For the last two weeks, Bordeaux buzzed with the “En Primeurs” campaign for the 2010 vintage. Last week was the peak of the campaign with tastings all over the Bordeaux area. Every appellation and classification opened their doors to journalists, bloggers, importers, distributors and all kinds of professionals. This time of the year is a blessing because it is possible to meet all those people one knows through Internet, via their blogs or virtual events.

Château d’Yquem, true to its cult status, organized the tasting of its 2010 vintage in the most beautiful room of the Bordeaux Opera.  The staging was gorgeous with beautiful white flowers in huge vases and the golden sculptures of the walls.  It gave a very zen feeling to the tasting very much in symbiosis with the vintage. As most know, I am not a wine critic and will not comment on the 2010 vintage, except to say it was as zen as the staging. I enjoyed the smoothness and the elegance of the wine. As Sandrine Garbay, the brilliant cellar master of Yquem, told me, it is already very drinkable and amateurs will be able to enjoy it earlier than the 2009.

After the pleasure of tasting the 2010 and the 1988 vintages, meeting a few friends, exchanging a few words with Pierre Lurton, Sandrine Garbay and Valérie Lailheugue, Communication Director of the Château, I started thinking about cult wines and branding. When I wrote Wine Brands – three years ago – I concluded that cult wines like Château Haut-Brion or Château d’Yquem, were not wine brands: they were luxury brands, but not to be treated like a Dior perfume.  Luxury wine brands are a very specific type of brands: very rare (a few thousands bottles every year) and not expandable, often expensive, exclusively distributed, luxury wine brands can thrive only in the rarefied atmosphere of  exclusive events and zen elegance.  But because they are an agricultural product as well, they cannot be treated like Calvin Klein jeans. How did they achieve this legendary status? Answer: organic marketing. According to Michael Havens, who founded the Havens Wines Cellars in California, “Synthetic marketing emphasizes the brand’s concept, label and price, followed by the wine; organic marketing focuses on the wine and the region first, followed by concept, label, etc.”, said Havens to journalist Marvin Collins of Winesandvines.com (Sept. 18, 2007).  As Michael Havens said even more wittily, it is “a story of a guy in a place with a grape”. Of course, luxury wine brands are more than just great wines grown in an exceptional place and elegantly bottled. Nowadays it is also a concept. The concept certainly evolved over the years more “organically” than voluntarily. Each luxury wine brand had to differentiate itself from the others but instead of emphasizing the packaging, they worked on the emotional link they created with their customers. Drinking a glass of Haut-Brion or Yquem is like drinking a little part of European history. Emotion through a beautiful wine, elegant bottle and refined staging is what created the brand over the centuries.

Instead of looking back at 2010, I’d rather look forward to 2011.  Of course, I am not a guru and I will not try to predict in what shape the wine industry will be in 2011. But there are a few signs of what we might want to look at in the next few months: are there any specific trends we should keep watching?

The emerging markets, mostly China, were very much in the news lately. When in Shanghaï, I was amazed by the energy of the people and how fast China was catching up technologically. The wine business is a different story. A recent scandal about fraudulent and fake wines shook the international wine industry and put a certain damper on selling and buying wine in mainland China. The video of the Chinese authorities clashing down on trafikers was supposed to reassure the markets. Talking to my Chinese students gives me a more relaxed approach to the Chinese market. Young Chinese professionals are coming to Europe and the US to enroll in Wine MBAs programs or in tasting schools. They will go back to their country with a good knowledge of Western wines, will be able to teach the local wine consumers and become opinion leaders in the wine trade. The future of wine in China is bright.

My second line of thought for 2011 is on social media and blogging in the wine industry. Blogs are the basis of communication for a lot of wine professionals and consumers: producers, marketers, technicians, food lovers, wine lovers and many others.  They constitute the main stream of exchanges between people and are now relayed by social media. No blogger can even consider writing a post without having it relayed on Facebook and Twitter, thus allowing the conversation to be carried out on more open shores. Of course it makes the blogger’s work a lot more complex as he/she has to answer comments on the blog, on Facebook and follow the threads on Twitter.  Let’s not forget to mention the following of fellow bloggers who deserve attention for their brilliant articles.

Emerging markets and social media will get all my attention in 2011. I am absolutely certain that, in the Spring, I will have found many other more new trends to follow up and write about since the beauty of Internet is in its constant flow of innovation and novelty.

During the Symposium of Masters of Wine in Bordeaux last June, the first panel was on “Wine on the Web”. The moderator was Christophe Macra, one of the four French MW. Christophe invited four prestigious panelists to talk about Wine and Web: Jancis Robinson, Rowan Gormley, founder and CEO of NakedWines.com, Eric LeVine, founder and CEO of cellartracker.com, Mike Linton, consultant for Peet’s Coffee and Tea and now on the advisory board of venture capital companies.

I will not bother you with a longer text as the panel was filmed and is now available on the symposium site:

Some thought it was a good idea, making it clear that Laville was the white wine of La Mission Haut-Brion while others were sorry to see an old name disappear from Bordeaux. Re-branding a well established wine brand is usually a very well thought out decision. In the case of Château Laville Haut-Brion, both names were historically justified. For almost 100 years, Château Laville Haut-Brion belonged to the Laville Family. Marie de Laville bought the estate on July 16, 1611. Ten years later it passed to her brother, Bertrand de Laville. It was only in 1717, that the Laville family sold the estate to a surgeon called Bernard Gaussens.

It made a lot of sense to name the wine after the place it came from. Even after the Laville family didn’t own the place, the successive owners kept the name as part of the tradition. But, at some point during the 20th century – around 1930 if I remember well my history – the owner of Château Laville, M. Bibonne, changed the name to La Mission Haut-Brion blanc. The Woltners went back to the original name.

What does this story tell us about re-branding a wine? For three centuries, the name of the Laville brand was associated to a family who did not belong to the place anymore. By changing the name to associate it to a place currently existing, La Mission Haut-Brion, two factors were accounted for at once: the historical value of the name and the consumer. The latter will gain a better understanding of a rather complicated system since there are three wines available in the La Mission Haut-Brion range: Château La Mission Haut-Brion red and white, La Chapelle de la Mission Haut-Brion, the second wine (red) of Château La Mission Haut-Brion. It is always positive to help the consumer better understand the world of our wines.

In spite of the financial crisis or maybe because of the financial crisis, a recent study of the 2008 edition of The U.S. Wine Market: Impact Databank Review and Forecast show that Americans are drinking more and better wines. The study seems to confirm that US wine drinkers keep away from low-end brands and favor smaller brands. The Wine Spectator reported in depth on the subject:

“Smaller brands will continue to drive the U.S. market. The 50 largest brands nationwide, all selling at least 1 million cases, are projected to post a collective 0.2 percent decline in 2008, according to the report. Wine brands beyond the top 50 will account for less than half the industry’s volume but are once again expected to significantly outperform their much bigger counterparts. Currently, well over 7,000 wine brands are sold in the United States, but less than 300 labels sell more than 100,000 cases annually.

Fifty brands sold between 500,000 and 1 million cases each last year, combining for a solid 4.3 percent increase, including such brands as Fish Eye, Menage à Trois and Santa Margherita. Another 61 brands sold between 250,000 and 500,000 cases each, led by the likes of Kim Crawford, Red Diamond and Edna Valley, and posted a combined 7.2 percent gain. But the hottest segment, comprising the 118 brands that sold between 100,000 and 250,000 cases, surged 8.2 percent last year, thanks to such brands as Acacia, Bohemian Highway and Oyster Bay.

The bigger brands still make up a large share of the market. Last year, 28 brands sold more than 2 million cases each, and another 26 labels sold between 1 and 2 million cases.”

This report confirms there is room for small and creative brands – as we suggested yesterday.

I just finished reading The Wine Trials 2010 by Robin Goldstein and Alexis Herschkowitsch. I must confess I’m very perplexed by this book. The authors blame the “lifestyle marketing” for overpriced wines. They also condemn the fact that a group like LVMH invest more money on marketing than to produce the goods, without mentioning that this marketing strategy covers all products manufactured by LVMH and not only their wine and spirits business. Because they reject marketing (they call it the “enemy” of the wine drinker) and the “taste of money”, they promote wines widely available in supermarkets and under $15. But, among the 150 selected wines, there are Two Buck Chuck, Norton, Almaden, Barefoot wines, to mention just a few. Do the authors sincerely think those wines are so widely available without heavy marketing and a lot of money? This selection by two main criteria – under $15 and widely available in supermarkets – is counterproductive for the wine industry. Wine drinkers and consumers need wines under $15 but original and well crafted. There are so many of them all over the world. It’s true it requires a little effort on the part of the consumers but it is well worth it. The Web 2.0 provides tools to look for, find and now locate affordable and not so easy-to-find wines.

All the selection of wines is based on blind tasting. I won’t make any comment on this choice: I’m not an enologist or a wine critic and have no opinion on the subject worth of mention. When they say blind tasting gets the truth out of a wine, I’m a little skeptical: why is it right to prefer a $15 cava over a $150 Dom Perignon and wrong to like a Dom Perignon? It’s just a matter of taste and education. I’m the last one to condemn somebody who likes a $3 Two Buck Chuck. As I already wrote, a wine is like a book: some people like reading detective stories or chick lit and others poetry or essays. There’s nothing wrong with it. But don’t tell me it is “un-American” to drink expensive wines because of their marketing strategy!

The Wine Trials 2010 is also very critic of wine critics and established magazines, such as The Wine Spectator. Critics of critics have been going on for many years. One of the answers provided by the Web 2.0 is the peer-to-peer recommendation system. Consumers have now a huge array of information through social media, forums, blogs, Facebook pages and Twitter. They can access this information instantly on their phone or through Internet.

Did I dislike this book? Not really. While reading it, I went from smiling to raising a perplexed eyebrow or being mildly offended. This said, I respect the effort behind the work: it is certainly very hard to carry such a tasting, even if I have a lot of reservations about the result. I also respect the thinking behind the work. Goldstein’s introductory chapters are worth reading thoroughly. As he says all along his book, the reader has to make up his/her own mind on the ideas and principles behind the book as well as on wine. Maybe the authors and I have to agree we disagree!

Marketers are always on the look out for new consumers. They seem to have bypassed an interesting category, the Boomer Woman. What is so different between a Boomer Man and a Boomer Woman? A Boomer Woman just spent 20 or 25 years of her life building her career, child rearing and managing a home. Women feel like they now have a lot of time and a lot more money to devote to themselves. Their discretionary income improved a lot and they now have an important professional and personal network. They are connected, they have a Facebook account and sometimes are even on Twitter.

According to a recent study by VibrantNation’s “Well-Connected and Wired,” a quantitative study of 1000 Boomer women, “boomer women influence 80% of the $2.1 trillion in consumer goods purchases made by the boomer demographic each year — the largest of any segment of the population. Every day, 8 of 10 boomers are online, making them the largest online consumer.”

What does it mean for brands in general? Most of the time, those women don’t refer to advertising or television to make their buying decisions. They listen to other women of their kind, whether on line or off line. They are ready to indulge and pamper themselves. How can a wine brand tap in this market? Wine and food are very seductive and part of everyday life. Wine brands should appeal to the tastes and skills of those women. Pink labels and silly names? Why not? Wine can be fun. If behind the pink label and the silly name, there is a good wine, then there will be a happy consumer. This happy consumer will refer the brand to her peers and this piece of good news will go around. QED!

Last week I was invited to the “Panorama” Tasting of the on line store Millesima.com on Sauternes and Barsac. I was privileged enough to taste château d’Yquem 1998, 2002 and 2005, Château Climens 1998, Château Rieussec 1997, Château Rabaud-Promis 1997, Château Coutet 1998 and 2004, château de Fargues 1996 and 1997. Many others were presentend but I was not able to taste all of them. Useless to say, those wines were gorgeous and it was a delight to go through the beautiful chais of Millesima, talking to wine makers and other passionate wine lovers while tasting those classics.

Of course, as you well know, I’m not an enologist and will not disgrace myself by writing tasting notes (Suffice to say they were wonderful). But I must say that among those jewels of Sauternes and Barsac, I found two pearls I never heard about: Château Liot and Château de Myrat (no site). Both wines were amazing and I started digging around trying to understand why they do not shine as much as they should. The case of Château de Myrat is rather puzzling. The estate belongs to the Pontac family – the very same Pontac family that created the notion of “cru” in the Bordelais and the very first brand, Haut-Brion, in the 17th century. Indeed the Pontac family owned Château Haut-Brion until the middle of the 17th century and its descendants now owns Château de Myrat. Why didn’t they apply the same strategy as their ancestors to brand their delicious wine? Of course, times changed but branding has now a lot more tools at its disposal than three centuries ago. Château Liot is a more discreet estate, located in the Barsac appellation – of course, less famous than the Sauternes – and belongs to the David family.

It is really too bad for two great brands not to get the proper attention. It would be so easy to have a good web site in French and English and try to use some of the new tools. Their wines deserve better communication.

Twitter and Crushpad winery partnered to create two wines to support Room to Read,
a San Francisco-based non-profit which aims to empower millions of children in the developing world through education.

This is the first Corporate Social Innovation initiative of Twitter. The label is dubbed Fledgling Wine. In addition to its Web site, the project has a Twitter page launched a few hours ago.

“As a company that’s only one percent into its journey, we’re always thinking about our long term impact on the world,” Twitter co-founders Ev Williams and Biz Stone wrote on Fledgling Wine’s home page. “The Fledgling Initiative embodies two things that are at the core of Twitter’s mission: providing access to information and highlighting the power of open communication to bring about positive change.”

Crushpad is associated to the project as the winemaking facility. It will help create the two wines, a Pinot Noir and a Chardonnay recently harvested. According to Michael Brill, CEO of Crushpad, Crushpad’s “goal is to seriously over-deliver on both quality and experience.”

The Fledging Wine site will provide multimedia content documenting the wine’s development step by step, in-person events at the winery, tweet ups (of course!), and even chances to taste the wine as well as the news and updates.

The Fledging Project is significant to the social media development for several reasons:

- it’s initiated by a very young company, Twitter, that gave itself the best way to explain its mission. Indeed, for many people, Twitter is just this micro-chat where privileged and educated people with time on their hands tell the world they just had their capuccino or they’re depressed because it rains in their part of the world. Twitter is a lot more than just a micro-chat for over-spoiled people. It has a social value and can expand its benefits to developing countries. Indeed, without reading skills, no tweets and no access to the world. It also has a professional value that is very often overlooked by people.
- it shows that the technological world is not cold and heartless: two technological advanced companies – Twitter and Crushpad – partnered to help Room to Read and to extend their hand to the world. Their partnership gives an other dimension and meaning to the expression “social media”. Technology is not self serving: it is at the service of mankind.
- Wine is the best link between people. When wine is often diabolised, this project shows it also links people together from the US to Europe, to Africa and to Asia. Wine might not be a world language like music, but it carries positive values.

Web 2.0 is about sharing not only knowledge but also riches. I wish the best to the three partners of this beautiful adventure and I hope there will be a lot of pre-ordering those bottles of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, lovingly made by all contributors.

I’m fascinated by the use of the Web 2.0 tools made by consultants, wineries, start-ups in the wine business. Everyday there is a new site, a new application, a new idea by someone or a company. We know VinTank and its super innovative process, Cruvee, ablegrape.com, snooth.com, thewinespies.com, vinobilia.com and many many others. Don’t be offended if I didn’t mention you: I’d like to finish writing my post before breakfast tomorrow morning!

Is the user of the Net – you, me, anybody who is not in the business of producing wine or communicating/selling/marketing wine – as innovative and creative? Do we use those tools to organize a trip to a wine country? I just read the post of Rebecca Kelley on her trip to Napa Valley. She used yelp.com and an iPhone to identify the wineries she’d like to visit. This strategy requires from the wineries to be social media savvy. And it worked! Rebecca had a wonderful time.

Could we do the same thing in Europe? Why not? More and more wineries are now now using social media for marketing and branding: some have blogs regularly updated, some have mobile sites available from iPods or 3G phones, a lot have Facebook and/or Twitter accounts. They’re accessible also on various wine communities who share tasting notes or trip experiences. Unfortunately we don’t have any yelp.com – yet! – but it could be a good idea for an European entrepreneur to start such a site.

Whatever the outcome of this idea among European start-ups, it seems the European wine world is getting more and more Web 2.0 savvy. My next travel trip will be done only using Web 2.0 tools and I’m sure it will be a great adventure!