Between The Wines January 2024
Hidden Treasures
hidden Treasures Thoughts & observations
Wine, like all other consumer goods, goes though fashions. A dozen years ago, good luck buying or selling rose wines from Provence France. Five years ago, we carried 20 of them and they were mostly on allocation. In the 90’s, Australian wines were one of THE hot categories, by the 2010’s, one would think that Aussie wines had cooties. Today, Aussie wines are still a pretty sleepy category even though the wines have never been better. Happily, we represent two of the best brands and two that still sell very well: Mollydooker and the gorgeous wines of Two Hands.
Founded in late 1999 by two friends—Michael Twelftree & Richard Mintz—their goal was to What's New highlight wines from some of Australia’s most prized growing areas, since at that time brands like Yellowtail, et cetera were making wines that had ‘SE quotation of Australia’ appellations (which the Month: usually meant characterless wines). Of course, they focused “A bottle of wine first on Barossa Valley Shiraz, of contains more philosophy than which there seems to be an all the books in almost limitless supply of the world.” awesome, old-vine sources which produce characterful, singular – Louis Pasteur wines. Two Hands produces several ‘series of wines with different packaging and price points---we carry three of them. But it is the ‘Picture Series’ with gorgeous labels and lyrical names that really deliver and sell very well. Offer things like ‘Angel’s Share’ and ‘Gnarly Dudes’ to your customers and there will be no worries mate.
Thoughts & Observations
Between The Wines January 2024
Thinning the Herd As referenced in our Hidden Treasure post here regarding trends & fashions in the alcohol beverage business, the most recent category to boom is the seltzer/RTD group of products. A pretty broad category of (mostly) low-proof, refreshing drinks that can be maltbased, spirits-based, or wine-based in a very wide range of flavor profiles and price points. A virtual explosion of these products started hitting the scene 5 or so years ago. In the midst of Covid, we probably represented 40 or so different brands. Fast forward to today, we represent 20 or so—the survivors. The market decides what they want to support; our role is to provide you and your guests options. Of the ones we still offer, they all seem to have an audience or a unique niche. Of course, none come close to the #1 spirits-based RTD—High Noon. The good news is the category is here to stay. Providing consumers with choice—in this case portability/ease of consumption/value— can only serve to broaden the base of consumers for the alcohol beverage category, and as baby boomers begin to age out, we’ll take all the new consumers we can find. Embrace the category!
quotation of the Month: “A bottle of wine contains more philosophy than all the books in the world.” – Louis Pasteur
Between The Wines January 2024
What's New Vint by Robert Mondavi Many of the ‘new’ items we feature here are new brands as opposed to new categories. Today we are announcing a new package as opposed to a new brand. Of course, we get new labels almost every year from many of our larger wineries--their marketing teams need to justify their existence after all. So why discuss this package change? It’s a bigger deal.
Robert Mondavi’s value play--Private Selection—has been a resounding success for almost 30 years. The wines are very solid with a very wide appeal. But in the vey competitive ‘Premium’ price point, consumers like to explore. In addition to aromas of say black cherry, chocolate & spice, some consumers like that new car smell, so a packaging ‘refresh’ was in order. For the most part the wines will be the same: same juice, same price points, just updated packaging. Vint is a verb that means ‘to make wine’. Who would you rather see make your wine than the team from Robert Mondavi?