JUST WHEN I THOUGHT I WAS OUT ... THEY PULL ME BACK IN."

Her Indoors was in Auckland recently and shopped relentlessly in Smith and Caughey's one of the very few remaining department stores in the country.

Sadly, this too has suffered the decline that retail, especially top end retail has experienced over the last few decades.

Once known for its fabulous window displays, the store now struggles to attract interest.

Heyday

Today

Inside the store the departments have been downsized and the 'magic' has gone. The same happened long ago with James Smith's and DIC in Wellington and more recently with Wellington's Kirkcaldie & Stains and Christchurch's Ballantyne's.

Anyway, amongst her purchases she bought 6 bottles of Francis Coppola Zinfandel 2020.

We are familiar with the brand and the wine style.

We spent some time in the Napa Valley in the early 1990s and Niebaum Coppola was one of the magnificent wineries we visited.

The wines were great and we purchased some top cabernet sauvignon and a couple of wine glasses (the ones in the photograph with Francis Coppola Zinfandel above) which we miraculously got home unbroken. 

When Her Indoors was working out of Wellington in 2020 she bought a bottle, probably 2017 vintage of this and we shared it with Richard and Shelley and their Italian visitor at dinner in the Egmont Street apartment.

The 2020 zinfandel we tried last night is again rich, medium bodied with fruity and spicy fruit and nice toasty oak flavours. Yummy now and will keep well. The petite syrah in the mix is evident and gives a nice backbone to the more luscious Zinfandel fruit.

I've given up drinking big rich red wines like shiraz, cabernet Sauvignon and zinfandel because I find that after two glasses I don't sleep very well. I might have to reconsider that after tasting this wine last night.

DOING THINGS BY HALF MEASURES

Not this.

I've written and complained many times at the lack of availability of 375 ml (half) bottles of wines in New Zealand. This is very annoying and I believe that wine manufacturers in New Zealand are missing out on opportunities.

As long as supermarkets control wine retail though, this is unlikely to change.

In a December 2018 post I wrote:

Producers have decided that consumers (or not enough of them) are willing to pay the premium that production of smaller size bottles demands. It's not just the cost of the volume of wine or the tax that makes up the cost (half) as the cost of the bottles, labels, packaging and bottling labour costs are nowhere near half of that of the 750ml variant and in the case of small production runs can be more expensive. Bottling lines are configured for 750ml runs and anything outside of this is a costly hassle.
Furthermore, wine retailing is stacked in favour of big chains whether supermarket or not to a factor of 80:20 and these customers just want to move as much product as quickly as possible so can't be arsed about fiddly other sized packaging. Bugger what the consumer wants.

In a September 2019 post I wrote:

Years ago many brands carried 375 ml variants (and bigger formats) of their best wines but this fell away when bigger production volumes demanded greater efficiencies and reduced costs and price points. 375 mls fell out of favour with stockists who presupposed that the consumer didn't want to pay more than half price for a half bottle of wine. In a way they were right given that 750ml bottles are so often on special so the price difference between the two sizes has become greater but they have misread the possible demand through convenience of the smaller format.
The economies are easy to work out. While there is only half the cost of the wine and the excise in the bottle the cost of the bottle, the label and the carton of the 375ml might actually be higher than the cost of the 750ml bottle, the label and the carton due to smaller production runs.

In May 20190 I wrote:

I opened a 375ml bottle of Penfolds Bin 28 Kalimna Shiraz 2006 last night. I expected it to be good and wasn't disappointed. This is seriously good wine and has been consistently so for many vintages. If there is dumbing down of it (which is to be expected under the new ownership regime and the heavy discounting of the brand) it has not yet ruined it.
The reason I bought a case of this wine and the reason I opened it last night, apart from its pedigree and my appreciation of it, was the fact that it is in a 375 ml format (half bottle). Unfortunately these are becoming very rare. Most wine companies have discontinued the practice of bottling some of their production into either magnums (2 bottle size) or half bottles. This is not because of quality considerations (although half bottles do age quicker than full bottles but magnums age more gracefully than 750 ml bottles) but due to cost considerations. A half bottle cannot be just half the price of a full bottle. The bottle can cost the same as will the cork, capsule, labels and cartons. Sensible consumers realise this and will pay the extra. The new power that retailers have now is the problem. They feel that their customers won't pay more than half the normal price of a bottle (have they asked them?) and so won't stock the smaller bottles. They have done the same to the magnums in that they have decreed that as they are more expensive there will not be the same stock turnover therefore it is better to only present the consumer with the one package size - 750
ml.

OK - in summary:

• A half bottle of wine will not have the same production cost as a full bottle of wine, it will be more because the cost of the bottle, capsule and label will be the same and, due to economies of scale bottling costs will likely be higher.
• In New Zealand producers don't really care whether there is a consumer demand or not for smaller bottles because they can promote and sell the full bottles so easily.
• Supermarkets that control the majority of the retail market are just interested in moving through volume.
• Many consumers won't pay comparatively more for a half bottle (which would probably be 3/5th) to 2/3rd the cost of a full bottle - before discounting.

Outside of New Zealand however half bottles, while not being as abundantly available as in the past are generally still available from the most modest of producers right through to top Chateau French wines. We are being done a disservice here.

What to do?

If I was younger I would take advantage of a market gap here. It may not be huge but I believe that it could be lucrative and, sooner or later someone will take advantage of it.

Specialise in importing half bottles

The rise of on-line wine retailing (I buy from at least 5 different on-line sellers and there are many more) provides an excellent opportunity for specialty or niche products. The on-line business model isn't dependent on having to suck up to supermarkets and retail chains, to pay the usurious listing fees and to have to supply them at low cost and lower margin. The product can be sold direct to consumer who pays the delivery cost thus protecting full margin unless, for any reason the product needs to be discounted in order to quit it.

There is an opportunity for someone to set themselves up as a select provider of half bottles that can be imported from around the world (including the few from New Zealand producers). The specialty nature of this business can, for a time at least, guarantee exclusivity. Frankly, I wish that I'd considered this many years ago.

Specialise in the production of half bottles of New Zealand wine.

The 'Kim Crawford' model that has been copied by many producers now is to contract with wine companies for bulk supply of wine to be bottled under a bespoke label. The wine can be bought off a 'list' of availability or produced to spec following a recipe of instructions. The wine is purchased when finished and shipped to an agreed bottling company who bottle, seal, label and package into cartons to be shipped to the brand owner's warehouse. This model could be easily used for specialty production of 375 ml wines which, across a variety of styles and varietals would provide volume and then economies of scale to secure glass manufacturing cost advantages.

This requires a lot of set up capital, not in manufacturing but in warehousing and stock purchase but, once product starts to move, cash flow will carry it. Ask the Crawfords who became multi millionaires doing this before selling up to international companies.

You can see that  a combination of imported and locally produced wine can cover nearly all wine styles and price points.

I'm an old man and won't be doing this myself but I'd like to see someone pick up and run with this.

SAME OLD

.

There are a couple of people reading this blog ....... hold on. I'd better rephrase that or you'll get the wrong idea .... a couple of readers of this popular blog have, on their own blogs (don't bother), written about their choice of wine plonk being  'cleanskins'. Oh, here you go, here's a link to a previous post I wrote about one of them: HERE

Cleanskins, as you know was a term coined back in the late 1990s to cover the wines that retailers were selling on winemakers behalf when winemakers couldn't sell their wines easily and did not want to invest in labels and packaging. Here a re a couple of posts I wrote on this a while ago:

CLEANSKINS

CLEANSKINS 2

Those two jokers I mentioned, being late adopters, take pride in their 'discovery' of a cheaper way to drink their favourite tipple - plonk, little realising that the ship has sailed and 'cleanskins' are now just part of the marketing mix and not fantastic bargains.

OK, "more fool them you might think" but you need to have an understanding of their naivety.

They are naive.

They celebrate the fact that they buy 'cleanskin' wines little realising the the 'cleanskin' that they buy is just another wine brand - with a bloody label on it. Sheesh!

Here's a close up of a LABEL!

What more can I say?

YOU JUST CAN'T HELP SOME PEOPLE

 

A regular reader ... sorry, a reader of this blog said in a comment a while ago that he feels like a connoisseur. I don't know what he planned to do with that connoisseur if he found one - the mind boggles.

Richard of Richard's Bass Bag drinks a lot of wine - a lot of wine - but it seems that quantity doesn't equate with quality.

Oops - wrong image

Here you go.

I've tried to point him in the right direction over the years but his default setting overrides my suggestions for good chardonnays.

Wine tasting protocols just don't register with him even if he goes through the motions:

I had a look at some of his recent posts to see if there's been any improvement but no, he seems to just drink the same old thing, his usual brand - Cleanskin:

The only other wine he mentioned was one he found behind a bookshelf. It must be years old and long past its best That reminds me of something .....

Oh wekk, at least he's contributing to the wine statistics.

CRACK A TUBE

 It's been a while since I've posted but it's been even longer since the wine industry has done anything new or innovative that excites me.

Not long ago there was a flurry of activity on production of no or low alcohol wines and alternative packaging but this hasn't progressed very far at all.

There are more reduced alcohol wines available but these are still in the aromatic varietals that I don't like. Offer me a decent reduced alcohol pinot noir, rose or chardonnay and I'll buy it but, to date, there are none.

Why is this? It's not as if the technology isn't there - it comes down to will.  Most producers simply can't be arsed to invest in this, to them, tiny segment of the market and prefer to pump out full alcohol wines to meet their (current) markets.

Twenty years ago I was researching and trialling some low and zero alcohol products, both wine and synthetic wine substitutes as I could see what the opportunity would be in the future. The stick-in-the mud people I worked with had no vision in this and gave little support to my project. When I left the company it wasn't pursued and, to date, that company still hasn't done anything significant in this area and is being gazumped by the likes of Giesen,  Brancott Estate and Forrest.

I'm excited by the experimentation going into vine development whereby, instead of picking unripe grapes, fully ripened grapes that will give a lower alcohol yield are being propagated. If these provide full or near to varietal flavour then I'll definitely be a buyer but, to date there are only a few people trialling this and the big companies with the big funds aren't bothering. Luddites.

This is interesting reading but is four years old and I'm unaware of any commercial breakthroughs:

LOW ALCOHOL WINE - VITICULTURE

As regards packaging innovation almost all companies are still using 'traditional' 750ml wine bottles and ignoring the potential market in 375ml and other packaging forms like cans. Safe linings for aluminium cans for wines have been developed but scaredy-cat executives of the major companies haven't got the balls to give them a go. Again - they just look at their current markets and not future ones. A paradigm shift is required here and, when it does happen, many will be on the back foot.

I'll be happy to buy most of my wines in 375ml bottle format even though the per ml cost is higher (larger production runs will reduce costs and subsequent prices though) and definitely would buy wine in 200ml or 330ml cans when the more serious varietals are used other than the current aromatic and cheaper quality wines.

Like this but better quality

THREE THINGS THAT CAN GO WRONG WITH A BOTTLE OF WHITE WINE

Hello all.

I've been off-line for a long time but have been called back in 'to the office' to inform you of the three things that can go wrong with a bottle of white wine.

I know, I know - this does seem to be beneath the capabilities of a wine guy but an old drunk a guy I know who is getting very old and becoming confused asked me this. It is serious as he's resorted to drinking cleanskin chardonnay in the mistaken belief that he's getting better value for money. I guess that it makes it easier for him to order wines now that his memory is going.

He should remember the post I wrote with him in mind a few years ago. The post is named CLEANSKINS 2  from December 4th 2017 and can be found on The WINE GUY site: 

http://nzwineguy.blogspot.com/

For some reason I can't paste the link directly. It might be because I'm using the lap top and not the main computer in the study.

Anyway - what are the three things that can go wrong with a bottle of white wine?


1. It might not be big enough. 

White wines used to come in 700ml bottles, especially German white wines which were the most popular. As wine consumption, worldwide increased and wine production expanded, 750ml bottles became the norm. In recent years with 'baby boomers' leading the charge in conspicuous spending and alcohol consumption, the 750ml size bottle isn't big enough. There is a requirement for 1 litre bottles and even 1500ml bottles. Look out for these - it will save you from having to go back to the cupboard or down to the wine cellar which, at your likely age, is dangerous.

2. It might not be any good.

Going by the wine choices of the Wainuiomartians and Moeraites who frequent this blog it's likely that wine selection is coming from the on-special stacked displays in Pak 'n' Save or from the bottom shelf of superettes. It must be said that the shiny, purple and pink labels might attract your eye faster but it does not mean that the wine will be any good.

3. It might be a cleanskin.

It's important for you to now go to the 'Search This Blog' or 'Blog Archive' function to the right of the home screen of The Wine Guy to find that post I mentioned to find out why you should not buy cleanskin wines.

There - those are the three things that can go wrong with a bottle of white wine. I trustr that this was helpful.