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Five Traps of Oenophile
Boy, did this post took a long time… I don’t even know why – I knew what I wanted to write – but no, it still took forever. Anyway, it is finally out, yay!
If you think about it, oenophiles have not only common traits (here is my take on them) – they also have common traps. Are there actually only five traps there, tripping over and under those who loses their caution? It depends on how you will count them, but I would think that these five are the most common ones. Let’s talk about those traps, and then you can tell me of you ever fell for any of them.
1. $100 is a new $10. How many of you out there started your love of wine with Yellow Tail or Frontera, for $5.99 or so? That wine was great, and the idea that you can buy a bottle of wine for more than $10 was completely foreign. What? $19.99? That must be for special occasions only, I can’t believe people spend that kind of money on the wine. See, I’m very happy here with my Frontera Cabernet.
Little by little this situation changes. Why this $6.99 Bordeaux tastes like you are chewing on the tree branch? This is Bordeaux, right? So it is supposed to be the best wine in the world? As you keep reading books and magazines, talking and listening to other people, and most importantly, trying wines which cost a little more and maybe a little more on top, you start hitting the ”aha” moment from time to time. More wines, more reading, more conversations, more experiences at the wineries and wine tastings, more appreciation for the wine and all the labor and passion which goes into creation of a great bottle of wine, and you start letting yourself to push your limit of ”appropriate and acceptable” a bit higher, and then may be some. Before you know it, what was unfathomable to you ($100 for a bottle of wine? What am I, crazy?) becomes … hmmm, let me think about it. No, I’m not describing a birth process of a wine snob (let me digress for a second – “wine snob” has both good and bad meaning, I’m referring to the bad one here) – I think as casual wine drinker becomes an oenophile, the entire outlook on fairness and rationale of the wine prices is changing, thus eventually leading to $100 becoming a new $10 (or may be even worse than that).
2. No cellar is ever big enough. No matter what size of your cellar is, it eventually becomes full – and you run out of space for the … wait for it… new bottles, right! And this is in the lucky case when you have an actual cellar (so you can probably squeeze in a little more). When you don’t have a cellar, the boxes start piling up all over the place, which … yeah, creates problems. You start opening the bottles just so you will get space for … new bottles. You wish that your friends will come over, so you can open more bottles and … create space for new bottles. Then some of your collection ends up at, let’s say, Benchmark Wine Company, and you get a lot of space in your cellar, so … you can fill it up again.
3. Buying of the wine becomes an obsession. We all buy things. Food, clothes, gadgets. Don’t know if someone can be obsessed with food (talking about buying, not actually eating) – may be, but let’s skip it. Let’s say someone is obsessed with gadgets. Very nice – so that someone will camp out by the store and wait for the whole night for the doors to open to be among first 10 blissful owners of iPhone 15. Some hundreds of dollars, and your obsession is satisfied for the next two years, until the iPhone 18 will come out.
When it comes to the wine obsession, situation is quite different. With the wine, oenophile is constantly afraid to miss something – miss on a big scale, miss irreparably and then regret. Ahh, 2007 was a great vintage in California, so I have to make sure I have enough 2007 in my cellar, because the time to buy is now. What if I will never see this wine again? 2009 was a great year, and this is a great producer – I have to get at least a few bottles of this wine. And that one. Ohh, and what if tomorrow this wine will disappear from the store? So there are only 200 cases of this wine made, and it has such a high rating, and, ahh – this price is incredible – should I get 3 or 4? Yes, yes, I know – I will get 5 and drink one now, but I will still have 4 left for the future, right? I can go on and on, but I think you got the picture.
4. There is never a right time to open that bottle. When it comes to deciding on which bottle to open, boy, does that creates a tsunami of thoughts? So I only have two of those bottles left… Should I open it today? But I think this wine is still evolving… May be I should wait for another year? But what if it will be past prime next year – that would be such a pity, this should be really great bottle of wine. Okay, okay – I will open it in a month, when Michael will come over – hmmm, but I think he really likes Pinot, and this is a Cab… Okay, no, I can’t decide. Let’s put it back. Do I still have any of that Chianti left which I got last week for $9.99? Yeah, I’m tired of this Chianti, but at least I will not destroy my precious bottle before its time… Again, I think this is pretty clear (tell me you never had an occurrence of this one, go ahead, lie to the world).
5. One becomes susceptible to the charm of clever and trusted wine marketing. What is the big deal, right? That what marketing is for – to make us buy something. Problem is that unless you are obsessed with something, most of the marketing generates “hmmm, this is interesting” reaction. Once we are talking about obsession, the reaction to the clever marketing is “I have to have it”. I can tell you that probably 8 times out of 10, I want to buy the wine described in the e-mails from PJ Wine (here is a link to the sample e-mail for you – judge for yourself). The need to pay for shipping really becomes a sobering factor here. Same story with the e-mails from Benchmark Wine Company – luckily (hope you sense the sarcasm), most of their offerings are priced out of the reach. A lot of e-mails from Wine Til Sold Out lead to the similar “I gotta have it” syndrome – I know people who unsubscribed from WTSO e-mails, just to avoid that permanent temptation.
I think I warned you enough – do you still want to be an oenophile (or a wine snob – in a good sense, of course)? If you are still reading this, there is a good chance that you already are – then I hope I armed you with something useful in a fight for preservation of the family money and free space in your house. If not – I hope I got at least a chuckle out of you. Last, but not least – I want to know what do you think! This is what comments section is for… Cheers!
Wine = Art
The title of this post is not misleading. I plan to talk about wine as an art form, which is the way I look at it. Why all of a sudden? Couple of articles, both great in its own right (I mentioned both in the Meritage post a week ago), prompted this blog post, despite my claim that I’m not going to enter this debate. I don’t know why is that, but I have a habit of saying “No” where deep inside, as soon as I finish my full and long “no” sentence I already know that, “oh it will be a yes”. Anyway, this blog post is not about me, it is about wine, so let’s get closer to the subject.
In case you didn’t have a chance to read those two articles, they were both on the beaten up (badly beaten up, I have to say) subject of cheap wines versus expensive wines. The first article, published in the Forbes magazine, provided a number of illustrations to the fact that…there are many factors affecting perceived taste of wine – temperature, label, feel of the moment, critics’ opinion, rating and many more (I’m not going to cite a full article here – it is well worth reading if you are into the wine world). I believe that one of the points of the article was to suggest that for the most of us, we can’t distinguish between cheap and expensive wines anyway, so why bother – drink any wine, be happy (I’m oversimplifying, I know).
Then Steve Heimoff took the subject close to his heart and went on to explain that there is a very big difference in taste between $15 and $150 bottles of Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, that more expensive wine is always better than the cheap wine and that the the whole premise of Forbes article in Steve’s words is “man bites dog” attempt at a cheap publicity.
Let me take step aside and explain the meaning of the concept “wine = art”. When you are at home, take a look around you. I would make a safe assumption that for absolute majority of people, your home is decorated in one way or the other. You might have pictures and photos on the walls, statues big and small, flowers live and not, little (or big) mementos and many other things which surround our lives with only one purpose – to give us pleasure, set the mood or may be create lasting connections between time and memories. Taking pictures as the simplest example, they can be your kids’ pictures, copies of the works of the famous artists, works of the completely unknown artists or may be they are actual original paintings. Those pictures can be mass produced and acquired at the neighborhood convenience store for $4.99. But they also can be acquired after a long battle at the auction, where you had to put down $4.9 million to beat another guy and get that painting you always dreamed of.
Now, when was the last time you read an article telling you that you are not supposed to buy any works of art more expensive than $19.99, because you are not capable of understanding the difference between $19.99 and $199 pictures? Or when was the last time you read an article telling you that expensive painting is always better than cheap print? I can bet I’m giving you a very taxiing memory-combing exercise which will yield no results.
So my question is – why wine is treated in any different way than any other works of art? Read (or talk) about the wines, read about vineyards and places, read about wine makers, grape growers, oenophiles, wine collectors – what do you get out of that reading or talking? Passion, obsession, emotions, feelings. We eat because we have to, but we drink wine because we want to, because of its ability to resonate with our beings, to create emotional response. This is my premise of “wine = art” statement. I believe that wine is a form of the renewable art, which also has a pretty unique advantage compare to a simple painting, for instance. Whatever you see on the painting will be exactly the same in 10 years or in 50 years. It will create different emotions on a different day, of course – but it will not change in principal. At the same time, even the simplest wine will change in the bottle. For better or worse, but it will change. Last weekend we shared a bottle of 1997 Toasted Head Cabernet Sauvignon/Syrah blend (probably $9.99 or less) – believe it or not, but this wine was outstanding – it evolved, it had beautiful fruit, great balance and nice finish. It was memorable, it solicited emotions, it created mental staples for that particular moment. If this is not art, I don’t know what is.
Where am I going with this? I don’t believe cheap versus expensive is a meaningful or useful argument for the wine world. Yes, there are many reasons for the wine to be expensive – best quality grapes with very low yield, state of the art facilities, manual processes, need for aging before release, market demand, reputation and many many other factors define the price and can drive it very high up. But if you will exclude snobbery, arrogance and blissful ignorance, price is simply one of many factors which affect your buying decision – nothing more and nothing less. Yes, $150 bottle will taste different than $15 – but can we say “better”? If someone is a Pinot Grigio drinker (and enjoys it very much), will you be able to prove to him or her that $150 Cabernet Sauvignon is really better that $15? I want to see that happening. When it comes to wine, “better” is a difficult category, as the definition of the best wine is 100% personal – the best wine is the one which tastes best to you. Yes, critics matter, ratings matter – but only as a reference, as food for thought.
Wow, did I bore you to death? I truly hope I didn’t – I think this post was brewing for a very long time, slowly ripening to the point of wanting to get out. These are my true feelings, this is how I see the wine world, and “wine = art” makes it so fascinating for me.
Is this arguable? Of course (comments section is down below and only a click away). I don’t pretend to possess the absolute truth – but “wine = art” makes me open a bottle of wine with hope and excitement. No matter what anyone said about that bottle, how much it costs or what the rating is – I hope you will enjoy it and I hope it will create a special memory, a special moment – just for you. Cheers!
Advent of Wine And Social Media
Someone can probably run a very interesting study as to why people blog. I guess that we [bloggers] have something to say to the world, and the Internet gave us an ultimate platform to deliver the message – I’m not sure if this explains the phenomena of mass social media, but I will leave that research to the professionals, and while they are working on the answer, I will keep blogging.
Another interesting question for me is how do we [bloggers] come up with the subjects for the blog. I’m sure that some people have a plan. My method, though, should be called an “opportunistic blogging” – I rarely know in advance what my next blog post will be all about, so I’m blogging as the life takes place. Consequently, the subject I want to discuss here was not planned in advance at all – the idea for this blog post was born after reading the post by Joe Roberts, a.k.a. @1WineDude, which was called “This Is Me Totally NOT Lightening Up On Wine And Social Media“. The best thing you can do is read the original post – but to give the main idea, the blog post is about wineries not investing enough into the social media, not engaging the consumers through the social media channels and not building up their respective brands.
This is definitely an interesting discussion. How much time and effort should wineries dedicate to the social media? I don’t have an answer to that question – just some thoughts. Twitter and Facebook are two major social media outlets for the task of reaching out. The question is – are you reaching out wine professionals or the consumers? If we are talking about the need for wineries to engage wine professionals in the restaurants and the stores, wine writers and sommeliers – yes, I fully agree with that, this is an important way to communicate with your immediate target audience. Trying to reach the consumers? How effective it will be, outside of delivering your message to the people who are already in your club or the mailing list? In the store which has hundreds and hundreds of bottles from all over the world, where appearance of the label is the first deciding factor for majority of the wine purchases, will your social media message help?
Actually, as I warned you, I don’t have the answers. For someone like myself, social network recommendations and discussions play an important role – this is where I learn about new wines and decide what I want to try. But what about the majority? I guess the full blown study needs to be engineered to assess how much of the social media engagement by the wineries will translate into the actual buying decisions. While we can only hope that someone will actually conduct such a study, I decided to compare some simple numbers for wine world versus general food products in terms of the number of followers on Facebook (FB) and Twitter (T).
Here are some numbers. First, for the brands: Beringer Vineyards – FB: 18K, T: 9K; Robert Mondavi Winery – FB: 20K, T: 5.8K; Francis Ford Coppola Winery – FB :15K, T: 4K; d’Arenberg Winery – FB: 6.5K, T: 3.6K. Now, for comparison: Barilla Pasta – FB: 48K, T: 14K; Breakstone’s (sour cream etc.) – FB: 50k; Pepperidge Farm -F: 22K, T: 9K. Food products do have an edge over wineries, but the gap is not very big.
For retail, my comparison will not be fair, but I still find it interesting. Wine world: BevMo! – FB: 28K, T: 2.4K; Wine Library – FB: 39K, T: 21K; WTSO.com – FB: 10K, T: 10K (very interesting exception with the number of Facebook and Twitter followers being practically the same). For comparison: Target – FB: 9.9M, T: 300K; Wal-Mart – FB: 13M, T: 150K; Amazon – FB: 3.1M, T: 229K. Okay, as I said, this will not be a fair comparison.
For publications: Wine Spectator – FB: 61K, T: 48K. For comparison, Glamour – FB: 680K, T: 160K; Wall Street Journal: FB: 461K, T: 1.55M.
When we are talking about publications, I can’t help it but to mention that there are thousands of the wine blogs – of the time of this writing, 659 blogs are registered with the web site called Vinography – and that is considering the fact that you have to request to be listed on the Vinography site. Interestingly enough but that leads back to Joe’s point about social media engagement from the wineries – there are only 72 winery blogs registered on Vinography site. Talking about wineries’ engagement, I want to mention a blog post by Steve Heimoff, an Editor of Wine Enthusiast Magazine, which was titled “Staying relevant: for wineries, it can be tricky” – while Steve’s point is not directed at the social media, I think that in today’s world, “staying relevant” includes great degree of social media connection and engagement for any business, wineries included.
I also want to give you a great example of the social media engagement – if you look at the picture, you can see @KingEstate printed right on the cork – this cork is from the bottle of a very good Pinot Gris from King Estate winery in Oregon which we had a week ago. If someone needs a proof that wineries are taking social media engagement seriously, I think we don’t need to look further.
Okay, enough is enough. It’s time to round up this post. I gave you a lot of numbers here – if someone knows how number of followers translates in to the actual sales, I would be really curious to know. That’s all, folks. Cheers!
Inventions We Can Live Without?
I spotted today a new wine glass design through a Twitter conversation – it is called “Revolution Glass”. You can see an image here (scroll down to see all of them):
http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/30/view/18079/martin-jakobsen-revolution.html
I never held it in my hands, but just looking at the pictures of the glass itself and then people using it, my first reaction is to call it an invention we can live without.
Assuming that this is a traditionalist talking in me and even accepting that I don’t understand modern form and design (don’t think so, but will accept it) – what do you say? Would you like to use a wine glass like that?
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