Wines you didn't know were all owned by the same company

When I did a consulting case for a wine company, I was interested to learn that most brands I saw in stores were not the charming mom-and-pop productions I had cheerfully assumed. Rather, they were owned by vast corporations that thrive by creating a stable of brands, pooling marketing and distribution resources, and cutting costs as much as possible.

Below are some examples that will help you nod knowingly the next time you're browsing through Safeway. It's fun to watch the brands copy each other shamelessly (e.g., Constellation's Ravage going after Gallo's Carnivor), and to see how hard to avoid self-cannibalization in such unwieldy portfolios. (It gets even weirder in other alcohol categories - how Beam Suntory manages to juggle both Old Grand-Dad Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey and Old Crow Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey I'll never know.)

Constellation Brands owns:

Robert Mondavi

Clos Du Bois

Mark West

The Prisoner

Meiomi

Black Box

Toasted Head

Rex Goliath

Gallo owns:

Barefoot

Apothic

Andre

Dark Horse

Carnivor

Alamos

Mirrasou

The Wine Group owns:

Cupcake

Chloe

Benziger

You get the idea. So next time you're reading those entertainingly florid descriptions on a wine label, just remember you can't spell "authentic and homegrown" without M&A.

Randy is a buzz-kill Part 2: Didn't Prohibition kind of, uh, work?

The view is so commonplace that it's become a political proverb: Prohibition didn't work. It was a useless, costly experiment that gave rise to organized crime and drove bad habits underground. 

But here's the thing: Prohibition did work to reduce drinking. Whether it was worth the social cost is an open question. But here is the positive side of the ledger:

Basically, after an alarming rise in alcohol consumption in the preceding decades, Prohibition cut it by 60%. And then it took 35 years after repeal for drinking to reach the same level again. Historians agree that whether or not it was "worth it," Prohibition was successful in its stated objectives.

I personally doubt that Prohibition was "worth it." But I dislike the Manichaean view that if it was bad, all efforts to liberalize alcohol sales must be good. I think that alcohol does, on the whole, more social harm than social good (even though I hypocritically partake in it myself), and that it should be a public health priority. I think strong sin taxes - which do indeed work to discourage drinking - are one important way to keep consumption in check, and we should come up with others. 

And when I think of the consumption I want to discourage, I'm not thinking only of my own. I'm thinking about the people who really buy the alcohol. They, by and large, are alcoholics: 

(http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2014/10/how_much_alcohol_do_americans_drink_consumption_predicts_alcoholism_and.html)

There are a couple of things to take away from this chart. One is that I (and perhaps you) drink more than we think we do. (I'm probably in the top 25% of drinkers nationwide.)

But the scarier thing is that 75% of alcohol in the United States is being sold to people who drink about 10 drinks a day. To me that doesn't sound like a rosy outcome of "freedom of commerce." It sounds more like "a public health emergency." And it doesn't sound like the work of an industry whose name deserves to be as sexy and hip as tobacco's is uncool and tarnished. 

So while I don't think Prohibition was the right answer, I hope that we can find a better one. That goes for all substances that can serve us well at times, can help us feel happy when we want to, but can, in some cases, threaten a healthy life. Soon a chart for marijuana will be added to the one for alcohol - what do we want it to look like?

Machine learning and wine: what can we learn?

As a software engineer, I’ve spent all of my career thinking about how to make processes more efficient, and these days, the hype in automation centers around one topic: artificial intelligence. Machine learning, in particular, is a subset of artificial intelligence that has been driven to the forefront in the wake of declining costs and increased availability of computing power and data storage. Now that it’s cheap to store and analyze lots of data, the possibilities for different industries to change and grow are multiplying, and fast.

There are three primary ways in which artificial intelligence is already impacting the world of wine.

1. Agricultural advances: Vineyard managers can collect data from their vineyards and use it to inform decisions about how to manage the winemaking process. Aggregating data across producers and from different sources, such as weather, could remove more of the uncertainty inherent in the winemaking process.
2. Improving the customer experience: As we’ve discussed in class, consumers can be overwhelmed by the number of options they have and don’t have great signals to help them choose the wines they drink. Machine learning can provide more personalized recommendations to consumers based on their preferences.
3. More efficient pricing and predictions: A standard use of machine learning is to take sets of structured data and make predictions about a particular variable. One application is to predict demand and pricing for wine based on historical data. For example, it might be possible to predict the best price for wines in your newest vintage by looking at historical pricing, weather, and chemical composition data to develop a better guess on how it will be received in the market.

Organizations like the University of California, Irvine, are collecting and publishing datasets. The public availability of these datasets has enabled independent researchers, including off-duty software engineers and data scientists, to experiment with new models for using this data. UCI has published datasets on chemical analysis of wines (1999) and wine quality (2009), and some researchers have started to collect their own data. As the amount of data increases, the possibilities for applying statistical techniques to wine will only continue to expand.

The big question is: what will you build to take advantage of this new opportunity?

Randy is a buzz-kill Part 1: Are we slowly poisoning ourselves with moderate drinking?

If there's one thing I'm good at, it's fretting fruitlessly about things that may or may not exist. I think it's high time I shared this talent with the class.

Sometimes I wonder whether my drinking habits - which vary widely, but seldom involve more than a couple of drinks per night - are slowly poisoning my brain. The alcohol's gotta be doing something up there, right? How do I know it's not leaving any scars?

But for some reason few scientists seem to share my curiosity. After a good while scouring the internet, all I could find on the subject was a 2012 study that showed lab mice with a 0.08% blood-alcohol content (the legal limit for sober driving) generated 40% fewer new neurons than their abstinent peers. In short, even "moderate" drinking led to a pretty substantial impairment in ability to learn and remember. No one's tried this on humans, but the authors of the study conclude: "even socially acceptable levels of alcohol consumption can have long-lasting and detrimental consequences for brain health and its structural integrity."

Why the heck aren't we more curious about this? Why do we have countless studies on a glass of red wine being good for your heart, endless evidence for binge drinking destroying your liver, and barely a handful of experiments about how the very seat of consciousness is affected by something billions of people do every day?

When people see I'm becoming agitated about this and want to calm me down, they reassure me that alcohol consumption has been going on for so long in so many cultures that surely we would know any important negative effects of moderate drinking among adults already. But for me this sounds uncomfortably similar to arguments for tobacco use, which seemed like a great idea for about 400 years before people realized it was linked to cancer. Or like lead poisoning among the Romans, who called lead plumbum, which begat our word plumbing, because they used the stuff to carry their drinking water, for crying out loud. When a substance is subtly harmful, widely used, and culturally approved, I fear that all too often we enjoy it too much to ask questions.

Any MDs or neurochemistry buffs in the crowd who can help me feel better / definitively worse about this? Cheers to all in the meantime!

What do these flavor descriptions really mean?

We’ve all been there before. You pick a bottle of wine from the store shelf, turn it around and read the label. You read a five to seven sentence description of the wine’s flavor – evoking a variety of fruits, warm sunshine, some minerals and maybe a wood or two. Nodding knowingly for the benefit of whoever may be watching, you then place the bottle in your basket without a clue how the wine is going to taste when opened.

The ancient Greeks and Romans, our original wine snobs, did not dwell on dissecting the various flavors of a wine, simply preferring to pass judgment – whether it was good or bad. This practice, or lack thereof, persisted for centuries until the late nineteenth century, when better winemaking methods raised winemaking to an art form, leading its artisans and admirers to seek more descriptive language to expound on its innumerable qualities. (http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/is-there-a-better-way-to-talk-about-wine)

Our modern wine lexicon can be traced to Ann Noble, professor of viticulture and enology at the University of California at Davis. In 1984, drawing upon the work of other sensory scientists, she published the Wine Aroma Wheel (http://www.winearomawheel.com/), a circular chart of six dozen descriptors to describe wine by smell. However, while we have a common language, experience and our reading for today’s class shows that not everyone agrees or is aware of how the language is spoken.

For the wine dummies like myself, I happened upon this useful guide by Wine Folly (http://winefolly.com/tutorial/40-wine-descriptions/) that explains in plain language what some of the more commonly described flavors are supposed to taste like when drunk. Here are some examples:

ANGULAR

An angular wine is like putting a triangle in your mouth – it hits you in specific places with high impact and not elsewhere. It’s like getting punched in the arm in the same place over and over again. An angular wine also has high acidity.

COMPLEX

A complex wine simply means that when you taste it, the flavor changes from the moment you taste it to the moment you swallow. As much as I love complex wines, using the word “complex” to describe a wine is a cop-out unless you go on to describe how it’s complex.

EARTHY

A classic go-to move for a wine writer trying to describe that awkward green and unpleasant finish on a wine. They don’t want to hate on the wine, they just want you to know that if you don’t like the wine it means you don’t like earthy and you’re a bad person.

OAKED

Oh oak! The ultimate non-grape influence to the flavors in wine. In white wine it adds butter, vanilla and sometimes coconut. In red wine it adds flavors often referred to as baking spices, vanilla and sometimes dill.

STEELY

A steely wine has higher acid and more sharp edges. It is the man-ballerina of wine.

Is Choice Overload Dependent on the Sales Channel?

The conclusion from the paper about choice overload in the wine market seems to indicate that choice overload does not happen in the case of wine. I found that paper to be somewhat narrow focused. What if the choice overload effect for wine was dependent on the retail / sale channel?

As discussed in class wine is different and far more complex compared to yoghurts or jam, however, intuitively it does seem strange that there would be no choice overload whatsoever. The paper focused on wine sold in specialized retail shops and it seems that no choice overload happens there. I can agree with that from personal experience. Every time I enter K&L, even if it is without the objective of buying a bottle, I always end up buying something as there is such a big selection that I always spot an interesting offering which sparks my interest. In brief, a consumer that enters a wine shop is looking forward to a broad selection and that actually increases his satisfaction of the purchase.

I’m not sure the same reasoning is valid for other settings though. In supermarkets for example, consumers are shopping for their groceries and they may want to buy a bottle of wine on the side. If the selection is too big however, they might be “scared off” and feel like they do not have time to properly asses a buying decision, as the main reason they are at the shopping center is to buy groceries. In brief, a consumer might be more frustrated with their wine choice, regardless of the bottle, thus deciding not to buy.

For restaurants, the previous posts and comments make a good point. In most cases it seems like there is choice overload, unless a sommelier service is present (which I guess is the point of having a 1000+ wine list) whose ultimate goal is to narrow down and advise the selection for the customer.

One interesting channel which I feel hasn’t been take in consideration enough in the choice overload discussion is online sales. Here I would like to compare 2 different models. The first is KLwines online, the online shop of the retailer I mentioned in paragraph 2 which has more than 9900 wines in catalogue; the second is sommly.io, a startup that imports Italian wines with 41 wines offered.

K&L has a very easily searchable database with a lot of different tags per wine. The website is set up in order to enable the user to narrow down his search, then browse the selection. Without knowing what to look for, it is very easy for the user to get lost in an endless loop of research / filtering / sorting. Even with some criteria in mind, the offer is probably going to still wide, so deciding factors tend to become the critic scores (which are showed quite plainly with the wine’s price). As discussed in class previously, not everyone feels satisfied when relating to critics’ scores.

Sommly instead has a much newer looking UI, with the picture of the wine being the main object on the screen. The search is not very refined, but given the small selection, it is quick and easy to just browse all the catalogue. I feel like each time I go on Sommly, I am much more tempted of buying a wine, as I can usually pinpoint the bottle that seems more interesting among all those offered. I would be more “satisfied” of my purchase decision in this case.

It would be interesting to run experiments and have data regarding customer satisfaction and buying decisions in settings with online choice overload.

Choice Overload and Wine Spectator Restaurant Awards

Last week's discussion on choice overload in wine selection was interesting. Picking up on George's post on choice overload when facing restaurant wine lists I thought it would be interesting to research the requirements for Wine Spectator's Restaurant Awards. The requirements and criteria are listed below:

Award of Excellence
2,414 winners
These wine lists, which typically offer at least 90 selections, feature a well-chosen assortment of quality producers, along with a thematic match to the menu in both price and style. Whether compact or extensive, focused or diverse, these lists deliver sufficient choice to satisfy discerning wine lovers.

Best of Award of Excellence
1,093 winners
These wine lists display excellent breadth across multiple winegrowing regions and/or significant vertical depth of top producers, along with superior presentation. Typically offering 350 or more selections, these restaurants are destinations for serious wine lovers, showing a deep commitment to wine, both in the cellar and through their service team.

Grand Award
86 winners
Our highest award, given to restaurants that show an uncompromising, passionate devotion to the quality of their wine programs. These wine lists typically feature 1,000 or more selections, and deliver serious breadth of top producers, outstanding depth in mature vintages, a selection of large-format bottles, excellent harmony with the menu, and superior presentation. These restaurants offer the highest level of wine service.

Source: Wine Spectator Restaurant Awards. http://www.winespectator.com/group/show?id=about_the_awards. Accessed February 27, 2017.

Talk about choice overload! The number and distribution of selections required for these awards are astonishing. I wonder what the value proposition is for a restaurant vying for one of these awards. Does being selected as a Grand Award winner actually drive more restaurant patronage? The cost of stocking, storing and curating a wine list of more than 1000 sections must be significant. It would be interesting to uncover the economics of the restaurants participating in this award program.

“Brorange” – The New Brosé?

I was struck by the orange color of the Georgian wines presented during our midterm talks, but didn’t think much of it until last week when I had dinner in San Francisco and our hosts ordered an orange wine.

I had never seen a wine that wasn’t white, red, or, until the explosion of rose a few years ago, pink.  And I have to tell you, seeing it up-close-and-person was weird: like a pale orange soda, but full of light, and entirely off-putting.

Orange wine – the other “off-white” table wine sitting between traditional red and traditional white – could be considered the evil twin of rosé: pink/blush wines are made by getting the juice off red wine grape skins more quickly than normal, while orange wines are left by leaving the juice on white wine grapes longer than normal.

With growing population, orange wines are being produced around the world, but the country of Georgia is still the orange wine capital.  There orange wine is still aged in bees-waxed lined clay vats called “qvevri,” a practice that’s been used for hundreds of years.  However, we’ll likely see other countries producing in much greater quantities (with variations along the production processes), if, as some industry insiders predict, it becomes wine’s hot new thing.

Personalized Recommendations - opportunity in the market?

I came across an advertisement the other day for a company called Bright Cellars - a subscription wine service started by two MIT grads that sends you wines based on your 'palate quiz'. After a fairly short quiz, half of which has nothing to do with taste, you get four recommendations that they'll send to you for $15 a bottle plus shipping.

Not being familiar with any of the vineyards recommended, I can't comment on the quality of their palate matching. But I am curious about their model, which seems to be a common one popping up. After a few questions can you really match my palate and feel comfortable recommending based on that? Is it really possible to break down wine preference into individual attributes that you try to suss out based on the type of juice or tea I like? I'm skeptical.

After so many iterations of recommendation algorithms - both in food and wine - I'm curious why there don't seem to be models based more around "people like you also liked ...". If it works for Amazon's purchase recommendations, why not here? I'd much rather see restaurant reviews on Yelp from people who enjoy restaurants I do. If you're more of a steak and burger person, your recommendations aren't as well suited to me since I don't eat beef. The same seems like it would apply to wine.

An app like Vivino already knows what else people who liked XYZ wine also rated highly. I'd be curious to see what a recommendation like that looks like and how accurate it might be.

Wine by the Keg

Wine on tap has recently begun to pick up steam, and according to the Washington Post, more high-quality wines are being marketed exclusively on tap for restaurant sales. I believe that this trend will continue for the following 4 reasons:

• Better value: A standard 750mL bottle holds about 4 pours. Restaurants price a glass of wine at the wholesale cost of the bottle so that even if they only sell 1 glass, they recoup the cost of the bottle. On the other hand, a 20L keg eliminates the need for 26 bottles, which saves cost of packaging and shipping. Whereas a typical California pinot costs $30/bottle, at $265/keg, it costs a restaurant the equivalent of $10/bottle.
• Better quality: When ordering a glass of wine served from a bottle, customers don’t know how long the bottle poured from has been open. On the other hand, kegs prevent exposure to oxygen, which keeps wine fresh, so that the first glass tastes the same as the last.
• Better variety: Having wines on tap is a great way to try multiple wines without purchasing an entire bottle. Customers have the option of drinking something with an appetizer, then switching to something else for the main course, or even creating a flight to match various dishes throughout the meal.
• Environmentally friendly: Kegs eliminate the needs for labels, foils, and corks. Stainless steel kegs are also often reused, which further eliminates waste.

I wouldn't be surprised if the next time I walk into a sports bar, I see this:

The Ritual of Tasting Moments

The NYTimes published an article last week on the etiquette of wine in restaurants - it made me think of the discussions we've had around wine traditions and rituals (uncorking of the wine, proper tasting etiquette) and wine in restaurants (navigating a wine list, selection).

The article recounts how sommelier Erica O'Neal has eliminated the step of pouring a taste for the restaurant guest; after presenting the bottle to the diner, she takes the wine away, opens it, tastes herself to test for quality, and then brings it back to the table to pour.

This may sound like a pretty minute change, but it elicits strong reactions from the customers in the article and NYT readers in the comments. The question at play: should we eliminate elements of traditional wine service if they seem pointless or outdated?

On the one hand, O'Neal argues, the tasting of the bottle is often an awkward moment: the diner doesn't know what to taste for, the conversation has to come to a standstill. She says, "I don't want to put my guests in the position of having to guess whether a wine is corked."

Others argue that the point of the tasting moment is giving the consumer a chance to change the order if he/she dislikes the wine. O'Neal believes in that choice but not in the moment: "“I’ve found it’s actually easier for guests to talk about whether they like the wine without the ritual.” Eric Asimov, the author of the article and NYT chief wine critic, commends the attempt of making people feel more comfortable with wine.

For what it's worth, I have never felt particularly uncomfortable with the tasting moment at a restaurant but also don't think it's a meaningful one - I've never sent the bottle back. I honestly am not sure it makes much of a difference to the dining experience. What do you think - would you miss this step, do you enjoy the ritual, would you appreciate skipping it?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/13/dining/should-restaurants-offer-guests-that-first-taste-of-wine.html

Tackling consumer choice overload: Boston's Urban Grape

As anybody who's spent significant time in Boston's South End will know, the Urban Grape is a wine shop in the area with a cult following.

The husband and wife team started the shop with the intention of applying their backgrounds in hospitality to wine retailing. Not only is the shop warm and inviting and the staff extremely helpful, but the team has attempted to lessen the ill-effects of too much choice in the way they've structured their shop. They call it "drinking progressively." As you move from one end of the store to the others, you move from a "body" profile of 1 to 10. The team has grouped the wines based on the power of flavor, mouth feel, weight, etc., so that a customer can state their preferred wine experience and be guided to a section of wines of different types that will all satisfy the customer's preferences. The idea is that you will be able to explore varietals, regions, and producers all at different price points, all according to your palate.

With the combination of attentive, helpful staff and an intuitive organizational structure, the impact on customer experience is impressive. The experience is easy, quick, painless, and guaranteed to land you with a bottle you'll enjoy. Next time you're in Boston I highly recommend stopping by.

 

Are the $2.49 Three Wishes wines drinkable?

While at Whole Foods over the weekend, I was stunned to see wines for $2.49 per bottle. (There is an additional 10% discount for purchases of more than six bottles, making it $2.25 per bottle.) Curious, I picked up all four varietals and did a taste test.

My conclusion: While none of the wines will win any awards as they are generic (almost impossible to tell the different varietals), lack concentration and have no length on the palate, all four wines were front loaded with flavor and thus easy to drink. Also, the value to price ratio of these wines are unbeatable as IMHO they are not worse than many other $10-$12 wines we had tried before.

Even more fascinating was to see responses to these wines: At a party over the weekend, we shared the four bottles. Almost without exception, people who drank the wines without knowing the brand or price found it acceptable, while people who knew the brand or price immediately concluded that they did not like the wines. For me, this cemented a point from an earlier class: A lot of wine drinking is psychological.

Key takeaway? If you are on a tight budget, serve these wines at the next party you host but try not to let people see the labels! :)

PS. The Merlot and Pinot Grigio were slightly better than the Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay.
PPS. One blogpost on this wine claims it is also made by Charles Shaw, the maker of the $2 chuck at Trader Joes. If true, Charles Shaw must produce a ton of wines!

What's next for Robert Parker?

So we talked a lot about Robert Parker and his hegemony on wine reviews, and we touched upon the question of what will happen in the post-Parker era. Well here are a few steps that Mr. Parker has already taken.

1. Selling Wine Advocate to Singapore investors

According to Decanter.com, Robert Parker has struck a deal with a group of Singapore businessmen to sell Wine Advocate for $15 million. The main shareholder, according to a source close to the deal, is Soo Hoo Khoon Peng, formerly of wine importers Hermitage. In an email seen by Decanter.com, the source says the two other shareholders in the deal are connected with Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs.

The source then says the primary interest of the group is to "Allow advertising, allow independent reviewers to conduct public speaking events, presentations and seminars all for a fee, [and] spin off a Chinese edition of TWA". The company’s headquarters will remain in Maryland, though a new office in Singapore is due to open soon where newly appointed editor-in-chief, Lisa Perrotti-Brown MW, will be based.

2. Delegating reponsibilities to others

Since 2013, the role of editor-in-chief went from Parker to Lisa Perotti-Brown, a Singapore-based correspondent for the publication. A second editorial office was opened in Singapore. Following lead critic Antonio Galloni's departure from The Wine Advocate， three new critics were recruited: Jeb Dunnuck, Monica Larner and Luis Gutiérrez. Today, a good portion of the wines are reviewed by these other members of the team rather than Parker himself.

3. Going from print to online

Wine Advocate has now gone completely from print to online, with a free membership that offers limited benefits and a paid membership for $99 a year. 

My concern:

Steps 1 and 2 are making me increasingly concerned with the future of Robert Parker's legacy. If people followed him all these years because of their trust in him, what's going to happen when more people realize that Wine Advocate will soon become a newsletter for which Robert Parker neither manages most of the day-to-day, nor does he even write most of the reviews?

References:

http://www.decanter.com/wine-news/soo-hoon-khoon-peng-confirmed-as-wine-advocate-purchaser-23146/

Sour Grapes

Before Tuesday's class I spent a bit of time poking around Tyler Coleman's blog (http://www.drvino.com/). One of his posts recommended Sour Grapes, a documentary about fraud in the wine industry that came out in May of last year. As luck would have it, Sour Grapes is available on Netflix. Tuesday night plans: check.

The film follows the rise and fall of Rudy Kurniawan, who burst onto the US wine scene in 2006 seemingly out of nowhere. He hobnobbed with rare wine collectors and frequented wine auctions, quickly making a name for himself as a prominent wine connoisseur with "arguably the greatest cellar on earth." In 2006, he made $35.3 million from two auctions at Acker, Merral & Condit.

Turns out, his wines were counterfeit. When the FBI arrested Kurniawan at his home in 2012, they found hundreds of bottles of inexpensive wine, along with fake labels, corks, wax, and stamps. In 2013, Rudy was convicted of several counts of mail and wire fraud and sentenced to 10 years in prison. On the civil side, Bill Koch, who bought at least two fake bottles from Kurniawan, sued Rudy for willful fraud in 2009; the parties settled for $3 million in 2014. Today, an estimated 10,000 bottles from Rudy's cellar are believed to remain in private collections.

The fact that Rudy's luck ran out is not at all surprising (the film documents a few particularly egregious label mistakes). What is surprising, however, is how long his luck lasted. How did no one notice the fraud for three years? And how did it take the FBI another three years to charge him? 

And, more pertinent to our class discussions, what does this say about (some) industry experts? Even after Rudy's fraud was unearthed, several characters in the film who apparently had extensive experience with fine wines had a hard time identifying the wines as fake (based on taste alone - careful label and bottling analysis quickly revealed the fraud). 

The film suggests thats the answer lies with the consumer's willful ignorance. That is, people don't want to believe they've bought a counterfeit, so they don't. They staunchly stand by the integrity of the wines in their cellar to avoid feeling like "dumb money," like they weren't expert enough to see through the fraud, at the price of thousands or even millions of dollars.

I'm sure willful ignorance plays a role, but I also wonder whether Rudy's fakes were just that good (the film hints at this). This leads me to wonder whether there might be space in the market for non-fraudulent imitator wines (i.e., blends sold under new labels). If Rudy's fakes were good enough to fool consumers with relatively extensive experience with fine wines, might non-fraudulent imitator wines be good enough to bring enjoyment to your average consumer? 

This of course begs the question of who would produce imitator wines, which couldn't command the prices garnered by Rudy's fraudulent wines (e.g., a 1945 Chateau Mouton-Rothschild). But that's a question for another day.

Written from Uncork'd (SFO Terminal 3), over a glass of Stags' Leap 2014 Petite Sirah:

(Vino Volo is only in Terminal 2 - reason number 100 to stop flying United.)

(fake) expensive wines actually taste better?

Michaela's thoughts last class on how choice affects our perceived quality and value of the wine reminded me of a study I learned about in a psych class at college. This study, run at Stanford a few years ago, found that "if a person is told he or she is tasting two different wines — and that one costs $5 and the other $45 when they are, in fact, the same wine — the part of the brain that experiences pleasure will become more active when the drinker thinks he or she is enjoying the more expensive vintage." 

How crazy. This is different than someone just rating a wine more or less satisfactory on a survey; this involves an fMRI machine scanning people's brains as they drink wine and telling us pleasure centers are lighting up more with the wine that is supposedly pricier. (Note that the tasters were not professional connoisseurs.)

Expanding on Michaela's point that wine labels can be tricky to figure read and understand, it points to another marketing strategy that goes the opposite direction of Yellow Tail: highlighting the high price point of a wine. While Yellow Tail's strategy focused on a clear, clean brand with a fruity taste and minimal selection, another strategy for a pricier wine would be highlighting price to indicate the  quality - which is some weird sense becomes a chicken and egg issue as perceived quality actually gets a boost from that increased price alone.

Choice Overload on a Menu

I wanted to share an extension of the choice overload phenomena we discussed in class on Thursday. In the context of this class, we focused primarily on choice overload on the shelves at retailers, and sometimes while shopping digitally.

I have faced this same scenario while dining out and trying to purchase a bottle of wine from a wine list. Often times whenever there is a large and complex wine list, I am overwhelmed, intimidated, and don't want to take the time to read the entire list. The worst scenario occurs when the wine list is in another language or isn't partitioned in a way that is friendly to the average diner. Often times when faced with this scenario, I end up either just ordering a cocktail or a beer.

The Authenticity Debate: Oh, now I get it.

I'll admit it. When we had our talk about authenticity a couple sessions ago I didn't really get it. 

Partially, I was overwhelmed with annoyance for how packaging impacts perceptions of authenticity and prestige. For example, although, as Professor Rapp pointed out, boxed wine has seen significant growth, I know many people who turn up their noses at the idea of boxed wine. I understand the market dynamics (technology that wasn't ready, you can't age boxed wine, etc.) that led to this, but that many still see boxed wine as somehow less "authentic" bugs me.

However, I can now say that I "get" it. 

Incredibly bored in SFO earlier this week, I picked up a remarkably expensive copy of National Geographic. The front page article was titled, "The Birth of Booze: Our 9,000-Year Love Affair With Alcohol."

Flipping through the pages, I ran across the following caption to a picture of two men carrying a half wooden barrel on their shoulders:

The oldest firm evidence of an alcoholic beverage comes from Jiahu, China [...] It's still a popular drink in China. At the Zhejiang Pagoda Brand Shaoxing Winery, workers steam and ferment freshly harvested rice in the winter, when water from the nearby river is at its purest.

My first reaction was, "that sounds amazing." I wanted to visit. The product felt authentic - ancient even - and incredibly pure. I wanted to try it immediately. 

A couple pages later, I ran across the following caption to a picture of two children in white canvas shifts reaching up to pick grapes off of a vine:

Wine was the beverage of choice in ancient Rome, a from there it spread throughout the empire, including France. At Mas des Tourelles, an estate near the southern French town of Arles, vintner Herve Durand worked with archaeologists to re-create Roman wines from first-century A.D. recipes - and to reenact the ancient process of winemaking. Grapes are picked by locals dressed as Roman slaves, snacked on by a Roman soldier, and pressed with a massive oak-tree trunk.

I was appalled. To re-enact an ancient custom right down to the costumes seemed absurd. My immediate conclusion was, "that wine must not be very good. This is basically a really insensitive disney-like product. I mean, is it even wine?"

But then I had to stop myself - other than the costumes, what really was the difference? Does the fact that the winemakers have their grapes picked by children dressed up as ancient slaves really impact the wine itself - of course it doesn't. Does the fact that this is a recreated recipe make it any less authentic? Possibly (one could argue that fruits, etc. have evolved enough that the wine could never be recreated or that it is a replica, not an authentic product in and of itself), but the same arguments can be made about the Chinese wine. Is the intention or manner in which the wine is produced directly impact its authenticity (I know some familiar Northern Italians who would argue yes)? 

Indeed, when it comes right down to it, both products are based on ancient recipes and both products are created in the same place as their ancient forbearers. Aren't both simultaneously authentic and homages to the original?

I would argue "yes" to the above, which leaves me with the unsettling feeling that anything can be considered "authentic" if you look at it long enough. No matter how "disney" it feels. 

(1) https://www.thrillist.com/drink/nation/the-benefits-of-boxed-wine

Oh look, it's not just me who likes ancient wine...

Someone on the staff of National Geographic is an ancient alcohol nerd too!

Since I already wrote about this topic two weeks ago, I'll be brief here. If you would like to read more, click here.

A couple notes on the article:

• The role of alcohol in the development of society tends to get some serious side-eye from historians; however, this article argues (far more eloquently than I did two weeks ago) that it is important to look at alcohol consumption in order to understand its role in the development of "man" as well as contextualize our current drinking forms. 

• Wines of all sorts - not just grapes - have been around for ages (most of this also in our text book):
• A combination of rice, milk, and honey was fermented into wine in China ~9,000 years ago
• The first grapes were domesticated in the Zagros Mountains (Iran) and were made into wine ~7,400 years ago

• There is quite a bit on Celtic wine in this article, but as I've already written about it, I wont repeat myself. The only fact that bears additional mention is the following:
• "Roman vintners, whose elite Roman clients preferred white wines, tended vast plantations of red wine grapes for the Celtic market; traders moved the wine across the Mediterranean, in ships [...] then  sent it north on small river barges. By the time it reached Corent months later, its value had multiplied a hundredfold. One contemporary claimed the thirsty Celts would trade a slave for a single jar" (National Geographic, February 2017, p. 52). 
• Sound familiar? How many cases have we had this quarter on producers facing the prospect of either cultivating the "preferred," high-class grapes, or selling lower quality grapes to a bigger market? Profit or prestige? I love that no matter how new we think our problems are today, there is almost always an echo in the past.

• Also, a helpful map for those interested in the timeline (visually) can be found here

Taking the Overload Out of Choice

I recently came across a company called Vinome, which claims to bring the ultimate personalized experience to wine. The company leverages DNA sequencing to determine what wines you are likely to enjoy, and then delivers them to your door.

This is a company built on top of Helix, which is similar to the DNA sequencing company 23 and Me, except styled like an app store. You give Helix your DNA and the company invites others to build applications on top, similar to the Apple App Store.

This seems to take choice overload out of wine shopping, while still providing the benefits of a large selection with a tailored selection that is specific to an individual's preferences, down to the DNA code. Pretty incredible!!

Lastly, as shown in the graphic below, this is available for the price of $50 per bottle, not bad given it includes the cost of the DNA test. Interestingly, Vinome also highlights that the price is the "winery direct price". Given what we have learned in class, this sounds like they're playing the role of the third party marketing provider in the value chain.