Let's Talk Wine

I have grown to appreciate wine over the past few years in part due to my parents and in part due to my dislike of beer. In fact, one of the very first times I met my husband, he remembers me politely declining his beer, only to respond by describing my strong interest for wine instead. For as long as I can remember, my mom has used wine as a treat at the end of the day – a way to relax and live in the moment. My dad on the other hand started loving wine most likely through numerous business meetings and events. He grew to love everything about wine and through the years I have seen him develop his own taste and preferences. I have also seen him become more sophisticated in his knowledge of the industry. I always lean to him when looking for a wine recommendation and am rarely disappointed. 

One thing that I have been left questioning is this idea of price and quality. As Sunny mentioned in her post, humans perceive a higher price to indicate higher quality. I too have fallen for this before. In the context of entertaining and “wining and dining”, I would be interested to understand how perceptions or feelings towards a host or business partner might change based on the price of the wine or even the design of the bottle label.

When looking for research in this area, I found an interesting article from the WSJ. It says, “Successful business people are supposed to be able to identify value — and the wine list is no exception.” So how might one person accomplish this without any wine knowledge? The answer described indicates “cheating” by studying the wine list ahead of time and making an informed and knowledgeable decision. For others who may not have the time to invest ahead of time, simply asking the sommelier for help and admitting your weakness in wine selection is an easy and honest choice. Each of these choices seems like reasonable solutions that would not be harmful to building a business relationship!

For me, when choosing a wine at dinner, I have often relied on brand names that I am familiar with – typically brands that I saw frequently around the house. By taking this class, I hope to develop a foundation to begin establishing my own personal taste palette and understanding of the industry. Additionally, I have loved learning more about how wine is positioned in the market and the numerous strategies that are embedded in launching each brand. 

To Zin or Not to Zin - life lessons from 2008.

When I departed for college back in 2008, my parents were unusually bashful about both drinking and dating advice. We had always operated under the premise of a “don’t ask don’t tell” policy - I was responsible for my actions and would be solely responsible for the consequences. I was thus surprised when my mom chimed in one night, likely after a glass or two of wine. “Just never drink White Zinfandel,” she told me somberly. “Men will assume something about you that you’re not.” Likely due to my discomfort I nodded and we moved onto another more innocuous topic. Yet the lessons stayed with me, and likely persist at some level even now: 1) Never drink White Zin, and 2) the type of wines you drink have implications for how others might perceive you.

Although I have since tasted White Zinfandel and decided it’s far too sweet for me regardless of my mother’s assertion, I’ve never verified her point. I therefore welcome this opportunity to dig in. Hopefully the results of my search will either provide myself and classmates license to embrace the varietal without guilt, or steer us away for good reason.

White Zinfandel is a rosé made from the Zinfandel wine grape. Typically these grapes are used to produce deep and jammie reds that I tend to love. White Zinfandel, rather, describes a way the grapes are processed, which results in a sweeter-tasting rosé wine. The technique is believed to have been developed in the 1970s, when Sutter Home changed the way it produced Red Zinfandel to make it more potent. They extracted some of the grape juice before fermentation, which they fermented into the newly branded “White Zinfandel.” Likely due to this sugary and drinkable flavor profile, the varietal took off. White Zin became Sutter Home’s most popular wine, and spread to other vineyards, making up 10% of wine sales by volume in the U.S. as of 2006.

So where does that land us? I did note that White Zinfandel was started from a waste product, and is still cheaper to produce than most table wines, in part due to a lower fruit quality required to make the drink. This perception of low quality isn’t helped by the fact that it’s often consumed as illustrated below, like a fruity “starter” drink and often over ice.

Yet according to some sources, White Zinfandel is becoming an acceptable beverage order.  Winemaker Chris Brockway sells a $22 Sonoma County version, which is reported to be not overly sweet. Christina Turley sells one for $18 (her red Zins sell for upwards of $100 per bottle).

I thus conclude my research by acknowledging a shift in perception, but also a likely still-entrenched bias. Though I would personally like to resist the notion that wine choices signal dating behaviors, I do still think a White Zinfandel could signal a nascence with wine unless 1) you are drinking a particularly nice one, and 2) you are accompanied by a person well-versed enough to recognize that. I would love Alyssa’s input here, but for now I think I’ll stick with my chards.

References:

• Why white zinfandel is cool again: 4 bottles to try now
• Wine Searcher

Wine Direct

I found the discussion around wineries working with Wine Direct very interesting, and I kept thinking about my experience over the summer. I spent part of the summer in New York working with a luxury womenswear designer called Prabal Gurung who was using Shopify to manage his ecomm business.

I spent a lot of time working on ecomm and it was very interesting to see what kind of considerations small luxury brands in fashion thought about when considering ecommerce / tech partners.

I think a lot of similarities may exist with wineries, and I think these considerations could give Wine Direct a competitive edge over other tech players. 

The main considerations included:

1)      What other comparable players do you work with? Whenever we approached a tech partner over the summer (be it a retargeting agency or a website pop up optimizer), the first and seemingly most important question the team wanted to know before anything else is what other high fashion brands the tech partner worked with. Given Wine Direct’s extensive portfolio of top wineries, I would assume that they would be able to make themselves the top consideration for wineries given their proven experience in the field, even if other players had better or more cost-effective  tech features…

2)      What is the costing model? Given how new ecommerce was to the brand I worked for, and given the limited funds they were willing to devote to it, there was a higher propensity to favor and explore ecomm solutions that took a percentage of topline versus a flat fee (e.g. picking a retargeting agency that charged a Cost of Customer acquisition versus agencies that charged a flat fee, even if the flat fee would likely yield a lower total cost). I wonder how true this might be for wineries new to the ecomm game, and what kind of costing model Wine Direct has adopted

Wine Documentaries for Thanksgiving Break!

I assume some if not many in this crowd are familiar with these, but for anyone who is not and is looking for some wine-related media entertainment over break, I figured I'd point out three extremely enjoyable wine documentaries available on Netflix:

1. "Somm." The most famous (I think) of the three, "Somm" documents the journeys of a few individuals seeking to earn the rank of "Master Sommelier" - the highest in the industry and of whom there are less than 300 in the world. It is probably the least relevant of the three from the business perspective of the industry, but excellently illustrates the breadth and depth of wine knowledge that exists at the highest levels of wine academia. Very fun film with great characters as well.

2. "Somm: Into the Bottle." Technically the sequel to "Somm," but in my opinion the association is only for marketing purposes, trying to ride on the success and popularity of "Somm." "Into the Bottle" is really about the winemaking process, and visits many different geographies, wineries, and winemakers to illustrate the impact variations in all the different steps of this process have on the final product. For anyone who is not as familiar with how wine is made, this will be extremely educational. It also has much more relevant business info, at least as pertains to wine production (supply chain management...not so much). Some of the characters from "Somm" return for commentary.

3. "Sour Grapes." This documentary is about Rudy Kurniawan, an infamous wine counterfeiter, and his exploits in the world of fine and rare wine auctions. From an entertainment perspective, the film is a fascinating crime and human interest story. But it also gives an enlightening glimpse into this unique part of the industry, where significant sums of money are changing hands for these famous bottles of wine. This is the high-end collectors side of the luxury good aspect of the industry, and makes one think about some of the issues we've discussed in class related to the connection (or lack thereof) between taste, perceived quality, and price.

How I Became Interested in Wine

From birth to college graduation, I had hazarded only two solitary sips of wine. One was delivered from the spout of my mother’s boxed Franzia “Chillable Red”, which lasted but seconds in my mouth before being expelled with great force into a nearby bathroom sink. The other was thrust upon me at a party in college – a saccharine Moscato, which seemed to me more a sugared fruit juice than what I had (by that time) expected of wine. I was not an enthusiast, I had acknowledged.

And so, when I arrived at my first ever Board of Directors dinner, hosted by the company’s CEO at his home, and heard that we would be served an 8-course meal with wine pairings, I was concerned. Though I had accepted glasses of wine to satisfy social expectations among work colleagues, I was far from confident that I could even pretend to enjoy (much less fully consume) eight glasses of wine. It was here, however, that my expectations would depart from experience.

To my surprise, as each wine was served, our host introduced the new selection with a personal story about visiting the vineyard and meeting the wine maker. He could explain how the wine was named and what was on the label; so specific were his descriptions of aromas and flavors that I didn’t even recognize the words he was employing. His home was situated on the outskirts of Montreal and he had selected an entire flight of complementary wines from Canada in the surrounding regions. His passion was enviable and, somehow, transformed a merely acceptable beverage into a personal story to be savored with care.

Over the subsequent years, I have endeavored to learn more about wine by tasting different varietals and blends, coupled with semi-frequent visits to cellar doors and wine regions around the world. As I had started to collect more of my favorites, it occurred to me that I knew nothing of the wine business. Thus, when it was brought to my attention that there would be a GST focused solely on the New World wine industry, I was sold. Hearing Professor Rapp speak to our group of trekkers, I knew that the class would quench yet another thirst for knowledge on the business side while providing even more context for tasting and enjoying a drink that I have come to love.

Why I'm interested in taking this course

The greatest honor bestowed upon me as a 10-year-old was the title of "Wine Master" as proclaimed by my grandfather. My mother's father has a great story. He was born in French-occupied Tunisia and was orphaned after losing his father in the French Resistance in WWII and his mother to breast cancer shortly after. He then emigrated to Canada where he worked on oil rigs and rough neck hotels before moving down to California where he met my grandmother in Carmel. He then became a teller at BofA and, without a college degree, moved up the ranks to become the head of EMEA for the bank. Throughout this impressive rise from rags to riches, he built a strong love of wine and developed an impressive collection as well. What year were you born? He's got that vintage. Because of the model he's been in my life, wine has always been a part of being a gentleman.

To be honest, I've always been more of a beer and whiskey guy. I do love a glass of rose on a warm afternoon or a pinot with some Thai food on a Sunday, but it's never been my default choice. As I think about growing up and trying to become a sophisticated gentleman like my grandfather, wine is something I need to learn more about. I don't think I need to learn how to taste peaches, hazelnut, or leather in my wine, but I would like to learn how to appreciate a quality wine, understand where the grapes are from and what that means, and be able to pick the right wine at dinner. Through this class, I hope to better understand the global landscape of wine and be able to speak intelligently on the subject.

My goal in taking this class

My main goal in taking the class is to refine my knowledge of wine such that:

(1) I learn what ‘other’ wines I like besides sauvignon blanc, barbera and merlot (though I’m actually happy that I at least have these in mind when I go anywhere and when someone asks what I like).  

(2) I understand the business opportunities and challenges of the wine industry given that I see it as being an exciting industry in which to work. 

(3) I better learn what regions I prefer in terms of wine, given that I love to travel and it would give me more reason to go explore those areas that I have not been before.  Plus, of course, it would help when I’m considering which wines to order – whether while I travel or when I’m here at home.

(4) I understand which wines (varietals, regions, etc.) go well with different types of food

My interest in wine has, to date, been entirely social.  The contexts in which we typically drink wine are celebratory in some sense or another (at dinner with family or friends it’s about celebrating the time together; when traveling it may be about exploring something new we haven’t yet experienced; at special events it’s about toasting the start of a new life, etc.).  With this in mind, I feel like knowing more about wine could only add to any of these and other experiences.