Getting Back to Business

As I sit down to write this post, I slowly sip a red blend from Epoch Estate Wines located down south in Paso Robles. I come from an Italian and Scottish family which is nostalgic, sentimental, and festive when it comes to wine drinking. For me, wine doesn’t just complement foods, but gives me an additional sensory experience with which to both make and preserve memories. I remember the Peju rosé I drank with close friends during my first San Francisco Fleet Week, the Châteauneuf-du-Pape my father would bring out on special occasions, and the 2014 DAUO Vineyards chardonnay I drank on the night of my engagement.

I admittedly didn’t take strongly to wine until I moved to San Francisco after college with my close friends, and the fantastic vineyards of the North Bay seemed to drip down into our backyard. It was as if almost every weekend there was a day trip to Healdsburg, a day of tastings on the town square of St. Helena. I was in my early twenties, so took any excuse to head to the sunny hills, tasty bites, and delicious pours of wine country.

It didn’t take long for me to realize a few personal lessons:

1. I actually liked the wines I was drinking
2. Wine tastings were more fun when you listened to what they were teaching you
3. I had a decent memory for the new tastes I was experiencing

I learned that I loved the buttery chardonnays of Napa Valley, not the steel barrel varieties so often marketed to my “young” peers. I started to write down the wines I enjoyed, taking pleasure when I came across them in restaurants throughout the city. Most importantly, I watched every wine documentary on Netflix, often paired with a brief Chef’s Table espisode!

Yet with shifting jobs, business school, and the many other responsibilities that try to lay claim to my daily schedule, I feel my learning curve tapering. I can identify the big buckets and make the sweeping generalizations (Reislings are too sweet, Pinot Noirs too soft, red blends overlooked), but I find myself wanting the intricacies and anomalies that can unexpectedly delight. I look to this class as a way to jumpstart a new period of exploration and learning. I still don't think any wine can beat a California chardonnay, but I'd love to see several try.

Why I'm taking the course

Right after college, I worked at Blue Hill at Stone Barns, a fancy farm-to-table restaurant in Westchester, NY on a beautiful farm. I did a restaurant management rotation program, and my first job in service was as a cocktail waitress. This may make me sound faint-hearted, but it was the scariest job I've ever had. Balancing 12 dirty martinis while the stern French general manager clocked your every move is not an experience I'd like to repeat. Plus, people with high expectations would ask you about wine, and I literally just lied!

After Blue Hill, I moved to Ireland to attend cooking school - also on a beautiful farm - before working as a chef in London for a year. Never in those years working in restaurants was wine explained to me, even though it's so intimately connected to food. The task of teaching and understanding seemed insurmountable. I want to bridge my knowledge gap.

I come from a family that prioritizes good wine. For better or for worse, my family loves to have "wine nights" when we taste wines blindly. Guests bring two bottles, usually one good one mediocre, the labels are covered, and we muse on the quality, the varietal, the region without any true understanding. It's good fun, but it's a poor showing - and it's usually the men that muse. A large part of me is taking this course to know more than the men. I may not be able to play golf, but I'll be damned if they beat me at wine :)

In all seriousness, wine is important to my lifestyle. I derive great pleasure from trying new wines from interesting regions. A glass of wine while cooking a meal is my version of bliss. I feel lucky and excited to take a course that teaches me about a topic I already know I feel passionately about.

Wine Over Time

Growing up in India, the only two alcoholic drinks that my parents drank were whiskey and beer. When we moved to the US when I was 9, my parents added a few more drinks to their repertoire: gin and tonics, vodka sodas, and even tequila. But according to my mother “I just don’t like wine, it doesn’t taste good,” and as a result, wine was never an option to even consider.

It wasn’t until the summer after my freshman year of college when I studied abroad in Florence that I began to drink wine for many reasons, including 1) I was old enough to drink there, 2) red wine was a staple at the dinner table of our hosts, and 3) it was really inexpensive. While I began to tolerate (and even like!) the taste of wine, all I really knew about wine was that I liked red wine, because according to the Italians, that was the only kind of wine that true wine drinkers liked. I started to drink wine casually in college and when I moved to New York, realizing it was often either the most sophisticated option or the cheapest option.

When I moved to California, wine became an even more important part of my life and something I wanted to understand better. Wine was always available at dinners, friend’s birthday parties and work off-sites were held in Napa, and I began to think that just maybe, white wine was pretty good too. My appreciation for wine has only increased over time, and as I’ve spent more time visiting vineyards in Napa, Sonoma, and around the world in Spain and Italy, I’ve realized I want to know more about how it’s made, how wines differ based on region, grape, country, vintage, etc., and what the wine industry looks like so I’m pretty excited to take this class and learn exactly that.  

Value Perceptions in Restaurants- Gabriel Glas and BTG Pours

Presumably like most wine enthusiasts, I was skeptical of the Gabriel Glas at its introduction. It felt good in the hand with balance and proportion but I, again like most knowledgeable wine consumers, was raised on Riedel stemware. Moreover, I am a fourth generation restaurateur and while we reserve the Riedel glasses for the premium bottle purchases, our standard glass is a knock-off of the classic Riedel Bordeaux dimensions but at a dramatically lower cost. The angularity and lack of a traditional bowl made me concerned that the wine would not swirl and therefore aerate properly to allow the bouquet to be lifted from the wine to the nose.

But, after about 10 small tastings of wine, I am intrigued and excited about the possibilities of the Gabriel Glas to enhance the value perceptions of the wine offerings at my casual restaurants where we rely on our by-the-glass sales. Consistent with the positioning of the product, the intentional design and dimensions of the glass concentrate the bouquet towards the nose and improves the experience of a program that needs to maximize perception and value. At two of our restaurants, we offer a selection of super-premium cellared wines in both a 2 oz and the standard 6 oz portion with price points between $60 and $100 for the 6 oz portion. Therefore, we sell a disproportionate number of the 2 oz portions but find that our guests want to sample through 2-3 different smaller pours. This is an ideal situation for the Gabriel Glas performance and a primed guest who expects this type of unique premium experience.

Unfortunately, I have to wait until after the Holiday season but I am excited to introduce my guests to the Gabriel Glas!

Why am I taking this course? Why not?

A course that combines wine tasting and strategic conversations feels like the apex of a business school curriculum. In all seriousness, as it relates to the former, I enjoy a class of wine from time to time (primarily lighter reds), but I have close to zero knowledge of the wine making process or what really differentiates one wine from another. In those awkward moments when I have to choose a bottle for the dinner table, I usually ask for a few recommendations for a Pinot Noir and then choose a cheaper bottle (but not the cheapest). Through this course, I would like to develop a more formulated view of what wines I like most and why I like them rather than merely basing decisions on price.

As it relates to the strategic element of the class, the wine business seems like a very interesting industry to analyze given evolving dynamics between suppliers, distributors and retailers and evolving consumer preferences based on demographic shifts and potentially other factors. Furthermore, it seems like a very difficult industry to make money, but some players have been successful. Given this, I’m very curious to understand what has differentiated winners and losers historically and what factors might prove most vital in determining success stories in the future. 

Wine & Movies

First off, last night I went to a nice Japanese restaurant in SF with some friends and Canadian family (one had tried Inniskillin, both know what it is, and neither of them thinks it's a big trend). I told them about the case we had gone over in class, and immediately afterward, the dessert menu came. What did I see for $20/glass? Inniskillin! Well targeted. Well targeted.

Why am I taking this class? The intersection of culture/art in a highly profitable business marketplace is a very salient and fascinating discussion to me. I went to film school for undergrad and have always worked in this industry where art and commerce are bittersweet bedmates. Wine--a highly scrutinized, beloved, expensive, traditional, valued, highly capital intensive industry, etc.--reminds me of movies. I also appreciate it in similar ways to movies. How companies known for quality negotiate the question whether or not to expand and offer cheaper, lower quality products is a an argument I am drawn to. At what point does someone not sacrifice quality/tradition for an extra buck? What audience do you want? Do you run your company like a profit-maximizing firm, or noble custodians of a culture and art form?

One of the biggest questions I have asked myself in life is whether my love of movies is a career, or a very passionate hobby. In analyzing what makes a winemaker/who decides to start a winery and how/why the wine economy works, I see my mind working similarly to when I think of the crazy ones who decide to make movies despite the risk, the unpredictability, the subjectiveness of the quality, the ability to make money, the effect of brand and marketing, etc.

If I didn't make movies, I would still need to make a product that is rooted in art/culture, and which ends up in front of a person. Wine is not much different for me.

On another note, my favorite way to travel is through food/drinks. It's how I understand cultures, lifestyles, and it's without a doubt my favorite way to see the world. I have loved wine and its effect on my lifestyle since before it was acceptable to drink wine, really. I also have winemakers in my family and have always been interested in the history and economics of it all.

Finally, this is the only class I have taken at the GSB where we get to interact with the product. It seems like a small thing, but tasting wine and having our own stems changes how I approach the reading. I wish other classes brought in products and gave us this tactile, real-world relationship with that which we are going to study. Other than the fact that it's exceedingly enjoyable, it is a good lesson for me to remember that this thing we speak esoterically about is real, out there now, and carries meaning for a lot of people. Getting up-close and personal with it to understand it, and the language used in this world is a wonderful lesson.

A Question of Quality

Wine has been a part of my family life for as long as I can remember. At our nightly family dinners, my parents always shared a bottle of wine. There are even stories of me drinking wine from the wine bottle around age 3. (I’ll assume that my age, and not the amount of wine that I drank, is the reason I don’t remember this happening.) Over the years, my dad grew even more passionate about wine, and his wine collection grew concurrently with his passion. This resulted in more opportunities for us to taste fine wines at holidays, birthdays, or really any visit home, and each tasting inevitably came with a conversation about the tasting notes as well as a brief history of the region. I quickly grew to love and appreciate wine, but what’s not to love when nice wine is lovingly poured for you at no cost?

Whatever foundation of wine appreciation was built by my dad quickly dissipated when I faced the $8 magnums of Yellowtail that garnished our party tables in college. Wine was cheap and plentiful, albeit sweet and somewhat gross. Fast-forward to when I got a job after college, and I felt empowered again to drink slightly more expensive, higher quality wine. But even with a job, paying “too much” for a bottle of wine in a restaurant never really seemed worth it. How could I be sure that paying 2x would result in 2x (or even 1.2x) the pleasure? 

This trade-off, between value and quality, is one of the biggest questions that I am eager to explore in this class. As an investor in the consumer and retail industries, I appreciate both the power of brand equity and the ability to get sucked in by a brand with little real reason to pay more for it. I want to understand how branding and pricing work with wine. Where is the inflection point that allows me to maximize value and quality together? Am I better off paying $30 for a bottle of wine from the store, or will $15 suffice to get the quality I want? What is it about the wine value chain that results in such a broad spectrum of wine prices overall? These are the questions I want to answer, and though it might take me a lifetime to do so, I might as well start my learning in a classroom, especially if it means I get to taste wine in class.

DFS & Iniskillin Strategy

I was really interested in Inniskillin’s strategy of selling ice wine exclusively through DFS. DFS targets a consumer with high purchasing power and has acquired a large customer base primarily in the Asia Pacific region. In partnering with DFS, Inniskillin gained access to this growing customer base and established a retail strategy with a company that was already highly visible in multiple regions. The issue that I see with exclusively selling through DFS initially was that Inniskillin potentially closed off the ability to acquire customers in other regions such as the US or Canada. I wonder what the business would have looked like if Inniskillin rolled out its product with two distribution strategies – one through DFS which may have been a high-end exclusive luxury product and another that was more easily accessible to North American customers. Although this was something that was done later, I believe that rolling out the two strategies earlier may have pulled in a supplemental customer base at an earlier stage. The hesitation to do this could have been related to either 1) cost constraints or 2) early interest primarily with a Japanese customer base and a lack of interest from the NA region. 

For further information, I found this article that detailed the freeze process and the history of the company very interesting! 

"Provost targeted Asia. Japanese travellers to Canada had already become entranced with icewine—tens of thousands of them visited Inniskillin every year. More important, high taxes in Japan had entrenched a duty-free shopping culture. Thanks to his Courvoisier experience, Provost knew that only a luxury product could produce the margins necessary to succeed. So he pushed Inniskillin to produce a rarer brand of icewine purely for the duty-free market. This "Gold Label" brand, aged in oak and some years reaching 46 Brix, was made from grapes harvested at the lowest possible temperatures, between -12 and -14...The first order from DFS was disappointing: a grand total of 48 bottles. But soon, Inniskillin icewine was being rolled out in stores across the Asia-Pacific region. Within a few years, it was DFS's top-selling wine. And in 2004 came Provost's biggest coup, when Inniskillin's Gold Label won the Star Product of the Year distinction at the Frontier Awards, the duty-free industry's big event in Cannes. "I was just stunned," remembers Provost. He was shaking so much, "I couldn't even text."

SO of someone in the wine industry

I have always had an interest in wine from a consumer perspective, as my dad is a moderate wine enthusiast. He began teaching me about different varietals and vintages and how they complement food (he almost became a chef and retains cooking as his biggest hobby) well before I could legally drink. However, this casual interest and knowledge base began to grow significantly when I started dating my current girlfriend.

Brielle has multiple wine certifications and has a side business (in addition to her day job as a talent development professional) in wine. Based in the greater New York City area, she teaches classes at various wineries, wine shops, and country clubs, consults with restaurants and hotels on their wine menus and offerings, and educates and trains staff at these same clients on their wine knowledge.

I simply try to keep up where I can, learning about wine and the wine business through a combination of osmosis from her and my dad and seeking out additional opportunities to enhance my knowledge. This class is the second such opportunity I have found at the GSB, after participating in a GST last spring focused on the wine industries of Argentina and Chile. I anticipate this class will build on my wine industry knowledge foundation that was laid mostly on that trip, as well as give me more opportunities for refining my tasting skills and preferences. Additionally, like I did on that trip, I always welcome the opportunity to be surrounded with, and learn alongside, other GSBers with an interest in wine; I saw many familiar faces in the first session, and look forward to continuing my journey with them as well as the rest of the class!