The Wine Curmudgeon

Holiday wine trends 2012

The one consistent from last year? Consumers are still looking for value, and they’re still worried about prices. Or, as my pal Gil Kulers, who works for Atlanta’s Tower Wine and Spirits, one of the largest retailers in the southeast, described it: “If it’s a choice between spending $1 more to get a better wine, and not spending the $1, I had a customer who didn’t want to spend the $1.”

The good news is that prices remain consumer-friendly, save for some higher end wines and Champagnes. In addition, the retailers I talked to said we’re looking for value in places that we haven’t necessarily looked for value in the past. The details are after the jump:

Wine Curmudgeon most popular posts, 2012

I'd better read the blog to find out about that Cupcake chardonnay. And how to hold a wine glass.

How much has the blog’s world changed in the past year? From November 2010 to November 2011, the highest-rated white wine review was Cupcake chardonnay, at No. 25, and no white wine review had ever made the top 10 in the blog’s four-year history.

This year, that’s almost completely changed. That same Cupcake review skyrocketed to No. 5, while a 2012 Cupcake review was 34th, even though it didn’t appear until September. A 2011 Two-buck Chuck pinot grigio review, meanwhile, was at No. 9.

And the blog’s usual preference for red wine? That pretty much disappeared. No red wine review made the top 10, while the annual Tormaresco Neprica review fell to No. 69. How the mighty have fallen.

Some things, though, remained the same. You really don't like reviews for rose and sparkling wine. Rose didn't show up until No. 42, and it wasn't a review, but the link to the rose category. And sparkling wine? Not until a 3 1/2-year-old Gruet review at No. 90. Even an expensive wine – the 2004 Stag’s Leap Artemis, which appeared in 2009 – did better than either, at No. 38. On a cheap wine blog, at that. Not to worry, though – I will continue to review rose and sparkling until I make my point.

After the jump, the top 10 posts between November 2011 and November 2012:

Birthday Week 2012: The blog keeps growing

And still in double-digit numbers, too. I’m beginning to think there may be something to this wine blogging business.

The always popular colored chart, which is after the jump this year, shows just how well we've done since I started tracking visitors in January 2008. The first post went up in November 2007, but I didn't keep stats for the first six weeks. Who knew I would still be here?

All told, the number of average daily visitors has increased 3,230 percent from that first January through the end of October. Plus, not only is the blog up 21 percent through October, but this year saw best day ever (when this Costco post ran), as well as its third best day ever (when the winery shell game past ran).

Five years, and the five biggest changes in the wine business

Even Eddie G. is surprised by the changes in the wine business over the past five years.

The blog turns five next week, a period that has given the Wine Curmudgeon a cyber-eye view of some significant changes in the way we drink wine in the U.S. It’s not the same score-driven, pay as much as you can business that it was when I did newspaper wine writing in the two decades before the recession.

The biggest change? That consumers discovered that they can drink cheap wine without worrying about quality or what wine snobs think. This shift in drinking habits has been well documented, though rarely discussed in the Winestream Media. Head in the sand, I suppose.

But everyone I ask says the same thing (and I ask everyone I talk to). We’re selling more wine than ever before, they say, but we’re making less money because we’re selling cheaper wine and cheaper wine is less profitable. One importer was practically rueful; she said she had never seen anything like it in all her years in the wine business.

The other changes: The multi-national wine producers’ growth and increasing domination of the wine business; the return of sweet wine; the decline and fall of Australia; and the idea of local wine. More, after the jump:

It is possible to write a good news release

The wine PR business has come in for some unkind words on the blog – Calling all wine coinsures! – but the point has always been to improve the quality of the business’ marketing and public relations efforts.

With that in mind, it makes sense to note that I received a quality release last week from Elizabeth Kane Tate at EKT Communications, touting several Italian wines for the holidays. The release was in English and not PR speak, the words were spelled correctly, and the suggestions were relevant.

My pal Tim McNally, who helps me keep an eye on these things, noted that the release was “very well laid out. Each item description to the point. Lots of white space. And no really cute sayings about ‘everyone on Santa’s list really wants one of these.’ ”

The point being, of course, that that sort of thing doesn’t happen often enough.

Winebits 253: Halloween

The Wine Curmudgeon does not do Halloween and wine; how many times can I write about Bogle’s Phantom or Ghost Pines from E&J Gallo? But that doesn’t stop the rest of the wine world, so this week we look at wine and Halloween:

• The always reliable Ray Isle of Food & Wine got stuck doing a Halloween post last year – the Phantom and Charles Smith’s Velvet Devil merlot appear among several others. They’re all decent wines, and not the stuff that usually shows up with a cute name and that isn’t much worth drinking.

• From the whoops department, a link to a couple of wines on a Halloween supplies and decorations site that doesn’t seem to work. Did someone find out that selling wine on the Internet was not quite the same thing as selling Halloween costumes?

• Finally, because I have a special fondness for this sort of thing, how to turn an empty wine bottle into a Halloween lamp. Besides, how can I pass up an opportunity to link to site called Tattooed Martha? The fondness? That’s because I made a lamp in shop class in high school, and I am far from the handiest person in the world.

The buying a winery shell game

Or, buy a winery because it’s fun and glamorous, and don’t worry about how much money you’re going to lose. Or that it ain’t so fun and glamorous, either.

That’s the gist of an email I got from a PR flack touting a post on something called the Financialist blog:

Owning a vineyard is a common fantasy among wine lovers, but over the past couple of decades, it’s started to become a common reality as well. There are many reasons why investors are making their dreams of owning vineyards into reality; we unlock them in this article.

This is so patently untrue that I can’t believe anyone would write it, let alone send it to reporters and bloggers and expect them to write about it. As noted here, the wine business is a lousy investment; pre-tax profit was in the single digits for most of the past decade and still hasn’t gotten back to its 2007 level.

So why did I get the email? Turns out the Financialist blog is “presented” by Credit Suisse, one of those huge multi-national banks that has received so much good publicity over the past decade. So when the blog runs a post like this, entitled “A Terroir Fantasy: How to Buy Into the Vineyard Life,” it’s probably a come-on for the bank, which lends money to the people who buy wineries because it’s such a common fantasy.

The only difference between this release and the street corner shell game? The Credit Suisse bankers probably have all their teeth.