Japanese brand with a French signature available in UK

In Wine Brands, I write a lot about Japan, its wine culture and its consumers. Japan was the first Asian market open to European wines and mostly French wines that they considered as the best. Hopefully they still do!

Today the news hit the blogosphere: Japanese wines are coming to Europe! How exciting! It is a white wine, called Shizen, produced by Asagiri with the help of the French Denis Dubourdieu. It is made from the indigenous Koshu grape, grown entirely in Japan. It is only 11% of alcohol.

Why import a local (but unknown) grape to Europe? "There is an international market for wines with a real sense of origin," Dubourdieu told decanter.com. "The world doesn't need another Chardonnay, but there seems to be a real durable interest in typicity and provenance."

The Japanese producers hope the growing success of Japanese cuisine in Great-Britain and in Europe will generate some word of mouth success. The wine is available at the Michelin-starred restaurant Umu in the Mayfait district in London and at the Greenhouse restaurant within the same group, also in Mayfair, both by the glass and by the bottle

Wine, a luxury brand?

I read today on the decanter.com Newsletter that Dom Perignon opened a bar in the famous Harrods store in London and offers a glass of 1975 Oenetheque vintage of Dom Perignon for £250. If you have some financial problems, you can settle for the 1995 Vintage of Oenotheque for the mere sum of £60. If you are lucky, you might meet Claudia Schiffer at the bar since she was the advertising icon of the Karl Lagerfeld video on Oenotheque Champagne.

We all know that Champagne aimed at making its wines a luxury product. Question for luxury buffs: do you sell a luxury wine by the glass? Do you need "people" to make it great or expensive? NO! Why sell a very expensive and luxurious champagne by the glass? It is the same strategy as all those branded cheap Dior products for 50 or 100 € you see all over. Does it blur the image of the brand? YES! A luxury brand exists only through the phenomenon of scarcity: a glass is not as scarce as a bottle. Would you sell a bottle of perfume by small bottles?

Why is it bothering me so much to see a wonderful champagne sold its image to the crowd? Because I see everyday in the wine business how luxury wines protect and develop their fragile image without compromising it. Think Château Haut-Brion, think Château Palmer: all those brands create a very emotional and affective link between them and their consumers without selling a glass of their precious nectar in a department store, as elegant as it could be. Wine is not a coffee shop or department store product. Before being a commercial endeavor, wine is about taste, pleasure, people and places. It is about tradition, emotion, history --past and present. Indeed the contemporary brands might become the wines of our children and grandchildren. They will tell the next generations what our life was about.

Women and wine: special designed brands?

Decanter.com, the online version of the British wine magazine, Decanter, announced today that Marks and Spencer launched a new brand of Port, specifically targeted to young, female wine drinkers. "The new style", writes editor-in-chief Adam Lechmere, "is 'bright pink in colour with fresh fruit aromas.' The port has the same sugar levels as ruby ports, while acidity levels are 'finely tuned to ensure the right balance.'"

After tasting the wines, Decanter editor Guy Woodward is very skeptic about the quality and opportunity of such a wine: "While I applaud M&S's effort to take port out to a wider audience, I'm not convinced this is the way to do it. This doesn't taste like any port I know – it's more like vodka and cranberry juice. I suspect they're trying to jump on the rosé bandwagon. The nose smells like a rosé but then you get this whack of confected fruits and alcohol on the palate."

Marks and Spencer would not be the first company trying to surf on the wave of the new consuming trends and new consumers. Women are a very important potential target: they buy 70% of the wines sold in UK supermarkets and 80% sold in US supermarkets. It seems like a good idea to specifically design wines for them. Unfortunately women are resisting this trend. Some do not recognize themselves or their tastes in those light and unsophisticated wines, as Margreet O'Sullivan says on the Decanter site: "I love a full bodied, concentrated, complex wine with a well integrated, but noticeable tannic structure - and above all - length!"

Why is that? First, biologically, women are recognized as having a finer palate than men. Then, if their wine culture is not as large or sophisticated as men's wine culture, women usually know what they like: a good wine pairing well with their meal or the occasion of the meal, i.e. an evening with friends, a formal dinner, a special occasion, a barbecue or a picnic. Last but not least, they choose their wine for the pleasure of drinking and sharing a good time, more than for impressing their guests (or their hosts).

Wines specifically designed for women are made by people who think they know what women like, when, most of the time, women will buy in the spurr of the moment. Our advice to winemakers and producers: create a great wine, without bothering to craft for men or women. Design it for our pleasure!