Monthly Archives: May 2007

Wacky Wine Weekend

Taking place this weekend is the Robertson Wine Valley, Wacky Wine Weekend.

With over 10 000 visitors in 2006, the Wacky Wine Weekend has been firmly established as one of South Africa’s leading wine tourism events. This fun-filled weekend spans the valley and includes 40 wineries from Ashton, Bonnievale, McGregor and Robertson with a special focus on good food, great wine and an even better time spent with friends and family.

Wineries all across this picturesque valley host extra activities in addition to wine tasting which includes boat cruises, tractor trips, paragliding, golfing, the sound of live music, loads of childrens’ activities and food ranging from traditional SA meals to gourmet delicacies. There are plenty of different scenes to enjoy – almost every taste and style is covered in one weekend.

A survey commissioned by Cape Town Routes Unlimited on last year’s Wacky Wine Weekend indicated that the event was highly successful with an estimated direct spend in the Valley of R 9,7million. And advertising last year was mainly by word of mouth!

By Mike Carter.

An eBay For Wine Collectors

The best wines in the world aren’t at Trader Joe’s, it turns out. They are in some collector’s cellar.

“The better the quality of the wine, the harder it is to get,” says Stephen Bachmann, CEO of Vinfolio, a wine trading/collecting site. ”The best wines that get released end up in the cellars of collectors. Private cellars have more supplies of these wines than the trade does.”

Vinfolio essentially acts like an eBay for oenophiles, who turn out to be just as crazy and compulsive as collectors in other fields. Wine owners list the contents of their cellars on the service. They can then sell, buy or trade with other collectors. If you start out as a California collector, but have switched to French wines, you can start selling the old bottles to pay for the new habit.

Vinfolio gives away its desktop software but takes a cut on transactions.

The company also provides data on estimated prices for your wines, current auctions and other information on the wine world. In other words, the dizzying array of data that makes rotisserie baseball addictive to its adherents is now part of wine collecting.

Subscribers are expected to grow to 21,000 people in 2007. Revenues will likely reach $17 million this year. The company is only three years old. In 2005, revenues came to $2.4 million. The average wine traded on the site sells for $100 to $125 with some bottles selling for several thousand.

And in the June 2007 issue of Food & Wine, Vinfolio was voted as one of the 10 Best Online Wine Shops.

By Michael Kanellon.

All You Need For A Great Wine Trip

Take a look at a great new wine tourism web site – www.winetravelguides.com – which offers over 40 Guides for wine travellers in France, all written by writers with the inside track on their region.

Launched at this years London Wine Fair by UK and French based wine writer, editor and educator Wink Lorch, each guide has a selection of wine producers to visit, places to stay and eat, and much more. The information is very detailed, varying in length from 10 – 18 pages including Michelin maps, and they have promised that this information will be reguarly up-dated. I particuarly liked the suggested itineries. Fortunately there’s no advertising as the Guides are available only by subscription which start at $15 for one Guide.

An interesting idea, with the potential to expand to other countries and wine regions as well.

Just register on the site with your email to test drive one of the Guides for free. One problem though – the confirmation email they sent me after registering included my password – not a good idea, and hopefully they will change this.

By Mike Carter.

Italian Wine Lovers Head For Open Cellars

Well over a million wine lovers and tourists are expected to flock this weekend to some 1,000 vineyards taking part in this year’s Open Cellars event. Now in its 15th year, Open Cellars has been a pioneer in developing Italy’s wine tourism sector which attracts over four million people to the Italian countryside.

Aside from seeing where and how wine is made, and discovering the difference of tasting it at its source, Open Cellars offers visitors a chance to learn about traditions and culture linked to wine-making and country life. Although wine is the chief focus, Open Cellars also offers tourists a chance to sample other farm products, especially olive oil, and feast on an array of regional foods and cuisine.

The initiative, organised by the Wine Tourism Movement (MTV), originally began in Tuscany to then spread quickly to Italy’s other wine-producing regions. A number of special events have once again been organised in various Italian regions for the Open Cellars weekend.
The region of Lombardy will reprise “dinners with winemakers” in a number of vineyards, historic homes and restaurants where visitors will be able to enjoy the region’s best wines and foods while chatting to a professional vintner.

A cross-country bike rally has been organised in Friuli Venezia Giulia and the region will also offer Open Cellars 2007 souvenir glass wine goblets, the proceeds of which will be donated to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). In Emilia Romagna, wine tasting will be twinned with sampling the region’s varieties of bread, with each vineyard playing host to a local baker. Vintage and classic cars and motorcycles will be an Open Cellars sideshow in Abruzzo with the participation of the Motoclub Pescara, the Sulmona Vespa Club and the regional Fiat 500 Club.

In Molise, Open Cellars this year coincides with the feast day of the patron saint of Portocannone, an ethnic Albanian enclave, where there will be the traditional ox cart race in honor of the Madonna of Constantinople. A ‘wine road’ will be inaugurated during Open Cellars in Calabria to allow wine tourists a year-round itinerary to discover the region’s wines.

Wine tourism in Italy has been expanding at a rate of some 8% a year and now attracts and generates annual revenue of around 2.5 billion euros in wine-producing regions.

A study by the social research group CENSIS found that every 10 euros spent in the vineyard generates 50 euros in earnings for the local economy. According to another CENSIS report, wine and food have become the second most important reason why tourists come to Italy and is considered the treat which gives the greatest satisfaction to visitors.

www.ansa.it

California Wine Month

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared September 2007 California Wine Month.  In a proclamation, the Governator stated “With more than 2,400 wineries and 4,600 grape growers, California is proud to produce ninety percent of all U.S. wine and to be the world’s fourth largest wine maker.  Not only does this mean that our wines are adding distinctive flair to countless meals and special occasions, but also that billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs are strengthening our economy.”  The Wine Institute is partnering with winery members, regional winery and grower associations, retailers and restaurants and other organizations with a calendar of California wine events in September. Visit www.californiawineevents.com for listings of events in California wine country in September and throughout the year.

It’s no surprise that with California leading the US wine production, our beautiful weather and amazing scenery, we draw in nearly 20 million tourists annually who come to experience the wines of California.

California Wine Month last September helped increase sales of California wines by 11 percent that month in U.S. supermarkets, compared to the previous summer.  So grab the California Wine Month image, post it on your site, get it in you next email blast and celebrate your contribution to an industry that strengthens our economy but lets not forget the most important part, produces some of the most amazing Vino in the world.

By Stephen Mutch – REthink Wine Blog

Numbered Wine Labels

On my recent trip to Australia one day my wife went out to get some wine for dinner, and she came back with a bottle of Polin & Polin Shiraz that was recommended by the clerk at the liquor store. Of course, I immediately looked closely at the label (as I always do with any product) and I noticed that they were using individually numbered wine labels.

So I decided to do a little investigating. I contacted Matthew Polin, one of the founders of the Polin & Polin Wines. They are a small family owned winery in a wine growing district northwest of Sydney. When I asked Matthew why he decided on going with individually numbered bottles he sited several reasons:

1. They wanted to emphasize that they are a low production, single vineyard winery.
2. Promotions to the members of the winery – they get a bottle corresponding to their member number.
3. To keep track of the bottles.

Now, numbering wine bottles is not a completely new idea, but there are still so few wineries doing it. An informal survey of my local liquor store revealed no wines with numbered labels. Today with the advanced digital label printing technology available this is very easy to do and not that much more expensive than regular labels. And it is a way to have your label stand out from the crowd. For a small winery like Polin & Polin I think it is a great idea, because it does give an exclusive and boutique feel to the wine.

By the way the Shiraz was truly outstanding, but unfortunately it is not available yet in this country. If you go down under, make sure you pick yourself up a bottle.

Thanks to Peter Renton for sharing his find with us! www.lightninglabels.com

By Peter Renton.

The Lost Art of Follow-Up

My biggest gripe with packaging suppliers is they don’t follow up. They don’t acknowledge receipt of orders. They don’t confirm delivery dates. They don’t advise me timeously about delays.

Exceptional suppliers follow-up. Their pro-active. They phone me. I don’t have to phone them. That sets them apart from the average. Believe me, follow-up is a lost art. In fact follow-up is so rare that businesses can stand out merely by doing it.

According to communication guru Ruth Sherman, follow-up serves the following purposes:

It let’s people know you care.
It identifies you as responsible for the process.
It keeps relationships alive and invigorated.
It provides opportunities for new interactions.
It plants seeds for new ideas.
It shows a high level of commitment.
It demonstrates self-confidence.
It regularly reminds people you are out there and available.

Do your packaging suppliers follow-up?

Read the entire article: www.fastcompany.com

By Mike Carter.

The Wine Century Club

Is this the most exclusive wine club in the world?

If you’re drinking a Buttafuoco*, Dzhani*, or Ehrenfelser* chances are you may be a member of the Wine Century Club. It’s a simple idea, but it’s not as easy to become a member as you may think. To join the club, which celebrated its 2nd birthday on March 18th, you must have tasted and be able to list at least 100 different grape varieties that you have tried.

It began with 33 and now has 109 members form all over the world, including Finland, Georgia (USA and former USSR), Germany, Spain and Brazil.

Of the thousands of applications downloaded, less than 3% are completed. If you feel up to the challenge, download an application: www.winecentury.com

By the way, though the application works on the honor system, the fine print notes: “Should you lie, may the wrath of Bacchus curse your palate.”

*Dzhani and Ehrenfelser are both wine grape varieties. Buttafuoco is an Italian blend of 25-65% Barbera, 25-65% Croatina, and up to 45% Uva rara and/or Ughetta and/or Pinot Nero.

By Mike Carter.

Wine Tasting Does Tupperware

30 billion bottles of wine are consumed annually worldwide. That’s almost 5 bottles for every single human being on the planet. But only a very small percentage of wine drinkers have knowledge of vino that extends beyond “I’ll have a glass of your house red.”

The sheer volume of wine facts can be daunting: over 5,000 varieties of grapes from dozens of regions worldwide are coaxed, coddled, blended, and aged into a staggering array of red, white, rose, still, sparkling, and fortified wines. With so many enthusiastic but under-informed wine lovers, The Traveling Vineyard tasted and smelled an opportunity.

The Traveling Vineyard is the home-based business arm of Geerlings & Wade, a US-based direct marketer of wine and wine accessories. Anyone interested in hosting a wine tasting party can call on the Traveling Vineyard Wine Consultant in their area who will work with the host to organise an at-home event for 10-20 friends.

In short, Traveling Vineyard at-home wine tastings are like Tupperware parties for wine – their website bills the events as “a party in a box!”. The company began running events in April 2002, and now boasts over 2,500 Wine Consultants in the US.

There are millions of consumers yet to be formally introduced to the wonderful world of wine from an educational point of view. Services like the Traveling Vineyard could do well all over the world, and for wine, restaurant, or food service companies similar service models have the potential to become a combination of an independent revenue generator and a marketing tool to boost overall retail revenue. Another way of getting your foot in consumer’s doors.

Spotted by Springwise: www.springwise.com

By Mike Carter.

Alexanderfontein

Alexanderfontein wines are produced in the Darling district, considered the heartbeat of the West Coast region. Here one is surrounded by an abundance of beauty and wild flowers, which is undoubtedly Darlings’s greatest asset. 

Alexanderfontein’s label was inspired by this and particularly by the rare West Coast flower, Gladiolus Carinatus. With it’s exquisite fragrance, it exemplifies the character and quality of the wine it represents.

Edging the logo with a red background was designed to bring a center point to the label and a particular focus on the logo. Creating a clean white background using Killer White, emphasised and conveyed a natural clean freshness. By adding the gold foil printed on gold ink as a final touch, Haumann Smal Design Studio succeeded in creating a “look and feel” of quality and refinement.

In conclusion, creating a link between traditional West Coast beauty and fine West Coast wines.

By Mike Carter.