A transitional red: SP68

As the fall weather starts to arrive, here’s a great wine for the seasonal transition: SP68 red from Arianna Occhipinti. Hailing from an organic vineyard in Sicily, the wine blends the summer joy of Frappato with the more structure of Nero d’Avola. Serve it slightly chilled for maximum enjoyment. The 2010 is a bit more [...]

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Palate Tuning and the Permanent Record

I’m aware that there are at least three strata of consumers who use wine reviews (and likely many more). 

1)  People that calibrate their palate to that of a critic so they can make very informed purchase decisions.  These people are few and probably most closely aligned with Robert Parker or niche critics like Allen Meadows of Burghound or Charlie Olken of the Connoisseurs’ Guide to California Wine.

2)  The broad swath of consumers who use scores, perhaps with some deference to the score-giver, to make retail purchase decisions.  With these folks, all things considered equal while balanced against price, a 91 is better than an 88 so they go with the higher score on the shelf-talker.

3) Online armchair wine researchers are an emerging category of users. Searching for a wine presents a sort of blotter file like the dreaded “permanent record” of school days gone by.  Consumers use search to research wines, validate a thought, sway indecision and incent action, sometimes in conjunction with #2.

This is linked, but separate from a recent working study presented under the banner of the American Association of Wine Economists called, “The Buyer’s Dilemma – Whose Rating Should a Wine Drinker Pay Attention to?”  For a well-considered post on this topic, see Joe Roberts post at 1WineDude.

For my part, I’ve done very little wine reviewing on this site preferring instead to make any specific wine the context for bigger ideas or points I want to make (no pun intended).  However, as I’ve gotten into the groove with my Forbes.com column, where there is a much broader audience, a wine-of-the-week column does have merit and I’ve started reviewing wines with more regularity.

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Doing so is fun, but the most that I hope for is to be a part of the permanent record as noted in item #3.  I certainly don’t have visions or a desire for anything more, but just the same, doing any sort of reviewing does open a can of worms, particularly in the case of the 2009 Red Car “Trolley” Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir, a wine that I recently reviewed and gave four stars to – which equates to a generalized “90-94” score.  I don’t give precise numeric ratings.  If I had to, I would have given the Red Car a 92, I liked the wine – it was earthy, nuanced, layered, balanced and it required some thought to figure out, all hallmarks of a good wine.

So, consider me SHOCKED when I saw the Wine Spectator review for this very same wine and Jim Laube gave it an 81.  I was less shocked, but slightly curious when I saw that Steve Heimoff at Wine Enthusiast gave it an 86 and Stephen Tanzer gave it an 88.

Can you imagine somebody searching online for the Red Car and seeing search results that present a disparate spread along the lines of Spectator’s 81, Heimoff’s 86, Stephen Tanzer’s 88, CellarTracker’s average score of 89 and a score under the Forbes masthead of 90-94?

It would be a real WTF moment that creates more confusion instead of the consumers desired order.

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This disparity in scores brings me to my point, which is the point of the Wine Economist working paper – whose score should you listen to?  Well, Joe Roberts, rightfully so, says listen to your own palate.  However, with the preponderance of existing and emerging wine reviewers out there, combined with an ever burgeoning tsunami of information about wine online, that’s easier said than done.  The real need is for meta-aggregation of scores, a sort of super wine review database.

Neil Monnens and his Wine BlueBook represents this on some level with his monthly newsletter that aggregates wine scores for individual wines from three or more critical scores giving it a QPR rating, but this is just the tip of the iceberg compared to where information is going.

Methinks that if a stats wonk can assign a Quarterback rating to NFL quarterbacks, and Sagarin ratings for college football, there has to be a way to create a meta-rating database based on regression analysis that accounts for palate preferences across a wide diversity of reviewers to create a super score for a wine that acts as the ultimate arbiter.  And I won’t be surprised if, in the near future, this emerges. 

Ultimately, the ongoing debate about wine scores is for naught.  The horse has already left the barn.  A better conversation might be around shaping the future and the fact that the best answer to, “Whose Rating Should a Wine Drinker Pay Attention to?” might be, “Trust your palate,” but it might also be, “Tune your palate against the database.”

Source: http://goodgrape.com/index.php/site/palate_tuning_and_the_permanent_record/

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Alan Kerr?s Vintage?s July 9 Release ? Tasting Notes

It?s that time of the year again when the LCBO boffins come out full tilt with the critically acclaimed big boys, otherwise known as the ?Top Marks 90+ Wines?. Vintages has assembled a few liquid treats from around the wine world that have been blessed and highly touted by some of the most influential wine [...]

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Field Notes from a Wine Life ? Digital Marketing Edition

Every year, and sometimes more frequently, I write a post about what’s happening in digital and what’s coming next, looking through the lens of the domestic wine business, based on my work in digital marketing outside of the wine business. This is that post.

Most everybody reading this understands the value of digital marketing (or “engaging” to use an overworked phrase) with platforms like blogging, Twitter and Facebook.  While not all wineries are utilizing these tools, enough in the wine business are.  Despite the growing imperative, we are in the midst of another cycle of advancement.  New platforms are emerging that are likewise centric to community-building and/ or a mobile device, either a smartphone or a tablet computer. 

Life gets more complicated and one man’s use of Twitter is another man’s opportunity to get ahead of “what’s next.”

On Social Media

The “Social Media Expert” of 2009 is now, officially, a dinosaur.  The game isn’t about Twitter or Facebook, it’s about effective use of platforms, a myriad of platforms that happens to include Twitter and Facebook.  As always, be wary of the consultant who borrows your watch in order to tell you what time it is.

On Google+

Google+ is more likely to be a danger to LinkedIN than it is Facebook.  I would keep an eye on it, but its value is still very much in the definition phase and even hardcore early adopters don’t know what to do with it.  Accordingly, I wouldn’t spend much energy on it until it gets categorized into a definable niche.

On Flash wine sales sites

As these sites mature, the fact that they offer a discounted price is going to become tangential to the fact that they make purchasing wine reasonably simple and easy.  There are too many wines for the average consumer to navigate when, at the end of the day, all they want is a good bottle of wine without a lot of problems in choosing.  Flash sites solve this by curation, which will become more important as the short-term oversupply issues resolve themselves.  They’re not going away anytime soon.

On Tumblr

In April, when Gary Vaynerchuk exhorted the crowd at the Nomacorc Marketing Symposium to pay serious attention to Tumblr, the easy to use blogging platform, I understood the “what” and “why” of his recommendation, but I also mentally counter-balanced what he said with the understanding that he also had an investment in Tumblr.

Sometimes it’s hard to *listen* to the message (“Every person in this room will have a Tumblr account for their winery in 24 months”) when you think you *hear* something self-serving.  Yet, recent statistics bear out his commendation of Tumblr.

According to recent Silicon Valley Insider statistics, Tumblr traffic is growing at astronomical rates—up 218% from July 2010 to July 2011.

The “why” of this requires a bit more context and Tumblr’s growth puts several trends in play:

  Wordpress, now the de facto blog platform, continues to lard itself with capabilities, morphing into a robust content management system and professional publishing platform in the process, becoming less and less the simple, easy-to-use, no-brainer tool that it was a couple of years ago.

  People that are active on Twitter and Facebook may want to write more expansively than what those platforms support, but less than the 400 – 600 words of a “normal” blog post.  In doing so, they want to “curate” other news and other people’s content and comment on it creating a sort of ongoing digital ephemera stream, a sort of digital scrapbook and archive of their life.  Tumblr and its competitor Posterous makes doing this super simple and optimized for mobile usage, as well.

  Tumblr and its ilk skews much younger demographically than Wordpress and Blogger.  It’s hard to imagine thinking of Blogger as your Mom’s blog platform, but it’s true.

  Web sites like Wix and Weebly allow individuals to create a web site/personal brand hub and then social channels/platforms become the metaphorical arms and legs off their personal brand hub – Facebook for friends, LinkedIN for professional pursuits, Twitter for communicating, quick links and watching news headlines, Tumblr for activities and longer thought,  Facebook for personal networking, etc.

My overall point is that wineries shouldn’t sleep on Tumblr – where blogs are morphing into a winery PR channel and Twitter and Facebook are fast becoming marketing channels, Tumblr is likely to morph into a more personal communication channel.

Speaking of Not Sleeping…

Wineries are officially remiss if they don’t pay attention to Pinterest.  You probably haven’t heard of it, but you will.  It skews dramatically young, female and educated and it’s all about curating pictures of stuff that users like online.

In my opinion, Pinterest is a direct result of the community niches that organized around subject areas in Flickr.  The community aspect in Flickr, it should be noted, has long been under-acknowledged by marketing types, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing as matters of personal taste can be explored unfettered… 

Being into wine is a statement of personal taste and Pinterest is all about expressing personal taste through imagery that is, “pinned” to a user’s board. The fact that Pinterest is growing fast and organically will keep it cool and insider-ish for a good long while.  The winery that starts a Pinterest board that resonates with a large female audience will have a marketing leg-up. I’m very bullish on Pinterest.

Online Wine Sales

The three best wine shopping experiences that I’ve seen online in 2011 are Dean & Deluca, Plonk Wine Merchants and Lot 18.  I’ve purchased from Plonk and Lot 18.

Interestingly, none of these “best” online wine shopping experiences, in my opinion, have anything to do with price, or selection – they have everything to do with user experience.  Clean, elegant, easy to use and information rich, each of these sites gives a drop of knowledge alongside an intuitive web browsing experience.  This is what wineries are competing against and we’re not too far away from current winery web sites and their legacy platforms supported by Inertia, eWinery Solutions and others being woefully out of date from a user experience perspective.

Oh, by the way, wine ecommerce is still very, very early in its growth.  That blip on the sales radar won’t be a blip forever… 

#Hashtag Days

The Hallmark holiday of the new millennium.  Let’s have a “Cabernet Day” or “Pinot Grigio Day” or any of the various permutations that have happened over the last two years.  Snooze.  Wake me when it’s over.  Overall, I’m terribly ambivalent about these arbitrary days just as I’m ambivalent about “Sweetest Day.”

It’s great for marketers because I think it does have an impact (however slight), but, they are unimaginatively tactical and not sustainable because participants gain absolutely nothing from participating and, users, if nothing else, are self-motivated.

Generally speaking, these are even more faddish than the QR codes that I mentioned earlier this week.

Gen Y. Focused Wines

Wine brands that are focused on Gen. Y (HobNob, Project Paso, Tamas and others) are missing something that I think is integral to being in your 20s – connecting your wine brand to an emotion.  Encapsulated by JWT research – it’s got to be a, “Fear of Missing Out” (see here and here).

On ROI

ROI or return on investment is important, but not nearly as important as having the simple ability to measure what you’re doing.  The return will present itself if you can measure.  Figure out the measurement and analytics first.

What I believe about Digital Marketing In a Nutshell

Organized customer relationship management (CRM) is everything.  Every Twitter follower and Facebook fan page “like” should be in a CRM program associated to an email address and, ideally, a mailing address.  The information is available. 

Content is most important after that.  Brands are publishers.  Ideally, both CRM and content marketing is underpinned by a strategy of some duration that plans content for various platforms. Plan your work and work your plan.

Note:  PR is one aspect of content marketing and strategy, but it’s not the entire strategy. 

One-off tactics that don’t fit within an overall strategy (i.e. QR codes) are a waste of time, effort and money.  Likewise, a mobile strategy need not be complicated so long as the platforms used within your strategy are mobile optimized. 

Also note, paralysis by analysis is a peril.  There’s so much out there and so much that you *can* know that over-thinking is as dangerous as doing nothing. 

If all else fails, listen to Miles from Risky Business.

Source: http://goodgrape.com/index.php/site/field_notes_from_a_wine_life_digital_marketing_edition/

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A new daily email service!

Do you love the smell of freshly baked blog posts hitting your inbox every morning? Then sign up for my new “daily dose.” I’ve been sending them with the new service for about ten days so if you are a subscriber and you have been feeling a nagging emptiness in your inbox, then something has [...]

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2009 California Pinot Noir Inside the Numbers: 8 Producers to Seek Out

Just how good is the 2009 California Pinot Noir Vintage? More than 55% of the wines rated by Wine Spectator have clocked in at 90 points or better. To put that into context, just 42% of the California Pinot Noirs rated by Spectator rated 90 or better - and they called 2007 the best vintage of California Pinot Noir ever.

Below is a chart showing 2009 ratings vs. 2007. Notice how in 2009 the mode (most frequently occurring rating) is 92 points whereas in 2007 it was 88 points:


Point being: There are a ton of terrific wines to track down from this vintage. But how many of the highly rated wines are attainable? How many of the values are actionable?

First, I want to understand which of the wines are the best values according to Spectator. I could easily sort on wines rated 90 or better costing less than $30 but I want to discover value at all price points. To do this I sift through the data and apply the WWP QPR Calculator (what's that?) to the wines rated so far for 2009.

The WWP QPR attempts to quantify the way deal hounds react to ratings within a category considering price. A WWP QPR rating of "1.0" is fair value and from there bigger numbers are better, numbers less than 1.0 are worse.

I then sorted the wines according to the WWP QPR to discover the top values according to the way I react to ratings and price. According to these metrics here are the best values in 2009 California Pinot Noir according to Wine Spectator ratings:



Price Rating WWP QPR
 Dehlinger Pinot Noir Russian River Valley Goldridge Vineyard $45 95 2.12
 Failla Pinot Noir Russian River Valley Keefer Ranch $45 95 2.12
 Loring Pinot Noir Russian River Valley $29 93 2.07
 Loring Pinot Noir Santa Lucia Highlands $29 93 2.07
 A.P. Vin Pinot Noir Santa Lucia Highlands Rosella's Vineyard $48 95 1.98
 Kosta Browne Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast $52 95 1.83
 Siduri Pinot Noir Santa Lucia Highlands Pisoni Vineyard $54 95 1.76
 Freeman Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast $44 94 1.72
 Loring Pinot Noir Paso Robles Russell Family Vineyard $45 94 1.68
 Loring Pinot Noir Santa Lucia Highlands Rosella's Vineyard $45 94 1.68
 Loring Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast Durell Vineyard $45 94 1.68
 Kosta Browne Pinot Noir California 4-Barrel $72 96 1.67
 Rochioli Pinot Noir Russian River Valley Little Hill $72 96 1.67

First off, notice that the highest WWP QPR is 2.12 which equates to "Very Good" value. It's nowhere near the 6.05 "Oustanding" the 97 point/$25 2009 Carlisle Sonoma County Sarah achieved. Keep that in mind as you're considering various offers. Although 2009 California Pinot Noir is a great vintage it's still difficult to get behind this category as being a value play.

Unless you compare it to Napa Cab. Whereas quality Napa Cab seems to start around $60 and goes up from there, most of these wines can be had in the $40 to $60 range. I love the flavor profile of California Pinot Noir so for me this is the most exciting region in wine right now.

Let's dive into some of these producers and specific wines for a moment. Is there an opportunity to buy these wines now? If not, is there an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a mailing list that's going to be hard to get on in the future?

Let's start at the top - with Dehlinger. Their 2009 Goldridge Vineyard Pinot Noir is one of three wines on the cover of the October 15th issue. I hadn't heard of them until a friend in the neighborhood brought over a bottle of their Syrah to share. I was impressed with it and he graciously shared a couple bottles from his 2008 allocation. I thought their 2008 Estate Pinot Noir was outstanding, rating it 93 points. Spectator dropped a 95 point rating on it. They might not have been on everyone's radar screen until these 2009s though. Their website says they're 75% mailing list and you'll occasionally see them available at retail.

I wrote about the 2009 Failla (pronounced FAY-la) Keefer Ranch Pinot Noir last month. I'd go 93 points on it (to Spectator's 95) and encourage you to check them out if they're not on your radar screen yet. Again, mostly mailing list but some availability at retail if you look around.

I don't think any single producer is happier about Spectator's report than Brian Loring. His appellation wines priced at $29 provide real QPR-benders, and their $45 single vineyard bottlings snared slightly higher numbers which make their 2009s values across the board. Their mailing list has long been one of the most consumer-friendly around with compelling sample packs for new customers and until just recently free shipping. Their 2010 mailer arrived recently and if this batch of ratings for the 2009 confirms the quality they believed was present in those wines expect the 2010s to be spectacular. Get on their mailing list now before its too late.

In addition to A.P. Vin's 95 point bottling from Rosella's Vineyard (what high end CA Pinot producer doesn't produce wine from Rosella's?) they've got at least 8 single vineyard Pinots from the usual suspects (Keefer, Gary's, Ridgetop, Clos Pepe etc) rated between 91 and 95. Some decent availability at retail so keep an eye out for them and give 'em a try.

Kosta Browne continues to be one of the consistent producers of 95+ rated California Pinot Noir. They're very difficult to find at retail and if you do the prices are typically inflated. Considering their appellation wines are "only" $48 theirs is a mailing list to get on for sure. I just got an allocation this year after about a three year wait. It was worth it. Their 2009 Russian River Valley Pinot Noir and Sonoma Coast bottlings are both unbelievable wines. They seem to have found a way to reign in the alcohol levels some criticized them for while maintaining this velvety mouthfeel I find utterly amazing. Theirs are benchmark California Pinot Noirs.

Perhaps a more familiar brand given their production levels and the amount of time they've been around, Siduri once again did very well with this vintage. Although they don't own their own vineyards they do produce wines from all over California and even Oregon. I thought their 2009 Santa Lucia Highlands (an appellation to keep an eye on) was perhaps the most widely available, reasonably priced window into what this vintage is about. More on that here.

Freeman is a producer I'm sure I've tried but don't know much about. Not to be confused with Joseph Phelps' Freestone Pinot Noir label (add them to the list of frequently confused wine brands) they had 4 2009 Pinot Noirs which all received 90 points or better ranging from $44 to $54.

There's a fantastic article in the magazine about the history of Pinot Noir in California and Rochioli's vineyards are credited with being where it all began. Although their appellation bottlings can be found at retail their single vineyard wines are sold almost entirely by mailing list. Along with Dehlinger and Kosta Browne, their 2009 Rochioli Little Hill Pinot Noir graces the cover of the magazine. To taste their wines feels like it would be a taste into the history of the grape in the region. For that and other reasons (many speak highly of their wines) it's one to seek out.

Conclusion

Spectator's viewpoint is just one of many out there (some say Laube favors the high alcohol fruit bombs) but it's the one I have the most trust and experience with. Antonio Galloni has taken over tasting the wines of California from Robert Parker - which is actually a good thing in my view since the grape never seemed to be Parker's favorite. Some look to Allan Meadows (http://www.burghound.com) but his coverage of California Pinot Noir will always be a sideshow.

If you love domestic Pinot Noir like I do you'd enjoy The Pinot Report which focuses exclusively on the category. Definitely a resource to check out.

Or if you're looking for help finding wines all the critics agree on - and are values - check out The Wine Blue Book.

Soon I'll be writing about some of the best wines 2009 California Pinot Noir under $30. And writing up a tasting report of the wines I've tasted from the vintage. I'd love it if you subscribed to the Wellesley Wine Press so we can keep in touch.

Question of the Day: What do you think of the 2009 California Pinot Noir vintage? Which producers would you recommend checking out?


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A few different things to do in the Napa Valley

Take the food and wine tour at the Robert Sinskey Vineyards. This has always been a favorite spot of ours. Too bad they closed their picnic area to visitors. We used to love to sit on the patio area across from the vineyards enjoying the view and our lunch with a glass of the Sinskey Pinot Blanc. Continue reading

Source: http://www.winecountrygetaways.com/napablog/a-few-different-things-to-do-in-the-napa-valley/

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