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:

Nothing new or exciting about it? Wrong! This new app is really innovative and for once it comes from France. It feels good to be able to write about an innovative feature launched by a French company, believe it or not!

Millesima is a Bordeaux “negociant” house founded in 1983 by Patrick Bernard. It is a family owned and run business.  Millesima launched its online store in 1997 and the online sales now account for 40% of the gross turnover. It is present in 11 countries, including the US since 2006 and just opened a branch in Shanghaï.  Their wines come directly from the producers and are stocked in their huge cellars in the heart of Bordeaux.

Since Gerard Spatafora joined the company as Internet Marketing Director 3 years ago, an innovative web marketing strategy was implemented: development of the Internet sales from 5% to 40% of the turnover, rich media with a series of videos to present the properties and their owners or managers run by Frederic Lot, an intense presence on Facebook mostly in French unfortunately, a Twitter account and now an iPhone application for their online store.

Gerard Spatafora and his team strongly believe in the future of the smartphones (IPhone, BlackBerry, Samsung ) as well as  in the future of the mobile Internet.  The keyword for Millesima is: personalization of the relationship. That’s why the app was preferred to a mobile site.  The customer just downloads the application to the smartphone and is master of the game.

On a technical point of view, the app is really outstanding by its features and very much user-friendly:

- Multilingual (6 languages), it provides access to 4000 references and a  stock of over 2,500,000 bottles. The traditional information making up the specification sheets of each product (visual, description, AOC, vintage, format, price, critics marks…) are automatically available.

- History of the orders

- Wish list,  allowing the customer who would postpone his search to save a great deal of time if he wishes to find back the wines added into the cart or into his favorites.

- Works for iPhone, soon on BlackBerry and, if needed, with Samsung.

-it allows a real direct and full purchase, without having to switch from your mobile Iphone or Blackberry to a computer.

Safety and confidentiality are of course primary concerns.  Using a SSL V3 certificate awarded by GlobalSign, the cart is  entirely secured. But it is remarkable that it is a premiere for an online wine store to offer to the web users the full experience of buying from their phone without switching to a web site to complete the transaction.

By offering its customers full services and access through the app to the full site of the country of origin of the consumers, Millesima hopes to gain a more global vision of the specific needs of its customers. This “one-to-one” marketing strategy will provide a better segmentation, therefore a more efficient development of customer’s loyalty.

Of course, the cost of the app was not advertised but anybody involved in technology is aware of the costs. The management considered that 200 new customers a month would make the application profitable – but after how many months?  No information yet. But one clue was provided: the iPhone app of Nespresso brings the company 38,000 euros a day of gross turnover.

And you know what? I wish Millesima and its daring team as much success as Nespresso in this new adventure. They deserve it: in our difficult times and with so many business people being afraid of making the slightest move, it is refreshing to see a medium-size company show such an entrepreneurial spirit.

The Wall Street Journal published lately a long article explaining why buying wine on the Net became a real headache for many shoppers and listed some problems: “phantom inventory”, slow delivery, cluttered sites, “tedious drill-down menus”, 20th Century web sites, etc. The author lists some solutions and recommends a few great sites.

I was a little surprised to see so many great online wine stores ignored: americanwinery.com, snooth.com, thewinespies.com and many others. All of those have a vibrant community and a good marketing strategy. They’re the Web 2.0 online wine stores and are fun, well done, efficient and trustworthy. They deserve to be considered as very professional and answer to all the prerequisites of an online store: good inventory, good structure of the web site and a contemporrary tone that make sthe experience fun and enjoyable. Thanks to all those young entrepreneurs for taking the irsk of creating something new and good!

Selling wine on line is not a novelty. Wine.com was one of the pioneers and, after many ups and downs, became the major wine store on line we now know. Nowadays on line wine stores are more and more numerous, inversing what’s happening in the brick and mortar world. Thirty years ago, there were 12,000 wine wholesalers while there are only 200 nowadays, said Jeremy Benson to New York Times journalist Claire Cain Miller. “As a result, more and more people visit vineyards, can’t find the wine they want in the store and go online to buy it.”

This statement is in direct contradiction with Barbara Insel’s analysis as reported by Miller: “Wine purchases are driven by recommendations from trusted firends or salespeople, a visit to a winery or a special experience at a restaurant. You don’t get that just from going to a Web site. It’s the ultimate experiential purchase.”

It is not true anymore with the Web 2.0 on line stores, such as snooth.com, redpinkwhite.com or americanwinery.com. Those sites have all the Web 2.0 features: on americanwinery.com, for example, winemakers can post their tasting notes and give tips to potential tourists, wine drinkers can buy, rate, review and discuss their bottles, a blog offers recipes, wine pairings and interviews, a wine encyclopedia defines terms from A to Z. This is the ultimate experiental purchase – with a total refusal of the top-down messaging strategy.

What is the business model of americanwinery.com? The site is free for wineries and customers. The wineries set the price of their bottles. When a bottle is bought, the site processes the payment and the winery is in charge of the shipment. Lloyd Benedict, founder of the site, doesn’t want to deal with shipping: it’s too costly and complex. Americanwinery.com keeps 10% of the purchase and gives back 90% of the paid price to the winery. This is the big difference between Benedict’s site and other resellers or wholesalers: a typical distributor would give 50% of the sale price to the winery.

The philosophy behind the site is very trendy. Benedict, a 24-year old entrepreneur, surfs on the interest of consumers for local products. His site encourages consumers to buy wines produced next door to them. The wineries are usually very small operations, producing less than 1,000 cases a year with no access to general distribution or with no capital to start their own on line store. Direct sales through americanwinery.com is a very good deal for them.

From wine.com, so typical of web 1.0 to americanwinery.com, snooth.com or redwhitepink.com, latest expressions of web 2.0, there is the long road into the 21st Century.

Last year, when I was still writing Wine Brands, I had the pleasure to meet and interview Bob Wesley, who was then the wine manager of the upscale grocery store Lazy Acres in Santa Barbara. When talking to him and looking at the wines displayed in the store I was impressed by his original choices of wine and his vast knowledge of wines from all over the world.

Upon arriving to our summer place in beautiful and sunny Santa Barbara, we found on the table as a welcome gift by our friend a bottle of Tutu Pinot Grigio. The label featured a ballerina serigraphed directly on the bottle. This got a good laugh from us since our friend is a choregrapher. We loved the wink! And in the gift wrap we found the business card of Bob Wesley, now managing director of a new wine store, The Wine Hound! Surprise! Surprise!

Intrigued both by the label and the new store, we paid a little visit to Bob’s new store. It is quite like Bob’s style: a real “wine hound”, Bob will taste hundreds of wines – even of the worst kind – to bring his customers only the best and present them with a carefully selected list of the best wines from the US, Europe, Australia, South America and any wine producing areas.

The store is backed by Vinesse, a company out of Westlake Village that runs the Web-based American Cellars Wine Club. Vinesse wanted to expand into bricks and mortar. They chose Bob Wesley to run this operation and we can only wish him the best of luck: Bob is doing a terrific job in the store.

While perusing The Wine Hound, I noticed a few new trends in labeling. I’ll keep you posted on those trends as they seem quite interesting for the wine business after I talked to Bob and took a few pictures to ilustrate the evolution.