Wine Marketer

Global credit crisis puts damper on wine prices

<ADMINNICENAME> — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 15:22:12 +0000

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) – Floodwaters from the global credit crisis have seeped onto the top deck of the wine business.

Domaine Romanee Conti (DRC) 1990, which commanded more than $20,000 a bottle just a little more than year ago, sold on Saturday for $6,500 - a 67.5 percent drop in price.

Auction house Hart Davis Hart admitted that the price was at the low end of its estimates.

“We definitely saw some conservative prices,” Paul Hart, the auction house’s president and chief executive officer, said after the sale in Chicago.

The scenario is being repeated at other wine auctions throughout the country.

“The price of wine, particularly at the higher end, has gone through a two-year period of unprecedented increases. Not surprisingly, we now see a period of price adjustments,” said Jamie Ritchie, head of Sotheby’s Wines North America.

Auction houses tout their sales by the percentage of lots sold. In the spring Christies, Sotheby’s, Zachy’s, and Hart Davis Hart all boasted sell throughs of well over 90 percent.

A Hart Davis Hart auction in September of a single collector had a 100 percent sell through. The total from the sale of 1,746 lots of Chateau Lafite-Rothschild, Petrus, and DRC was almost $11.2 million, nearly $1 million above the top estimate.

What appears to have been the high-water mark for wine auctions took place the same week in October that the Dow Jones Industrial Average went into a freefall.

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Wine collectors eye cellars for liquidity

<ADMINNICENAME> — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 18:44:57 +0000

Wine cellars have been taking a hit from the global credit crisis and it isn’t because the owners of rare bottles are drinking more – it’s because they have been selling to raise cash.

The selling started with mortgage brokers and has moved to Wall Street as owners turn their collections of coveted vintages into liquid assets.

“People need money. Even richer people need money sometimes,” Vinfolio.com founder and Chief Executive Stephen Bachmann said on Monday.

In the last few weeks, private collectors submitted offers to sell US$10 million worth of wine to Vinfolio, a San Francisco-based company that buys and sells wine online. Normally the company has about US$6 million offered to it.

Among the wines that that recently have come into Vinfolio’s possession are a 6-liter Imperiale of 2003 Chateau Margaux that retails for almost US$15,000 and a bottle of 1990 Romanee-Conti that lists for around US$11,000.

One Aspen collector is looking to sell US$750,000 worth of wine and another individual from the private equity world is offering up wine worth about US$500,000 from his collection, he said.

“I think we’re seeing a culling of people’s cellars without necessarily a wholesale abandonment,” said Bachmann, whose company has a five-person team dedicated to buying wine from private cellars.

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Wine warehousers find much needed space in new facility

<ADMINNICENAME> — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 18:44:16 +0000

AMERICAN CANYON – Three wine logistics companies serving hundreds of wineries in the North Coast and Pacific Northwest have found badly needed room to expand in the tight southern Napa Valley wine warehousing market with a newly completed 411,000-square-foot facility.

All three currently occupy spaces in the cluster of expansive warehouses and distribution centers along Green Island Road at the north end of American Canyon. That’s where Madera-based Stravinski Development Group built the new warehouse, located at 644 Hanna Court, and is working to complete an adjacent 307,000-square-foot warehouse next spring.

Valley Wine Warehouse, which caters to about 300 mostly small-scale vintners, had to stop taking new customers 18 months ago to keep palettes of wine from stacking up in the aisles and hampering inventory management, according to General Manager Bill Harper.

“The thing that amazes me is that with all the bad news about the economy that, even with not taking new customers, we’ve had a steady flow of people calling us who are getting into the business for the first time with 500 to 2,000 cases,” he said.

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International Wine Commodities office raided

<ADMINNICENAME> — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 21:22:05 +0000

Hertfordshire police have raided the Whetstone offices of International Wine Commodities Ltd (IWC), a company offering wine investments. The raid, on 8 October, was carried out after search warrants were issued, allegedly on suspicion that IWC failed to buy en primeur wines that their clients had ordered and paid for.

IWC is believed to have started trading in August 2007. Its last set of accounts has just become overdue at Companies House.

One director, Oseghale Hayble, had been a director of the Bordeaux Wine Trading Company (BWTC), which is also under investigation by Hertfordshire Police’s Economic Crime Unit.

It is believed BWTC also did not buy en primeur wines, believed to be in the region of £750,000, that clients had ordered.

Hayble and fellow BWTC directors – Paul Craven and Nicolas Cashman – are currently on police bail until January 2009.

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White Wine As Healthy As Red?

<ADMINNICENAME> — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 21:19:11 +0000

White wine may be just as good for the heart as red, claims a researcher.

Rats given two glasses of Italian white wine a day had less damage during a heart attack than those on water or grain alcohol.

Resveratrol found in grape skins is thought to protect the heart. But biologist Dipak Das says white wine made with the grape flesh also has benefits.

Mr Das, of Conneticut University, said: “We can safely say that one or two glasses of wine per day works exactly like red.”

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Liquor Barn won’t cut state wine list

<ADMINNICENAME> — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 18:17:47 +0000

The Liquor Barn chain yesterday reversed itself and announced that it will resume buying products from state winemakers who advocate allowing wine sales at grocery stores.

Roger Leasor, president of Liquor Barn, which has three stores each in Louisville and Lexington, had said Tuesday that he would no longer buy from wineries that supported the grocers’ effort to change Kentucky law. He said doing so would be paying them to promote competition with Liquor Barn.

Kentucky is one of 16 states that do not allow wine sales in groceries. A bill to allow the sale failed in the legislative session earlier this year, but another effort is expected.

“I’m not going to fight with my neighbors,” Leasor said yesterday.

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‘Palin Syrah’ sales drop over resemblance to Sarah Palin

<ADMINNICENAME> — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 17:45:23 +0000

Washington, September 25 : The sales of Palin Syrah, a 100 percent organic wine from Chile, have dramatically plummeted in a San Francisco wine bar ever since Republican presidential hopeful John McCain named Sarah Palin to be his running mate.

Celine Guillou, a co-owner of the Yield Wine Bar, says that the wine used to be a strong seller once, but it is an outcast these days because its name resembles that of the Alaska Governor very closely.

Palin Syrah takes its name from a ball used in a Chilean-style hockey game, and it has been on the bar’s wine list for a while.

“Before McCain made his announcement it was selling very well, because it’s an affordable wine and it’s from South America. Then he made his announcement and we hear people making comments constantly about the wine,” Fox News quoted Guillou as saying.

The bar’s list of wines describes Palin Syrah as: tastes of “white pepper” and “madrone” - an evergreen found in the Pacific Northwest.

However, according to Guillou, customers these days have made a sport of ad-libbing their own descriptions.

“People started making suggestions like gunpowder, moose meat, hockey mom - the list goes on and on. It’s funny, but it’s all we’ve heard for the last couple weeks,” Guillou said.

With San Franciscans unofficially blacklisting Palin Syrah, its place on the bar’s list is appears to be in danger.

However, Guillou feels that it’s too early to sound the death knell for Palin Syrah.

“We might have a group of Republicans who come in to try and bring the sales up. Who knows? Eventually the sales could be tied to how she does in the polls. You have to appreciate San Francisco for what it is, I guess,” she said.

“I think people try to see the humour in it, but we’re in San Francisco, so most of the people we have in I’m going to suspect are fairly liberal. People like to joke about it, but for some people it evokes quite a visceral reaction,” she added.

However, it is not that everyone in the U.S. wants to put a cork in Palin Syrah, for the wine has been flying off the shelves at Cepage Noir Wine Company in Houston, and its sales have been strong even in solidly Democratic New York City.

Scott Pactor, the owner of Appellation Wine and Spirits in New York, has revealed that Palin Syrah has caused as many heated debates among wine shoppers ever since Sarah Palin hit the national political scene.

“We’ve had couples come in and one in the couple will say, ‘We’re definitely not buying this,’ and the other half of the couple is curious and they want to try the wine, so it becomes a bit of a debate. It’s been very funny. Its funny to see how much conversation can be generated over a single name,” Pactor said.

Pactor also revealed that he was looking to give Democrat supporters an option so as to balance the situation.

“We’re also in the process of looking for an Obama wine or a Biden wine, just to be balanced, obviously, just to be balanced. We want to make sure customers have options, but so far we haven’t been successful,” he said.

French wine regions up in arms on advertising

<ADMINNICENAME> — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 19:26:50 +0000

The French wine sector has sent an open letter to the government, demanding it do more to protect the industry against the threat of the anti-alcohol lobby.

The letter describes how, ‘contrary to promises by the president, the government is ignoring the legal injustice to the wine sector’. A copy has been sent from each of the wine regions in the country.

It names specifically the banning of advertising wine on the internet, which was not included in a specific list of allowable advertising mediums in the 1991 Evin Law, and so is by omission illegal.

It also names the constraints on journalists to write freely about wine, and accuses the Ministers of Health and Agriculture of taking no decision regarding ‘this catastrophic legal deadlock’.

Marie Christine Tarby, the president of lobbyists Vins et Societé has spent much of 2008 liaising with the wine regions, underlining the extent of the threat facing them, and mobilising them to launch this unified oppostion.

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High-tech wine labels track travel temperatures

<ADMINNICENAME> — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 13:55:16 +0000

NAPA, Calif. - Sultry weather can be hard on any traveler, and for wine it can be disastrous.

A high-tech shipping label now being used by some in the industry aims to warn customers if there’s a chance they’re getting cooked cabernet.

About the size of a sugar packet, the labels can be programmed for a range of temperatures and placed directly on the product or its packaging. A light flashes green if the product stays within specifications and yellow if it doesn’t.

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Amazon To Sell US Wine Online

<ADMINNICENAME> — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 13:53:29 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Amazon.com (AMZN.O), the largest global online retailer, plans to start selling U.S.-produced wine on its website within the United States by early October, wine industry insiders said on Wednesday.

Napa Valley Vintners, a nonprofit group representing 315 vintners in the famous California wine-producing region, has already begun to set up workshops for wineries interested in selling through the retail giant, said Terry Hall, communications director for the group.

“They have been working for a while on this wine project. Now they are signing up the wineries,” Hall told Reuters. “They’re fast-tracking it right now.”

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The Fight Against Wine Fraud Begins

<ADMINNICENAME> — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 15:02:16 +0000

More and more wines are being proven fraudulent, robbing collectors of hundreds to thousands of dollars. Chemists have decided to step in and create a potential early warning system.

With all the talk of wine fraud these days, it is no wonder that many scientists have been applying themselves to the task of inventing a device that will detect fraudulent wines. Well here is today’s latest iteration. As reported on by no less that the Royal Chemistry Society, Cecilia Jiménez-Jorquera from the Barcelona Institute of…

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Wine Survey Shows German Wines Please Palettes

<ADMINNICENAME> — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 15:01:15 +0000

German Wines a Particular Favorite Among U.S. Hospitality & Beverage Professionals and Americans Under 40

NEW YORK, Sept. 3 /PRNewswire/ — According to a recent survey by Wine Opinions, a research provider to the U.S. wine industry, Americans across multiple demographics frequently purchase and recommend German wines. The wines are particularly popular among wine importers and distributors, retail, restaurant and hospitality employees as well as Americans under the age of forty.

Hospitality and beverage professionals gave high quality ratings to German wines overall and especially in regards to white wines, when compared the other nine wine-exporting countries evaluated in the study. While all other white wines received an average quality score of 2.93 on a four-point scale, the average respondent ranking for Mosel wines was a 3.59, the highest average rating given a white wine. Furthermore, Rheingau wines received a 3.27 quality rating, with one-third of respondents considering the wines of Rheingau and Rheinhessen “outstanding” (38 percent and 31 percent, respectively).

The high quality scores reflect a rapidly growing affinity for German white wines among wine industry professionals that is spreading to consumers. More than a quarter of consumer survey respondents — 29 percent — said they purchased a white German wine within the last six months. In terms of white wine purchases, Germany was second only to France and New Zealand (both 31 percent). Of the German white wine purchasers, 36 percent of the respondents were in their 20s and 30s, revealing a growing preference for German white wines among younger Americans. Furthermore, while only 9 percent between the ages of 60 and 69 said they were “very likely” to purchase German white wines, 25 percent of those between the ages of 21 and 29 said they were “very likely” to purchase the wines.

When respondents were asked on an unaided basis to indicate their favorite wine or type of wine from Germany, Riesling was the top response by a wide margin for consumers (65 percent) and 53 percent from trade.

“Whether it be a crisp Riesling or dry Pinot Noir, we believe that the diversity, complexity and quality of German wines make them some of the finest in the world,” said Monika Reule, managing director of the Deutsches Weininstitut. “That such a wide variety of people enjoy our wine reaffirms that belief, and we will continue to export high quality wine to the U.S. market.”

The Imported Wine Comparative Survey measured consumer attitudes, purchases, evaluations and taste preferences for wines from 10 wine-exporting countries: Australia, Argentina, Chile, France, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, Portugal, Spain and South Africa. The survey was fielded to the Wine Opinions consumer panel, which consists of 805 wine drinkers, the largest online panel of high frequency wine consumers ever assembled. A Wine Opinions trade panel of 109 pre-screened participants was also surveyed in order to gauge industry attitudes toward imported wines.

About Wines of Germany

Wines of Germany is the exclusive U.S. office of the Deutsches Weininstitut. Wines of Germany is focused on creating greater awareness to further enhance the image and increase sales of German wine in the U.S. through educational and promotional activities. It is the primary information source on wines deriving from the 13 German wine growing regions for members of the wine trade, the media, and U.S. consumers. The promotional and educational efforts of Wines of Germany focus primarily on Riesling and Pinot Noir, the most famous German grape varieties.

    Media Contact:

    Emerich Gutter
    Wines of Germany
    212.994.7576
    emerich.gutter@rfbinder.com

Amazon: What will their move into wine mean?

<ADMINNICENAME> — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 18:18:40 +0000

Between classic business savvy, an avid interest in the wine world, and the development of Kindle… Amazon may be poised to make a big move.

It isn’t exactly breaking news that Amazon is contemplating this move. They have tried this before. You may or may not recall their failed bid at the online wine market back in 2005 where they simply funneled traffic to wine.com, and even before that a direct investment of over $30million dollars into wineshopper.com. So it isn’t as if they have ever given up on this endeavor.

They recently hired a Senior Wine Buyer who comes from Wente and Deluca with a background in Marketing. The goal is to develop the Earth’s largest selection of wine…

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Pa. wine lovers fight control of shipped purchases

<ADMINNICENAME> — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 17:34:27 +0000

PHILADELPHIA — Wine enthusiasts are fighting the latest attempt to limit the direct shipment of wine to Pennsylvania consumers.

A pending bill would require wineries to ship consumer purchases to the state Liquor Control Board, which would then send the wine to the consumer for a fee.

Supporters believe direct wine shipments could deprive the state of tax revenue and make it easier for minors to buy wine.

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