Wine Biz Radio Industry Commentary

Stephen Tanzer, world-renowned wine reviewer and tastemaker, publisher of Stephen Tanzer’s International Wine Cellar has joined the blogging world.

Called Stephen Tanzer’s Winophilia, the humbly-titled blog is written by Stephen, other members of the IWC staff, and, presumably, guests. But how is it different from other wine sites?

Luckily for all of us, the About page answers just that question with, and this is just a snippet, the following:

At Winophilia, we’re not armchair tasters who pretend to speak knowledgeably about regions we’ve never visited. We’re not amateur bloggers whose coverage of wine is limited to a handful of random samples we’ve just received, a trade tasting we’ve attended, or a press junket we’ve just been treated to. We live wine. Each of us spends several weeks to several months on the road each year, visiting wineries and tasting thousands of wines annually with their makers. And that’s not even including the thousands of bottles we taste each year in our own dining rooms.

Well, that’s quite a mouthful, Stephen! As an armchair taster who pretends to speak knowledgeably about all sorts of things, I’d like to personally welcome you to the wine blogging world by saying go back to your dying print medium, jackass.

In the wake of flagging circulation numbers and decreasing revenue, wine publishing luminaries have been migrating online, albeit slowly, for the last year-plus. Robert Parker did it with eRobertParker.com, and now Stephen’s here. But why the denigrating tone? Why simultaneously join the party and piss in the punch bowl? What could be the point? The impetus?

Since I’m already an armchair taster pretending to speak knowledgeably about blah blah blah, allow me to put on my armchair psychoanalyst hat (while the former apparently pisses off Stephen, the latter may make my wife, an actual PsyD candidate, throw up her arms in frustration. I’ll take the chance.) and give it a go: he feels threatened.

I’m not sure why. As we all know, “[w]ine blogging is the attention-seeking barking of lonely poodles” (thanks, Ron), not the to-be-taken-seriously challenge to the traditional wine cognoscenti that Stephen must view it as in order to leap in to the deep end of blogging while, at the same time, decrying the existence of water in the pool. Or maybe of other swimmers. See, I’m just an armchair wordsmith pretending to speak knowledgeably about analogies, so I’m not sure there.

Frankly, the “traditional vs blogging” catfight is getting tired. I don’t really care what Stephen Tanzer thinks of me. We’re never going to meet. I’m never going to have to ask him for a letter of recommendation, and he’s never going to ask me to design and develop a website for him (my career)–although incidentally, Stephen, Winophilia looks like a high school class put it together–so really, our effect on each other is minimal.

Unless my words here (collectively, of course, with the words of other wine bloggers) are actually making an impact on his bottom line. If I’m right up there in that pedestrian psychoanalysis, and he does indeed deem wine blogging to be a threat to his dying medium. If so, then boys and girls, we must be doing something right. Apparently, blogging is having an effect. People like it. Maybe they only like it because it’s free, but I doubt that. As my personal hero, Walt Disney, liked to say, “quality will out.”

Maybe it has to do with being unpretentious nonjackasses. If you’re an unpretentious nonjackass, please step forward.

Not so fast, Mr. Tanzer.

(photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jpockele/ / CC BY 2.0)

Steve Paulo's vitriol aside, he raises a good point.

With remarks such as Robert Parker labeling wine bloggers as "wine blobbers" (Jeff LeFevere at Good Grape has a great summary on this) as well as Anthony Dias Blue, we can look at the latest salvo by Stephen Tanzer as more of the same.

Wine bloggers should rejoice that they are getting such traction that old-guard wine reviewers such as Tanzer and the International Wine Cellar feel threatened enough to jump in the wine blog pool and swim with the... um... what is it that you call capable incumbents who occupy the market segment that you hope to enter?

Oh yeah: sharks.

Why Worry About Social Media and Dominating the Millenials when Your Wine Sucks?

While most are strategerizing about social media and how to target millenials with leftover 3rd label juice, a handful of people are still out making wine that tastes like this.

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Sales of our third label are down, way down.  It is mindboggling, because the goofy-ass name we gave it did great in test markets-  Who doesn't want a wine named Crazy Bear Charbono-nay-- a tasty blend of smoke-tainted Charbono and stainless steel Chardonnay?  (More on Crazy Bear in coming posts).  The data said it was supposed to flow like energy drinks this year in the parking lots of the Nickleback tour we sponsored, but something went wrong-- horribly wrong.  Now sales blames marketing, marketing blames production, production blames sales, and whoever the people are who are on the other side of the conference calls have now hired consultants that say "You need to turn on social media now, or Crazy Bear is farked!"

Heads ready to roll, we've set up killer twitter #hashtags (#crazybear), recruited thousands of "friends", and started tweetin' like a mother-clucker (even if they just RT stupid stuff, #crazybear is getting out there!) Soon everyone will be talking about Crazy Bear (The crazy wine that cares)!

In 3months Crazy Bear is going to be way on top- Getting guzzled by dudes on iPhones falling out of party buses shelling out hundos and coming to make it rain all up in your tasting room!  Because what the consultants tell us we need to realize is that lovers of Crazy Bear will soon grow and become lovers of our pricey main label-- Bear Creek Ridgeline Springs (An exclusively bold wine for successful couples sophisticated indulgence, for sharing with other like-minded, but not quite as successful couples). 

It is a good thing that It is hot as balls down at Bear Creek Ridgeline Springs, because to score big and get that cheddar, you've got let those balls hang.  Lovers of Crazy Bear relate to that and it is just a matter of tweets and moving out of their parents house before they cross the line...

Crazy Bear Wine on Facebook

Crazy Bear Wine on Twitter

Hardy can play wild-and-loose sometimes, but despite the hilarious post he's written, the underlying question is insightful and compelling. It's all well and good that you spend exorbitant amounts of money on selling your product; but if your product is terrible, sub-standard, or just plain lousy, should you really be worried about taking a "bleeding-edge" approach to marketing and selling it, rather than just relabeling it as paint thinner?

The moral of the story: as a business, please don't get swept away in the euphoria of social media (which, by the way, feels frickin' AWESOME) without having a product that you're passionate about marketing or selling and that is WORTH marketing or selling to a receptive audience. To do anything less will inevitably backfire on you.

And seriously, don't mess with Crazy Bear Wine. These guys are going to crush it. Just you wait.

February 23, 2010

The Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America, the NFL Players Association and Discovery Education Partner on New Effort to Address Underage Access to Alcohol

It's 21. Just Pass initiative reinforces the message that the legal drinking age is 21 and challenges high school students' knowledge about the laws and consequences of underage drinking

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contacts: 
Jerry Brown, Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America
202-371-9792, jerry.brown@wswa.org

Jilane Rodgers, NFL Players Association
202-572-7504, jilane.rodgers@nflplayers.com

Stephen Wakefield, Discovery Education
240-662-2893, stephen_wakefield@discovery.com

Silver Spring, Md. (Feb. 23, 2010) – The Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America (WSWA), the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA) and Discovery Education announce a new partnership creating the It's 21. Just Pass initiative. Designed to reinforce the message that the legal drinking age is 21 and challenge high school students' knowledge about the laws and consequences of underage drinking, It's 21. Just Pass has launched in 21 cities across the country.

The central component of this effort is the It's 21. Just Pass challenge which targets high school students and features:

• A quiz which challenges students' current knowledge while providing critical information about the laws and consequences related to underage drinking;
• A drawing to award one $5,000 scholarship (students become eligible by taking a short online quiz); and
• An assembly featuring an NFL player, awarded to the school with the highest challenge participation levels.

In addition, the It's 21. Just Pass online video forum encourages students to create short videos about the dangers and consequences of underage drinking for a chance to win two tickets to an area NFL game.

"WSWA is committed to community programs that address underage access to alcohol," said Craig Wolf, President and CEO, Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America. "By partnering with NFLPA and Discovery Education, we've leveraged high-profile sports personalities and a very credible educational resource to help us develop an innovative campaign that demonstrates our ongoing commitment to become an industry leader in social responsibility."

"The NFLPA proudly supports all of its players in their community service endeavors," said George Atallah, NFLPA Assistant Executive Director External Affairs. "Ventures like 'It's 21. Just Pass' give these player role models an invaluable platform to spread a positive message."

"Discovery Education is committed to empowering educators with the tools and resources that engage students in learning each and every day – whether those lessons are about the solar system or the consequences of underage drinking," said Mary Rollins, Vice President of Education Partnerships, Discovery Education.  "We are pleased to partner with WSWA and NFLPA on the It's 21. Just Pass initiative, and look forward to collaborating on this joint mission to educate teachers, parents and students about the dangers of underage drinking."

To learn more about It's 21. Just Pass, visit www.its21justpass.com.

We've been critical of the WSWA's position on direct shipment of wine to consumers, and their rather flimsy argument that what kids these days want to do is order expensive wine from out-of-state retailers to be shipped to their door and not have their ID checked by the shipper.

Regardless, we are not above giving props where props are due. The WSWA's program to educate high school kids on the realities of underage drinking's consequences appears smart. It appears well thought-out, with incentives to get kids involved and raise awareness with some pretty compelling carrots being dangled in front of them (a scholarship and a school visit by "an NFL player" - no specifics there - being the biggest ones).

Is it likely to reduce the occurrence of underage drinking (especially binge drinking by minors)? We remain skeptical but optimistic.

A Facebook site called "Save the Wine Column" has now over 700 industry and non-industry members and is growing daily.

Supporters have flooded to the page that was constructed last week by wine journalist Rebecca Gibb, after news that Tim Atkin's weekly Observer wine column is to be significantly reduced.

His column has been cut from from 900 words to just two wine recommendations with tasting notes of 40 words each.

Although Atkin will still appear in the Observer Food Monthly, he told Harpers: "It's sad that the Observer have made this decision and especially for all the readers who have supported me and read the weekly column over the past 17 years."

Commenting on the site,  Atkin MW, who has been writing the column in the Observer since 1993, said: "I'm biased, but I don't think newspaper wine columns are dead, or on the way out just yet. There's a proven demand for good copy with useful recommendations. There are still columns on the FT, [Financial Times] Telegraph, Indie [Independent] and Times after all."

It's not the first column to have been recently slashed, in March 2009, Joanna Simon's column was taken in-house at the Sunday Times and Richard Ehrlich's wine column for the Independent on Sunday was cut.

On the site, Gibb said: "The loss of wine columns is a worldwide trend as seen by the number of international members getting involved from France to Canada, the US and New Zealand."

Due to the page's growing membership, it also points to Facebook's increasing in popularity as a social networking medium throughout the wine industry.

Dear friends, the wine column is alive and well with wine bloggers. Yes, yes, you don't get paid much right now, your audience is small, and you feel like you have no impact at all.

Has the Wine Bloggers' Conference taught us nothing at all? Wineries get it, a growing number of Internet-savvy consumers are reading and trusting them. The ad dollars that originally went to print newspapers and subsequently into the paychecks of wine writers have been consistently (if slowly) moving toward wine blogs. Ad networks set up by online wine publishers such as Palate Press show a technique that bridges the old print world and the online world, one that advertisers can relate to and they reasonably understand. Friends, the transformation is fully underway.

Even traditional curmudgeons such as Steve Heimoff benefit from the growing wine blog trend, even as he disparages it. Several well known wine writers have at least explored, if not fully embraced, moving their wine writing to blogs. It's our belief that, once the ad dollars show up in sufficient numbers (i.e. the tipping point), wine writing will move online with such speed that people will no longer bemoan the passing of print wine columns.

Constellation Brands Inc. denied Thursday that its $25,000 campaign contribution to the re-election of Gov. David Paterson was tied to Paterson’s proposal to allow wine sales in grocery stores.

The donation was made the week before Paterson announced his wine plan Jan. 19, as part of his proposed 2010/2011 budget, raising concern. Blair Horner of New York Public Interest Research Group, said Thursday that “generally speaking, major businesses don't give campaign contributions out of the goodness of their hearts. They believe it will have influence and they don't give unless they think it will work.”

Constellation spokeswoman Cheryl Gossin said the contribution is “not in any way connected to the wine in grocery stores” proposal. Constellation made the contribution in response to a campaign fundraiser, Jan. 12, in Rochester organized by community leaders, she said. Constellation had planned to make the contribution a month before that, she added.
While Constellation supports the governor, she said, it has and will remain neutral on the wine-in-grocery stores issue.

Likewise, Richie Fife, spokesman for Paterson’s re-election campaign, said Thursday, “there is absolutely no connection” to the Constellation contribution and the governor's support for wine in grocery stores.

The long-standing debate over whether New York should allow wine in supermarkets heated up this year with the state’s fiscal woes. Opponents say the proposal would put the state’s roughly 2,700 liquor stores out of business. Supporters say putting wine in the state’s 19,000 groceries and convenient stores would boost wine sales and raise tax revenue.
 

Somedays, it's really hard not to be cynical.

If the allegation is true (that is, that Constellation donated money to a politician in order to influence the "wine in grocery stores" issue), it's only following the example of every other corporate interest who enables the election (or re-election) of politicians who will do their bidding when the contributor's "booty call" comes in. Every other major legislative and policy decision made in this fine country (financial reform, health care, water rights, direct shipping, and so on) seems to follow this time-honored tradition.

Paterson's denial-by-proxy that there is no connection is disingenuous at best. The fact that an corporation who had an interest in changing how wine is sold in New York made a sizable (if not six-figure) contribution to the governor's re-election campaign. The appearance of impropriety is enough that the governor needs to do more than just claim that there's no connection.

WARNING: SARCASM

Honestly, what's the problem with large corporations paying to get their way in politics? Apparently it's the only way to get things done in the United States. Now, if only the teeming unwashed masses of people who can actually vote a ballot had that kind of influence...

Hidden Costs of Expanding Your Direct Shipping Program

At what point does it make sense to get a direct shipping license for a particular state? Common business sense dictates you will wait until (at a minimum) the benefits of gaining market access outweigh the licensing costs. But are you fully aware of the costs involved? Make sure you are ready to grow your business by understanding these “hidden” fees you may encounter.

Bonds

Bond fees are commonly overlooked by wineries calculating the cost of shipping to a new state. A bond is a written guaranty that all taxes owed will be paid to the state. A bond fee is essentially an insurance premium—you pay an annual or biannual “premium” to secure a bond. Bond premiums typically average around 10% of the total bond price, or $50-$180 out-of-pocket for the winery on a recurring basis . Different bonding agents may quote different rates, so it pays to shop around.

Connecticut, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Oregon, Texas and Wisconsin all require a bond in order to obtain a direct shipping license. In all of these states (except Oregon) you will need to secure a bond before submitting your license application. Oregon issues the bond documents after the license application has been received but before the license is issued.

Label Registration

Though not as common as bond fees, some states charge for label registrations. Ohio, a state that 26% of direct shippers have in their program, requires wineries to register all the labels that will be shipped into the state for a one-time registration fee of $50 per label. This can add up if you plan on shipping multiple labels into the state so you will want to consider this in your budget.

And if that sounds pricy to you, consider Connecticut. Connecticut charges $200 per label and you must re-register labels every 3 years if you continue to ship that product to Connecticut.

Georgia, Louisiana, New York, North Carolina and Virginia require label or brand registration, but there is no charge in these states.

Application Fees

Depending on your business structure, some states may require business registration, tax registration or other application fees. This depends entirely on how your business is set up and varies state to state. You may encounter some of these additional fees if you plan to start shipping to Arizona, Connecticut, Hawaii, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia or Wisconsin.

The key to ensuring a profitable direct shipping program is to do your research in order to avoid getting caught off-guard with unexpected costs. If you are responsible for your company’s direct shipping program, you can stay on top of all required license, bond, registration and application fees at EasyWineLicensing.com or you can use this online break-even calculator to help you determine true costs. Knowledge is power!

ShipCompliant has a newsletter they send out, and this article made me sit up and took notice. While SC has been a sponsor of the show in the past (though not currently), I will say that you are not likely to find a firm more knowledgeable of the regulatory Gordian Knot that is beverage compliance than these guys.

Backlash against social media gathers steam

Two articles recently caught my eye. Although they were not apparently related, I saw an underlying connection that speaks, perhaps, to the future of social media.

The first, on the front page of last Saturday’s San Francisco Chronicle, was headlined “Cafe asks customers to turn off laptops and start talking.” It seems there’s a coffee shop right here in Oakland whose owner “is asking customers to leave their laptops at home and actually speak to each other.” Anyone who’s ever been in a free wi-fi environment like Starbucks is familiar with the situation: people hunkered down at tables, nursing a $3 latte for hours while surfing the web. “I don’t have anything against technology,” said the cafe’s owner, a young, hip-looking guy with a goatee (i.e. not some dinosaur Boomer who “doesn’t get it”), “but it’s not the same as looking someone in the eye and pressing the flesh.”

I’ve expressed some negative feelings in this blog over the last year about the way laptops and other personal digital devices, like cell phones, are intruding into the social contract. That contract is an old one, understood pretty much by everyone, and it relates to how we behave in shared social situations. In a crowded elevator, for example, most people will be silent and avoid making eye contact with strangers. On an airplane flight, passengers understand the concept of personal space, which includes audio space: don’t let your arms stick over into your neighbor’s area, don’t make unnecessary noise, etc.

What technology is doing to us is destroying the traditional social contract. Now, that person next to you in the elevator is just as likely to be yakking into a Bluetooth. The other day at my gym, a woman was screaming at the top of her lungs into her cell phone for a good half-hour, while the rest of us had to endure her drama. With laptops in cafes, it’s just the opposite: where ten years ago patrons might have been debating about politics, gossiping, or playing chess, today they’re absorbed in their own little worlds. They might as well be on the Space Shuttle as in a crowded room with other human beings. “It’s now socially acceptable to text during dinner parties or stand alone at a party and check email,” the Chronicle article acidly observed.

Not at my dinner parties!

The second article was sent to me by Ron Washam, the famous Hosemaster of Wine. It is an excerpt from a new book, “You Are Not a Gadget,” by a Harpers Magazine writer, Jason Lanier. Lanier deconstructs many myths surrounding social media in a way I strongly agree with. His underlying message is that social media is not only not bringing us closer and making us better, more dextrous communicators, but in fact is achieving exactly the opposite. “I know quite a few people, most of them young adults, who are proud to say that they have accumulated thousands of friends on Facebook. Obviously, their statements can be true only if the idea of friendship is diminished,” Lanier writes, in a devastatingly pinpoint j’accuse whose truth is hard to deny. Lanier also demolishes one of the more persistent myths of social media: that its “hive mind” nature, in which thousands or millions of individual human minds are collectivized digitally, is somehow superior to a mere “organic human.” This is the assumption made by those entrepreneurs (and I’ve recently written about them) who are launching all these new “people’s wine tastings,” in which the collective wisdom of the crowd is said to be more trustworthy than the judgment of an individual expert. “The most tiresome claim of the reigning digital philosophy is that crowds working for free do a better job at some things than antediluvian paid experts,” Lanier writes. Tiresome, indeed.

The connection between the two articles is that there is a backlash setting in against social media. In the first case, real people, such as the cafe owner, are starting to understand how divisive technology can be (and it’s interesting that their customers are beginning to agree with them). In the second case, academics are questioning the metaphysics of social media, not just analyzing it, but peering into its destructive potential. So we have two prongs moving together in a pincer movement: normal people on the ground and the philosophers of the academy. That is now movements form, and generate momentum.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 9th, 2010 at 12:10 am and is filed under News, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Steve Heimoff has never shown himself to be much of a fan of social media, and wine blogging in particular. However, in claiming that technology has somehow broken traditional social structures, he fails to realize that social media hasn't broken those social contracts, it's transformed them into something different. For him, he doesn't see a benefit from engaging, which may or may not be a function of his place in the industry, his world view, his age, or any number of other factors.
Or to put it another way, YMMV (and for him, his mileage seems to vary considerably versus the unwashed masses of crowdsourcing plebes).