Wine That Tastes Good
Personally inspired by a trip to Napa and Mendoza (check my flickr for photos), I’ve become a more involved wine-drinker. My palette is beginner at best and I actually prefer it stay that way for the time being but I will become more sophisticated as time goes on.
There are a few really interesting consumer angles, one of the average person becoming more interested in wine but overwhelmed by the choices and the complexity. The other area that strikes me as fascinating about wine is the actual industry, there’s a built in history, mystique and of all things tourism that are attributes with which wine makers sell and market themselves.
Recently an article was published in the NY Times talking about a familiar topic: 3 buck chuck vs. more expensive wines. I think most people will tell you it’s all about your own taste, buy and drink what you like the ratings are there to guide you. The following excerpt expresses my thoughts above more eloquently and expounds on a study that found:
A $10 bottle of bubbly from Washington state outscored Dom Pérignon, which sells for $150 a bottle, while Two-Buck Chuck, the cheap Charles Shaw California cabernet sauvignon, topped a $55 bottle of Napa Valley cabernet.
The consumption of wine has been growing steadily in the United States rising to 283 million cases in 2006 from almost 189 million cases in 1993, according to the Adams Wine Handbook, which tracks consumption.
Are wine consumers really easily manipulated victims, the flip side of the stereotype of wine drinkers as pretentious snobs? What have they done to be singled out from other consumers who might equally be portrayed as knuckling under to hype and salesmanship, like connoisseurs of clothes, handbags or shoes, car aficionados or golf fanatics, food or film lovers?
The answer rests, I think, both in the insecure and uncomfortable attitudes that Americans hold toward wine and in the difficulty of bringing some sort of objective and universal criteria to the fleeting and obscure realms of aroma, taste and texture.
Yet drinking more hasn’t made Americans more comfortable with wine. People with little interest in wine tend to see it as somehow foreign and threatening. Even among the curious, fears abound, of being embarrassed or appearing unsophisticated, of choosing the wrong wine, or of liking the wrong one.
And a response post from Business Week’s brand blog that puts this in the perceived value category.
