I’ve written about Enologix here before. Their service purports to help you make wine that will score better with influential gatekeepers like Parker and the Wine Spectator. It is veiled in secrecy (very few producers own up to using it, though reports indicate that Enologix has approx. 50-60 clients) and it costs around 20K a year to use their service.

Recently Leo McCloskey was interviewed over at Appellation America by Alan Goldfarb. One of the more humorous moments from the interview, from my perspective at least, is when McCloskey tells Appellation America that appellations, AA’s reason for existing, are pretty much worthless to consumers as indicators of quality. The AVA smackdown follows.

“When you hear AVA, you just think — vanilla. It doesn’t have any color to it and depth. … The AVA won’t tell you where the highest-priced wines come from within the AVA because the producer of the lowest quality product in the AVA wants to cover up (that) fact. The true consumer information is always covered up by the AVA.”

McCloskey is a proponent of the European system: tightly (self) regulated genetic material and winemaking methods crafted specifically for individual wine growing regions. He argues that the wine industry basically sweeps their poor performers under the rug of appellation by refusing to self-regulate, and that this confuses consumers. He also advocates forming a list, ex ante, of the highest quality producers in the market.

Lots of Problems

There are numerous problems with this reasoning. The most glaring of which is the problem of determining quality in the first place.

Under McCloskey’s system, the high performers (those wineries that command high prices in the market) are considered “high quality”. Winners sell wine. This is evidence of quality. We need to celebrate winners and ruthlessly weed out the losers.

But more than any other industry, price and market success in the wine biz is driven by getting a high score from an elite group of perhaps 2 or 3 reviewers. They grade according to intensity. Coincidentally, that’s precisely the metric McClosky advocates using. So, effectively, quality is what Parker and Laube define it to be.

Interestingly, McCloskey acknowledges the problem with relying on experts to determine quality in the interview.

“It would be better to have a producer-based source because of the unreliability of the critics,” he says, surprisingly. “Critics’ ratings, of course, are subjective. About 30 percent of the products are misrated and this creates a risk to capital.

Hmm. And we are supposed to trust this kind of circular definition of quality to crown New World 1st Crus?

Our Industry Doesn’t Scale

But let’s leave that issue for now and talk about risks to capital. McCloskey levels the charge that the wine industry is too conservative. He claims that we subscribe to an incestuous and protectionist type of psudo-competition that focuses on “rising tide lifts all boats” tactics rather than a more transparent and customer-friendly system that rigorously enforces quality standards and weeds out low performing members.

I can’t argue with his analysis. Ours is an industry that tries to limit risk wherever possible. Like all farming endeavors, we have plenty of risk built into the ridiculously capital intense system already. Why add more?

But there is another factor at play as well, and it’s huge: Our industry doesn’t scale.

Example by way of a question: What is the pay off if we were to switch to the system McCloskey proposes?

The pay off is that there will be a newly minted cohort of winners who should always be able to sell their wine at prices many multiples higher than the vast majority of competitors. Consumers, in turn, will be confident that they are getting quality when they purchase these wines. I suppose McCloskey would argue that this would lead to higher sales for these wine winners – but oh, that’s right, wine doesn’t scale. Once a producer sells out, that’s all folks. There’s no good way to monetize unmet demand, otherwise Screaming Eagle wouldn’t be ramping up production (at the possible expense of quality) even as I type this. The only way for the winners to take advantage of their position will be to raise prices, and I’m not sure how that helps consumers.

This is a huge problem. It’s so huge in fact that I predict that we (the wine industry) will never, ever voluntarily enact the changes that McClosky is proposing. The current winners (who would simply be cast in bronze and stamped with “High Quality” under McCloskey’s plan) already sell out. They have nothing to gain by backing such a system, except maybe a nice ego boost.

And the current losers? Do you seriously think anyone who spent 8 million on their Yountville estate vineyard and winery wants to hear that they are no longer welcome in the Valley because their quality levels or chosen varietals don’t measure up? No, the rich owners of under-performing wineries will tell whomever asks that Leo can go pound sand, and to leave them the hell alone thankyouverymuch. This is America, after all.

Leo of course doesn’t have this problem. His business does scale. In fact, if Enologix became the clearinghouse for quality for all of Napa Valley he stands to do very well. That’s no reason not to judge his proposal on its own merits, but it is interesting to note nonetheless.

Unworkable Silliness

Unlike the core service offered at Enologix, which I feel relatively neutral towards, I may be judging this McCloskey idea too harshly. It may be that I took personal offense to his statement (in the YouTube video below) that sales success due to marketing is “undeserved” (Underserved?? Explain white zin, Yellow Tail and Stormhoek’s success to me then. Is it all undeserved? Or are they perhaps providing something of value to the market besides wine quality?). Maybe I’m insecure since a system like he proposes would make the already steep barriers to entry in the wine industry even steeper. Perhaps I’m just overreacting.

But I don’t think so. I think this is just plain ol’ unworkable silliness. I think Leo knows his idea won’t ever work. So is he just trying to be provocative?

If he is, I don’t mind at all. Being provocative is good marketing. I just hope he remembers that any business he gets from this latest PR campaign is “undeserved”.

Cheers to Leo for getting folks talking.

You can read the entire interview over at Appellation America.

Michel Rolland is back in the news today as Eric Asimov proflies the flying winemaker in his New York Times column. There were a few standout quotes:

I mention Clos du Val and Corison, two Napa Valley producers whose wines adhere to a less upfront, more austere style, and Mr. Rolland is strikingly dismissive.

“Are they as successful in the marketplace? No,� he said, warming to the subject. “Wine is done for what? The public! Wine is a business. They want to make wine to sell wine. In the U.S. they are honest enough to tell you they want good ratings. They don’t want loser wines.�

Sucks to be Clos du Val this morning. Not too often your wine is branded a capital-L loser in the New York Times.

Though it might make for a good slogan for Capozzi Winery: “No Loser Wines!” (with apologies to Ravenswood).

Dr. Vino also wrote a couple posts on Michel a week or so ago that are well worth a read. For instance, Dr. Vino weighs in on whether Rolland imparts a monolithic style upon the wines he produces. After tasting a sizeable cross section of Rolland’s wines Dr Vino concludes

the wines I tasted were different across regions and across vintages.

Bottom line: as much as some might want to cast him as the devil, and as prickly as he can be, it is fairly obvious that Michle Rolland knows what he’s doing in the winery.

Ross Halleck, a newer and well regarded Pinot producer who works with Russian River Valley grapes, is inviting anyone with some cash to spare to invest in his winery. He’s attempting to raise $25,000 in cash to fund their expansion from a few hundred cases to around 1500. I’d say more, but Halleck does a good job of hyping this interesting initiative. After all, his day job is as a marketer.

There has never been anything like it available before. Halleck Vineyard is participating in a revolutionary concept in micro-lending through a web site called Prosper (www.prosper.com).

Halleck Vineyard is reaching out to the community to borrow $25,000 to support our growth. As you know, we have ramped up tremendously in the past few years. In 2003, we released our 2002 wines of only 189 cases. This year, 2006, we are releasing over 1,500 cases.

…banks will not finance the future. They only look to the past and loan against performance and current inventory.

This is a very cool idea, though I wonder how successful it will ultimately be. I think that it stands a chance, ala the million dollar home page, to create buzz and attract attention and through that attention attract some dollars. However success largely relies on if the idea goes viral and spreads throughout the web.

I wish Ross the best of luck with his venture. Have a look if you have some Benjamins that you’d like to invest burning a hole in your pocket. Sadly for other wineries looking for some extra funding, I don’t think that this is a strategy that will be very effective the second time around.

Just like the million dollar homepage.

One of the best winery websites out there is the one for Twisted Oak Winery. They have an irreverent style and it is deftly incorporated into all the ways that they present themselves to the public. They even have a white (Marsanne & Rousanne) and red (Mourvedre, Syrah and Grenache) named “%@#$!” Pretty clever, and definitely original.

Ever on the cutting edge the Twisted Oak folks, led by El Jefe, also have a very cool blog: El Bloggo Torcido. In their most recent post they present their new wine data sheet. I wrote earlier this month about How Wine Data Sheets Should Be, and it appears* that El Jefe et. al have taken the idea and run with it. They’ve added an extra bit of information beyond what I’d proposed and were able to squeeze even more info to the graphical number line. Here’s a pic (click to enlarge it):

The more consumers being exposed to the relevant ranges of wine chemistry, the better. Empowering people with information helps them to grow more and more comfortable with wine, and that is good for the entire industry.

What El Jefe’s added is a descriptor to the ends of each number line like “dry” and “sweet” or “soft” and “crisp”. Very useful.

But I have to question the addition of volatile acidity, or, at the very least the use of the descriptors “wine” and “salad dressing” for end points of the relevant range.

A little VA is a complexing agent in wine, but the presentation of the information with “wine” on one end at a level of 0 and “salad dressing” on the other with a level of .2 implies that Twisted Oak’s own Petite Sirah is something other than wine. This is bound to cause confusion rather than enlightenment.

Overall I’m impressed that Twisted Oak is taking the opportunity to provide their customers with information in context, making the data more “news you can use” rather than “news that makes you snooze.” Good times.

* I say apparently because El Jefe doesn’t mention my earlier article in his post. He writes that he came up with the idea when he was reading a Ham Radio magazine. I know he reads this blog, so I assumed that he was at least inspired a little by the post. And even if Jefe did happen to come up with the idea on his own, it still would have been cool if he’d acknowledged that another wine blogger out there had a very similar idea. C’mon ‘mano. Chale!

Over at Wine Sediments. Less than 400 cases made, so if you’re interested go give it a read.

Top 7 Cuts of Meat You Can’t Screw Up on the Grill

10 Steps to a Happier Mealtime With Kids

16 Ways to Spot a Bad Restaurant

And be sure to check out Top 10 Wine Myths as well.

…and other extremely silly quotes and grape related goodness from the SF Chronicle weekly wine edition.

And if you haven’t yet, please vote on our label design here. It really is a huge help to us!

Letter to the Editor

First up is this marvelously insulting letter to the editor regarding the Ravenswood profile from last week. It’s from a Fresno State student:

The reason why I’m writing is this comment: “In 2001, two years after going public, Ravenswood was bought by Constellation Brands for $148 million. Peterson, whose hair reached his hindquarters in the wineries early years, was the largest stockholder, making him that rare bird many students at UC Davis’ Department of Viticulture and Enology aspire to become — a winemaker-turned-multimillionaire.”

True winemakers do not aspire to make $148 million by selling out. Sure, Davis students (a.k.a. medical school dropouts) want to make that “buck” by producing sterile wine, but are these prima donna winemakers ready to accept the fact that they are not going to make millions making wine?

The ultimate goal of a Davis grad is to carry a clipboard and direct orders to the true cellar crew. Can they detect a flaw in a wine? Sure. Send it to a commercial laboratory and they’ll hook you up. Science will never beat passion or experience.

-MIKE LUCIA, Enology student, Cal State Fresno

Whoooo doggies! Doesn’t Mike Lucia, Enology student, Cal State Fresno, realize that a fairly sizable percentage of the industry he one day hopes to be employed in was trained at UC Davis? Is this how he was taught to win friends and influence people? By calling his future colleagues prima donnas and a widely respected winemaker a sell out? The heat must be frying brains as well as berries down there in Fresno.

I find this comment especially entertaining: “True winemakers do not aspire to make $148 million by selling out.”

Reading it I’m left wondering, how does Mike Lucia, Enology student, Cal State Fresno, know for sure? Has he asked one?

Other SF Chronicle wine news:

Wine falls behind beer in U.S. popularity poll

After one glorious year ahead of beer in consumer preferences, wine has fallen behind once again. Statistical anomalies are being blamed.

Why some people happily pay $500 for a bottle of wine

Linda Murphy writes a feature length piece on expensive bottles of California wine. At the end is a little case study called “follow that bottle� that is an object lesson in why the three tier system is the devil. Enjoy.

One of the best and most honest posts on building a winery (and running it as a business) I’ve read is over at Vintner’s Journal, the Match Vineyard’s winery blog. This kind of openess really makes me want to try their wines. I just wish Randy and Sasha would post more often.

Have a look..

I was recently asked if there was any advice I was given that I failed to follow that I’m now regretting. Nothing comes to mind, but there were a few bits of advice I took that I now either regret or I’m not sure about the path taken…

St. Zini has all the details and some great commentary over at his blog.

It seems Randall Grahm can truly be called eccentric now, he’s always been a bit loony and now he’s also quite rich. Perhaps, as St. Zini proposes, now he will be able to concentrate on making some interesting lower production wines that will match his distinctive personality. Here’s hoping.

Cheers to Randall.