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     One of the things we get asked for is help for foreign suppliers to find U.S. importers.  More often than not the supplier doesn’t have an accurate understanding of the U.S. Drinks market and the radically different situation that exists here vs. many other countries.  We may be one of the biggest markets in the world, but we’re one of the most complicated to navigate.
     It’s not as simple as the supplier asking “here’s my bottle, how many containers will you take?”, but rather you need to answer the importer’s questions of “What’s in it for me and what kind of support will you provide?”
    Here’s a list of some of the more common things a U.S. importer expects a prospective supplier to bring to the table.
1.  Product for tasting in a package ready for submission to TTB
2.  Background literature in English
3.  Proposed price structure for the U.S. market three tier system
4.  Brand performance history (sales and marketing support) in key reference markets like the UK and Western Europe.
5.  Marketing Support plans including:
    -Marketing strategy and objectives
    -Budget in sufficient detail (e.g. media budget for consumer and trade, POS, PR, Online, Price support, supplier support i.e. US representative of brand ambassadors for intro year and following years based on anticipated volume
   -Brand positioning:  creative in the form of a piece of trade and consumer sales literature; and description of product key point of difference, value proposition for the consumer and identified competitive set of brands or catgory
   -Market research results validating the brand’s potential in the U.S. market
   -Anticipated introductory and expansion markets and rationale for why they were chosen.

The more you are able to anticipate and answer the importer’s needs and questions, the more likely you’ll be able to find someone who’s interested in taking on the brand.

Following right on the heels of the New Wines of Greece event, the Wines from Santorini strutted their stuff. Santorini is one of the most interesting wines in the world with a back story dating to 1650BC when the volcanic island exploded leaving only a knife edged caldera rim and caused the tidal wave that destroyed the Minoan civilization on Crete.  It is in fact considered the source of the myth of Atlantis sinking into the sea. You’ll be able to read more about Santorini on the website we’re working on (not live yet, but I’ll announce when it is).

But since we couldn’t take everyone to the Aegean, we brought the island to NY…representatives from many of the wineries were here including Paris Sigalas of his eponymous winery and Stela Kasiola, Marketing Manager for Santo Wines, (that’s her in the picture and that’s Oia above my left shoulder) the coop that works with all the wineries and is overseeing the EU-funded promotional program and a host of importers including Ted Diamandis of Diamond Importers and Sam Catechis of Stellar Imports.

Event attendees left with a fascinating gift bag including miniature replicas of the basket vines as well as the very special tomato paste and caper leaves and berries that are hallmarks of the island.  They also brought over some of the volcanic rock that makes up what’s called “soil” in Santorini.  Lacking any signficant clay, Santorini is phylloxera-immune.  And because of the unique heading system used to renew the vines when the baskets get too long, many of the vines are hundreds of years old…nobody really knows how old. (Well, none can be older than 1650 BC…they might not have phylloxera, but they do have earthquakes.)

Most folks recognize Santorini, or more properly the town of Oia perched at the norther tip of the caldera for its iconic imgery of white washed buildings, blue domed churches and windmills overlooking an impossibly sapphire-blue sea.

But it’s that iconic image that has made it a world famous tourist destination.  The downside is that many of the vineyards are more valuable as land for hotels than for making wine.  So a big driver of the promotional program is to raise awareness of the prescious resource that Santorini wine industry represents, and the jeopardy it’s in from the relentless pressure of tourism.

So the best thing all of us can do is celebrate Santorini by buying some of their wine.  The key grape varietal is Assyrtiko and while it is sometimes planted elsewhere in Greece, it reaches its apogee in quality and expression of minerality,racy but balanced acidity and alcohol.  One of the noble grapes of the world, the natural affinity between Assyrtiko and seafood is one of those sublime things we get to enjoy so rarely in this world.

And it’s not just Assyrtiko.  Did you know the name VinSanto originated from Santorini (Wine from Santorini).  It’s a sticky that’s spectactular with a nice balance of acid and sugar and we got to taste some old ones that blew my mind.  The rule of thumb I use is that the more it looks like used engine oil, the better I like it.  Nykteri is another specialty wine of the island, also with a unique backstory…it’s harvested only at night.

Santorini is born from the sea, and the wines she makes marry with seafood in an almost magical way.  OK, so maybe you can’t get on a plane and fly there tomorrow, but you can go out and buy the wine and see what I’m talking about!

Sorry for going dark for a while, we’ve been incredibly busy, but I’ll catch up with a few posts now.

OK, so the headline quote isn’t the most original, but it was thematically correct yesterday.  New Wines of Greece and the Wines From Santorni under the guidance of George Athanas and All About Greek Wine hosted a super event at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center.  Food was supplied by Michael Psilakis of Anthos and it was better than fantastic.  I don’t think I’ve ever had better haddock.  Great seminar hosted by Steve Olson and Doug Frost with an interesting twist on procedure…blind tasting, but with a bit of guidance.

MW Konstantinos Lazarakis who was acting as MC made some comments closing the NWOG session that were informative for all of us in the industry.  He was looking 10 years out and said:
1.  Being good will be irrelvant.  Good wine in the bottle is assumed.  To compete, brands will have to deliver something even more than high quality at a reasonable price.
2.  Being different is what will make sense.  Not just the provenance or a label…but what’s in the glass.  People are expanding their horizons and looking for new experiences.
3.  Stories! Every wine has a story and you need a story to stand out.  What makes it unique, special.  In a sea of sameness a wine needs to be notable to compete.
4.  Drinking the wine is more important than tasting.  Greeks enjoy wine; it’s the social lubricant that makes agoraphobia a word that simply doesn’t signify in their country. 

There’s a host of new wines coming from Greece.  We tasted the four varietals being focused on:  Aghoritiko, Moschofilero, Assyrtiko and Xinomavro, and what the wine makers are doing is nothing short of amazing.

One corkscrew design I’ve never been able to master is the Ah So.  Supposedly great for old wines with corks of questionable integrity, more often than not I end up pushing the cork down rather than pulling it out.  Greg Del Pias, Community Manager at Snooth, and host of the NY Wine Century Club gathering demonstrates a little trick using the Screwpull worm.  Check out the video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBdgn3AlkYo

Austrian Wine has Arrived!

That was the vibe at Tribeca Rooftop as Willi Klinger  and his team from the Austrian Wine Marketing board hosted 80 winemakers representing the largest delegation of Austrian wineries ever to hit the shores of the U.S.

Gruner Veltliner stole the show as the lead varietal from Austria, but siblings Riesling and the reds Blaufrankisch, Saint Laurent and Zweigelt also shared the stage at a trade tasting in the afternoon followed by a sold-out crowd of consumers (it was SRO outside!) Food for the evening was provided by Wallsé; Gordon Ramsay at the London; Seasonal Restaurant; Aldea; KLEE; BLT Prime; 10 Downing Food & Wine; Salumeria Rosi; Telepan; Recette; 15 East Restaurant, and Grandaisy Bakery, giving guests the opportunity to taste the wines with food designed to showcase the wines.

Tables I visited included Niche Imports’ Lenz Moser, Michael Skurnik’s Brundlmayer, Winemonger’s incomparable Neumayer line which absolutely blew me away, Szigeti’s sparklers,  (that’s me tasting the sweets with Bob O’Brien of VinDivino, Erin Grace of Winebow serving the wines from Fred Loimer and Rudi Pichler and of course the wines of Vienna from the Darcy and Huber Portfolio.

As you know BAT has been helping the AWMB with online promotion for the last year or so and we were thrilled when they stepped up to the plate to become host to the European Wine Blogger’s conference to be held in Vienna next October see www.winebloggersconference.org. I’ll also be attending the American Wine Blogger’s conference which will be held in Walla Walla, WA in June. (Our European friends tend to chuckle when we say that name…sort of like I think Kartoffelpoofer just sounds funny.)

On my way to WSWA and looking forward to hearing Sarah Palin’s presentation.

One of the subjects that come up frequently in discussions about the role of blogs is, “Are bloggers journalists?” Clay Shirky,author of “Here Comes Everybody” explains it through some insightful observations which I’m paraphrasing here (really, you gotta read this book!)…

A profession exists to solve a hard problem, one that requires some sort of specialization. They exist because there is a scarce resource that requires ongoing management. The scarcity of the resource itself creates the need for a professional class. “The old dictum that freedom of the press exists only for those who own a press points to the significance of the change. To speak online is to publish, and to publish online is to connect with others. With the arrival of globally accessible publishing, freedom of speech is now freedom of the press, and freedom of the press is freedom of assembly.” And THAT explains why the Chinese government is so paranoid about Google.

For journalists, the resource (access to the means of distributing information, news, opinion) is no longer scarce, so we’re seeing the mass amateurization of the profession. And to make matters worse, when the resource was limited, an editor’s role was necessary to determine “Why publish this?” Now, the question isn’t why, it has become “Why not?” So where previously, scarcity of the means of distribution meant journalism’s function was to filter information BEFORE publication. Now filtering comes AFTER publication (think Search, Google Alerts, RSS feeds).

Another way Professor Shirky phrases it is, “If everyone can do something, it is no longer rare enough to pay for, even if it is vital.” And that’s the conundrum journalism…and many other professions created from the old constraints face.

Translate this to marketing and you can see the difficulty many command and control organizations face: “in the open source world, trying something is often cheaper than making a formal decision about WHETHER to try it.” Yowza! The result, lots of 25 year old entrepreneurs eschewing the plodding slope of corporate advancement for the philosophy of “Just Do It.”

I recently finished Clay Shirky’s book “Here Comes Everybody. The Power of Organizing Without Organizations” and have become even more impressed by him as a thought leader.
If you’re interested in how the web is transforming everything, this NYU professor puts it in terms I can grok. (See Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land for a definition.)

The key premise of the book is that the seminal function of the Web is enabling the convening of group-forming networks. Big deal? YES! A VERY BIG DEAL.

Shirky says “Revolution doesn’t happen when society adopts new technologies. It happens when society adopts new behaviors.” We all used to hear about e-mail being the “Killer App.” He pulls back the curtain on this a bit further to reveal the real killer app was the “reply all” function in email. That was the very beginning of Social Media. Now anyone can connect with anyone else in a group environment that doesn’t require synchronicity or physical proximity.

The implications of this are profound and explain the mechanics of how social media like Twitter and Facebook are so awesomely powerful and influential. “The web has lowered the hurdles to doing something in the first place, so that people who cared a little could participate a little while being effective in the aggregate. Having a handful of highly motivated people and a mass of barely motivated ones used to be a recipe for frustration. The people who were on fire wondered why the general public didn’t care more and the general population wondered why those obsessed people didn’t just shut up. Now the highly motivated people can create a context more easily in which the barely motivated people can be effective without having to become activists themselves.”

Add to the mix the tendency for us to trust the opinions of peers (think the Amazon “if you liked this, you might also like this” and we begin to see the implications of how this all scales up.

We’ve created this visual to explain the (I hate using this word, but it works here) viral nature of Social Media like blogs, sites, forums et al.

The important thing to recognize is that the post on a blog or forum is just the beginning, not the end.

Argyros video reposted here http://ping.fm/01Cuj

Uploaded a neat video on Argyros winery on Santorini http://ping.fm/sLneb