Bad news if you’re selling high-end wine: Makers of high-end wines caught in ‘dead zone’

This isn’t really news, if you’re in the wine business. But if you haven’t been following the game, wine sales are up in the USA, but they’re up for wines selling below $20 retail. For those selling at higher prices, times are tough.

Now’s when managing inventories becomes the most important brand management issue. Because if you have too much wine, and a high price point, you are likely in great danger of destroying your brand position by cutting prices in order to get desperately needed cash out of your inventory.

These are the times I wish we could bottle everything as shiners (unlabeled), for maximum flexibility. Unbranded corks, no capsules, no labels, contents (unprinted) case shippers. Holding wine in bulk, unbottled, might seem preferable, but that’s difficult if you need tank space for new vintage grapes.

But a mix of delayed bottling, and when bottling, putting that wine in shiners, seems like the ideal way to develop a brand. Label as necessary. Label for others, with their labels, to sell at lower prices, so as not to damage your own brand.

But I guess that would require a bottling line on stand-by all the time. A capital outlay fewer wineries are making these days.

But having gone the shiners route several times in the past, I can testify that the benefit of offering excess wine to private label, or export labeling, or whatever, gave much more flexibility in managing inventories and protecting brands.

DAH is David Anthony Hance at www.middletonfamilywines.com

I just don’t understand social “gaming,” specifically, Farmville on Face Book. As a wine company, we’re certainly active in social media. We understand that using Twitter, Face Book, YouTube and other applications can help us build a base of interested consumers who might someday become customers.

But what does playing Farmville do for anyone except capture more of the time they don’t have enough of in the first place?

I have eschewed Face Book surveys and quizes, and no, I don’t want to play Mafia Wars, thank you. It’s all I can do to find time to read wine blogs and glance at the weekly food & wine sections in major newspapers.

And no, I’m not a curmudgeon or a luddite, though I admit to being cynical.

All too often, my colleagues and I whip off an email when a quick phone call would suffice. And if we DID pick up the phone, we’d have the added benefit of producing some meaningful discourse, rather than an email string that begats its own secondary string.

Not to start off a nice Friday with whining blog entry, but I hate to see the promise of the cool things social media can do turn us into anti-social virtual farmers.

Now, if there were a grapegrowing and winemaking Face Book game…

DAH NOTES:

Deriding that about which you know nothing: A favorite modern pastime.

Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library and Wine Library TV fame tweeted this USA Today link: USA “USA Today on Twitter”:http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2009-08-24-online-tweet-twitterˍN.htm?csp=34ease note: I would have no awareness of this article if I did not follow @garyvee on Twitter.

I have had many conversations about Twitter with friends and associates. Well, not so much conversations. More like rant-control as they go off about Twitter. Or Facebook. Or E-Mail. Or Blogging. Or Podcasting. Or Digital Music. Or Cable TV. Or Cell Phones. Or the introduction of the telegraph. Or the Pony Express. Or Railroads. Or Electricity.

OK, so the last few, not so much.

Or another favorite: Wine is wine. Who cares where it’s from? I either like it or I don’t. Why do THEY make such a big deal about it?

Or as in: Who needs Washington wine? There’s already too much wine!

Or even: Walla Walla wine! That’s stupid. Who cares about Walla Walla?

Or: Why Cadaretta? Why do we need ANOTHER wine from Walla Walla?

The people with whom I would have all these rant-control conversations (I’m doing the rant controlling, they’re doing the ranting) are all the same people. Over and over again. Coping with the prospect of new choices by ranting about them.

Some people love the new. Often unabashedly and without selectivity. Such people are not the ranters I’m dealing with.

Some people are alarmed by the new. Often unabashedly and without selectivity. Such people ARE the ranters I’m dealing with.

What I’d prefer: Everyone sorting the old and new and making choices that work for them without complaining (ranting) about the choosing process.

What I’m going to get: More ranting, I expect.

The USA Today article suggests that 40% of Twitter is babble.

Gary Vaynerchuk suggests that 40% of everything is babble.

DAH suggests that more than 50% of everything is babble. And that at least 20% of the rest is ranting and complaining.

Which is why we should all just chill … a bottle of Cadaretta SBS … and just chill.

DAH is David Anthony Hance at dhance@cadaretta.com
dhance@cadaretta.com