Consulting Wine/The Wine Firm, Intl.’s Post

One of the reasons why I love this post is because of my own history in the ‘flavored wine world’. Between 1980 & 1990, the companies that I worked for were extremely successful in direct to consumer tasting room business. One company ran 38 wine tasting rooms in California selling 600,000 cases of wine direct and the other 8 tasting rooms selling 125,000 cases. I really didn’t know the difference between a Cabernet Sauvignon, a Pink Chablis, or a Chocolate Flavored Red Wine (referred to in the industry as ‘special naturals’), but I did know how often I was running an analysis on flavored wines and prepping bottling blends for them….and it was often! Then, we started to get ‘sophisticated’ and the wine experts began making all the decisions. I don’t know if it’s accurate to say, but if it hadn’t have been for the California Wine Cooler in US consumption history, Baby Boomers might not have ever developed their palate for wine….lots of speculation there. It is fact that it was Boomers that led the pack in consuming those flavored beverages and the next thing we’re talking about (still today) is how much we miss those Boomers in their wine consumption voracity!. The coolers were fun, fresh, wonderful chilled and at the beach and at a party. They were easy with twist off caps and you didn’t have to act like you knew what you were doing when you brought the coolers to the family get together. We (much of the industry) knew that when Gallo & Constellation and other ‘big players’ got into the game, they would take over the market….and for a while, that 50% watered back, flavored wine brought our per-captia consumption of wine up to 5 gallons! What we all didn’t anticipate was the large wine cooler players switching from wine based products to malt based products to avoid the larger tax category of wine. And that was the end of the wine cooler fad as ‘wine’ coolers. So today, where are those fun, ‘wine cooler style’ replacements that so easily remove the intimidation factor from wine and build an unrestrained freedom into beverage exploration? Well, they’re everywhere and they come in more styles and shapes and sizes than ever before. So, flavored, sparkling, low, no, canned, bagged, boxed, ‘pouched’ (that’s for you Alex Taylor), salted, peppered or skewered for all I care, explore, create, have fun and give the consumers what they’re asking for….. …..and when they start asking you for the pure item of your organically farmed 1.5 ton to the acre #oldvine Garnacha, you’ll know exactly what to do. Nicholas M. Karavidas - Principal Consultant, The Wine Firm/Consulting Wine, Intl. #wineindustry #winemakersforum #marketing #beverageindustry #branddevelopment #researchanddevelopment Kristen Newsom Captain Laura Einsetler Jennifer Stojkovic Dawn Bardessono