A recent survey conducted by Vinexpo on women and wine in United Kingdom, France, Germany, Hong Kong and the US showed that cultural differences are an important factor of differentiation in appreciating wine.

What did those women agree upon? They usually prefer red wine over white wine. They are driving the sales for rosé wines:  16% said they’d rather drink rosé (over only 6% in 2009). This is an increase of 160% in 2 years! 70% drink wine while socializing with friends or on a date: 68% consider wine important and even essential on a romantic dinner. French women are leading the trend with 50% of the answers while 10% of British women and 5% of Hong Kong female drinkers would not go on a date without some wine.

This first breach in the consensus opens the door to the deeper cultural differences. Women do not agree on the factors leading to their choice. 70% of French women consider that the country of origin is their first criteria while it is important for only 50,8% of British women. In the USA, grape variety is the most important criteria – not surprisingly. Price (58,5%) and country of origin (67,8%) are most important in Hong Kong.

The deepest difference appears with the question : is wine part of tradition or a part of your lifestyle? American women answer loudly and strongly that wine is part of a lifestyle while for French women it is part of the tradition.

This survey is an interesting marketing tool because it was conducted on line in 5 countries in partnership with several sites of various magazines: Elle in France and Hong Kong, Konsum Göttinnen in Germany, Wine Enthusiast in the US and Decanter in England. Interestingly enough, the sites partnering with Vinexpo are not wine-related in France, Hong Kong and Germany. They are more lifestyle- or -women-related magazines. In UK and in the US, it is the opposite: the surveyed women were readers of wine magazines, but they claimed wine as a lifestyle choice.

Even more fascinating is the use of Internet as a tool. The survey revealed that the women wine drinkers in the age 18-30 are using most the Internet (14%) while in France only 3% go on line to look for wine. Let’s just hope that Internet will be more and more used to discover wine(s) from all over the world, and not only by women.

After the unfortunate recent failure of Chamarré it seems very brave to launch a new French brand on the US market.  The press release bears the rather off putting title : “300 Year Old French Winery Brings Prestigious Wine Appellations Into The 21st Century”.

The 300 Year Old French Winery is Arnoux et Fils, family-owned and operated in Vacqueyras, in the Rhone Valley. The prestigious wine appellations are Vacqueyras, Gigondas and Châteauneuf-du-Pape. The brands are called “Gig” for Gigondas, “Vac” for Vacqueyras and the “Chat9″ for Chateauneuf du Pape (9 is said “neuf” in French). The range also includes some “rosés” from Côtes de Rhône. All those brands are under the umbrella of “THE-Vins” (the wines).

The launch of this new brand is based on a study conducted by Sopexa, stating that “72% of respondents held a very positive image of French wines, and 81% agreed that French wines are typically reserved for special occasions. French wines have the image of being consumed less frequently, being more complex to understand and to taste, and commanding a higher price.” THE-Vins are the answer to the shyness of young American consumers towards French wines. The packaging is supposed to break “the mold of conventional French labels, while respecting and promoting the longevity of prestigious French appellations that are currently unfamiliar to a broader range of tomorrow’s consumers”, according to the press release.

The new brand is promoted through a traditional web site 100% Flash and 100% annoying when trying to get information. My questions to young American consumers are : do you know Vacqueyras? Do you know Gigondas? Do you know Chateauneuf-du-Pape? Next questions : when seeing those bottles displayed on a supermarket shelf, will you be enticed to buy them because they’re eye-catching?Are you sure you’ll enjoy them because of their labels?

My questions to THE Vins are: What is the price point? Where are your wines going to be available? Why release several brands like Vac, Gig, under THE Vins? Why not launch THE Vins brand by itself? Why dilute the brand by too many sub-brands? Why no social media presence if targeting the young American consumer?

So many questions, so few answers. The American young consumer is the favorite target of a lot of wine brands.  Just have a look at the perfect strategy of HobNob wines launched by veteran Bill Deutsch. The consumer is involved in the strategy. He is the center of the strategy. When will Europeans understand that they have to engage with the consumer if they want to succeed? I wish the best of luck to THE-Vins.

BYOB is popular in the US and in Australia and totally discouraged in France. I just read in Decanter.com that England is not very keen on the system either.  But two Bristish entrepreneurs are trying to beat the system by creating the Bring your Own Bottle Club in partnership with Nicolas. The system is astute: for a yearly fee of £75 or £100, consumers pay little or no corkage charges at participating restaurants.

For the restaurants, the advantages are obvious: they get more clients and can expect to sell at least a bottle of Champagne. What are the advantages for the consumers?  First, consumers are aware of the fact that restaurants make a lot of margin on their wine list, sometimes even an indecent one.  But second, why should they choose among wines they might not like or want to try when their cellar is full of wines they would like to share with their  friends while not worry about cooking? In the US, most restaurants, even expensive ones, are ready to suppress the corkage fees to get customers. They even encourage their clients to have large parties and bring many bottles. They know people will eat a lot more if they don’t have to pay for the wine and will usually leave a (very) large tip. Those happy consumers will also talk to their friends, who are mostly wine lovers and give the restaurant a good reputation. And this reputation will go around on the Web, the Facebook pages and be tweeted and retweeted. Some restaurants go even further in this strategy: they host tastings based on a theme  (Rosé wines, Roussane and Marsanne wines,etc.). The wines are brought by the customers who are served a sample of the main dishes of the restaurant as a buffet for a minimal fee. The restaurant gets known by many people who might not otherwise heard of it.

Of course, the British Wine Club is a first step towards a more “liberal” way of bringing wine lovers to restaurants. The next step is for restaurants to understand that a bottle of wine cannot be anymore half of the final bill.  The crisis brought out a new way of consuming wine: at home with your friends around a nice dinner. It will take more than a new wine club to bring back wine lovers to restaurants. Consumers have the right to expect new  and more friendly ways of doing business for the restaurant industry.

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.

Wine marketing is a funny line of work. A recent Vinexpo study showed that women despise “women wines” – i.e. “pink” or “sweet wines” – specifically designed for them and favor red wines. On the other end, Michelle Locke from the San Francisco Chronicle cites Nelson Barber, an associate professor of hospitality management at Texas Tech University who has studied gender differences in marketing wine, who said: “”As a general rule, guys get together, they don’t want to be seen with a glass of wine”.

Locke is obviously talking about American men. European men don’t feel embarrassed to be shown a glass of wine in hand – quite the opposite. It is a flattering and glamorous image of a refined and elegant manhood. What’s wrong in drinking wine for an American man? Men drink more beer than wine – true. Is it because beer is a symbol of masculinity in the US?

We are touching now the delicate subject of cultural differences. In Europe, beer is not connected with any social values, such as elegance, culture or refinement. On the contrary, it is a “popular” drink – one for picnic or for the “café” before going home. It’s not young or trendy: it’s the drink of the middle-aged, very medium income male. Wine carries historical values going over gender differences: it is the drink of the well educated and refined people.

The wine drinking America doesn’t have yet this kind of cultural references. Wine is more recent in consumption history and doesn’t carry the same image of quality and style for men. But I’m sure men will come to recognize the values of wine as they recognize the importance of… cosmetics and colognes!

When a wine is very much connected to a region, should one try to get it more awareness by branding the region first, before branding the wines? This is a pertinent (if difficult) question when reading the last study conducted by Wine Intelligence and presented during the London Wine Fair in May 2009.

Wine Intelligence collected their figures from 2,000 wine drinkers in the US and 1,000 in the UK. They show very clearly that most drinkers ignore Malborough (identified as a cigarette brand) and don’t know very well Barossa.

In Wine Brands, I had two examples of region branding: Cahors, in the South West of France and the Tri-Valley in California. When I was writing the book those two regions were just at the beginning of their work. Tri-Valley had just launched a new tag line, “Our roots are showing” and a new web site with all the geographical and cultural information. When I googled Tri-Valley this morning, the tourist information site didn’t show up first but in 7th position. Worse, I had a few hesitation before clicking on the link, wondering if I wasn’t going to be directed to some hotel accomodations or restaurant lists.

It doesn’t seem like their awareness strategy and branding worked very well as the Livermore wineries didn’t benefit from their exposure. What about Cahors? After 2 years of work on the Malbec grape, a slight movement towards recognition is seen. The new tagline, “Cahors the original Malbec”, gets attention from Malbec lovers, mostly in the US already aware of the Argentinian Malbec.

Is branding a region a good strategy for a wine? To my humble opinion, it seems it is efficient mostly if you can link tightly the region and the appellation. In the case of the Tri-Valley, there is no wine connected to Tri-Valley, the appellation being Livermore. For Cahors the region and the wines – as well as for Bordeaux, Napa or other places – are deeply linked. By increasing the awareness of the place, people will more easily connect the place and the wines. It will also help the local wine tourism.

A thread on ethnic marketing on OWC and our Wednesday podcast on Spanish wines started me thinking on marketing to Hispanics in the US. I mentioned in Wine Brands the initiative of Round Hill Winery, California, in 2004 with their “Bolsa de Recetas” or “Bag of Recipes” on their bottles of wine.

It was the beginning of a trend in the wine business. Wineries saw the huge potential of wine drinkers that the Hispanic community represented in the US by its diversity. The Wine Market Council targeted at the same time two main bodies: the Millennials and the Hispanics. In 2006, according to the web site, meetings with the Hispanic media in Miami were conducted with bilingual chef spokesperson Richard Sandoval. Included in this effort was a live appearance of Chef Sandoval on the national Univision morning show “Despierta America”. Their efforts were the results of a survey the Council organized in 2006. According to this survey, 31 percent of Hispanic wine drinkers are consuming more wine now than they were during the last few years, while only 11 percent of Caucasians say the same and they are 50 percent more likely than their Caucasian counterparts to enjoy wine only for a special occasion or celebration.

The Council hired Richard Sandoval, award-winning chef and owner of the leading international group Modern Mexican Restaurants to explain to Hispanics the pleasure of pairing wine and Mexican food. Hispanics show a strong sense of their roots in the choice of their wines. They favor wines from Spanish speaking countries, such as Chili, Argentina and now Mexico whose wine industry is growing.

Hispanics are making an impact on the wine industry more than any other ethnic group. “Current Hispanic consumption trends and increasing attention to this market by leading wineries around the world can together make for rapid and lasting growth of wine as a truly enjoyable part of the everyday lives of millions of adult Hispanic American consumers,” concludes John Gillespie, President of the Wine Market Council.

Either because of the financial crisis or a general feeling of depression, consumers are drinking as much wine as before but cheaper. The average price of the top selling wines of the online store MyWinesDirect.com has dropped just over $2 per bottle from $12.93 to $10.87 (16%), according to Bryan Dougherty, CEO of My Wines Direct.

Is this a significant trend? Certainly because it is common to a lot of wine stores, whether on line or off line. Several store owners I talked to in France reported the same request from their customers: they buy as many bottles as before but at a lesser price. Those buying in the $15-20 are now buying wines under $15 and so on.

It means – as some previous studies already showed – that wines under $10-15 will not suffer too much – not any more than the pricier wines. The middle range is going to suffer the most – unfortunately.