Wine, Google, & Zagat

Google plays a centerpiece role with wine enthusiasts searching the web for quality wine content.  Google is not always efficient though, since wine sites figuring neatly into the search engine’s algorithms are too often commercial content aggregation sites. It’s predictable and annoying.  These sites are more suited to sell you a wine than tell you what [...]

Ignoring California Wines: Is Anybody Listening?

Last week Steve Heimoff published a post called “California Needs To Be Careful It Doesn’t Price Itself Out Of The Market.”  I become confused when I read things like this because the fact of the matter is California violated my personal quality to price ratio (QPR) tolerance more than a decade ago.  For me, California [...]

What’s Going on With the Price of Wine

I finally caught up with a replay of Rob McMillan’s Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) webinar presentation of their own 2011-2012 State of the Wine Industry report. Rob is founder of SVB’s Wine division.  His presentation was not really a state of the wine industry report since the bank and its research are only concerned with the U.S., west [...]

Wine Knowledge and Australia

I just received an interesting email from the Wine Australia representative I met at the Wine Bloggers Conference last month. Antonia Muir is memorable because, among other things, she gave me a very cool grey promotional t-shirt with only one line across the chest proclaiming “Everyone Has A Story.” While I am happy to fly [...]

Bordeaux First Growths Fund Alternative Wines

In early 2006 the Bordeaux price-value line was breached and began its transgression towards complete collapse, erasing all justification for drinking the first growths and other similarly coveted wines that sat in my cellar for decades.  Just look at the blue line to the right, representing relative fine wine price escalation compared to the major [...]

NJ Wine Consumers and Growers Facing Direct Shipment Legislation

Current New Jersey wine law affords its in state, small, fledgling wine producing industry the right to sell direct to consumers from their own showrooms. That’s a good thing because wholesalers will not handle these small production wines and 90% of the state’s local winery sales occur just this way. Practically all New Jersey wineries, [...]

US Wine Labels and Hong Kong Wine Auctions: Tale of Two Wine Worlds

While the US domestic wine industry continues its painful recessionary adjustments in response to the $50-plus wine category implosion and the consolidation of its distribution channels, the picture looks very different in Asia where this year’s Sotheby’s and Christie’s Hong Kong wine auction sales will outstrip their own combined New York and London volumes.  As [...]

No Comment on Wine Freedom in H.R. 5034 Response From Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown

H.R. 5034, the Comprehensive Alcohol Regulatory Effectiveness Act of 2010, is simmering in the House of Representatives and waiting to make its way out the House to a Senate vote.  So,  I contacted my State Senator, Scott P. Brown, with an appeal to consider the scary aspects of this legislation which would allow Massachusetts, and all other states, [...]

Crowd Sourcing Content for Commerce: Snooth Wine Pro For iPhone

Snooth’s introduction of the iPhone Wine Pro app gives wine lovers a fun tool that simultaneously permits Snooth to amplify its serious content marketing strategy by expanding crowd sourced wine content to drive search traffic and wine sales revenue.  Snooth’s wide network of wine retailers benefit from the site’s consumer traffic of wine review readers and [...]

Wine Industry, Consumers, and Social Media: A Brand Loyalty Conundrum

I am annoyed and conflicted sorting through the efficacy of social media deployment for wineries intending to build brand loyalty.   My visceral understanding of the raw marketing power unleashed by well deployed social media programs and a personal conviction that wine consumers ought to embrace brand/winery/vineyard/house styles and reject brand loyalty fuels my sloppy moral [...]

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