Superstitions of Vintners

SUPERSTITIONS OF VINTNERS

Superstition rituals are powerful routines that give us solace in stressful times and allow us to have the positive thought and faith that otherwise in a stressful situation is hard to come by. Since time immemorial, people have had to deal with the randomness of nature and have had the fear of the unknown. since the wine Industry is so held captive and ransom to the tantrums of the weather and its effects, its but Natural that the vintners, want to connect and repeat the psychologically comfortable circumstances manifested as rituals to remain positive. Some of the superstitions that have been practiced and acknowledged by the vintners are as follows: -

Hair:

The superstition in this winery in Oregon is that there is no shaving once the first fruit is picked until the last cluster runs through the sorting line. The pickers are allowed to shave their neck, because that’s just gross. The first shave is typically something weird or different. This works out good since it is usually around Halloween and one can get away with looking like an idiot. It is believed that failure to follow these rules would result in poor fermentations, and thus most people follow this ritual. Once harvest starts lot of winemakers in the state of Washington don't shave again until their last grapes are in (especially when harvest is off to a great start). One of the winemakers grew so tired of the routine to grow and cut the Hair that he instead came up with the idea of dyeing his hair purple or red just before harvest.  However, Anne Vawter of the Red Mare wines always chops her hair right before harvest. She proudly says-Out with the old and in with the new.

Clothing:

Rachel Stinson Vrooman says that her biggest harvest superstition is a little grungy in that the harvest sweatshirt/vest must not be washed from the beginning of harvest until the last press run. Other than that, water hoses must be left perfectly coiled at the end of the day, lugs stacked in stacks of 20, and no checking of grape ripeness the day after a rain. Neeta Mittal of LXV Wine, Paso Robles wears her Cal Berkeley Sweatshirt on the first pick of every harvest. Paul Steinauer of Flora Springs, St. Helena wears shorts from the first day of harvest until the last tank of red is pressed out. Even though the last pressing might continue till last November and it gets cold.

 Toasting:

MJ Tsay at Realm Cellars, St. Helena says that since she is a female winemaker, she cannot participate in the harvest ritual of shaving, and thus she has taken the elegant route of toasting the first grapes received, with a bottle of Champagne. She always gathers her entire team (sales/marketing included) at the ungodly hour of 5 or 6 a.m. to gather around their first bin of grapes and a taste of Champagn- remembering to always give a pour for Bacchus over the grapes.

Paul Steinauer of Flora Springs, St. Helena follows the ritual to saber a bottle of bubbly and christen the grapes to celebrate the vintage and then the team toasts to a great harvest season. 

Odd Stuff:

Matt Crafton in Chateau Montelena, Napa Valley, ever since his first harvest, has always carried a plain-white envelope with the word ‘push’ written on it to keep him motivated during the crazy, stressful days of harvest.

Garrit Stoltz of Stoltz Winery, Hood River, Oregon on the other hand has a deep distrust of pumping wine. They instead fork the grapes by hand into destemmer, and then feed down into what was the cadaver laboratory (their winery facility was once a funeral home) for fermenting and pressing. Once quiet it is moved with gravity and gas displacement into the mortuary’s old cold chamber. The wine is bottled by hand back in the lab without ever seeing the inside of a pump.

Stuart Spoto of Spoto Wines, Oakville has a simple ritual wherein he sits down with his cup of coffee, pets the winery dog and let him lick his face for luck. This is how he starts his days during crush and to top it all the winery dog’s name is Napa.

Brooke Langelius of St. Supéry Estate Vineyards & Winery in Napa dreads the Full moons because as per him they bring nothing bad luck for bottling. The equipment on their bottling line breaks down with no explanation what seems like every single time they bottle on a full moon.

Laura Barrett of Casey Flat Ranch in Capay Valley follows just one superstition – she never, never washes her car during harvest. With multiple trips, up and down Casey Flat Ranch the dust gets into every nook and cranny of her car, inside and out but she believes that It's against all winemaker rules to wash until the last grapes are in. If you hit the carwash, it will rain.

Earthquake wine. No, seriously.

For the nerd-loving science type, there's an interesting shift in the Milky Way that is occurring today, right this second, that may impact what type of wine you drink 10 years from now.

What is it?

For the past sequential few years, the earth's rotational speed has slowed.  According to scientists who analyzed every earthquake above 7.0 magnitude since 1900, when our planet decelerates rotational spin, it leads to an increased number of earthquakes.

How, you ask, does this cyclical link translate for impacting the wine industry?

Stick with me.

In 2014, I was woken in my apartment in SF by the sound of my running metals slamming together on the wall above my head.  I was in the middle of an earthquake, so like any Californian, I waited for it to stop, and then went back to sleep.  Just few miles North of my apartment was the epicenter for a 6.0 earthquake, in Napa.  It resulted in $1 billion of damage, and the region is still recovering today.

The San Andreas Fault, which many speculate will create an earthquake known as "The Big One," runs directly through the Bay Area.  Some speculate that the West Napa Fault, the cause of the 2014 South Napa earthquake, is attached to the San Andreas fault line.

If scientists are correct about increased earthquakes resulting from slowed rotational spin, which we are experiencing today, then chances are the wine we will be drinking years from now will either be from a different region due to earthquake damage, or it will be a well-shaken varietal.

The Emperor's New Clothes

I really enjoyed listening to Jessica Kogan tell her story about how she and her husband founded Cameron Hughes. I found it interesting to learn about their business model and the secondary market for wine, where people can come buy ready-made wine and re-bottle it under another name. One thing that really stuck out to me was the idea of key-man risk in this business. According to Jessica, the eponymous brand would not exist were it not for Cameron’s special palate, which allowed them to identify incredible wines and develop a brand that people associate with quality. What happens when Cameron dies? Is he still so critical to the business today, or do the existing relationships with wineries maintain the brand’s high quality into the future? My gut tells me that with good business relationships, Cameron Hughes (the brand) could find someone with a good enough palate to keep the business going strong. But where is the line between good enough and great?

                In an even more explicit point than Cameron Hughes, the idea of key-man risk keeps bringing me back to Robert Parker, the arbiter of taste. I remember reading a book on wine several years ago, where the author’s thesis was this: just because Robert Parker prefers his wines a certain way does not mean that everyone should like them a certain way.  Why then does the industry continue to depend upon his rating to determine the grade of a wine? There’s a certain “emperor has new clothes” aspect to this dynamic that gives me pause. Is he really wearing clothes, or are people just not telling him that he is wrong?

It is hard for me to think of other industries where so much power rests in the hands of single individuals. In fashion, there are a lot of prolific designers, but they seem to share power in a way that Robert Parker shares with no one else. In business – for the most part – even the most powerful managers share responsibility to those below them. Why has the wine industry developed in such a way that the rest of us yield our taste preferences to people with a biologically different palate than we have? As for me, I’ll continue to drink what tastes good to me, thank you very much.

Millennials + Wine

I thought Jessica was Cameron Hughes was an awesome speaker who got me thinking a lot about my generation. She argued that when millennials buy wine, they opt for boxed wine, or other unrefined mediums – they’re not buying what she’s offering. That point surprised me. Are millennials really not interested in bottles?  It got me thinking: if you replicated the Cameron Hughes model, but branded it for millennials would that work? I think it would.

We know from the cases we’ve read that millennials are increasingly drinking wine. Wine sales in the US are approaching $62 billion, and millennials are consuming over 40% of it. The studies reveal similar things about what millennials want from wine. We want stories, and we want varieties and regions that we haven’t heard of.

I read a Wall Street Journal article that references this trend, and opens the article quoting a sommelier in NYC who says, “so many millennials are interested more in the narrative of the wine rather than the wine…a lot of mediocre wine is sold on the basis of a story.” The content may be right, but to frame millennials behavior with condescension misses our generation.

There’s a reason why we prefer exploring with wines. A lot of us grew up around wine. It’s in our supermarkets. Our parents drank Old World, imported wines. But France and Italy aren’t exotic for us anymore. Syria is. Wine is a way to open our world, and to differentiate ourselves from older generations, as we grow into adults ourselves.

The face of Cameron Hughes does not feel like the face of my generation. Baby boomers may gravitate towards him – 78% of the wine drinkers in that generation are white – but we want a trusted source that is different from the old guard. And we want to understand it. I learned from a Wine Opinion survey that 72% of us have posted something about wine on social media, 85% have met someone for a glass of wine in the last month, and 43% have visited 4 or more winery tastings in the last year.

All of this is to say, I think millennials want to buy bottled wines in the $15 - $20 price range, but I’m not convinced we understand how to market to this generation. We need to embrace the diversity that millennials want to experience in wine. And we need to look at is not as the misguided tastes of untrained palates, but as a way to redefine what grapes and what regions get airtime.

Mark West Goes After Young Men (but actually)

Millennial males are not the target demographic for many wine brands. According to the WineDirect case, women comprised 57% of the wine-drinking population, and 66% of the Millennial wine-drinking population. This shows that there is an opportunity to pull out the young male buyers and convert them to wine drinkers.

I was recently chatting with a friend of mine who is a brand manager for Constellation Brands. She said that one of the brands she is managing, Mark West, has specifically targeted young males in an effort to build up this demographic. Constellation Brands bought the Mark West label for $160M in 2012. At the time, it was one of the nation's best-selling pinot noir, producing over 600,000 cases each year.  Mark West had positioned themselves as the "Pinot for the People", targeting a $10-12 per bottle price point and making the wine "simple to understand". This combination positioned the brand well to take on this young male population.

Since the acquisition, Constellation has clearly targeting this demographic. My friend had mentioned that Mark West had done a tailgating tour of the South earlier in the year to raise brand awareness and attempt to establish wine as a alternative tailgating beverage, like at Stanford tailgates ;). On the website, there is a pairing recipe for Chocolate Oatmeal Cream Pie Football Cookies (yum!!). Other recipes on the menu include pulled pork, ribs, brats, and jalapeno poppers. Sounds like a good tailgate to me!

And to prove that the marketing scheme has worked, last Sunday I was compelled to pick up a bottle for myself. Nailed it!