The dearth of recommendable California wines under $12

The New York Times magazine ran an charticle on Sunday that compiled the picks of 18 wine industry types. The category? Wines under $12. But the list raised questions for Ray Isle of Food & Wine, since he tweeted: The lack of California wines is understandable for a couple of reasons. Yes, California makes a [...]

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Paris Hilton Patricia Velásquez Paula Garcés Paulina Rubio

Yeoman wine, harvest festival, more brainwashing, advice ? sipped & spit

SIPPED: snappy advice GQ.com has a fun list of 25 wine tips that may run counter to expectations (cool photos too). If you like your tips in book form, I mentioned many of these items in Dr. Vino’s guide, A Year of Wine. SIPPED: Yeoman wine James Conaway, who wrote Napa a couple of decades [...]

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Rose McGowan Roselyn Sanchez Rozonda Thomas Saira Mohan

Two Value-Play Winners From Pricey Catogories: Burgundy and Barbaresco

Buy a half-case or more at Wine Chateau and get 1/2 off shipping with code "wellesley54"
I came across an interesting story today about how a Wellesley author's father's blogging efforts "robbed" the author of his unique identity as the author of the family. The father recently retired and all he did was play golf, watch soccer, and read books. Sound pretty nice if you ask me. The point that struck a chord was that the father channeled his voracious book-a-day appetite into a unique online review format - published via a blog.

I thought to myself: I usually taste a new wine every day, why don't I write about each of them?

The reason I don't blog every day is because in spite my unrelenting efforts to triangulate professional ratings, low prices, and availability, many wines I try are just "good" or "very good" and don't seem worthy of telling people about.

I try to find interesting stories in wines and relate recommendations that are relevant and interesting. But sometimes I think I should just knock out a post and move on. This is just blogging after all.

With that in mind here are a couple of winners I came across tonight:

2007 Domaine Pierre Janny Bourgogne Blanc Echavon
About $12

The other day I was in Bin Ends picking up some 2003 Albino Rocca Brich Ronchi they had at a great price. Dan Kline asked me if I ever drink white wine. I would have enjoyed a long conversation on the subject but in the interest of time I said "not really" and left it at that.

The reality is I'm often disappointed with white wines and even if I end up liking them I don't look forward to opening them. A few months ago I stopped in and asked for a recommendation in the tricky white Burgundy category. This wine was that recommendation.

I cringed as I opened it thinking it was going to be limited aromatically. However, the wine was an absolute delight to drink. There's no way I would have pegged this as French if I tasted it blind. Such a nice tropical aromatic nose but as you taste it, it reigns in its gregarious nature. Green apples on the palate and a touch of acidity. Perhaps the best thing I liked about it was the linear enjoyable aftertaste - it avoided the quirky flavor markers so many domestic Chardonnays seem to display.

A stunning and pleasant surprise.

I've heard "If you think you found a cheap Burgundy - you probably found a cheap Burgundy." Maybe that applies mostly to reds?

Purchased at: Bin Ends Wine
91/100 WWP: Outstanding


2007 Col Dei Venti Tufo Blu Barbaresco
$31 Release Price

My interest in Barbaresco continues to evolve, and along the way I've been comparing notes for the highly regarded 2007 vintage from The Wine Advocate's Antonio Galloni and Wine Spectator's newly minted Piedmont editor Bruce Sanderson.

Galloni used to pen Piedmont Report and I've found his reviews on Italian wines to be useful. Sanderson's coverage of the region started just recently. In comparing their notes on the 2007 Pelissero Barbaresco Nubiola I found better alignment with Sanderson than Galloni however:

Where's the fruit? I realize this is super-young but I've got to favor WS's opinion over WA on this one. I think Bruce Sanderson nailed it: "Dense and austere in flavor, with a muscular structure dominating any fruit."

Compare this with Galloni's note: "caresses the palate with layers of round, sumptuous fruit. This is a more generous, enveloping style than the Tulin, and shows just an extra touch more depth. Dark red fruit, sweet spices".

Sweet spices? Sumptuous fruit? You've got to be kidding me. This wine is dark, brooding, and austere. It's more like a Barolo than a Barbaresco.

Props to Sanderson for good work in his rookie season covering Piedmont. I'll pay attention to his notes going forward.

The 2007 Col Dei Venti is a wine Spectator's Sanderson thought highly of. At 94 WS/$31 release price it's quite a QPR-bender. Even better if you can snag it for around $25.

The wine is a beauty and incredibly approachable for a young Barbaresco. It's lower in acidity with softer tannins than most Barbaresco I've tasted. It's plush and forgiving.

Flavor wise it's classic Nebbiolo. Each sip starts with light red raspberries and floral aromatics. I noted a striking aroma of Crayola crayons in an elementary school desk drawer. Quite amazing and persistent across a couple glasses. Wow - really interesting.

Purchased at: Wine Connextion 
92/100 WWP: Outstanding

So there you have it. Two outstanding wines in categories notorious for being hard to find value. 

PS That's our 4 year old in the photo above whining at the dinner table while I took the photo. It was a little bit of a rough night but in the interest of knocking a blog post out - there you have it. :)

Question of the Day: Have you had either of these wines? Let me know what you think of them in the comments if you've had them. If not - have you found any good values in Burgundy or Barbaresco lately?


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Rebecca Romijn Reese Witherspoon Rhona Mitra Rihanna

Field Notes from a Wine Life ? Digital Marketing Edition

Every year, and sometimes more frequently, I write a post about what’s happening in digital and what’s coming next, looking through the lens of the domestic wine business, based on my work in digital marketing outside of the wine business. This is that post.

Most everybody reading this understands the value of digital marketing (or “engaging” to use an overworked phrase) with platforms like blogging, Twitter and Facebook.  While not all wineries are utilizing these tools, enough in the wine business are.  Despite the growing imperative, we are in the midst of another cycle of advancement.  New platforms are emerging that are likewise centric to community-building and/ or a mobile device, either a smartphone or a tablet computer. 

Life gets more complicated and one man’s use of Twitter is another man’s opportunity to get ahead of “what’s next.”

On Social Media

The “Social Media Expert” of 2009 is now, officially, a dinosaur.  The game isn’t about Twitter or Facebook, it’s about effective use of platforms, a myriad of platforms that happens to include Twitter and Facebook.  As always, be wary of the consultant who borrows your watch in order to tell you what time it is.

On Google+

Google+ is more likely to be a danger to LinkedIN than it is Facebook.  I would keep an eye on it, but its value is still very much in the definition phase and even hardcore early adopters don’t know what to do with it.  Accordingly, I wouldn’t spend much energy on it until it gets categorized into a definable niche.

On Flash wine sales sites

As these sites mature, the fact that they offer a discounted price is going to become tangential to the fact that they make purchasing wine reasonably simple and easy.  There are too many wines for the average consumer to navigate when, at the end of the day, all they want is a good bottle of wine without a lot of problems in choosing.  Flash sites solve this by curation, which will become more important as the short-term oversupply issues resolve themselves.  They’re not going away anytime soon.

On Tumblr

In April, when Gary Vaynerchuk exhorted the crowd at the Nomacorc Marketing Symposium to pay serious attention to Tumblr, the easy to use blogging platform, I understood the “what” and “why” of his recommendation, but I also mentally counter-balanced what he said with the understanding that he also had an investment in Tumblr.

Sometimes it’s hard to *listen* to the message (“Every person in this room will have a Tumblr account for their winery in 24 months”) when you think you *hear* something self-serving.  Yet, recent statistics bear out his commendation of Tumblr.

According to recent Silicon Valley Insider statistics, Tumblr traffic is growing at astronomical rates—up 218% from July 2010 to July 2011.

The “why” of this requires a bit more context and Tumblr’s growth puts several trends in play:

  Wordpress, now the de facto blog platform, continues to lard itself with capabilities, morphing into a robust content management system and professional publishing platform in the process, becoming less and less the simple, easy-to-use, no-brainer tool that it was a couple of years ago.

  People that are active on Twitter and Facebook may want to write more expansively than what those platforms support, but less than the 400 – 600 words of a “normal” blog post.  In doing so, they want to “curate” other news and other people’s content and comment on it creating a sort of ongoing digital ephemera stream, a sort of digital scrapbook and archive of their life.  Tumblr and its competitor Posterous makes doing this super simple and optimized for mobile usage, as well.

  Tumblr and its ilk skews much younger demographically than Wordpress and Blogger.  It’s hard to imagine thinking of Blogger as your Mom’s blog platform, but it’s true.

  Web sites like Wix and Weebly allow individuals to create a web site/personal brand hub and then social channels/platforms become the metaphorical arms and legs off their personal brand hub – Facebook for friends, LinkedIN for professional pursuits, Twitter for communicating, quick links and watching news headlines, Tumblr for activities and longer thought,  Facebook for personal networking, etc.

My overall point is that wineries shouldn’t sleep on Tumblr – where blogs are morphing into a winery PR channel and Twitter and Facebook are fast becoming marketing channels, Tumblr is likely to morph into a more personal communication channel.

Speaking of Not Sleeping…

Wineries are officially remiss if they don’t pay attention to Pinterest.  You probably haven’t heard of it, but you will.  It skews dramatically young, female and educated and it’s all about curating pictures of stuff that users like online.

In my opinion, Pinterest is a direct result of the community niches that organized around subject areas in Flickr.  The community aspect in Flickr, it should be noted, has long been under-acknowledged by marketing types, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing as matters of personal taste can be explored unfettered… 

Being into wine is a statement of personal taste and Pinterest is all about expressing personal taste through imagery that is, “pinned” to a user’s board. The fact that Pinterest is growing fast and organically will keep it cool and insider-ish for a good long while.  The winery that starts a Pinterest board that resonates with a large female audience will have a marketing leg-up. I’m very bullish on Pinterest.

Online Wine Sales

The three best wine shopping experiences that I’ve seen online in 2011 are Dean & Deluca, Plonk Wine Merchants and Lot 18.  I’ve purchased from Plonk and Lot 18.

Interestingly, none of these “best” online wine shopping experiences, in my opinion, have anything to do with price, or selection – they have everything to do with user experience.  Clean, elegant, easy to use and information rich, each of these sites gives a drop of knowledge alongside an intuitive web browsing experience.  This is what wineries are competing against and we’re not too far away from current winery web sites and their legacy platforms supported by Inertia, eWinery Solutions and others being woefully out of date from a user experience perspective.

Oh, by the way, wine ecommerce is still very, very early in its growth.  That blip on the sales radar won’t be a blip forever… 

#Hashtag Days

The Hallmark holiday of the new millennium.  Let’s have a “Cabernet Day” or “Pinot Grigio Day” or any of the various permutations that have happened over the last two years.  Snooze.  Wake me when it’s over.  Overall, I’m terribly ambivalent about these arbitrary days just as I’m ambivalent about “Sweetest Day.”

It’s great for marketers because I think it does have an impact (however slight), but, they are unimaginatively tactical and not sustainable because participants gain absolutely nothing from participating and, users, if nothing else, are self-motivated.

Generally speaking, these are even more faddish than the QR codes that I mentioned earlier this week.

Gen Y. Focused Wines

Wine brands that are focused on Gen. Y (HobNob, Project Paso, Tamas and others) are missing something that I think is integral to being in your 20s – connecting your wine brand to an emotion.  Encapsulated by JWT research – it’s got to be a, “Fear of Missing Out” (see here and here).

On ROI

ROI or return on investment is important, but not nearly as important as having the simple ability to measure what you’re doing.  The return will present itself if you can measure.  Figure out the measurement and analytics first.

What I believe about Digital Marketing In a Nutshell

Organized customer relationship management (CRM) is everything.  Every Twitter follower and Facebook fan page “like” should be in a CRM program associated to an email address and, ideally, a mailing address.  The information is available. 

Content is most important after that.  Brands are publishers.  Ideally, both CRM and content marketing is underpinned by a strategy of some duration that plans content for various platforms. Plan your work and work your plan.

Note:  PR is one aspect of content marketing and strategy, but it’s not the entire strategy. 

One-off tactics that don’t fit within an overall strategy (i.e. QR codes) are a waste of time, effort and money.  Likewise, a mobile strategy need not be complicated so long as the platforms used within your strategy are mobile optimized. 

Also note, paralysis by analysis is a peril.  There’s so much out there and so much that you *can* know that over-thinking is as dangerous as doing nothing. 

If all else fails, listen to Miles from Risky Business.

Source: http://goodgrape.com/index.php/site/field_notes_from_a_wine_life_digital_marketing_edition/

Luján Fernández Magdalena Wróbel Maggie Grace Maggie Gyllenhaal

Deal Alert: 93 WS $15 Spanish Red


It might be lost in the excitement surrounding the highly acclaimed 2009 California Pinot Noir vintage, but if you look on page 87 of the October 15, 2011 issue of Wine Spectator you'll see a round up of Top Wines from Spain.

In the midst of a number of wines rated 93 points, wedged in between a $200 Numanthia-Termes and a $250 Bodegas Roda is the 2004 Bodegas Resalte de Penafiel Ribera del Duero de Restia Crianza Selected Harvest at $15.

What do I know about this wine? Nothing. But I know where to buy it.

While I was trying to track the wine down I received an email from The Spirit Shoppe (a WWP advertsier) offering it at a fair price. I asked owner Devin Vollmer what was up with this wine? Why was a 2004 just being rated? He answered on their Facebook page that most Crianza is cellared for 2 years (so 09s are being released for the most part) but this wine was just arriving in the states.

CellarTracker
Wine-Searcher

As of now The Spirit Shoppe is the only place in the country I see offering this wine. It's $18.69 per bottle with free shipping in MA if you buy a mixed case of wine. Check out their assortment of 09 CdPs, CdRs, and domestic Pinot Noir to round out a case:

Buy this wine online at The Spirit Shoppe 

Question of the Day: Have you tried this wine or other vintages?


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Nelly Furtado Nichole Robinson Nicky Hilton Nicole Richie

Questioning Authority: The David Darlington Edition

Insight and education and entertainment does result from exploring the expertise of authorities in any given field. But sometimes, simply questioning the authority on more mundane matters can also deliver insight...and surprises. The "Questioning Authority" interview series on FERMENTATION is...

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Lacey Chabert Laetitia Casta Lake Bell Larissa Meek