Had a call from a guy working on his WSET. He’s doing a paper on rising alcohol levels over the last 20 years and wanted my viewpoint.

He began by listing 6 reasons that, in his judgment, account for higher alcohol: later harvest time, climate change, locale (planting in warmer areas, is what I think he meant), viticultural practices, vinification techniques and consumer demand. Then he asked if I thought any of them was more important than the others.

Here’s what I said. “Obviously, one of them is driving the rest.” He knew I was going to say “consumer demand.” The others (excluding climate change, which I’m not sure has a place in this discussion) are manipulatable — they can go any way the owner wants. An owner or winemaker can pick earlier or later, farm the way he wants, make the wine any way he wants. The one uncontrolled factor — the only thing he can’t manipulate — is consumer demand. Which is what matters: a winery is a business, not a charity. Therefore, consumer demand drives all else.

So we have to ask, why is the consumer demanding these high alcohol wines? Well, they’re not demanding high alcohol in itself, they’re demanding lots of fruit. And the way to achieve lots of fruit is extreme ripeness, i.e. high alcohol. It’s an unintended consequences type thing, like energy consumption. Consumers don’t consume gasoline (with all the political, financial and environmental problems it causes) because they like gas. They buy it because they need gas to drive.

Winemakers don’t want to make high alcohol wines; it’s the price they pay for ripeness. Which is why the holy grail is to achieve physiological ripeness at lower brix levels. If there was an easy way to do it, everybody would know, but there’s not. You have to try lots of different things, over many years, and even then, it’s not entirely in your hands. There’s no formula.

The WSET guy wanted to know if the high alcohol trend is reversible. I said that, while cooler vintages in California may be helping, and there’s a critical backlash against high alcohol, in general the answer is, no. We’re not going back to 11.5-12 percent alcohol.

Then he asked if high alcohol leads to homogenization. I said it does, because it leads to similar flavors in all varieties. I’ve said this before, but everytime I do, somebody — usually Charlie Olken — smacks me upside the head. But I do think fruit flavors are all pretty similar across varieties in California. (Do we really need an argument that one area is red cherries and another is black cherries? I don’t think so.) Flavor isn’t hard to achieve: I could grow grapes and get them really flavorful. Just don’t pick until they’re super ripe! But what I couldn’t achieve in wine is structure. And structure requires 3 things: money, talent and good taste (that’s assuming a good vineyard). Even if a winemaker has the first two, that doesn’t mean he has good taste. You’d be surprised at how much bad taste is out there. I constantly am.

So does high alcohol mask terroir? I said I don’t think so. The wines of Saxum have terroir. I know that vineyard. It’s a very special, unique place. It also happens to be in a hot area. Justin Smith’s wines routinely approach and sometimes exceed16%. And yet they’re delicious and compelling. So high alcohol in itself does not mask terroir. (And low alcohol doesn’t necessarily guarantee it.) I told the guy, “If you want to talk to someone who’s on an anti-high alcohol crusade, find Dan Berger. High alcohol doesn’t bother me, if it’s balanced.”

In the end, it all comes down to the consumer. Justin Smith caters his small production to his admirers. So does everybody else. And until the broad mass of consumers says “We’re sick of high alcohol and we won’t take it anymore,” high alcohol isn’t going anywhere.

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One of the best books I ever read (and I’m a lifelong reader) was “Confessions of an Advertising Man.” It was written in 1963 by one of the original Mad Men, David Ogilvy, who started his firm (now Ogilvy & Mather in London, and OgilvyOne in New York) back in the 1950s. The reason his little book was such a good read was because it was very inspirational. Ogilvy told of how he started with nothing but a dream and built up one of the greatest advertising agencies in the world.

Ogilvy, who died in 1999, was a natural born salesman. His spirit still infuses the company, which just announced a worldwide contest, open to anyone over the age of 18: to create a short YouTube video in which you sell a red brick.

Yes, a red brick. “If you can sell a red brick, maybe you can sell anything,” a company executive was quoted in the N.Y. Times.

The winner gets a three-month job at OgilvyOne, and will help write a guide to selling in the 21st century. (The Times article mentioned that “The contest will also use other social media like Facebook and Twitter,” although it didn’t explain precisely how.)

When I read this, I was instantly reminded of A Really Goode Job [2009] and, before that, of the Rockaway deal with bloggers [2008]. (Most readers here know all about those.) Both were, of course, instances of wineries experimenting with how to use social media and engage a new generation of consumers, the former through a contest. It made me wonder if the Ogilvy people knew about them.

What’s interesting to me isn’t the fact that yet another company is having a contest to bring attention to their social media efforts. We’re used to that by now. It’s that Ogilvy decided to have the contestants sell a red brick. Why such a prosaic item and not something cool and contemporary? As a company exec explained, “the iPad does not need ‘the world’s greatest salesperson.’”

In other words, the contestants are going to have to sell the sizzle, not the steak, since, in this case, there is no steak. They will get to display sheer artistry and talent. This brings up all kinds of ideas about marketing wine. Some wines sell themselves: they get great scores, collectors lust after them, there’s a waiting list for the mailing list, and they’re home free. Other wines have to be sold. We’re seeing a lot of attempts to sell now, but wineries seem to be scrambling to find the right message, the right price point, the right strategy.

Which is why there continues to be so much interest in social media. Ogilvy execs were quoted in the Times as saying things like “the consumer [is] in control” and “the salesperson needs to get invited in.” And selling is “less about intrusion and repetition and more about engagement and evangelizing.” (Although you wouldn’t necessarily know that if you watch TV, where commercials are more intrusive and repetitive than ever.)

So everybody is jumping into social media. Think about it. When the reformists in the streets of Tehran want to talk to the world, they tweet. That’s the same reason the old regime in China wants to censor searches: so their people can’t interact with the outside world, or even each other. That’s the big picture. What about the smaller world of wine in which we live? Wineries are on notice they have to sell harder than ever before. For some, that means they actually have to learn to sell in the first place.

David Ogilvy famously said, “No sale, no commission. No commission, no eat.” It’s the old law of the jungle, and social media — no matter how revolutionary it turns out to be — isn’t going to change it.

We had a lot of wine at the old groaning board on Christmas Day: Zinfandel, Gewurztraminer, sparkling, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc. But no Syrah. I know, because I brought all the wine, and there was no Syrah.

Of all the major varieties grown in California, Syrah’s the poor cousin. Nobody wants it. Winemakers tell me what a problem sell it is. Distributors grimace when they have to peddle it. It’s a fairly easy grape to grow, not fussy like Pinot Noir. Syrah throws a good crop, although it responds well to limiting yields, and it doesn’t seem to mind being grown in both cooler and warmer climates.

It should sell well because it’s got a pretty, easy-to-pronounce, French-sounding name, which Americans love. Merlot’s pretty, too, but Syrah is even sexier. It sounds like somebody whispering something in your ear. Ssssyyyrr-rarrrhhh. So what’s the problem?

For one, Americans have a fairly limited imagination when it comes to wine. Everybody’s heard of Cabernet Sauvignon. It’s the go-to red wine if you want something dry and fancy. Merlot’s probably #2. With Pinot Noir, of course, we in the industry have clubbed the consumer over the head like baby seals so many times since “Sideways” that there’s probably no one conscious who hasn’t heard favorable things about it. Zinfandel? Everybody knows something about it, too. But that’s when the brain starts getting pretty crowded with grape names. It’s about as easy trying to wedge Syrah in there as it is stuffing an overcoat into your already-full suitcase.

I looked up my highest scoring Syrahs in Wine Enthusiast over the last two years. Highest is a Qupe 2005 Bien Nacido, followed by a clutch of Faillas, a Chateau Potelle (are they still in business?), then a Rubicon, an Ojai (also from Bien Nacido), a pair of Zaca Mesas (gosh, their Black Bear Block is good) and a Heintz, which I believe (correct me if I’m wrong) comes from not too far from Ehren Jordan’s Failla. So these are all from relatively cool places.

They’re all rich, elaborate wines that deserve their high scores, and one of these days, you never know, a 100-point Syrah might come along (and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was from one of the wineries mentioned above). At its best, Syrah is slightly soft, with velvety, ultra-refined tannins and a chocolate-biscuit taste to the berry fruit flavors, which can range from red cherries and currants through blueberries and blackberries, all the way into cassis. There is also often that savory hint of black pepper that only a cool climate can coax out.

I like a good California Syrah but when it comes to pitting it against its nearest neighbor in the noble, full-bodied red wine sweepstakes, I’ll take a great Cabernet Sauvignon every time. As lush as Syrah can be it never seems to have the structural depth of Cabernet. It’s like (pardon the analogy) the Anna Nicole Smith of red wine (may she rest in peace), beautiful, fascinating, exotic, opulent, curvaceous, eye candy (or in Syrah’s case, mouth candy), but somehow missing something essential. The greatest Cabernets are not missing anything, which is why they are so great.

I doubt if this “missing” quality, however, is why more Americans don’t buy Syrah. The masses wouldn’t know that, nor would they know that very few critics ever give perfect scores to Syrah, as opposed to Cabernet and Pinot Noir. So it remains a mystery why Syrah isn’t more popular. Someone once suggested to me that Syrah has been hurt by Aussie Shiraz’s cheap image, which may be partly true, but that assumes people know that Shiraz is Syrah. There was an article last summer, in winebusiness.com, which implied a certain indecisiveness on the part of American consumers, who seem not to know exactly what Syrah is, or what it ought to taste like, or how much a good bottle should cost, or why precisely they ought to buy it when they’re not quite sure they should (which is a violation of the First Law of Marketing: Convince the consumer he must buy the product, or suffer irreparable loss). There also is the implication that selling Syrah is a bit like trench warfare: each sommelier or merchant has got to hand-sell it to each customer, in a never-ending scrim that occurs on the one-yard line where getting past the cash register, not the goal post, is the goal.

Then there are Syrah’s weaknesses, which are greater than Cabernet’s. The worst you can say about a minor Cabernet is that it’s overcropped. That leaves plenty of room for them to score in the 83-85 point range, which isn’t bad. There are millions of glasses of such Cabernet Sauvignon sold every day at the nation’s Denny’s, Popeye’s, Red Lobsters, Longhorn Steakhouses and Tony Roma’s. A poor Syrah on the other hand is a truly dreadful wine. High alcohol can burn the finish, excessive sweetness make it insipid, and if you include green flavors with high alcohol and residual sugar you have something not even fit for vinegar. There are many such Syrahs and they come, surprisingly enough, not just from hot climates (Paso Robles, Livermore, Lodi) but cool ones (Edna Valley), although the truth is you’re more likely to get a bad Syrah from a hot climate than a cool one.

I don’t know what the answer is for selling more Syrah. Maybe that orphan variety needs a trade and promotion event, like ZAP or the Rhône Rangers or the World of Pinot Noir. Something that would raise Syrah’s profile in the consumer’s mind would be a good thing.

Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention. And in times like this, when consumers are loathe to spend money, it becomes more necessary than ever for wineries to figure out ways to encourage them to do so.

As a critic I’ve seen almost every way there is for wineries to attract attention to themselves. They’ll resort to oversized bottles so heavy you have to use two hands to pour from them. They’ll put more and more outrageous things on the label. Critters and various colorful modes of transit (trucks, wagons, bicycles) seem mercifully to be on the way out, but on the way in are larger point size for type, greater contrast of colors on the label, and more psychedelic use of gold. It’s the label as roadside billboard. Of course, bottles wrapped in tissue paper suggest that the wine inside must be very special indeed, as is the case with bottles that come in wooden boxes.

There is a cottage industry of packaging redesigners, to whom despairing marketing and sales people turn in roughly the same way a worried man might go to a psychic for consultation following a broken love affair or economic crisis. “[T]hey are hoping that some magic combination of prices, adjectives, fonts, type sizes, ink colors and placement on the page can coax diners into spending a little more money” is how the New York Times yesterday described how restaurateurs are trying to lure in cautious diners. The same can be said of wineries. Production people come up with their own “magic combinations.” If you can’t sell your Cabernet Sauvignon, what about a Malbec instead (grabbing onto Argentina’s coattails)? How about a cleverly-named proprietary bottling incorporating the owner’s children’s names, or something French-sounding?. There’s as much psychology involved in buying decisions as anything else. One restaurant cited in the Times article “not only excites the taste buds but goes to work on the mind.” This is crucial because flavor occurs, not in the taste buds, but in the brain, which is the seat of our sexual fantasies.

We humans, it turns out, are as irrational as invertebrates when it comes to choosing our delicacies. “[T]he psychology of the menu”, a complex interplay of graphic design, word and image association and subtle tricks played on the mind (e.g. cost sans dollar sign is said to be less threatening, so that 9 is friendlier than $9) represents the summitry of the restaurateur’s — and the P.R. agent’s — art. “The hidden persuaders,” in Vance Packard’s term (the title of his 1957 book), provided pre-”Mad Men” evidence of hidden tactics advertisers used to sell products. The ultimate in subliminal was said to be barely perceptible (to the naked eye) images of writhing nude human torsos in airbrushed ice cubes floating in cold, refreshing glasses of cognac and other spirits — images that the eye missed but that the reptilian id did not. There are wineries right here in Northern California that are not above mixing eye candy in with their message. The handsome young man from Livermore and the hot young woman from Napa Valley, both of whom are used in their company’s pictorial ads (and you know who they are), come to mind. What’s surprising is that the wine industry does not use sex appeal more than it does. Perhaps it’s a form of prudishness, or maybe the industry just feels it’s “above” pandering to that denominator. But if the suggestion of salaciousness can sell everything from Volvos

to coffee

to clothes

to iPods

it can certainly sell wine. I’m not suggesting that we start having young winemakers in bikini briefs and thongs appear in wine advertisements (although that could be pretty cool) and I certainly wouldn’t want to see old winemakers scantily clad. But the wine industry is stuffy and tight-cheeked when it comes to portraying its own image and it could have more fun and try new things. And by the way, a sincerely meant message from this blog:

The last few months have seen the usual Fall influx of sparkling wines coming in for review, as the wineries try to get their scores posted in time for the holiday season. So this time of the year always gets me thinking about California bubbly.

As good as it is — and it’s become quite good on a world-class level — California sparkling wine suffers from an identity crisis. As everybody knows, sales for years have been flat or down (as they are for sparkling wines of all regions, including Champagne), and if you ask the average, or even the semi-knowledgeable, wine lover what they know about sparkling wine, he or she would probably run out of things to say, beyond “It’s bubbly.” That’s compared to, say, Cabernet Sauvignon, which would likely elicit something about Napa Valley, or Pinot Noir, which might bring forth comments about cool climates and could even turn up references to specific regions, like Russian River Valley or Santa Rita Hills.

But California sparkling wine? Does anybody even know where it’s grown? Does anyone know if it matters where it’s grown? Granted, some might surmise — if they knew — that, since it’s usually comprised of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, it ought to be grown in cool regions. But someone else, equally knowledgeable if a bit mischievous, might remind them that, since the grapes that go into sparkling wine are picked less than ripe, it hardly matters where they’re grown. This is, of course, a specious argument, but it underscores the point that one of the reasons California sparkling wine doesn’t do better with consumers is because they’re unable to associate it with a region or appellation, and if there’s one thing consumers can get their (already information-sated) minds around, it’s appellations.

In Spain (as I was reminded re-reading Tom Stevenson’s wonderful “World Encyclopedia of Champagne and Sparkling Wine”), when Spain was told by the EU that the regulations demanded that appellations be linked to specific growing regions, that country shrewdly gerrymandered their various Cava production areas so that all of them, scattered across the nation, can now officially be called Cava. That ploy was taken due to the eccentricities of the EU system which we, in the States, of course, don’t have to care about. But it set me thinking: Why couldn’t California create a new appellation (or American Viticultural Area, as they’re called in America) that would encompass the best sparkling wine-growing regions?

Would it be legal? Well, I think so. An AVA is only an indication of geographic origin. If we drew up a sparkling wine AVA that ran from, say, Anderson Valley (Roederer, Handley) through Sonoma County (Iron Horse, J), Napa Valley (Schramsberg, Mumm) and Carneros (Gloria Ferrer, Domaine Chandon), then down through the Arroyo Grande (Laetitia), it would constitute a defined geographic area. And since AVAs are allowed to cross county lines (e.g. Carneros), that’s not a problem.

One potential problem could be a clause in the TTB’s statutes (the TTB is in charge of granting AVAs) that requires “Evidence that the name of the proposed viticultural area is locally and/or nationally known as referring to the area specified in the petition,” but I think that could be dealt with. It might not be easy, but it could be done, probably using the (admittedly politically-fraught) word “coastal”. Other than that, TTB’s additional requirements, such as evidence of distinguishing geographical and climate features, should present no difficulties. The band of any sparkling wine AVA would probably include U.C. Davis climate regions I and II or (in the case of Napa), lower III, and lie within a 5-30 mile distance inland from the Coast.

Imagine if there were a sparkling wine AVA. The marketing and P.R. firms, and the wineries themselves, would have a ball promoting it. Think of the maps, the brochures; there could even be a special seal on the label. Of course, sparkling wine producers from outside the appellation would howl, but there’s nothing wrong with a little controversy (or buzz, as the case may be). This might even be a good opportunity to get the message across, at long last, that sparkling wine is not just something for weddings and New Year’s Eve.

From the consumer’s point of view, wine buyers really would be the utmost beneficiaries of a new AVA, because they would have one more powerful piece of information at hand when making a buying decision: the best sparkling wines really do come from that narrow coastal strip between Mendocino County and San Luis Obispo County (and I suppose Santa Barbara County could get into the act if they wanted to, if someone in the Santa Rita Hills got serious about sparkling wine, which, of course, they’re not likely to, since a SRH Pinot Noir is worth so much more than a SRH bubbly would be. But that’s another story).

I can’t think of single case in which getting an AVA didn’t help promote its grapes and wines, especially those along the coast that make superior wine anyway. Look at the history of AVAs in California, from Napa Valley through Santa Lucia Highlands and Santa, err, excuse me, Sta. Rita Hills. So, all you coastal sparkling wine houses, how about it? You have nothing to lose but your, uhh, lack of sales. (And maybe TTB would let you continue to use your existing appellation along with the new one, e.g. “Anderson Valley/California Coastal”.)

* * * * * *
Dept. of What were they thinking?

Got a nice holiday greeting postcard from the “Sweet and Fortified Wine Assocation” wishing me best wishes, etc., which was very nice of this trade group I’ve never heard of. I’m always happy to hear from a wine association I can learn more about, but in this case the postcard had no contact information at all. Not a website, not an address, not a phone number, nada. Just the group’s name.

As it turns out, they have a website, but it’s perhaps indicative of the weakness of sweet and fortified California wines in America that they would send a postcard to a critic, without any way of finding out who they are except through Google.

Those pesky Gen Y’ers continue to fascinate and frustrate wine marketeers, according to this study published yesterday by Graham Holter, an associate director at the London-based wine consulting firm, Wine Intelligence.

The study starts with the inarguable premise that the wine industry, being concerned with selling a consumable product, “is…increasingly interested in ‘younger drinkers’” whom common sense dictates “are required to replace the old” as they (we?) drift off into decrepitude. These “younger drinkers” are identified as “Generation Y,” also known as Millennials — people born from the mid-1970s through the 1990s (of course, in this year 2009, a Millennial would have to have been born prior to 1988 in order to be of legal drinking age in the U.S.).

Holter, quoting his boss (Lulie Halstead), describes Millennials, no matter where they live in the world, as “less divided by cultural and geographic boundaries than ever before” due, of course, to the pervasive influence of the media, especially the Internet. This homogeneity “ought, in theory…make life easier for wine marketers” since multiple messages, and the means to deliver them, do not have to be devised for multiple groups. And what is the central focus, the “overriding factor” of that message? You guessed it. “Authenticity.”

This quality is never quite defined in the study, which leaves us, the readers, having to infer what it means. Immediately after dropping the “A”-word, Holter (again paraphrasing Lulie) analogizes it to the iPod, which “is authentic because it is straightforward, simple and does what it says it’s going to do.”

Holter then describes the digital behavior of Millennials with which we’re all so — too — familiar these days: “They’ll go straight online, to Facebook or start texting and forwarding emails…” (and it’s a wonder that Twitter escapes mention in this Almanach de Gotha). What are Millennials looking for when it comes to wine? “If a wine has a clear set of brand values and a story associated with it, even if it’s very short and straightforward [he might have said especially if it’s short and straightforward], that’s what they’re looking for.” Holter suggests that one such “story” concerns “fair-trade,” another “organic” and a third “companies that respect those who work for them.”

These are all ideal and notable concerns for wine brands, but in the same way I’ve suspected in the past that laudable concepts have been hijacked in the name of marketing, so now does that disturbing thought strike me here. I can’t prove that in California (my bailiwick) “organic”, “fair-trade”, “green” and the like are sometimes used to lure consumers of an environmental bent, and not necessarily because the winery owners truly believe in them; but I suspect it happens more than is generally known. It wouldn’t be the first time somebody with something to sell appealed, somewhat cynically, to the higher instincts of consumers, especially when those consumers are young, idealistic and — let’s be frank — a little naive about how the world really works.

And back to “authenticity.” Why the iPod should be more “authentic” than a tape cassette recorder, boom box or Sony Walkman is beyond my powers to analyze, although there’s little doubt that, in the minds of those who use iPods, that device does represent the ultimate expression of authenticity. It doesn’t, really — that’s ridiculous — but that so many people believe it is a testament to Apple’s marketing genius. Nor is it apparent to me that “go[ing] straight online, to Facebook or start texting” is particularly authentic behavior. In my world, it’s actually less authentic than talking to the person next to you. (I’ve been on crowded BART [subway] cars coming home late at night from San Francisco where every Millennial on the train was pecking away on some personal digital devise, rather than take the truly, authentically existential leap of looking into the eyes of his or her neighbor and actually uttering a few words of communication.)

Don’t get me wrong. Wineries do have to figure out how to sell to Millennials. But it just grates me the wrong way when they (and the consulting firms that advise them) gussy up their [legitimately] commercial motives in the cloak of higher purposes and aspirations. It’s like Chevron reminding us how helpful they are to the rain forest.