Fermentation

Every now and again I like to take account of what wine books will be coming our way in the next few months. It’s a way of glimpsing what I’ll be thinking about in the near term where wine is concerned. Following are a selection of wine books scheduled to be released along with their publication date and the level of “anticipation” I have for their release.

A Carafe of Red — By Gerald Asher (HIGHLY Anticipated)
This will be the esteemed Mr. Asher’s second compilation of essays to appear in book form in a short period of time. Considered by many the best prose writer on wine in the past 50 years, and a Gourmet Magazine mainstay, this new issue will appeal to those who simply want to enjoy a best read on wine.
Publication Date: February 7, 2012

A Travellers Wine Guide To California — By Robert Holmes (SOMEWHAT Anticipated)
I’m always fascinated, being a citizen of rather than a visitor to wine country, how my back yard is described to he passer-through. This new issue by a well-received travel writer will offer suggestions on how the traveller ought to approach wine countries across California. I’ll be curious if they get off the beaten path.
Publication Date: February 27, 2012

How To Talk About Wine: Discover The Secrets of Wine Ten Minutes at a Time — By Bernard Klem (VERY SLIGHTLY Anticipated)
Annually probably 10 or so new guides-to-wine-for-the-uninitiated are published. The secret is making each new one different from the others when in fact it isn’t. From what I can tell, the difference here is that the info is digestible in 10 minutes segments. Also, here the uninitiated will learn how to talk about wine, making this part of the sub-category of wine books I like to call the  “Read This Or Look Foolish” genre. It’s a little manipulative.
Publication Date: March 12, 2012

Musings On Wine & Other Libations — By MFK Fisher (HIGHLY Anticipated)
Ms. Fisher is the most engaging writer on food and eating. Having died many years ago, she left behind a set of works that are both informative and personal, all wrapped in beautiful prose. I would have loved to have met her. This new collection of her essays is dedicated to her writings on wine and other drinks and I can’t wait for it to appear as I want to drinking it in slowly and repeatedly.
Publication Date: May 1, 2012

Beyond Jefferson’s Vines: The Evolution in Quality Wine in Virginia — By Richard Leahy (SOMEWHAT Anticipated)
Of late, Virginia wines have been garnering excellent reviews and its industry has been counted as having gotten over the the “up and coming” hump and has arrived. We see a great deal of talk about Virginia wines today. This volume, by well respected wine writer Leahy, should explain what the Virginians have done to bring the quality of VA wines up to modern standards. If I know Leahy, the book will be both technical and historical as well as analytical.
Publication Date: May 1, 2012

The Makers of American Wine: A Record of Two Hundred Years — By Thomas Pinney (ANTICIPATED)
Thomas Pinney is an historian more than a writer of general interest. And this is a very good thing as it means this new volume is likely to be thorough. What’s interesting is that Pinney will look at two hundred years of American wine history by profiling 13 people who played a key role in its development. I hope this book gets lots of coverage.
Publication Date: May 14, 2012

Glass Half Full: A Cellarmaster’s Journey Through Wine & Life — By Kevin Zraly
I suspect this memoir by Mr. Zraly, one of America’s most celebrated wine educators, is highly anticipated by many people in and around the wine world. I hope it gets a wider reading. The master of the Windows on the World wine school in the World Trade Center, Zraly has likely seen a great deal that will both interest and intrigue. I suspect this book will be one of the best received books in 2012. HIGHLY Anticipated
Publication Date: September 4. 2012

In 1991 “60 Minutes” reported on the “French Paradox”, a study that showed that the French, who eat a diet higher in saturated fats, nonetheless had fewer instances of coronary heart disease. The high intake of wine was identified as a significant reason for this. The result: A huge increase in the consumption of red wine among Americans. It was a groundbreaking event akin to the Paris Tasting that put American wines on the map in the 1970s.

Today, we learn from a new study that women who drink up to two glasses of red wine wine a a day have a significantly better sex life.

Whether this will cause a run on wine shops by women or men is yet unclear. But I can’t any reason why this kind of finding shouldn’t cause a similar reaction as the report on the French Paradox. Let the celebrating begin!

What really kills me about this study is how it reminds me of how much time I spent in high school plying girls with liquor, rather than wine, in my feeble attempts to get laid. They couldn’t have released this study in 1979??

According to the new study that was conducted among Italian women, “Women who drink one or two glasses of red wine a day showed better results in terms of arousal, satisfaction and pain.”

Again, I can’t help but feel cheated with this study coming out only in 2012 when I could have used so much help in this area so many years ago. Bitterness isn’t a pretty quality, I know…But still….

Whether 60 Minutes will do another show based on this study or if “Nova” will produce and extensive exploration into these miraculous findings is not clear yet. However, we can only hope this information is spread far and wide. The 16 year old boys among us will certainly appreciate the information. And the wine industry will appreciate it too.

As a wine publicist, I almost always am dealing in minutia, not Big Picture thinking. It’s the nature of the job. What’s the best way to deliver this message? How to define this niche? What’s the import of this particular marketing practice. Minutia.

For some reason, the past couple weeks I’ve been thinking about “Big Pictures” in the wine industry. Defining and determining what the Big Pictures are isn’t as easy as one thinks. But no matter how you define the Big Pictures, in order for an issue to rise to that level and the way an issue unfolds going forward, it must impact huge numbers within the industry and it must result in changing the way people in the wine industry think about their industry and how they do business.

What are the Big Pictures in the Wine Industry today?

1. Wholesale (middle tier) Consolidation
Very little is more important to the wine industry than how the product is actually moved across the country and how it is sold. The consolidation among wholesalers over the past 20 years has been huge, leaving really 5 or so big wholesalers that control a vast swath of the marketplace. This places tremendous power in a small number of companies’ hands that, when wielded carelessly, can change the dynamic of the marketplace for many brands and for consumers. In addition the power consolidation that comes with market consolidation in just a few ends up concentrating political power in a few. This ongoing consolidation in the Wholesale tier of the wine industry will have the effect of spawning tremendous innovation by producers and retailers as their own marketing choices are limited.

2. Consumption
The recent news that America is the largest wine consuming country in the world is really just a commentary on the size of the country’s population, the wealth of the country and the amount of population increase in America. It’s not a commentary on consumption. The real important statistic is per capita consumption. The U.S. falls in the middle of the world pack in this category. The Big Picture question is what will happen with American per capita consumption over the next 20 years and whether the industry can have an impact on this kind of macro trend. Per capita consumption of beer continues to go down. Spirits and wine per capita consumption is on the increase, but slowly. The wine industry has done nothing to try to effect or speed up this upward trend. Whether it will take a whack at affecting it and if it can be successful is a real Big Picture question.

3. Regulatory Change
The past 20 years has seen significant regulatory change in the wine industry driven by increased consumption of wine, new technology, a changing economy and an increase in the number of brands in the United States. Reform of alcohol regulations has a huge impact on the Big Picture. We are currently living through a moment when great changes to the regulatory structures in a number of states is being contemplated due to the impact of the recession and the general trend and perceived need to contract government services. Will state control of alcohol sales and distribution wane? Will access to alcohol in the various states be liberalized. How these questions are answered over the next ten years will profoundly impact the Big Picture.

4. Critics and Sales
The importance of big critics to sales over the past 25 years can’t really be under estimated. The impact of the likes of Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate, The Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast Magazine, Wine & Spirits Magazine and critics at large daily newspapers has been profound. There is great discussion right now whether this source of authority will continue to drive the marketplace, particularly for mid and high priced wines. Will the social internet and mobile technology lessen the impact of critics? Will the turmoil in the publishing market have an effect on their power to move the marketplace? Will professional wine critics and wine publications increase their power to move the marketplace as they consolidate power amidst the decentralizing impact of social media. Very Big Picture questions that will be answered over time.

5. Brand Proliferation
The increase in the number of wine brands in the U.S. marketplace over the past 20 years has been profound. Despite the claim that corporate interests more and more control the wine industry, the fact remains that consumers have more choices of brands than ever before. Can this continued increase in brands be sustained? How will a consolidating wholesale tier impact these brands? Will regulatory changes help sustain all these new brands by giving them more ways to get their wines to market? Or will we see what we have not seen yet: a reduction in the number of brands available to the American wine consumer. How these questions are answered will have a monumental impact on the whole of the American wine marketplace.

I know how I’d like to see these Big Picture questions and trends answered and go forward. I have strong opinions on how I think many of these questions need to be answered in order to create a vibrant, successful and profitable wine industry in America going forward. But I have no idea whether things will fall out the way I hope they do. Big Picture questions are notoriously hard to guide or predict.

However, I do know that great sums of money and individual examples of success will be achieved based on whether individuals bet correctly on how these issues will evolve over the next ten to twenty years.

An article Sunday in the Boston Herald on the demise of Quarterly Review of Wine after 35 years of publishing its thickish, glossy, well-edited magazine brought to light a couple of issues that fascinate me.

First, in the article publisher Richard Elila made the case that “small vineyard owners with hands stained purple from grapes — has given way to corporate ownership over the decades.”

Richard says:

“In the old days, I could pull five or six (vintners’) names out of a hat and interview them,” Elia said. “Now I end up talking to marketing directors — and all they care about is how many cases of wine they’ve sold.”

Richard was one of the first writers/publishers I got to know when I got in the wine PR business. He was always kind and always took time with me and taught me a great deal. He’s a very insightful man. But in this explanation of the changes that have taken place in the wine industry over the years simply isn’t correct. In fact, the proliferation of small domestic, family-owned wineries and the introduction of so many new imported brands into our market may be the defining trend of the past 20 years.

This proliferation of brands has driven the direct shipping revolution and has played the key role in the heightened interest in wine that we see in America today. This explosion of brands is what makes being a wine geek so much fun today and it’s also the source for what I would see as the basis of a great wine publication.

But Richard Elia also noted something else in the article:

“Single-copy sales also took a hit when Borders went under last year, while Barnes & Noble has reduced its orders to focus on selling “ebooks.”

In other words, the digitization of the publishing business played a key role in pushing Elia to shut down Quarterly Review of Wine. Frankly the only question is how long will it take digital versions of books and magazines to overtake the sales of print versions of books and magazines?

I can’t see any scenario whereby any major wine magazines survives into the future on the backs of a printed edition. The same can be said of any magazine. There simply is no scenario by which Americans do not continue to move toward consuming previously printed media in anything other than digital tablets. The momentum is palpable.

Of course the same can be said of wine books. In ten years I believe it will be very quain to see someone reading a printed book. The implications are fun to consider:

-What Happens to Book Cases?
-What Happens to Airport Magazine Kiosks?
-How Does the Second Hand (antique?) Book Market Develop?
-What Happens to Magazines in Dentists’ Waiting Rooms?

I suspect the same thing happens to them that happened to Quarterly Review of Wine.

It strikes me that the opportunity exists for a new kind of wine magazine to appear that is published entirely in digital format, that takes advantage of the explosion of wine brands and new wine consumers, that takes advantage of interactive media built into the digital editions, and that captures the attention of the throngs of wine lovers who now tend to live their wine lives not just in the bottle but in a digital realm. This new publication will be structured similarly to traditional magazines. There will be an editorial department, separate from the advertising and sales department. It will be released monthly. It will review wines. It will profile vintners, vintages and vineyards. But there will be no paper.

The publisher that can produce an authoritative and attractive wine publication that has a great sales and marketing staff may just be the next big thing.

Among the things I do every morning after the coffee is brewed is sit down and look through the various emails I receive the deliver aggregated wine news. Today, I opened the Wine Business Monthly Daily News Links email and saw these headlines:

Wine Demand Outstripping Supply

Forecast: Wine, grape prices to rise in 2012

Experts predict rebound in wine prices, plantings

2011 a vintage year for sales of California wine

I then moved on to Wine Industry Insight’s News Fetch for the day and saw this:

Short California 2011 Winecrop Spurs Grower Prices

Collectively, these stories amount to the most good news for the California wine industry in a single day that I’ve seen in probably more than year. What all this optimism points to is a growing recognition, boosted by statistics, that a difficult economy is recovering and that the wine industry in particular is helping to lead the charge.

The really good news here, that results from a variety of factors, is that California’s grape growers appear to be in store for an increase in prices they will get for their grapes along with an easier time finding contracts for their grapes. Two short harvests in a row and increase demand for wine is working its magic.

Add to all this the fact that Wines & Vines, via its Data Center, has been showing all year long an increase in on-premise sales of wine in 2011 over 2010 sales, a significant increase in Direct-to-Consumer shipments from wineries in 2011 over 2010, and an increase throughout 2011 in wine industry job offers over job offers witnessed in 2010.

The uptick in the wine industry sales and general health of the wine industry mimicks that we see in other luxury goods markets that we’ve witnessed throughout 2011. What is really necessary now and what would truly kick the wine industry and its surrounding service providers and vendors is an uptick in wine sales among the middle class. This of course would indicate a stronger recover at least in the Jobs Market, if not in the housing sector. This is the sort of thing I say prayers about when I lay my head down at night.

Today’s news gives me the impression that someone might be listening.