup. It tells the story of how French producers walked a delicate line, trying to preserve their wines and vines during the Nazi occupation. The Kladstrups are wonderful story-tellers, so this is a book that is hard to put down.

Lucand’s detailed historical analysis of wine during the Nazi Occupation of France is fascinating, too. Nazi forces purchased truly enormous quantities of French wine from all regions and of all qualities at prices well above the market and shipped it all back to Germany. The money to buy the wine came from the exorbinate fees that Germany charged the French government for the costs of occupation. So French money bought French wine for German drinkers.

Although I am sure the wine producers had mixed emotions about these transaction, the fact is that the high-priced sales were welcome since large stocks had built up in the pre-war years. And, Lucand tells us, the occupiers worked to improve vineyard operations in order to keep the wine flows going.

When the clouds of war finally cleared, Lucand explains, the French wine industry was transformed from an inward-looking business to an export-oriented giant. Fascinating. Detailed, well-written, and controversial, Lucand’s history of France and its wine during the Nazi Occupation is an unexpected treat.