I’m sure that a month after the big holiday season we’ve all lost the weight we put on. But the more important question is: Did you consume your bottle-a-day to help us out of the big crop problem?
Before we get to the heart of this column, I have a couple things that really make me feel out of step with the world. Maybe I’m just getting old, but someone please tell me when they started coming out with TVs in cars—no, not DVD “family entertainment centers,” but TVs. If they haven’t, then why on Earth are there traffic pictures and reports on the evening news programs? If you don’t have a TV in your car, then how are you going to see these reports? Maybe it’s to let the homemaker know when to put dinner on?
Well, if that isn’t enough to make me think I’ve lost touch with the real world, then I’m sure of it when I hear on a sports broadcast that with the new NBA dress code, the players are asking for a clothing allowance. Remember, they have a family to feed, according to one player. I guess it’s hard to eat well on only about $5 million a year.
The only good thing I’ve heard lately is that Terrell Owens, of 49er fame and most recently of the Eagles, finally had somebody stand up to his irrational requests. Should we send a case of local wine to the management of the Eagles and maybe two to his agent who probably was the major cause?
New beginnings
OK, enough of the funny stuff. Now to the real thing. Recently, we’ve seen some major changes quietly happening in the marketplace. They make me think the industry might actually be willing to change a few things from its traditional, ancient ways. Some recent ACNielsen figures indicate that change might be happening. Using store scan data, the figures show that in the first three quarters of 2005, sales of 3-liter boxes increased 42.5 percent. This is compared to just a 7 percent growth in all table wine sales. Believe it or not, even sales of small (187 ml) single-serving plastic bottles increased by 16.3 percent. Larger plastic bottles aren’t currently on the market and may never be, but some new work being done in the East indicates the next new product will be an aluminum “bottle.” It will be bottle-shaped, not like a beer can, and can be used for 750 ml bottles as well as single-serving bottles. There’s already a 500 ml screw-top bottle on the market, and the back label says it’s bottled in Modesto. Gee, I wonder who that might be.
What’s the driving force behind these changes? Some market research people say the industry is trying to use the single-serving, plastic screw-top bottles to try to win over new customers. The thought is they’re moving wine beyond the posh, white-tablecloth set and into a more informal picnic setting. My only problem with this is, who said a single serving is only six ounces? I always thought it was about 24 ounces. A benefit of the plastic and/or aluminum package is that when you accidentally drop it on your tile floor, there’s no glass to pick up.
Also, I wonder if it’s cool to drink out of a little plastic bottle. On airplanes, at least in cattle class where I fly, they give you a little glass bottle and a plastic cup. Do we have to do the opposite and pour our plastic bottle into a glass cup? Just thought I’d ask since we might be on the forefront of a new generation of wine drinkers and we’ll need to teach them our new traditions. (Is it possible to have a “new tradition?”) A bonus for the airlines is that the lighter weight of the bottle will let them carry more, or add more freight, which helps the company.
An overall increase in wine consumption in this country will not happen as long as all wine comes in a glass, corked bottle that costs $10 to $20. Chateau la Box (alias “cask wines”) is all over Europe, and wine glasses don’t have stems for everyday consumption. Did you catch that word “everyday?” That’s the best way to increase consumption. Did you know that if you drink just one 6-ounce serving per day, you’d consume 17 gallons a year? We can show up our European allies if everyone would just cooperate. If you pay $8 for a 3-liter cask, that’s about 50 cents per glass. This means your habit will only cost about $132 per year—chicken feed! You can’t even go out in Healdsburg for less than that.
A quote I recently read sums up the whole concept: “The wine bottle itself is so iconic that when you put wine in something else it ruins the experience for some reason.” In my mind, I hope the wineries will put a decent product into the non-traditional containers. We need to learn from the past that what killed the original bag-in-a-box was poor wine—and some poor bag material that allowed early oxidation to occur. Oxidizing an already bad wine only compounded the problem.
All in good taste
It seems all my old peeves are coming to light this year. Another recent study by Beam Wine Estates has to do with tasting rooms and their staffs. A former writing partner of mine at another magazine stated that, “They polish the bar, but they don’t polish the people behind the bar,” “they” being winery management. They hire people for a token and then fail to even train them.
We can look at tasting rooms of the larger wineries that get more traffic, and thus have less time to spend with customers, who need to do a better job in a shorter period. But with the smaller wineries, where cellar door sales are much more important to the bottom line, it’s been noted that the tasting room staffs have very little training. It’s too late in the column to start a big argument. So I’ll only say I recognized the problem in 1989 and thus started teaching a class for tasting room personnel that gives them “just enough knowledge to make them dangerous in the tasting room.” I still teach it every spring, and it’s interesting to see which wineries encourage their people to attend. We’ve had entire staffs from some wineries, but there are obviously a lot of other wineries who don’t encourage people to come.
So be it! Now start on your homework to reach that 17-gallon number for 2006. We’ll all thank you.
