Branding a region through the colors of its wines is a new marketing strategy I really enjoyed. Most of wine lovers know Bordeaux for its red wines.  Bordeaux also produces white, rosé, clairet (darker pink), bubbly (the Crémant) and sweet wines of various yellow shades. Unfortunately, those colors are not as known as the famous red. That’s why when, a few weeks ago, I got an invitation to (re)discover the various colors of the Bordeaux and Bordeaux “superieur” wines I was interested: what an original approach to the wines of a specific region that consumers think they know. In fact consumers know mostly the Classified Growths and ignore the diversity of the Bordeaux and Bordeaux superieur area.

The program included an evening and three half days based on the wine colors: a blind tasting to select the summer rosés, a trip to properties producing mostly red wines (the Ruby event), then a yellow theme on the beach of the Bassin d’Arcachon and the firework, a dinner created by Michel Porthos where the color of the each dish matched the color of the wine.

Wine is usually about color: think Cahors and its “black wine“, think Provence and its pale rosés, think Bordeaux and its dark red wines, think Alsace and its white wines.  But is also part of the stereotypes of the region : Cahors, Provence, Bordeaux and Alsace produce other styles of wines. Provence has some beautiful red wines while Alsace Pinot Noir is a gorgeous wine.

The marketing strategy of the Bordeaux and Bordeaux Superieur is a good example of a simple and efficient strategy: invite a few female bloggers, create a fun and instructive program and bingo! you get a good buzz on the Net. The young Italian blogger Magda Beverari, the French Nina Izzo, the Canadian MarieEve Inoue were fascinated by what they learnt and discovered.  They blogged and twitted about the trip. No need to spend a lot of money: just be creative and trust your guests.

This experience showed that Bordeaux is trying to brand its wines of lesser fame (and much cheaper price) than the famous Classified Growths. It is time for international wine consumers to understand that a Bordeaux wine at about $15 is a good wine: one does not need to pay an extravagant price to taste and enjoy a good Bordeaux wine. I just hope international consumers will appreciate wines from smaller estates and will not be put off by “low” prices.

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:

As some of my friends know, I started blogging  in French a few months ago. I decided to give it a try just before my French book got published. In spite of being located in France, I feel and work mostly like an Anglo-Saxon: I always get mildly irritated by the French way of doing business, their slowness in understanding social media and Web 2.0 strategies. But I must admit things are improving a bit and I look forward to confirming this impression during the European Wine Bloggers Conference held in Vienna from October 22nd to 24th. Why is that? I was checking the list of attendees today and I saw much more people from France than last year. There are also many Europeans attending, coming from UK, Germany, Hungary, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Belgium, Sweden. But the most striking thing is the number of people coming from outside Europe : China, USA, Thailand, India, Brazil, Australia, Mexico and even Mauritius.

What does it mean ? Just that the EWBC is becoming a recognized event among the international blogging community.  It also means the blogging community recognizes the need to gather regularly to discuss issues, strategies, new tools and maybe just meet up. I am looking forward to meeting people in real life I’ve been in contact with for months, sometimes years to put a face and a voice on this blog URL and name on Twitter.

Blogging has now been the topic of various studies. We all know the outstanding study conducted by Prof. Liz Thach on 222 wine blogs in English as well as her article on : “Do Wine Blogs Impact Your Brand?” in WineBusiness.com. There is also a very recent one conducted by a young French marketer, Jean-David Camus, on French blogs and bloggers. It shows that 80% of French bloggers write about wine when Dr Thach’s study showed 9 major blog types.

Chart created by Prof. Liz Thach

English-speaking wine bloggers are less focused on tasting notes than their French counterparts. Is this trend true for all European countries? This is one of the points I’ll try to find an answer to while in Vienna, because I’m convinced that the blogging world has undergone tremendous changes in only one year. See you in Vienna, Austria?

For many people, even in the wine business, the Masters of Wine are a mysterious entity.  They are the elite of the wine industry, having passed a very difficult series of tests. There are only 285 of them in the world: it is an exclusive club. At least, that’s what I thought before I met Christophe Macra, one of the five French Masters of Wine, a young and entrepreneurial spirit full of energy and humor, founder of  Tasteo and Esensio.  Thanks to Christophe, I was invited to the 7th Symposium of the Institute of the Masters of Wine held in Bordeaux last week and whose theme, “Forging Links”, for the perfect topic for someone who spent most of her professional life networking and “forging links” between several cultures and their people.

I will spare you the details of every dinner and tasting. I’d like to emphasize what was so new and fascinating during this symposium. Out of the 285 MW, “only” 75 attended the conference. The 250 other attendees were professionals from the wine industry: journalists, consultants, importers, distributors, writers and educators.  There were 17 countries represented between everybody. The official language was English.  I attended every session, every tasting and every dinner. I met people I knew but mostly I was able to “forge links” with people from all over the world: Russia,  USA, England, Italy, China, Belgium, France, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, among others.

The inaugural session was moderated by Christophe Macra MW on “Wine on the Web” with four major topics: are blogs the new gatekeepers ?; Reviews : wine critics for Consumers; Social Media and Icons on the Web; mobile strategy. The speakers were Jancis Robinson MW for her blog, Eric LeVine, founder of CellarTracker/GrapeStories, Rowan Gormley, founder of NakedWines and Micheal Linton, from eBay. Most agreed on the fact that consumers and bloggers are replacing the wine gurus but Jancis Robinson is comfortable with the situation.  Indeed a blogger is powerful if he/she has an audience: Jancis has the audience and even if her job is more difficult now, she likes it. Some other types of sites will attract a lot of people: CellarTracker, for example, has a strong following because of the comments left by its many users: it has 1,400,000 consumers’ reviews at the moment. What about social media? Jancis Robinson adopted twitter.com very early: she uses with talent and on a regular basis. According to her, Twitter is a good tool to react fast to a comment. The iconic figures of the wine industry, such as Yquem, are now on Facebook and Twitter to engage with their consumers. Mobility is an other key word for the future of the web: most people have a web access though their phones and use it to look for information and very soon to buy. The conclusion of this amazing panel: according to Rowan Gormley, Internet is the best way to cut down costs of marketing and promotion. It seems that social media, and especially Facebook, is now bringing more traffic on web sites than Google and any SEO techniques.

A pasionnate debate took place between Margaret Hernandez, head of the House of Krug, Sylvie Cazes, President of the Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux, and member of the famous Bordeaux family Cazes and owner of Château Lynch-Bages with her brother Jean-Michel, Eduardo Chadwick, owner of Villa Errazuriz in Chile and Christian Seely, CEO of AXA-Millesimes, the insurer owner of several wine estates in the world. The debate was : “Who serves the consumers best? Families or corporations? A quick survey in the room seemed to show people trusted families more than corporations. Maggie Hernandez and Christian Seely preached so eloquently for corporations they turned some attendees in their favor! Both are very lucky to manage what was formerly family owned estates. The tradition of a strong family management is still very much alive in Krug and the estates managed by AXA-millésimes: Château Pichon-Longueville, Château Pibran, Château Petit-Village, Château Suduiraut, Quinta do Noval (Portugal), for example. As Eduardo Chadwick and Sylvie Cazes strongly emphasized, behind corporations or families, there are people. This is the quality of the people that make the quality of the management and of the wines.  At the end of the discussion, almost everybody agreed that people are making the difference, not an administrative structure.

Some sort of illustration of this principle came out during the next session, “Passing the torch”. Three families, three stories: Jean-Bernard Delmas and his son Jean-Philippe both managing Château Haut-Brion and Château La Mission Haut-Brion owned by the Dillon family, Miguel Torrès and his daughter Mireia, Jean-Claude and Olivier Berrouet, managing Petrus for the Moueix family. Two families, who are now owners of the estates, figured out a way to pass the torch for 3 generations in Haut-Brion and 2 generations in Petrus to people ouside their own family. They showed that family owned estates trust the family managing the estate enough to create a sort of “succession” tradition. There is legitimacy founded on trust, high level of professional skills and a certain sense of continuation. Some people even questioned the legitimacy of passing the torch to a child who might not be as good as a hired professional. Of course, it was not the case with the Torrès family: Mireia is certainly one of the brightest wine professional of Spain. But the question was asked and deserved an honest answer: sometimes it might be better to let a professional manage the estate until a scion of a next generation can take over with the same passion and the same skills as his/her predecessors.

The next day, we were asked to concentrate on “Emerging Markets: BRIC”. We also focused on “Asian markets and their links with the world consumers”.  On those dry and very technical subjects – full of figures and hard facts – we had the most amazing speakers: Judy Leissner, CEO of Grace Vineyards for China, Eleonora Scholes for Russia, Magandeep Singh for India and Dirceu Vianna Junior for Brazil. Full of humor and anecdotes, they filled us with thoughtful insights on their respective countries. Judy emphasized the importance of the government in the wine business: the three major wineries are state owned (ChangYu, Dynasty and Great Wall).  When the typical consumers’ profile is changing in the Western world, the typical Chinese wine drinker is male, 45 to 60 yr-old and drinks frequently… without liking wine. Indeed drinking wine is a social status related activity.

Eleonora Scholes showed us the differences between the perception of the Russian drinker and the reality. Russians are considered heavy drinkers, big spenders, conspicuous consumers, unpredictable and opinionated. They are in reality not the heaviest drinkers, spend the few money they have because if they don’t, the government will take it or the economy will collapse; wine is still status related and Russians are cultured and educated.  Russians drank in 2009 81 liters of beer, 15 l. of vodka and 7 liters of wine (down from 21 liters in 1985).  Every third wine is imported but, being expensive (150 roubles=3,8 euros), they’re drunk by people with higher income.

Let’s move to Brazil now. It is a young, energetic and rich country where wine is important. According to Dirceu Vianna Junior, There are two markets: one used to domestic wines and entry level imported wines; then demanding professionals with high disposable incone. The Bazilian market meets with three main obstacles: uneducated consumers, price sensitive market and an invasive bureaucracy. But the potential is huge because of a strong population increase and the increasing interest in luxury goods.

India is the “mystery” land where an average salary is 90€ and a good salary 200€. Can Indians afford wine? Hardly, answered Magandeep Singh: the price of a bottle is about 10 to 20 euros. How often can you drink a bvottle of wine on a basic income of 90€ a month? The market is small considering the population of  India: 1,200,000 9 liters cases are consumed in India, including 200,000 cases of imported wines. Mumbai and Delhi are 80% of the market. Any hope for the future: yes, with an up to date marketing to reach the younger consumers through social networking.

The highlight of the aftertnoon was our keynote speaker, John Hegarty, creative director of the ad agency BBH and ower of Domaine Chamans in Languedoc. “Lose the mystery, and enhance the magic” of wine, was his advice to an enthralled audience.  He reminded us that the basic rule is “engagement” because of the fragmenting of the audience. he emphasized the importance of “brands” in the wine business because “brand=reputation”. He pleaded for innovative, creative, daring strategies to create differentiation. Differentiation generates traction, that generates premium. How to brand a wine to create the magic ? We have  to understand the purpose of wine (we know the function) . Wine flavors our life.

Nothing was truer than this statement when we were sitting in front of four glasses featuring wines from Paul Draper, Alvaro Palacios, Paul Pontallier and Peter Gago: “modern legends”. No, because legends are make believe or dead and those wines and their makers were wonderfully alive.

After those four days spent with stimulating speakers and guests, I completely reviewed my idea of what a Master of Wine is: he or she is a great human being able to make 250 guests from all over the world gather in Bordeaux. They’re fun, bright, knowledgeable and open. I can’t wait for the next Symposium held in 4 years somewhere in the world. See you then!

Is this assertion of Ron Washam a wake up call for wine bloggers? What is the purpose of wine blogging? What is the real influence or importance of bloggers in the wine industry – in comparison with micro-blogging on Twitter or talking on Facebook?

There are many types of wine blogs: blogs from producers, marketers, journalists, enologists or foodies as Pr. Liz Thach explained in her well researched paper on “Do wine Blogs impact your brands?“. Does it mean a blog post should help a winery increase its sale or a writer sell more copies of his/her book? Do wine bloggers have to carry the same role as print wine media? Wine bloggers have one advantage over print writers: they are their own masters and have to answer only to their own conscience, assuming they don’t take ads or too many samples or review copies.

Blogging is the privileged moment of the day when a writer, a consultant, a winemaker or a foodie can take a break and really think about real issues or topics. The wine business is complex enough to make room for any type of wine blogging: are bloggers really barking like lonely poodles? Not at all. Bloggers have now access to Twitter, this beautiful micro-chat tool letting them reach out to their readers in real time. A monitoring tool like Cruvee shows that there are hundreds of thousands of online conversations on Twitter going on at once every month. Conversations can also be carried out on Facebook with winemakers and news makers.

Ron Washam’s provocative assertion might be referring to the now defunct image of the blogger writing away in his/her Ivory Tower. Bloggers are now all over the Internet – talking, interfacing and reaching out to the wine industry and to the wine consumers. Welcome to the 21st century blogging world!

The French blogging scene is a rather unknown phenomenon at the international level. That’s why I didn’t miss the opportunity to meet some French bloggers in Paris at the initiative of the store chain Monoprix. Monoprix is the equivalent of Ralph’s in the US – a middle upscale grocery store with a nice wine selection.

Monoprix just opened a new store, Monop’ Store, in the trendy Saint-Emilion shopping center located in the old “chais” of the now defunct wine quarter in Paris. Wine bars, trendy restaurants, nice stores thrive in this elegant center. Monoprix stores offer a selection of wines in their stores for the traditional September wine fairs. The selection itself was done in a rather original way: Monoprix selected a few of their customers to be part of a jury to select some of their wines. The jury knew also the origin of the wine (Bordeaux, Burgundy, etc.) and the price point. Question: would YOU buy this wine at this price on our shelves? The wines selected by the customers will then submitted to the final approval of two French famous wine critics, Thierry Desseauve and Michel Bettane. The selected wines were then singled out on the shelves with a special aknowledgement in the “Gourmet” brand of Monoprix. The “Gourmet” series of wines represents about 10 to 15% of the wine brands sold in Monoprix stores.

To promote this new selection process and the “Gourmet” brand, the Monoprix Internet Manager (with the help of the Sowine Agency) imagined to ask several wine bloggers to taste their selection of wines being promoted during the September wine fairs all over France. About 10 bloggers met at the Monop’Store in the Saint-Emilion quarter. Most of them were… men, French speaking and only interested in tasting the wines. From what I heard, the wines were very eclectic and represented in fact a rather wide array of tastes and styles. Which means that French wine drinkers, mostly Monoprix customers, are certainly different from what we imagine: they have diverse tastes, don’t hesitate to select more “difficult” wines and enjoy easy to drink wines at the same time. We’re far away from the image of the traditional French wine drinker – either “amateur” of great Bordeaux or Burgundy wines or drinker of mediocre table wines. I just wished I could have a better description of the wine consumers on the MOnoiprix panel.

It is significant that this first experience was launched by a middle size distributor. It is a good way to associate consumers, producers and bloggers to promote wine in a country that seems to be losing its interest in one of its best accomplishment – a pleasant lifestyle associating wine and food.

Happy Anniversary to winebrandsblog! A little more than a year ago, I emailed the final version of my book to my publisher. At first I felt happy and relieved I completed this difficult and enjoyable task. But I kept collecting information and thinking about new media and the wine business. It didn’t take me long to understand that new media and new technologies kept evolving and developing while my publisher was proofreading, editing, formatting and printing my book. I started the blog primarily to update the information given in my book and keep my (future) readers informed.

Over the months, the blog itself evolved and changed. Of course, I keep updating the information but I also commented on news, got involved in a few controversies and looked at all new technology – new media, social media, the cork business, new softwares, e-commerce, etc. All along 2008 I followed the development of snooth.com, ablegrape.com, americanwinery.com, thewinespies.com, The Mutineer Magazine and many others. I talked to all those young entrepreneurs full of spirit and energy. I became a proud member of this new and thriving community, OpenWineConsortium and developed relationships with several members. I unfortunately couldn’t attend the first European Wine Bloggers Conference in Spain (being in the US at the time) and the First American Wine Bloggers Conference in California (being in Europe at the time). I lectured on new media and the wine business in the US at the Society of Wine Educators Conference in New Orleans and attended various conferences in Europe. I try to be present on Twitter as much as I can to share information and keep in touch with friends and colleagues as well as to connect professionally to people. All this was made possible by a very simple tool, a blog. It also made me a wine blogger, a title unthinkable a few years ago!

As 2008 is fading away, I must confess I’m happy with this passed year. Of course, there were success and happiness as well as sorrow and failures. Of course, everything wasn’t rosy all the time but looking back to the good things help to start a new year with happiness and hope. What will 2009 bring us? I don’t know but belonging to the “half full glass” type, I expect a lot of positive things: new fascinating technologies, great projects from creative and energetic people, wonderful wines, a lot of new contacts and positive experiences, belonging to many thriving communities and staying in touch with a moving and changing world. I’m sure 2009 will make a difference in our life, a positive difference, of course! Next year, same time, same place, I’ll raise a glass to a wonderful 2009 and will expect even more positive and beautiful accomplishments from 2010! Cheers! See you next year to start a new journey!

For those of you who follow OpenWine Consortium, a.k.a. OWC, know, two wine bloggers conference took place recently: one in Europe with our friends Ryan and Gabriella Opaz of Catavino and Robert McIntosh of WineConversation and one in California with the founder of OWC, Joel Vincent. Ryan had the brilliant idea to create a survey on who the wine bloggers are. So far he got 92 answers but the results he put together on wineblogger.info are very interesting.

There were 22 questions from the basic ones – country of origin, language used, the blogging platform – to more sophisticated ones – source of income, wine rating system, number of posts, etc. The countries of residence are varied with a strong dominance in the US (67%) but with significant numbers inBrazil (3.3%), Spain (4.4%), Italy (5.5%) and a few scattered in France, UK, Canada and Australia (2.2% each). 70.7% are male. The age brackets are more interesting: 27.2% are 36-40, 21.7% between 31 and35 and 20.7% between 41 and 50. 34.1% claim an average income between $100K and 250K. Most bloggers have a bachelors degree or equivalent (34.8%) or a masters degree or equivalent (37%). 64.% have taken wine education classes (62.5% have a certification from WSET and 28.1% from the Society of Wine Educators). Wine marketers are the core bloggers (32.1%) closely followed by wine bloggers (30.4%). A vast majorty of wine bloggers don’t rate wine (66.3%). They blog 1-5 times a week and don’t license their content. The leading language is English (89.1%) and 57.6% don’t accept advertising. A vast majority blog to promote themselves in other wine related work (64.8%).

From those results can we draw a picture of the typical wine blogger? He would be American, English speaking, male, aged 36 to 40, earn over $100K, college graduate, wine educated, working in wine marketing, post on a regular basis to promote his wine business and doesn’t license his content. This is a rather accurate picture if one takes into account the really focused and professional wine bloggers. If you don’t recognize yourself in this picture, please contact Ryan Opaz and all our friends to help refine the survey. Ryan is thinking about a new one based on our comments.

Yesterday, during the on line radio show for the new wine consumer about the first American and European Wine Bloggers Conferences, we brushed on a topic that could be interesting to both sides of the Atlantic: the differences of demographics between Europe and the US.

In continental Europe, the main bloggers are usually wine makers or wine lovers. It might not be true in every country but in France, it is obvious: the main bloggers are the Perrin family, Bizeul from the Clos des Fées, Alain-Dominique Perrin from Château Lagrezette in Cahors and Château Palmer in Margaux. They write mostly about their vineyards and sometimes expands on topics related to the wine industry in their country or outside. But the core subject of the blog is related to their vineyard. Some blogs are even only in French – which considerably reduces the audience – but many are bilingual (French and English).

The situation is very different in the UK and the US – in the UK, because the wine makers are still a minority and in the US, because marketers, journalists, wine lovers and academics are driving the movement. It makes the conversation between writers and audience a lot more rewarding as well as lively. The OWC community provides information and links to a lot of those blogs through the Wine Bloggers Group.

I’d like to hear from bloggers from Europe on this topic. Do you share my opinion or do you have information that contradict me completely?