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A Dutch Point of View

by Steve Raye | Sep 26, 2010

I’ve been in Holland for a few days for meetings with our client Canei wine and next week with the folks from deKuyper.

Jean Erickson and I did some busman’s holiday work and checked out a bunch of retail wine and spirits stores as well as on premise accounts for a sense of what’s going on here.


Door 74 looks like it would be at home on the lower East Side,

Door 74. We were directed (actually got a great cocktail bar recco sheet from the Bols Experience, see below) to one of the top cocktail bars in the world, right here in Amsterdam. Door 74 was a finalist in last year’s TOTC best international bar competition, and now that I’ve been there…I’d have voted for them. It’s got a PDT-like vibe in that the entrance is an unpreposessing door, with no signage to indicate what’s there.

We met mixologists Remco Babay and Bas Verhoeven and partner in crime Frederico Fusco

Simon Difford doppelganger Bas Verhoeven

and had a couple of wonderful evenings talking bidness. First item was my request for somethign special with Mandarine Napoleon. Remco did great, but for the life of me, I can’t remember the recipe.

Bas explained a drink concept he came up with for one competition that involved real smoke, wood chips and shaved chocolate in a two layer glass…it takes molecular mixology to a whole new level. He also treated me to his signature drink, the Martila:

½ shot Reposado Tequila

1 Barspoon of lemon rind scrapings (not a zest, but scrapings with a serrated knife)

2.5 Barspoons of Maraschino Liquor

1 shot of dry white vermouth.

Stir, garnish with lemon twist and voila…

We talked at length about Pisco which they were somewhat familiar with. I gave the 5 minute version of Pisco 101, told them all about Pisco Portón and the mosto verde process, and promised to get them the first bottled that exports to the Netherlands. (Johnny and Andrea…you’ll have to help me with delivering on that promise)

The Wine Side

I’ve seen more presence of Chilean and Argentinian wines than I had anticipated. I expected to see French/Italian and Spanish wines, which I did, but there is surprisingly noticeable distribution of New World wines, according to my unscientific retail review in Amsterdam, Delft and The Hague. Pricing seems to be a bit lower than the U.S. and in fact I saw a bunch of entry level wines at the €6.99 /€7.99 level…translated into dollars that’s still below the $10 price point. Valdivieso from Chile was especially noted as having good floor stacks in stores that had very limited real estate allocated for displays. Canei was pretty well distributed by commonly on the bottom shelf with just one or two facings.

Spirits:

We had stopped by the Bols Experience, a mini-exhibit that was very well done. The location can’t be beat…right across the street from the Van Gogh museum. There were some good displays of atomizers with flavors used in their liqueurs and real samples of the various botanicals used as well. They end the exhibit in a real bar (albeit stocked only with their products), but you can design a drink or choose one of their cocktails and have it hand-made and served with a flourish by bartenders trained upstairs at the Bols Bartending Academy.

Are We Engaged Yet?

by Steve Raye | Sep 21, 2010

I had just finished writing my presentation for the U.S. Drinks Conference and was reflecting on a few recent conversations I had on social media marketing and it dawned on me that we’ve turned a corner.

Within the past two days I’ve spoken to self-described Luddites or representatives thereof (guy has his secretary print out emails for him), expert practitioners of the craft, and a bunch of folks somewhere in the middle.

That whole spectrum will always be there, but what I realized is that I’m no longer an evangelist having to explain the new thing. We’ve finally reached a point where at least everyone’s heard of social media. And while they might be a bit hazy on the definition and terminology (social media, social networks, word of mouth, viral marketing etc.) there’s pretty much universal recognition of its existence and importance.

That’s progress. In spite of the few comments you still hear that “this Internet thing is gonna blow over” I think most people in the marketing business recognize that there’s been a sea change in the way we need to communicate with our customers, prospects and suspects.

Simply stated, it’s no longer a situation where marketers are shouting at the multitudes and hoping someone hears and maybe even pays attention, but rather a conversation among and between people whose actions indicate they share an interest in a subject. Whether they’ve become a Fan of a Facebook page, bookmark a forum or newsgroup, read or get an RSS feed from a blog, they…WE… all have one thing in common…we’re ENGAGED.

Engagement, however, is a two way street and has an implicit agreement that the commitment is mutual. So it’s incumbent on marketers to recognize that at its very core, social media is personal. Even a brand with a quarter million Facebook fans has to make each one of them feel an individual connection.

Coming back to my intro thought here, we have turned a corner, but we still have a long road in front of us. The challenge now is how to scale personal communications within larger communities.

That’s one of the subjects we’ll be hearing a lot about at the USDC…I’m psyched to hear what Gary Vaynerchuk has to say, as well as the folks on the panel I’m moderating on social media. So Tyler Colman, Colleen Graham, Nora Favelukes and Carter Reum….what do you think?

Let’s meet at the VinItaly USA Tour 2010 in NY 10/25 and PHL 10/27

by Steve Raye | Sep 13, 2010

VinItaly returns to the US in October with two events, one in NY Oct. 25 the second in Philadelphia Oct. 27. The NY event will be held at the fabulous new Eataly venue on 23rd and 5th that’s managed by the Bastianich family and Mario Batali. More about Eataly below.
The trade tasting in New York is from 2PM – 6PM at Eataly (200 Fifth Avenue) followed by the consumer tasting from 6PM – 9PM. There will be a closed pair of B2B sessions for the participating wineries and I’ll be speaking on a panel discussion focusing on how producers can find importers in the US. On the panel with me will be Nunzio Castaldo, SVP at Winebow, Gianfranco Sorrentino of Il Gattopardo restaurant and Bill Ippolito, of Charmer Sunbelt. A second session follows on marketing and promotion of Italian wine in the US with Enore Ceola of Mionetto USA, Susanne Bergstrom of Folio Fine Wines Partners, Gino Colangelo of Colangelo and Partners PR and Jay Spaleta, Assoc. Publisher of Wine Enthusiast.

The Philadelphia trade event takes place from 5PM – 9PM and I’ll publish the participants on those panels as soon as they’re finalized

Have you checked out Eataly yet? Imagine a microcosm of a street in Roma, a trattoria from Venezia a pizza joint from Napoli and a grocery store packed with more Italian cheeses, olive oils, meats and bread than you’ll see in a hypermarket. But that’s not all, right next door is a fabulous wine shop with a selection of some of the most interesting wines from Italy. It just opened last week and there have been lines out the door for real Italian gelato. Constance stopped by yesterday and saw Mario Batali, and when I visited with Stevie Kim of Veronafiere last week I spotted actress Emma Thompson mmmming on pistachio gelato.

U.S. Drinks Conference 2010 coming in October

by Steve Raye | Sep 9, 2010

As many of you know we’re one of the organizers of the U.S. Drinks Conference. This will be the fourth year that we’ve held the event and is scheduled for Oct. 12 and 13 in New York. Check out the website (www.USDrinksConference.com) for more details on speakers, agenda, registering, and hotel accommodations. Registrations are running at 3X the pace of last year and we fully expect to max out the room. We moved to a bigger space this year, but indications are we’ll have to expand further next.

Here are just a few of the highlights of the program:

Social Media: Gary Vaynerchuk. He’s been a one man revolution in the wine business in the U.S. and globally as well. . Gary’s cut back his speaking engagements as he’s broadened is brand to be a media and marketing consultant. So we’re thrilled that the USDC is one of the few events that he’s kept on his schedule. (I’ll admit I was a little worried earlier this year, but thanks Gary for the commitment.)

For those of you who don’t know about him, that alone is a compelling reason to attend this year. Word is he’s more influential to a broader audience of wine consumers than Robert Parker, Wine Spectator and Wine Enthusiast…combined. His grasp and application of social media strategies is setting the bar very high for the wine industry. Not only that, he’s one heck of an entertaining speaker…expect your boat to be rocked.

Complementing Gary’s speech will be a panel I’m moderating on social media and I’m particularly pleased and proud to have Tyler Colman of Dr. Vino, Colleen Graham of About.com, Christian McMahon of Heineken USA and Carter Reum of Veev Acacia spirits on the dais. They all bring a level of expertise in social media to the discussion that’s unique their field of interest, and our focus will be on real world best practices in this new media channel.

Distributor Panel: One of the most popular sessions, you’ll get an earful of good advice from distributors on how they decide which brands to take on and support what they expect from suppliers and how they manage and motivate their sales forces. The moderator will be our good friend Ted Roman from William Grant and panelists include Kevin Fennessey of SWS, Efren Puente of Charmer Sunbelt, Bob Hendrickson from RNDC and Jeff Altschuler of Allied Beverages.

Financial Panel: New to the roster this year is a panel on finding financing in this changed economic climate. We’ve got speakers from some of the major VC and investment capital sources working in our industry, and I’m really looking forward to what they have to say.

As I said, details are on the site, but here’s a list of the other panels…each boasting a stellar list of industry luminaries.

Regulatory Panel: Answers to the questions you didn’t even know to ask
Navigating (what may seem to be the labyrinth of) brand entry and distribution including price structures and logistics options
Supplier Panels on spirits and beer, and a separate simultaneous session on wines sharing case histories and lessons learned.
How to allocate marketing budgets
Retailer panel including on and off premise independent and chain specialists.

Reflections on Tales of the Cocktail

by Steve Raye | Aug 10, 2010

Having spent a necessary few days detoxifying from Tales of the Cocktail, I once again raise the rhetorical question of why we so rarely see spit buckets at spirits events, when they’re de rigueur at wine tastings?

I attended this year’s event in the company of Stephanie Jerzy who manages social media marketing for spirits at BAT, along with my daughter Lindsay Raye who is a brand ambassador in the New York market. We were also joined by several clients including Johnny Schuler from Pisco Portón and Marc de Kuyper, Albert DeHeer and Arno van Eijmeren from Mandarine Napoleón. It was interesting to see the event through the eyes of these folks, several of whom were Tales virgins.

My observations, in no particular order:

-New Orleans was cooler than CT…figuratively and literally that week.
-You can’t walk five feet in the Monteleone hotel (or on Royal or Bourbon St. for that matter) without seeing someone you know and REALLY want to talk to.
-It’s great to meet people in person whom you’ve only met via blogs or online
-The camaraderie and sense of community was outstanding…and it’s pretty cool when regular consumers are so interested in our business that they pay to come to what’s really a trade event.
-I’ve GOT to get my partner Jeff Grindrod to attend next year.
-the Faulkner bookstore was a pretty groovy place (and I saw a real pirate in Pirate’s Alley)
-Paul Pacult is a great presenter and guide to tasting spirits in a manner that makes the subjective, objective.
-Paul Clarke really knows his stuff or did his homework…or both.
-Darcy O’Neil always brings something new and interesting to Tales (but he does have some pronunciation issues, and I’m not talking “aboot” the Canadian accent.)
-I missed Camper English’s social media session and really wished I’d made it.
-Spirits blogging is evolving…rapidly. It’s no longer just a singular channel; Facebook, Twitter and the plethora of new media coming down the pike are magnifying our reach.
-Johnny Schuler has really nice manners (he stands when a woman arrives or leaves the table), and his passion for Pisco is palpable.
-Marc de Kuyper is the 11^th generation of his family in the business, how cool is that!
-Francesco Lafranconi and Diego Loret de Mola are the Blues Brothers of booze, only wearing guayabera shirts and Panama hats instead of sunglasses and skinny ties.
-Sandro Bottega of Alexander Grappa is one crazy dude, and he makes some fabulous grappa.
-The Mixoloseum house was great fun, and having the shuttle van was a super idea.
-Tales is growing every year and more of the bigger brands and companies are exploiting it. It will be important for the organizers to maintain the sense of fraternity and shared passion that has characterized the event in the past.
-Call me a Philistine and a Luddite, but I don’t think cocktails go with dinner.
-The Carousel bar at the Monteleone is a royal pain…it’s impossible to keep a conversation going when one person is moving and the other isn’t. (And the quality of drinks and bartenders there should really be top drawer at Tales showcasing what cocktails really can be and how they should be prepared and served. I had too many mediocre drinks, but the Bloody Mary was killer.)
-I’d like to know who stole my bottle of Mandarine Napoleón XO from the Summer in Paris lunch at Antoine’s.

American Wine Bloggers Conference, Walla Walla, WA

by Steve Raye | Jul 20, 2010

We’re back from the American Wine Bloggers Conference in Walla Walla,Washington (our friends in Europe get a kick out of the name) which Constance I attended. This is the third year for the event which attracted 300 attendees from the ranks of bloggers, wineries and PR agencies. We returned with enhanced perspective on the state of social media in the wine industry.

The sense I got from the conference was that wine blogging is coalescing into something more than a loose association of citizen-bloggers. There was general agreement that the influence of wine blogging is increasing and that both domestic and imported suppliers are starting to “get it.” Also, the audience that reads blogs is a whole lot broader than the readers of Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast and the wine criticism and reviews found in the Wall Street Journal, Food and Wine magazine and the like. But many of these are now incorporating online blogs and functionality related to their print vehicles…Andrea Robinson and Lettie Teague’s active participation at the conference being indicative of that.

And I think that’s where a distinction–and some might say chasm–between wine blogging and “traditional” wine journalism has formed. With traditional media and wine criticism there is an implicit and commonly understood notion that it’s all related to the ultimate sale of wine. People read these in large part to find out what wine to buy for what occasion and food pairing situation.

But for most wine bloggers, what they do is a labor of love and an avocation. So the commercial imperative is a bit hazier. In many cases…perhaps most…a blog generates little to no income yet takes up a lot of time and commitment. So issues like “transparency” (a euphemism for policies on accepting samples, whether to go on sponsor-paid trips etc.) and “ethics” (if a blogger accepts a sample or a trip, is there any responsibility expressed or implied to write about a given wine/producer/region?) came up again and again at the conference.

There is a distinct generational difference in readership as well. It may be an oversimplification to say that Millennials only read blogs and GenX’ers and Baby Boomers read traditional media (see the VinTan k report for more on this.) But there is decidedly a real distinction between the way Millennials look at wine compared to those of an older persuasion. In some informal research I’ve done, when you ask a Millennial where wine comes from, the answer you’ll get is Australia, Argentina and Chile…in their world, France and Italy are irrelevant at best, unknown at worst. The growth of irreverently labeled wine brands is an additional indication that some suppliers are seeing the democratization of wine and developing products oriented to these new consumers.

One of the other recurring themes I heard was in regard to the metrics of cause and effect and the inability to connect the dots between what’s written in posts/comments and reader activity…like purchases. Even among the PR folks working on bigger clients who one would assume have more resources available, the general consensus was there are no systems in place that allow marketers to get a read on the actual commercial impact of blogging. Of course, that’s in large part true for the traditional print media as well.

OK, so back to the AWBC. Cool event, great people, new relationships and a broadening of my worldview of wine and wine marketing. I’ll be going to the European version of the event which is being sponsored by the Austrian Wine Marketing Board in Vienna in October, and will be interested to see how things are developing there.

Sam’s Gone

by Steve Raye | Jul 2, 2010

We had a bittersweet goodbye for Sam Harrigan this week that unfortunately Jeff and I couldn’t attend in person (but we were there in “spirit”). Sam Harrigan who’s been with us for two years and helped create and shape our social media marketing skills officially left BAT for grad school.

Constance Chamberlain, Stephani Jerzy, Sam Harrigan, Anthony King and Kayla Joyce (and curious George hanging on the door) toast Sam’s @BAT

Sam, what can I say…it was a real pleasure and honor to work, learn and create with you. I know all of our spirit blogger friends join my in wishing you best of luck in school, and we’ll raise a glass or two to you at Tales in NOLA in a few weeks.

EWBC: European Wine Bloggers Conf event hosted by Austrian Wine Marketing Board

by Steve Raye | Jun 23, 2010

Thanks to Gabriella and Ryan Opaz for organizing a wonderful evening of tasting Austrian wines and promoting the European Wine Blogger’s Conference which is being hosted by the Austrian Wine Marketing Board in Vienna Oct. 22-24 this year.

The Opaz’s have been a driving force for both the EWBC and the American Wine Blogger’s Conference which takes place this week in Walla Walla WA. Constance Chamberlain and I will be in WA and I’ll also be attending the EWBC.

For those of you involved in Social Media Marketing, these events represent rare opportunities to meet and talk with many of the folks we’re all communicating with digitally…but it’s much more fun to taste wine together physically.

Participating wineries at last night’s event included Darcy and Huber Selections with an incredible array of Gemischter Satz (field blend) wines from Vienna. D and H will also be hosting the first ever Field Blend seminar at the EWBC. One of the wines we tasted was grown on the grounds of the Schonbrunn Palace…cool!

Klaus Wittauer of KW selections sampled us on Anton Bauer and Hillinger wines from his portfolio, and Anna Micic Viducic of Monika Caha Selections contributed their range of wines including the Neumeister Sauvignon Blanc.

Pisco!

by Steve Raye | Jun 17, 2010

We just got back from Peru visiting with Johnny Schuler and Brent Kallop of Pisco Porton. They are on a mission to make Pisco a significant category and Pisco Porton a significant brand in the U.S. spirits market.

For those of you unfamiliar with it Pisco has a long history…it’s the oldest spirit in the Americas dating back to the days of the Conquistadors and the missionaries who accompanied them. Pisco was a major spirit category in the US and was the base spirit for a number of the most popular cocktails including the Pisco Sour and the Pisco Punch prior to Prohibition.

(l to r) Steve Raye, Sue Ritter, Brent Kallop, Johnny Schuler, Jeff Grindrod

Pisco is the native spirit of Peru, where it is traditionally distilled in alembic or pot stills which allows the master distiller to create a product with a very individual style. Chile also produces a product they call Pisco, but generally at lower prices, lower quality and via a continuous still process. Peru’s claim of Pisco’s authenticity rests on the eponymous name of the town where it was born and the long history of production and association of the name Pisco with the vessels in which it was traditionally transported…also called Piscos.

Most of the Pisco produced in Peru come from the Ica Valley, an emerging region with aspirations of becoming Peru’s Napa Valley. Ica and in fact the town of Pisco itself, was the epicenter of an earthquake two years ago which caused widespread destruction of the region where many of the buildings are made of adobe.

Peru has emerged from a dark period of bad government decisions and the breakup of large landholdings. It’s only recently that larger farm operations have become possible and the country is really just re-emerging on the world stage. It is not uncommon to still see donkeys pulling carts beside signs for the local John Deere dealer.

More to come on this subject…but I thought you’d enjoy seeing some of the pix from the trip. In addition to visiting the vineyards and distilleries, we also got a chance to fly over the Nazca lines and wonder just why they were made.

Nazca lines “astronaut” Tasting Pisco Porton from the resting tank

Below, the Hacienda la Caravedo vineyards with the Andes in the background. It’s not uncommon to see donkeys, and bottom right kiln from the 1600’s used to fire the “botijas”or Piscos in which the spirit was transported.

by Steve Raye | Jun 3, 2010

What U.S. importers expect from prospective suppliers…new post on BATblog http://ping.fm/Xkb69

A Dutch Point of View

Are We Engaged Yet?

Let’s meet at the VinItaly USA Tour 2010 in NY 10/25 and PHL 10/27

U.S. Drinks Conference 2010 coming in October

Reflections on Tales of the Cocktail

American Wine Bloggers Conference, Walla Walla, WA

Sam’s Gone

EWBC: European Wine Bloggers Conf event hosted by Austrian Wine Marketing Board

Pisco!

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