Wine - Seeing the World Through the Bottom of a Glass
Mon Apr 07, 2008 at 07:46:25 AM PDT
Cross-posted from
What can wine tell us about the world? Plenty, it turns out. It is one of civilization's oldest products. At one time it was a necessity, when food was served rotten and water was where you washed and evacuated. Now it is enjoying a resurgence. It is an agricultural product, and a unique one. You see, vineyards have kept records of temperature, yield, and ripeness-dates for centuries, giving us incredibly precise records that tell us reams about the global environment. It is also a luxury item, particularly at the top end. As such, its sale and purchase can tell us volumes about the global economy.
Today we look at how modern technology is changing the way people sell, and the way people buy.
Hat tip to Fermentation, a Wine Blog for the initial story, and inspiration, for this diary.
The internet is doing more than changing the way we buy things. Sure, it's convenient to do our holiday shopping at home, no crowds, no parking, and no sales tax (shhhh! don't tell anybody, that part's a secret). But it is more, far more, than that. The internet gives us access to goods we would never otherwise see. It also gives producers, small producers, who would otherwise never get off the ground, a chance to reach consumers. Wine is the perfect example of this trend. It is a luxury product, fills a unique niche, and allows small producers and sellers to carefully target potential customers. And specialty wine, a subset of wine itself, allows even more careful focus. A tiny little vineyard might not have a chance in the brick and mortar world, forced to sell its grapes to a larger consortium for lack of ability to market its own wine, to make relationships with wholesalers and shippers, and get off the ground. But with the internet, it is possible.
Israeli Wine Direct is a new niche website. When people think "Kosher wine" they think syruppy Concord Grape wine. Kosher wines have come miles, and many of the very good ones (truth be told, there are not yet great ones) come from Israel. Israel itself has a growing wine-making business, but many producers are small, not yet able to maintain an international presence. Israeli Wine Direct travels the Israeli wineries and offers the wines through its own wine club. This would simply not be possible in the old brick and mortar days. Sure, mail order existed, but how would you even hear about it? Now, emailing blogs, cross-posting, and a little cheap internet advertising, and you're in business.
Winemonger does the same thing for Austrian wines. Did you know Austria makes some great white wines? Not many other people do, either. Not just that, but if you did know, the chances of walking into your favorite wine store and finding one are about the same as finding a '61 Latour in good shape on the bottom shelf of the bargain bit. Winemonger, though, gives those Austrian wineries access to American markets, and American consumers access to Austrian wines.
Truly Fine Wines provides the same access to micro-vineyards and their products in Germany, the sorts of things you might remember from a trip, but never get your hands on over here.
It's not just foreign wines, either. In 2006 California direct sales increased 33% (the huge jump because of the Supreme Court's Granholm decision). From '06 to '07 it popped another 7%. This is not so much about just wine sales, but sales from little wineries, the kind that make a few hundred or may thousand cases a year, rather than 50,000 or 100,000. These are wineries that used to be vineyards, selling their berries to other wineries, but now have the ability to market their own product. This is great for the consumer, too. Why? Well, these are wines made by the people who grow the grapes, make the wine, and put their name on the label. It is often a labor of love, a family affair, with kids in the vineyards, walking the dogs (trained to sniff out pests or playing in the warehouse. I once called one of these vineyards and had to wait a minute, because the woman who answered was giving her three-year-old a bath. How can you not love that?
The internet is giving small business opportunity they never had before, and consumers new and better choices every day. We have talked about this for years, and seen it once in a while. Today, we see it really working, as we see the world through the bottom of a glass.
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