Ever since returning from Crushpad Bordeaux to man the helm of Sales Account Management at Crushpad Sonoma, I’ve been searching for the best vineyard source of Cabernet Sauvignon to create a similar Bordeaux style blend to pair with my 2010 Margaux-based blend. After sampling all of Crushpad’s 2010 Cabernet Sauvignon production, I focused on the Cabs form the coolest part of the valley, the Coombsville/Tolucay area: Carrefour, Coombsville and Reverence. Samples from each of these vineyards proved more than “worthy” but the Reverence vineyard stood out as best for my needs.
Once past the vineyard selection (which I though was the hard part), I pulled samples from several barrels to analyze and taste.
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My first order of business after relocating from BDX (Bordeaux) to PDX (Portland) via BOS (Boston), was to attend the Oregon Wine Symposium in Eugene this week. Below I offer you some interesting tidbits while sparing you the gory details.
Technical Tasting: Ageable Oregon Whites
In this session we were treated with 11 aged white wines from Oregon and 2 aged wines from Germany as a comparison. My 2 favorite wines of the bunch were the 2001 Argyle Chardonnay and the 1992 Zilliken Saarburger Rausch Riesling Spatlese (Germany) followed closely by the 2004 King Estate Signature Pinot Gris. I disagreed with the panel’s positive endorsement of the 2002 Amity Gewurtztraminer and 2005 Watermill Viogner and found the Rieslings a bit lacking in the company of the German samples.
Bottom line, I would certainly endorse Oregon’s ability to produce age-worthy white wines. Chardonnay may be the varietal of choice for aged wines in the future if one is to believe a comment by a viticulturist from another session stating that Pinot Gris is not ‘particularly economically viable’ to grow.
Consumers and Their Purchase Drivers
Of the plethora of mind numbing statistics and PowerPoint Eye-Charts, nothing ground-breaking was reported. It was encouraging to learn of Oregon’s 2010 growth rate (~18% volume and value). Other information was obvious to New/Social Media saavy folks like ‘most wine buyers are getting most of their information from Facebook, Twitter or Blogs’. I left the session muttering the words of Benjamin Disraeli, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” These statistics are important for business plans and bankers, but at the end of the day, we winemakers must make the very best product we can and make a real, personal connection with our consumers. I probable could have skipped this session and gone to the bar to network.
Harvest Parameters and Differing Conditions
The most interesting information was given by Russ Smithyman from Château Saint Michelle in Washington. Their use of remote (aerial) sensing using leaf reflectance to delineate intra-parcel maturity/selection was fascinating. I was reminded of my friends at Force-A who have developed optical devices to measure photoflorescense in developing grape bunches to evaluate phenolic maturity. Cool (geeky) stuff.
Drawing Perspective: Three Views on Distribution
This was fun to watch. What started as a series of factual presentations from a winery, distributor and an outsource sales and marketing company turned into a mild bashing of distributors and enthusiasm for direct-to-consumer. To Alex Krobin of Thirst Wine Merchants’ credit and from all accounts, he seemed like a standup guy and maintained the middle ground on the debate and basically took the position that “there is room for all of us”. Adding value to the marketplace versus violation of the commerce clause is what’s at issue. Only time will tell. As a producer, determining your raison d’être and go to market strategy early on is paramount.
The Many Faces of Malolactic Fermentation
OK, this will most likely only be interesting to me. But, I really enjoyed Sigrid Briand and James Osborne’s talks on Malolactic Fermentation. Not a moment too soon as next weeks UCD winemaking lectures cover MLF. Of specific interest was the issue of co-inoculation. Rodrigo Laytte’s of Château Kirwan (see The Art of the Blend with Château Kirwan’s Rodrigo Laytte) explanations of the benefits of co-inoculation where confirmed by both speakers. Additionally, if I understood correctly, co-inoculation can protect against Brettanomyces and can reduce vegetative notes. They did warn, however, that wine that endured MLF showed reduced color and pigmented polymers. This could be an issue for unstable colors in Pinot Noir.
All About Filtration
Consumers have lately been conditioned to prefer/request unfiltered wines. Unfiltered == Better == Artisinal == Complex == “Insert-Your-Own-Quality-Descriptor”. This talk and tasting presented traditional and cross-flow filtration and gave us an opportunity to taste the differences. Of the 2 Pinot Noir wines we were shown, 3 samples of each were given: Unfiltered, Cross-Flow Filtered, Cross-Flow and Sterile Filtered. The wines were well clarified and impossible to detect visually. The unfiltered wines generally displayed more tannic qualities. Preferably speaking, I preferred Cross Flow and Sterile filtered version of Wine 1 and the unfiltered version of Wine 2. Given that this was my first experience of head-to-head comparison of filtered and unfiltered wines, I can’t form an opinion. I think that I’d have to try it on my own wines before making a conclusion.
More like the season of buying stuff that you don’t want in order to appear charitable. But is it generosity, guilt or something else that drives this giving? Did you really need that 3lb tub of cookie dough or gallon size tin of kettle corn that your coworkers were selling for their kid’s school fundraiser? Did you buy out of obligation or to invest social capital which you’ll redeem for your kid’s soccer team’s candy bar sale next month?
This and NPR’s story, ‘Selfish’ Giving: Does It Count If You Get In Return?, are the impetus for this post.
I would love to help your kid’s school buy new textbooks, offset the costs of a trip to Washington, DC or provide the soccer team with new uniforms. Since I don’t want anything in return, I am not willing to buy something that I don’t want. I’d be happier to just give you the portion of the proceeds of the purchase designated to the cause. What could it be, $1, $2, or even $3? I have a better idea.
Affiliate Aggregation
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Group buying has been all the rage for quite some time. Evidenced by the $250 million valuation for “Collective Buying Site”, Groupon. If you are still one of the uninitiated, like I was this past spring, the idea behind group buying sites is quite simple. Each day the site presents an unbeatable offer if you and a few hundred of your closest friends go in on the deal. OK, you don’t even need to know these people as long as the minimum threshold is reached. Brilliant idea, in fact. I love it. However, I have yet to find anything that tickles my fancy. Spa treatments are nice but don’t qualify for my lax list of needs. I don’t necessarily care how much I’m saving if it’s for something that I wasn’t necessarily looking for in the first place.
Which brings me to something that I am passionate about, buy often and frequently share my purchases with friends.
Wine!
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Over the summer, I read Seth Godin’s latest book Tribes. Tribes makes the case that it has never been easier to create and lead a tribe around a product, a cause, or in the case that I would like to make here, music. In it, Mr Godin references Kevin Kelly’s blog post on The Technium, 1,000 True Fans, where Mr Kelly argues that an individual artist only needs 1,000 fans to make a living as a full time musician. He cites strategies musicians like Jill Sobule employ to “underwrite” their music production. This is analogous to technology startups conducting market research before spending millions creating a product that nobody wants.
But, what if you’re name is not Jill Sobule and you haven’t invested years (with the aid of the old establishment) building your brand? This begs more to Mr Godin’s premise that with social media this becomes a much easier task than ever before. However true this is, every musician would need to employ the same, or largely similar, tactics. And then convert casual admirers into “true fans” that will presumably plunk down $100 a year for whatever they produce. Let’s hope that they are prolific creators because a $100 is not exactly milk money. And, an effective social media (self-promotion) strategy demands a considerable time investment leaving little time for the plethora of content that I’ll expect for my $100.
This model is very difficult to sustain and to scale for an individual artist.
Idea: Coopetition
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