WBM_2020_07_July

WINE BUSINESS MONTHLY July 2020 • $5.95

The Industry’s Leading Publication for Wineries and Growers

New Applications for UV Tank Cleaning Technology

PLUS:

Tasting Room Study Spotlights Emphasis on E-commerce, Remote Tastings and Telesales How Winemakers are Planning for Physical Distancing in the 2020 Crush Best Practices for Winery Sanitation in a Pandemic AND:

Technical Review: Red Tail Ridge Winery

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month in review WINE BUSINESS MONTHLY July 2020 • Volume XXVII No. 7 Editor Cyril Penn Managing Editor Erin Kirschenmann

A Changing World and a Time to Reflect

PWV Editor Don Neel Eastern Editor Linda Jones McKee Copy Editor Paula Whiteside

JULY 2020

WINE BUSINESS MONTHLY July 2020 • $5.95

WINE BUSINESS MONTHLY

shelter-in-place and coronavirus fears, to the widespread loss of hospitality jobs and economic fallout, the last three months have felt like three years. To say it’s a heartbreaking and challenging time for many is an understatement. Today, as this is written, protests are swelling in cities throughout the country, and across the globe, as millions take action to demand justice to end inequality and systemic racism.

Demonstrations in the defense of Black lives have forced many to take a humbling look at their actions, ourselves included: Are we doing enough to represent the diversity of the American wine market? How can we better support and uplift intersectional and Black-owned and -operated businesses in the industry?

We are willing to listen, learn and adapt. Our magazine is committed to honesty, equity, and inclusion in stories we bring to the international wine community.

While the world shifts, winegrapes continue to mature and they will arrive soon—that we can be certain of.

When they do ripen, they’ll be harvested and crushed under different circumstances.

Our winemaking colleagues in the Southern Hemisphere were already in the thick of harvest when the pandemic hit—they didn’t have time for advance planning. Here in North America, wineries continued to operate as essential businesses and have had some time to get ready for physical distancing during the 2020 harvest. An article in this issue spotlights how winemakers are preparing.

The Industry’s Leading Publication for Wineries and Growers

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New Applications for UV Tank Cleaning Technology

FROM THE BEGINNINGS OF

Contributors Surendra K. Dara Jim Gordon Jake Lorenzo Curtis Phillips Ray Pompilio Bill Pregler Barbara Snider

Tasting Room Study + Sanitation

Design & Production Scott Summers

PLUS:

Tasting Room Study Spotlights Emphasis on E-commerce, Remote Tastings and Telesales How Winemakers are Planning for Physical Distancing in the 2020 Crush Best Practices for Winery Sanitation in a Pandemic AND:

Technical Review: Red Tail Ridge Winery

Director, Analytics Group Alan Talbot Editor, Wine Analytics Report Andrew Adams Web Developers Burke Pedersen, Peter Scarborough President & Publisher Eric Jorgensen Associate Publisher Tamara Leon

Physical distancing will be emphasized in cellars and tasting rooms, even if we don’t know exactly where we’ll be in terms of mitigating COVID-19 this fall.

Several articles in this issue discuss winery sanitation, which is integral to sound winemaking, of course, but is front and center in 2020.

In the tasting room, after a hiatus, wineries are beginning to welcome visitors again, with reduced capacities and/or reservations required, which is welcome news.

Lessons learned from the closures, including the value of virtual tastings, e-commerce, and phone sales, will continue to play an increasing role as results of the WBM Tasting Room Study in this issue confirm.

Here’s to this precarious time; may it expand our hearts as we make great wine during the 2020 harvest Cyril Penn - Editor

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contents

July 2020 • Volume XXVII No. 7 • The Industry’s Leading Publication for Wineries and Growers • www.winebusiness.com

winemaking

grape growing A Case Study in Sustainable Vineyard Practices:

The Benefits of Rice Straw for Erosion, Natural Weed Control and Reducing Irrigation Needs . 58 Barbara Snider, Hinman & Carmichael LLP

Update on the Spotted Lanternfly: Invasive Pest Recorded in Eastern United States . . . . . 62 Surendra K. Dara

Physical Distancing in the Winery. . . . . . . . . . . 10 Cyril Penn

Winery Sanitation in a COVID-19 World. . . . . . 16 Webinar Discusses Best Practices in Cellar Operations

sales & marketing

Linda Jones McKee

Options Abound for Single Serve Packaging . . . . . . 66

Barrel Purchases Clouded by Virus and Recession . . . . . 18

Wineries turn to smaller formats to reach new consumers

Coopers Say Prices Are Up Modestly, and Grow Wary About Supply Chain Interruptions

Andrew Adams

Jim Gordon

Red Tail Ridge Winery— A Road Less Traveled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 The Pathway to LEED Gold Certification Ray Pompilio

Retail Sales Analysis Wine Sales Gain 26 Percent but Single-Serve Declines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Wines Vines Analytics

An Integrated Crushpad: Paris Road Vineyards’ New Home . . . . . . . . . . 38 Curtis Phillips

technology & business 2020 Tasting Room and Wine Club Study: Results Show Opportunities for Growth . . . . . 76 While most DTC dollars are made through wine clubs, the forced closures of tasting rooms have shown that e-commerce and phone sales should also play an important role in the DTC line-up.

Erin Kirschenmann

Cool Sanitation Products from Unified 2020 . . 42 New Applications of BlueMorph UV Technology, Plus Winery Sanitation Audits Bill Pregler

departments month in review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 people . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

Winemaker Trial Using Engineered Yeast to Create Stylistically Different Chardonnay . . . . . . . . . . 48 Erosion Wine Co. winemaker Patrick Rue wanted to know—is it possible to customize the aroma and flavor profile on Chardonnay based on yeast choice alone? Here’s what he found out.

Select Closure Vendors . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

COVER PHOTO: Alex COVER DESIGN:

Farren Scott Summers

advertiser index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 jake lorenzo Day by Day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 winemaker of the month . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

52

Jeff Pisoni, winemaker, Fort Ross Vineyard & Winery, Sonoma, CA

Wine Business Monthly (ISSN 1075-7058) is published monthly by Wine Communications Group, Inc., 35 Maple St., Sonoma, CA 95476.

Subscription rates are $39 for domestic; US$49 for Canadian and US$89 for foreign subscribers. Periodicals Postage Paid at Sonoma, CA, and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: Wine Business Monthly, PO Box 1649, Boulder, CO 80306-1649.

who’s talking in this issue

July 2020

Tracy Timmins, vice president consumer sales, Stoller Wine Group, “2020 Tasting Room and Wine Club Study,” page 76 “Overall, those wineries that were able to keep some semblance of the sales force, either by providing curbside pickup, or operating through shipments and online or phone sales, weathered through OK, us included.”

Juan Muñoz-Oca, executive vp for winemaking, Ste. Michelle Wine Estates, “Physical Distancing in the Winery,” page 10 “We have a tremendously challenging task ahead. It’s about having the ability to bring the fruit we need into the wineries and doing what we normally do with our grapes while keeping socially distanced, while being very aware of the health of our employees and their families, and while keeping an eye on regulations.”

Patrick Rue, winemaker, Erosion Wine Co., “Winemaker Trial,” page 48 “In today’s world, I think most of the flavor in California wines is driven by growing different cultivars in different terroirs. Our major takeaway from this trial is that flavor can also be driven by the strain of yeast that the winemaker chooses.”

Gina Schober, co-founder, Sans Wine Co., “Options Abound for Single Serve Packaging,” page 66 “Essentially, we treated the production similar to how we would make a bottled wine, with some slight variations…From the actual packaging standpoint, we had to customize everything.”

Lesley Berglund, founder, WISE Academy, “2020 Tasting Room and Wine Club Study,” page 76 “There is going to be a subset of employee who can do it all, be it in the tasting room, on the phone, or in a virtual tasting. We’ve entirely eliminated the concept of downtime in the tasting room.”

8 July 2020 WBM

winemaking

Physical Distancing in the Winery Cyril Penn

is about being organized. Whether it’s ordering enzymes, yeast, malolactic bacteria inoculants, and stocking other supplies, or checking scales, hoists, forklifts, or cellar equipment to verify function and cleanliness, there’s a lot to prepare for. The 2020 harvest, however, will probably be remembered for the COVID-19 crisis and physical distancing, and the additional challenges they presented.

“We began preparing for harvest a lot earlier than normal and completed our barrel and harvest ingredient orders earlier than normal to allow for supply chain delays caused by the pandemic,” Matt Steel, E. & J. Gallo director of Central Coast winemaking, said. “We are planning to operate harvest with adjusted protocols that reflect the current practices we have adopted in response to the pandemic. These practices have been developed and revised to meet the recommendations of the CDC and local authorities.

These include social distancing, adjusted schedules to minimize the concentration of people at our wineries, rearrangement of our break rooms and offices to ensure physical separation, enhanced sanitization practices, and adjusted procedures to reduce visitation to our wineries.”

GETTING READY FOR HARVEST

10 July 2020 WBM

Creating Six Feet of Separation Most winemakers are already good about sanitation protocols, but people are the source and vector for SARS-CoV-2 and it is believed that one employee can get sick from another even if surrounding surfaces are clean. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) advises people to keep six feet, or about two arm’s length, apart.

Wineries have been preparing adjustments for this physical distancing scenario in vineyards and cellars since the start of the pandemic and are gearing up for harvest.

“We have a tremendously challenging task ahead,” said Juan Muñoz-Oca, Ste. Michelle Wine Estates’ executive vice president for winemaking. “It’s about having the ability to bring the fruit we need into the wineries and doing what we normally do with our grapes while keeping socially distanced, while being very aware of the health of our employees and their families, and while keeping an eye on regulations.”

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Physical Distancing in the Winery

SCOTT SUMMERS

The logistics of staying six feet apart vary by winery size, layout, and the types of vineyard and cellar equipment a winery has. In response, wineries are expecting to see more vineyard mechanization in 2020 where possible, even on high-end blocks not previously machine-picked. In the cellar, they’re deploying more automation in general: either not using sorting tables or slowing them down; slowing bottling lines down when necessary and installing plexiglass dividers on bottling lines when six feet of separation isn’t possible. Essentially, they’re rethinking all processes with an eye toward lowering the number of touch points.

For some wineries, it’s a bit easier: Many cellars are small with relatively few staff members, making physical distancing more straight-forward, and a large number operate outdoors or in well-ventilated spaces.

Jackson Family Wines, among others, has been proactive on physical distancing since the start of the crisis, preparing bottling lines, the cellar, and barrel and blending areas for six feet of separation.

“I don’t have all the answers yet,” Kendall-Jackson winemaster Randy Ullum said. “We’re being proactive on the potential of having to maintain separation. We might have to slow the production process down a little bit.”

12 July 2020 WBM

Offense and Defense Scheid Family Wines in Monterey, Calif. uses a two-pronged approach.

A defensive strategy includes sanitation of common touch points, such as doorknobs and keyboards, every two hours throughout the day as well as cloth face covers for all employees.

The offensive strategy involves education: trying to explain the reality of the situation to employees and get them onboard with the new rules, as well as how to conduct oneself, including at home. “It’s easy to let your guard down when you are home,” Scheid Family Wines’ quality assurance manager Jess Hogg said.

Physical Distancing in the Vineyard Keeping vineyard workers apart during harvest may be a challenge.

“We have adjusted our practices to separate our vineyard teams even further, so each team member works at least one row (usually 8 to 10 feet) away from the next closest team member,” said Steel, who oversees Bridlewood Winery, Edna Valley Vineyard, Courtside Winery, and Talbott Vineyards. “When our winemakers and vineyard managers assess vineyards, we are all in separate vehicles and also stay at least one row away from each other.”

More Mechanization Muñoz-Oca said scheduling for the 2020 harvest might be another challenge. “I’m wondering how much we will have to give up that ability to pick right at the precise moment we think the flavors are completely developed.

We could have to give that up by a couple of days if it means that we can get a steady flow of grapes into the winery. Mother Nature will decide how we bring in our fruit, but ideally, at least on paper, we should be bringing in fruit at a steady pace.”

The crisis is expected to lead to more mechanization in vineyards that were previously hand-picked.

“That’s where everybody’s going anyway because of the labor issues,” Ullum said. “With the costs going up and the availability of quality labor going down, mechanization within all the venues, and especially in the wineries for such things as pump-overs, is something that they’ve been doing over in Australia and New Zealand forever from day one that we’re all starting to move towards. It’s an upfront investment but reduces the number of people wandering around.”

Harvest

To Sort or Not to Sort SCOTT SUMMERS

Morning meetings with vineyard crews might be out, and workers don’t necessarily need to stop at a vineyard office, if there is one. They can go straight to where they need to be for the day, and are encouraged to take their own vehicles. “We have been using video tools to share progress on key vineyard practices such as shoot thinning, reducing the need for winemakers to be in the vineyards, while still keeping everyone informed on our seasonal progress,” Steel said.

Muñoz-Oca said Ste. Michelle limits groups to four or five people at a time, staging breaks and staggering shifts. He said the one logistical bottleneck is for health screening: the mandatory temperature check in the parking lot.

Receiving Grapes Wineries are creating protocols for the weigh stations where trucks deliver winegrapes. In some cases, they may slow the flow of deliveries or spread them out. Some are arranging for portable toilets for truckers only, with hand washing and hand sanitizing stations.

“Truck drivers that deliver grapes aren’t going to be able to hang over your shoulder and look at you while you due process the weigh tag,” Plata Wine Partners’ director of winemaking Alison Crowe said.

The industry’s largest fleet of gondola trailers is managed by G3 Enterprises, which hauls up to 1.6 million tons in a season representing 40 percent of California’s winegrape harvest.

Senior director for California logistics Yvonne Sam said G3 will use technology to drive efficiency and eliminate unnecessary human contact when possible. “The implementation of GPS in our trucks and utilizing electronic invoicing are two main initiatives that will help limit the contact and spread of the COVID-19 virus,” she said. “Our GPS units improve communication and provide real-time visibility for drivers, dispatchers, and growers. As we prepare for harvest, we are working closely with wineries and growers and taking every precaution to transport our customers’ grapes and avoid any delays or stoppages that could negatively impact grape quality and the health and safety of workers.”

Where the crop is hand-picked and sorting tables play a role, staff may need to get creative. Those still hand sorting may need to deploy fewer people, slowing the belt down to sort grapes as they come through.

CITF GROUP “Sorting tables might be issue,” Nick Goldschmidt, a winemaker who CITF Group produced a an next-generation prototype Alien M18 optical consults throughout the world and makes wines under his own label, said. sorter that uses robotic arms to vacuum up MOG, raisins and other waste, “The needa to be really about what atthetheexpectations are: Who Vinitech Exhibition whichrules received Silver Awardclear for Innovation knows what the going to be like in September?”

Omega was the first American winery to use in Bordeaux.

In situation’s 2018, Alpha UllumM18. pointed out, traditional sorting tables with six people within six Jean Hoefliger strives for perfection in red theAsAlien Winemaker feet of each other are likely not going be allowed. wines that retail for $100 to $650 pertobottle, so heWillamette wanted theValley AlienVineas a yards founder Jim Bernau going to need to elongate the the primary winery’s secondary optical sorter, said afterthey’re a Pellenc Vision 2 performed sorting in response.

Steel said E. for & J.sorting Gallo replaced its older sorting sort.

It’stable essentially an optical sorter sorted grapes.

Think of table with a vibrating table—a new technology that helps improve quality. it in the way you might choose to use 400 grit sandpaper after using 220 Crowe predicted winemakers will two experiment with that different types of grit.

I personally observed the Alien’s robotic arms removed every optical this year, whileatBucher director salesarm andmeasurably marketing last bit sorting of undesired material 4 to 5Vaslin tons per hour. of Each for North America Meaper Leeman confirmed she’s increased interest“If in can remove 200 pieces minute for a total of seeing 400 pieces per minute. the Alien optical (see “Product Review: Optical Sorters,”Bucher WBM you want robotic perfection, yousorter still need Alien or people,” said Hoefliger.

July 2019).

Vaslin is the exclusive dealer for CITF’s Alien in North America.

Alien

CITF GROUP

Talk to Your Neighbors In summary, winegrape optical sorting technology has improved significantly since its introduction 11 years ago. The machines have become more WBM July 2020 13 accurate, cost-effective and much more user-friendly while, at the same time, finding hand sorting staff is much more difficult. Optical sorters are

Physical Distancing in the Winery

Splitting Shifts and Working in Pods

SCOTT SUMMERS

P&L Specialties president and CEO Ed Barr said he received many calls from customers about adding sorting tables to existing systems so sorters would be more spread out. Given the late timing, he referred them to the Revolution Equipment Sales division to find used tables to work into their systems.

“We’re all facing the same question, whether it’s the pandemic or lack of labor,”’ V. Sattui Winery director of winemaking Brooks Painter said. “More automation is going to be in our future.”

Managing Work Flow To keep cellar workers physically distanced, wineries have reconfigured production areas, limited the number of entrances, exits and designated work areas as well as minimized congregation areas. They’re using floor tape and decals to reconfigure workflow and lower the number of path crossings.

“We have different buildings for barrels, and we keep teams together in the different barrel buildings. If there’s any movement of people between buildings, it’s kept to one or two known individuals so we can keep track of what’s going on,” said Ullum “We’re making sure we give people different responsibilities in the cellar so they’re not congregating or having to pass each other,” Bernau said. “We’re lucky because of the way our cellar is laid out. Some cellars get much tighter confinement. Here in Oregon, most of our wineries are small. That’s the easiest part to manage.”

Scheid is using floor tape to keep people apart when they clock in each morning and a separate system ensures no more than two people enter bathrooms at once. Employees at Scheid are also distancing themselves during lunches. “That’s really the tough part,” Hogg said. “Folks want to break and sit down and talk.”

14 July 2020 WBM

Crowe said that building different teams, or “pods,” of workers is the way forward this harvest. “You might have a barrel crew that really is just very dedicated to maybe two or three rooms in the winery and they don’t come into the lab,” suggested Crowe, who makes wine at five custom crush facilities. “They don’t bring samples to the lab anymore. There’s a sample drop-off point—then the lab staff comes and sprays those bottles with alcohol, lets them sit for five minutes, and then collects the samples. There’s going to be some interesting traffic pattern management.”

Documenting when and where people work is key in case there’s an outbreak, to deter health authorities from shutting down an entire operation.

If a winery can say ‘look, we split shifts, only these people came into contact, we’ve got these protocols,’ a winery may be able to safeguard employees and their livelihoods. Working in pods allows for tracing contact: If one person in the pod gets sick, the entire pod goes home for two weeks but the winery doesn’t necessarily shut down.

“We are preparing for working in mini-teams,” Muñoz-Oca with Ste. Michelle, said. “We’re thinking there will be five or six people working together. They will come into the facility at the same time, take breaks and lunches at the same time, and work in the same physical area.”

Instead of running two lines side-by-side, Scheid employs day and night shifts with a break between. A winery with space that operates two cellar crew shifts for crush can have one crew start very early and another occupy a separate area so workers don’t cross the building, creating pods of employees that will occupy only certain parts of the winery.

And what happens if somebody gets sick?

“You better have a back-up and just be prepared to go a little bit slower throughout the course of the day and the winery,” Ullum said.

Distancing and Automation in the Cellar When workers do need to be in close proximity, they’ll likely be wearing face coverings. Wineries may set up rows between tanks in a similar manner to grocery aisles, with arrows directing foot traffic along a given row of tanks to the north and along a following row to the south.

Wineries will need to clarify protocols for removing must from red fermentation tanks while keeping workers apart. That task typically includes three people: one in the tank with two others in close proximity for safety.

“When you’re shoveling the grapes out of the tank, you have to have a person outside monitoring that guy all the time because carbon dioxide is a big deal,” Goldschmidt said. “We need a clear understanding about how people are going to work standing next to each other.”

Some, particularly the well-funded wineries, are already quite mechanized, with automated pump-over systems and remote technology, though winemakers still need to taste from the tank or barrel.

“A couple years ago, we implemented automated pump-overs for every single tank, so that reduces labor and can be run by a few people,” Francis Ford Coppola Winery chief executive officer and winemaking chief Corey Beck, said. “Every tank has its own centrifugal pump and temperature control is done from a laptop. Because we’ve been in such a tight labor market for the last five or six years, we’ve had to look at reducing labor in some areas. It helps with the spacing side of things.”

At Scheid, automation has been part of operations for a while. “The nice thing with our facility is we have so much automation we’re really able to do a lot of jobs with only one or two people,” Hogg said. “We’ve found it’s in the

KENDALL-JACKSON

bottling area where you get tighter groups based on the setup. That’s where we’ve had to get creative.”

Scott Labs chief executive Zack Scott predicted the shortage of full and parttime labor (interns) to mule pump-over carts, drag hoses, rake clusters from tipped bins, and babysit filters will result in more rapid upside economics for fixed piping, dedicated pumps, hopper-hopper grape handling, cross-flow, tank management automation and general winery software.

“We think it is really time for people to invest more in automation such as automated pump-overs, valve control, crossflow, etc.,” Scott said. “Labor has long been an issue, but this year takes it to another extreme.”

Longer Bottling Runs Most bottling lines aren’t set up for physical distancing but the more advanced lines, for instance the lines at Rack & Riddle, are more automated, requiring fewer workers to operate.

“Fortunately, we have a lot of robots and automation so we don’t have a lot of people on the floor which definitely helps with the physical distancing,” Rack & Riddle director of executive winemaking Penny Gadd-Coster said.

Physical distancing may require slower bottling runs in many cases, including when wineries work with mobile bottlers. Wineries may need to slow lines down to manage glass, corks or labels while remaining two armslengths apart.

Most winemakers contacted for this article installed plastic dividers for distancing on their bottling line(s), and all require face shields or masks. Jim Bernau said Oregon’s workers’ comp carrier provides financial support to wineries making changes on their bottling lines to distance people.

Worker Safety Through Sanitation and Communication Protocols “The good news about so many wineries is that, especially during harvest, we’re cleaning and sanitizing all day,” Crowe said. “And winemakers are pretty practiced with a PPE already: face shields, goggles, gloves, and masks.

This is an industry that is already tuned into microbial control. It’s what we do. It’s what we have to do. A winemaker is basically a glorified, microbial zookeeper.” (See “Winery Sanitation in a COVID-19 World” in this issue, starting on page 16).

Though already prepared for sanitation, it’s the communication within a winery that many operators are increasing their attention to.

“For me the big part has been having a communication plan. We’ve got 50 people that work here, so making things available, and obviously in Spanish, both in verbal and written communication, was important,” Matthew Glynn, COO of Bin to Bottle, a custom crush facility in Napa Valley said. “We have daily tailgate meetings to remind people every day about basic sanitation practices, and hand washing.”

Hogg stressed Scheid uses a check list and does weekly winery audits to make sure given departments are adhering to the rules. “The biggest challenge honestly is implementation. You have to have a top-down approach. If you don’t have senior leadership behind it, it will be difficult because it is new and it’s uncomfortable, wearing face masks all day.”

As Crowe pointed out, it’s important that the industry learns together, sharing ideas and what is and isn’t working.

“Everybody in the industry is feeling the same way,” Muñoz-Oca said. “We protect ourselves and protect each other and that’s the number one thing.

We’ll figure it out. Once you have that as your guiding light, you let the rest of the cards fall. If you put yourself and everybody else around you and their health as a top priority the rest of the stuff figures itself out. You slow down to the point that you need to slow down. If you’re less productive, so be it.

We’ll ramp up when we can.” WBM WBM July 2020 15

winemaking

Winery Sanitation in a COVID-19 World Webinar Discusses Best Practices in Cellar Operations Linda Jones McKee Linda Jones McKee, Eastern editor for Wine Business Monthly, has been writing about growing grapes and making wine East of the Rockies since 1981 when she and her business partner Hudson Cattell founded Wine East. That magazine was integrated into Wines & Vines in 2008, and she served as Wine East editor until W&V was incorporated into Wine Business Monthly in January 2019. McKee also has experience on the business side of the wine industry, as she and Richard Carey owned Tamanend Winery in Lancaster, PA, from 2002 to 2015.

That instruction has been repeated constantly ever since the COVID-19 pandemic moved into this country. But what should wineries do to establish better sanitation levels in their operation?

Two Cornell University professors participated in the webinar “Winemaking in a Post-COVID World” on May 18, 2020 and looked at different aspects of the sanitation question for tasting rooms and winery personnel. Dr. Abigail Snyder, assistant professor of microbial food safety, spoke on “Killing two birds with one stone: FSMA compliance and COVID-19 preparedness;” and Dr. Anna Katharine Mansfield, associate professor of enology, addressed the topic of “COVID-19 winery sanitation and personal safety.”

Snyder began by defining the “two birds” mentioned in the title of her talk, saying, “Do the work to get the good manufacturing practices in place, and you’ll be in a good position to adapt for reopening and implementing practices to prevent COVID-19 spread.” Most winery owners and winemakers know that wineries are exempt from some, but not, all the rules in the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). Parts of FSMA’s Preventative Controls for Human Foods Rule do apply. Most importantly, the good manufacturing practices (GMP) rule includes the basic sanitary practices required in food production.

According to Snyder, “One pillar of GMPs is personnel, which specifically refers to health and hygiene. This includes restricting personnel with symptoms of food-borne illness from working in food handling. It includes practices around hand hygiene, how and when to wash hands, glove usage, and where employees can eat, drink and smoke. It also includes aspects related to personal grooming.” If a winery has been doing the minimum practices to comply with this rule, Snyder pointed out that they could enhance those practices “to include social distancing, excluding sick employees from the workplace with COVID-19 symptoms, and hand hygiene to prevent the spread” of the virus.

She continued, “Just because we washed down all the door handles and implement deep cleaning overnight, it’s not a substitution for social distancing, which is hard to implement for businesses. It’s crucially important to mitigation because people are the vector and the reservoir for virus. This means that even if you clean every surface really well, one employee can still get sick from another employee if they’re in close proximity, even if all the surfaces around them are clean.”

WA S H YOU R H A N DS!

16 July 2020 WBM

Hand hygiene is one of the most important mitigation methods for COVID-19 and includes hand washing with soap and water, hand sanitizing with an ethanol-based sanitizer, and glove usage. Snyder stressed that glove usage “does not replace the importance of hand washing, and if used incorrectly could actually be worse than no gloves at all. That’s because people who wear gloves tend to think of their hands as sterile. But if you continue to touch contaminated surfaces, the gloves become contaminated too.” A policy on when people should use gloves and when those gloves should be changed is important.

Hand sanitizers containing ethanol are effective against the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes the COVID-19 disease because the virus is surrounded by a lipid envelope that is sensitive to ethanol as well as soap. While sanitizers are useful in places where there is no running water, they don’t work on dirty or oily hands. Consequently, Snyder said, wineries should “think through what policies you’re going to implement on hand washing. Specifically, when and where are people going to be expected to wash or sanitize their hands?”

Because this is a respiratory virus, she continued, “washing after coughing or sneezing, after changing jobs or locations in the facility, and perhaps even at regular intervals throughout the day might make sense. You should also be thinking through proper hand washing techniques and how to train your people on this.”

Snyder suggested that wineries should develop a check sheet and a schedule for checking. She noted that outdoor activities during harvest or with u-pick operations require planning ahead for hand hygiene in more complex locations. “You want to do everything you can to lower the barriers to get people to comply with hand washing. This includes increasing access, making sure it’s stocked and clean, and providing signage.” Another option is to have an employee beside the hand sink or the sanitizer station to direct all customers to wash their hands.

Sanitation programs in wineries normally focus on equipment and food contact surfaces. Now, however, wineries may need “to focus on high touch surfaces and personal space like door handles, refrigerator handles, and desks,” Snyder commented. In tasting rooms, wine lists or menu options could be posted on a sign or available on their personal phones.

In the final section of her talk, Snyder noted that both training employees on basic principles of food hygiene and food safety and documentation of

that training is required by FSMA. While technically employees only have to be trained once, she suggested that wineries should offer re-training “whenever an employee’s job changes, whenever something happens that could be addressed through re-training, and at least once a year offer a brief refresher on employee health and hygiene.” An example of that re-training would be to update employees on the practices being instituted to prevent COVID-19 spread.

The training should be documented with the name of the record, the business name, the list of employees, the date of training, the topics covered, and the signature of the supervisor.

Winery Sanitation and Personal Safety Mansfield began her talk with definitions of cleaning and sanitizing.

“Cleaning is the soil and debris, while sanitizing is the reduction of microbes via heat or chemicals…Remember that cleaning doesn’t equal sanitizing. It always is two steps.”

She continued, “Sanitizing is not the same thing as sterilizing. That’s a common error. Sterilizing is actually killing all viable microorganisms, spores, and viruses…That never happens in a winery. We need to realize that we’re never going to have a 100 percent lack of microorganisms. We’re just going to knock them back as much as we possibly can, and in order to do that, we’ve got to do both the good cleaning step followed by the good sanitation step.”

The parameters that are important in cleaning and sanitizing include: • Temperature: For cleaning, water should be between 100° F to 145°

F for the initial rinse, the wash, and at least one rinse. For sanitizing, the hot water used must raise the temperature of whatever is being sanitized to 180° F for 30 seconds • The compound used: In a winery, no compound for cleaning or

sanitizing should contain chlorine (hypochlorite) because that would introduce TCA [trichloroanisole] into the winery.

• Time: Any sanitizer or disinfectant has to be in contact with the

surface being sanitized for a certain length of time. That “dwell time” will be listed on the label of any sanitizer.

Mansfield summarized her comments on sanitation by saying, “If you are already following a proper cleaning and sanitizing protocol in your winery, you don’t need to change that now. What we are doing is adequate in production spaces. Wineries are not super awesome places for SARS viruses to hang out. We really have to worry about our people right now, not our surfaces.”

She continued, “What we need to worry about now is cleaning and disinfecting frequently touched objects and surfaces because we’re worried about people and transmitting from one person to the other.” Doorknobs, switches, all handles, latches and keys (even forklift keys) were all on her list of objects, and also similar objects in communal spaces such as break rooms, offices and bathrooms, and frequently used items like the handle to the refrigerator, the handle of the microwave, and the coffee maker.

Winery operations change from week to week. Winemakers and managers should think through what is frequently touched, from pump handles to switches to clamps, and consider cleaning and sanitizing more often than in the past. Mansfield noted that wineries should have individual sanitation standard operating procedures (SSOP) written down for separate cleaning events at different times and in the different areas in the winery that address the sanitation conditions and practices before, during and after processing.

“It has to be written down,” Mansfield said, “because even if you think everybody knows that and everybody’s doing it the same way you are, just as with

hand washing, they probably aren’t.” SSOPs should be written in language that is concise, easy to read and understand. It should cover all the necessary details and use diagrams and pictures. If a procedure needs a certain expertise, the SSOP could contain a listing of who is able to do that and who should be excluded.

Mansfield concluded her talk by noting that what is most important is “keeping airborne viruses from traveling from one person to the other, and we have got to find ways to protect ourselves.” She listed four factors that we have all heard before: stay at least six feet apart; don’t touch your face; wash your hands frequently, and wear cloth face coverings. Wash your hands before putting on a mask, touch only the ties or loops but not the fabric part, learn to sneeze in your mask, and keep it over your nose. WBM

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winemaking

Barrel Purchases Clouded

by Virus and Recession Coopers Say Prices Are Up Modestly, and Grow Wary About Supply Chain Interruptions Jim Gordon

their barrel purchases for an upcoming vintage always face a number of unknowns, including what the size of their harvest will be and how fast they will empty their existing barrels based on consumer demand. But 2020 will no doubt go down in history as the coronavirus vintage, and that brings with it a number of other unknowns for barrel buyers, and even more questions for barrel merchants.

We spoke to and exchanged emails with six cooperage executives to get a sense of what U.S. winemakers can expect from the barrel industry this year. The knowns include modest price increases that have already been announced for many barrels, a relatively big supply of wine already in winery cellars and warehouses, and a slowing or plateaued growth rate in wine sales, depending on the price sector a winery is selling into.

WINERIES THAT ARE PLANNING

Jim Gordon writes and edits articles on grape growing, winemaking and wine marketing. He has been covering wine and the wine business for more than 35 years, notably as the editor of Wines & Vines from 2006 through 2018. A role as contributing editor for Wine Enthusiast began in 2014, in which he review California wines and reports on various California wine regions.

18 July 2020 WBM

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Barrel Purchases Clouded by Virus and Recession

Of critical interest to most medium and small wineries are the government-mandated shutdowns of tasting rooms to help slow the spread of COVID-19 that have already hurt their direct-to-consumer sales. With less cash flowing into tasting rooms, will they choose to cut their barrel purchases as a way to keep cash from flowing out?

“There is a little bit of fear that the market could collapse, so some wineries will be short on cash and may order less,” said Laurence Cheftel, who manages U.S. sales of barrels and casks from Tonnellerie Sylvain, Marc Grenier and Tonnellerie Meyrieux. Based in Napa, she has been selling barrels in California since 1995 and said that as of the last week of March orders have been coming in at a close to normal pace. She said her French barrel prices are up 2.5 percent.

“I do believe we’ll sell fewer barrels, but I’ve had that feeling before, and it hasn’t always happened,” Cheftel said. “I have a feeling people are not going to stop eating and drinking. I think there will be people still buying fine wine. And there will be people making wine. I believe they are not going to let Napa Valley grapes hang on the vine in 2020. If they do, there is going to be much more to worry about.”

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Barrel Purchases Clouded by Virus and Recession

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Cooperages in France had been ordered in mid-March to shut down due to the virus, stopping the production of barrels temporarily, but the government loosened its restrictions to allow small groups of workers to return to cooperages, according to Chris Hansen, general manager of Seguin Moreau Napa Cooperage. However, cooperages in the U.S. have been classified as “essential” operations, and Hansen said his Napa cooperage has continued to make barrels.

Hansen said Seguin Moreau has informed its customers that there could be delays in barrel production, most of which normally happens between May and September, and most orders come in from April through June. He said they have some inventory in Napa, but potential disruptions in the supply chain from France and through U.S. ports make the overall supply picture cloudy.

Seguin Moreau French barrel prices are up by 3 percent and range from the high 800s in euros (currently $975) per barrel to the mid 1,000s in euros ($1,160) while American barrels from the company’s Kentucky-based Canton Cooperage range from about $500 to $550 per barrel. One bright spot for American wineries is the dollar-euro exchange rate, which he said has fallen from $1.13 per euro in recent years to a recent $1.07, which makes French-made barrels effectively 5 percent less expensive than they would have been.

The output of French cooperages was up by 2 percent in volume of barrels and by 3.2 percent in sales value in 2018, the most recent year for which data was available. The 58-member Federation des Tonneliers de France reported that the U.S. took 29 percent of that volume and 31 percent or $163 million of its value at today’s exchange rate.

The issue of supply chain logistics was also a concern for Vincent Garry, the Paris-based director of sales for Oak Nation, a division of Groupe Charlois that launched in 2018 and represents barrels from Nadalie, Marsannay, Marchive, Mercier and others. “We believe availability for winemaking products in general, for those coming from Europe, will most likely be affected by the capacity of the logistics chain to respond to the demand when things restart rather than the capacity for cooperages to produce,” Garry said.

“Most cooperages have barrel inventory at this time of the year, and for some of them they continue to operate at reduced capacity during the crisis but do operate. As I mentioned, we anticipate a significant backlog surrounding the logistics chains,” Garry said.

He added that the cooperage groups that own production facilities in the U.S. will have a high potential response capacity when needed. That would include Charlois Cooperage USA in Cloverdale, Calif. As for the expected demand, Garry said, “At the moment it is uncertain for our industry how the wine industry, and therefore our clients, will respond to this crisis. Crop size and cash flow capacity will be determining factors in the decision making around the supply chain.”

Slightly Lower Demand Expected At Cooperages 1912 in Napa, whose barrel brands include T.W. Boswell and World Cooperage, general manager Elizabeth van Emst said via email that she expects overall demand for barrels to be slightly lower than last year due to the financial impact of the virus quarantines and other restrictions.

“I believe wineries with multiple channels, various price positioning and creative strategies will hold steady to their original projections, especially with the turmoil surrounding imported wines right now (shipping, tariffs, shutdowns, etc.…). Others with less routes to market will likely react by scaling back production, and thus barrel purchases will be reduced.”

She reflected on what happened after the 2008 banking crisis as a potential clue to what will happen now. “We didn’t see the negative effects as much in 2008 as we did in subsequent vintages due to the prolonged effects. This unprecedented contraction now is new territory for all of us, so time will have to tell. It looks like we are being more reactive this time to jump-start the economy once the risk has passed, than we saw in the last recession, so that is a positive.”

When wineries were polled at the end of the 2019 harvest and before COVID-19 hit the news, only 31 percent planned to increase their purchases of barrels in 2020, according to Wine Business Monthly’s 2019 Barrel & Oak Report. This was already the lowest percentage since 2009, when it was 22 percent.

That low number reflected the view that wineries were at least well-supplied, if not over-supplied, to meet the slowing pace of growth in wine sales.

Now, however, with early Nielsen results showing a big spike in off-premise wine sales at the same time virus prevention measures were being introduced, overall wine sales might have a good growth year. The spoilers, of course, are that boutique wineries that depend on direct sales, and many brands with on-premise focuses are already reporting severe sales decreases.

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WBM July 2020 23

Barrel Purchases Clouded by Virus and Recession

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Vincent Bouchard, founder of Bouchard Cooperage, a vendor of barrels to U.S. wineries, has been in the business since 1979 and has seen several financial crises come and go. He noted that only a small percentage of the world’s wine is aged in barrels, let alone new barrels. So the overall wine production and consumption numbers aren’t a very accurate indicator of the barrel market’s direction.

He said one way to look at it is that people who are wealthy enough to continue buying fine wine in a recession will be more particular than ever to get their money’s worth. This may mean, in turn, that makers of fine wine will still need to buy and use top-quality new barrels for their luxury brands despite the virus and the economy.

Mel Knox, a now-retired San Francisco barrel broker, observed that in mid-March when grocery stores were sold out of toilet paper and pasta, one of his neighborhood fine wine shops had empty shelves in the high-end Pinot Noir department. “People are not going to stop drinking, I suppose, but the question is what will they be drinking?”

Similarly, he argued that winemakers are not going to stop making wine. “If you’re a California winemaker and you contracted for fruit from Beckstoffer or Pisoni, you’re committed, and maybe you’re paying $15,000 a ton. With that fruit you are still going to get your Francois Freres or Taransaud barrel in order to make something good out of it.”

At WBM’s deadline, Tonnellerie Radoux USA general manager Louis Zandvliet said it was too soon to say how barrel sales would finish up the 2020 season because many wineries put purchase decisions on hold as they monitored the COVID-19 situation.

Zandvliet said some winemakers were ordering exactly what they’d previously expected to order while others were canceling everything until further notice. Still others fell somewhere in- between; ordering, for instance, 50 to 70 percent of expected needs up front with an expectation of making an additional order later. He noted that orders varied by how a given winery was set up to sell wine; wineries selling mostly to restaurants were struggling while those with online and retail presences were sometimes up.

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Connecting with Customers With wineries closed, sales managers were working remotely, communicating through phone calls, emails and Zoom conferences to discuss volumes, pricing, profiles and every other aspect of the business.

“What is complicated for us is tasting,” Zandvliet said. “Usually you taste through the barrels you sold in 2019 or 2018 before selling new barrels in 2020 because you adapt to the programs and taste profiles. We go in the cellars and taste the wines from our barrels for their programs so that we understand exactly what they’re looking for. Right now we can’t do that.”

A further consideration is that the high-end red wines made in 2020 won’t be sold until 2023, by which time the economy could be rolling well again.

Who would want to be without a good inventory to release at that time?

WBM

24 July 2020 WBM

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winemaking

Red Tail Ridge Winery— A Road Less Traveled The Pathway to LEED Gold Certification Ray Pompilio

Ray Pompilio is a wine writer based in Ithaca, New York.

An avid follower of the Finger Lakes wine scene and new grape varieties across the East and Midwest, Pompilio likes to find new and interesting methods of growing grapes and producing top quality wines in these regions. He also knows that finding ways to sell those wines is important.

PHOTOS BY RAY POMPILIO

The view of the vineyards from the winery, with Seneca Lake in the background.

IN 1 9 7 8 , M. Scott Peck, M.D. wrote a book, The Road Less Traveled. It explored

Starting in California

a line of thought that incorporated psychoanalysis, religion, mysticism and the conflicting cultural currents of the 1970s. It went on to be a national bestseller, giving people a new way to look at life, in general, and themselves.

What does this have to do with Red Tail Ridge Winery in Penn Yan, NY, one of the most innovative and interesting Finger Lakes wineries? Many years ago, I read that book, and it came to mind as I was driving to meet co-owners Nancy Irelan, winemaker, and Mike Schnelle, winegrower, who made similar alternative choices when it came to their winery. Red Tail Ridge’s innovation began with the choice to use geothermal energy as the winery’s main power source, and the vineyards’ uncommon cultivars for the Finger Lakes region, including Dornfelder, Blaufränkisch, Teroldego, Lagrein and Zweigelt.

The genesis of Red Tail Ridge began in California almost 30 years ago. Irelan received a Ph.D. in Grape Genetics at the University of California, Davis and was hired immediately by E. & J. Gallo Winery to initiate a quality program. She spent 12 years with Gallo, where her duties ranged from long-term innovation projects to vineyard problem-solving and day-to-day commercial management during harvests. She led experimental plantings of a number of European cultivars to determine which might be suitable for the winery in future seasons. When Irelan left Gallo, she was vice president in charge of viticulture and enology research and development. She felt she was spending more time with administrative tasks and meetings so she and her husband, Schnelle, decided to look for a new place to live, start a vineyard and make wine.

26 July 2020 WBM

Red Tail Ridge Winery—A Road Less Traveled

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Nancy Irelan and Mike Schnelle, owners of Red Tail Ridge Winery, with Bueller (The Drooler)

Schnelle had a varied career, and a large part had to do with farming and excavation. He left that to earn his MBA and began a career in finance. While working the latter, he found time to take a few courses in viticulture at the University of California, Davis.

The couple searched numerous wine regions throughout the country, considering climate, land availability and cost. “We decided here [near Seneca Lake] because Nancy had been coming to Cornell, and she knew the area. This place was starting to evolve, there was a mass of wineries, and things were really getting going, so we thought it would be a good place,” said Schnelle.

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They purchased a property northeast of Penn Yan and began clearing their land to plant a vineyard. At the end of a long day of work, they noticed a pair of red-tailed hawks, swooping down to feast on what their clearing efforts had exposed. The hawks were continually in view as they had a nest on the property, and their presence convinced Irelan and Schnelle to name the venture Red Tail Ridge Winery.

They planted Riesling and Pinot Noir in 2005, and currently have 13 and 6 acres of each, respectively. The cool-climate reds—Dornfelder, Blaufränkisch, Teroldego, Lagrein and Zweigelt—along with Chardonnay, have been added. The vineyard now totals about 30 acres. All vineyards were planted by

Red Tail Ridge Winery—A Road Less Traveled

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The pioneer vineyard in the Finger Lakes of Teroldego, planted in 2006

Benchmark Custom Vineyard Planting, located in Ovid, NY. The GPS-based vineyard planting company was started by Cameron Hosmer, owner of Hosmer Winery, and is now run by his son, Tim, who travels extensively in the East to provide services. Red Tail Ridge utilizes dense planting of 4 feet x 8 feet, with their Riesling at 3 feet x 8 feet. All the vines are trained with vertical shoot positioning (VSP) and are hilled up each winter.

While the vineyards are not certified organic or Biodynamic, sustainability practices are employed. Irelan noted that sustainability is a financially viable option, but one must take care of the natural resources. “It does take time, but the hope that you can make a living off of a business improves with sustainable practices,” she observed.

Red Tail Ridge minimizes its chemical footprint by employing a multi-faceted integrated pest management program (IPM). Permanent cover crops of clover and rye grass are grown, and thanks to the precisely positioned vineyard rows, Schnelle can easily utilize a mechanical weed cutter without disturbing the vines. The winery has also experimented with sorghum plants whose roots produce natural compounds to inhibit the growth of other unwanted plants in the vicinity.

In 2011 and 2012, Schnelle began working with Regalia Biofungicide (EPA Reg. 84059-3) for season-long control of powdery and downy mildew, and botrytis black rot. Their experience showed it to be effective against powdery mildew, and it is currently part of Red Tail Ridge’s IPM program. Other practices include regular leaf and cluster thinning. To combat animal pests, the vineyards are surrounded by 8 foot-high deer fencing and are covered by bird netting as harvest approaches.

30 July 2020 WBM

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In a Foundation of Change Following the initial vineyard plantings, several years were devoted to planning for the construction of the 4,608-square-foot winery, which was built in 2009. While in California, Irelan had heard about the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program (LEED), a third-party certification program for “green” buildings under the auspices of the U.S. Green Building Council. She and Schnelle decided that mainly alternative energy would be employed on their site and researched alternatives, such as solar, wind and geo-thermal. While solar and wind energy would have a return on investment (ROI) of 15 years each, they were quickly attracted to geo-thermal, which averaged a 2.5-year ROI. The building plans were aided considerably by working with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERD). Through the agency’s new construction program, they were able to design the winery so that it could be built with primarily recycled materials and fieldstone from their vineyard clearings. LEED certification was their immediate goal. To be certified required adherence to specific guidelines in the following categories: site sustainability, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, material resources, indoor environmental quality, and innovation and design.

Site sustainability is graded upon soil erosion control and maximizing the recycling of construction waste. Water efficiency is measured by low-flow plumbing, with no additional landscape irrigation. The energy and atmosphere requirements were satisfied by geo-thermal heating and cooling, which had to provide an energy cost reduction of at least 50 percent. Materials used for building included recycled and sustainable forest lumber. The winery’s

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Red Tail Ridge Winery—A Road Less Traveled

design innovation and indoor environmental quality issues were met by its east-facing wall of glass– double-paned and filled with argon gas–that provides almost all the winery’s indoor lighting needs.

Working towards their LEED certification offered them numerous rebates and incentive support as the winery became more efficient. The certification process took about 1.5 years. They had been operating for almost a year before final certification and saw their ROI shrink from the estimated 2.5 years to just over one year, with a 70 percent reduction in normal cost—a figure which led to their LEED® Gold certification in 2011.

From the Ground Up What exactly is geothermal heating/cooling and how does it work at Red Tail Ridge? The system operates by buried tubing that is filled with an antifreeze/water mixture, which takes advantage of the earth’s temperature to heat and cool via heat pumps inside the building. In the winter, heat is taken from the earth, and in the summer, heat is removed from the building and put back into the ground.

Their passive system includes 8,000 feet of 1-inch diameter, 150 psi well pipe buried 6 feet below the surface in an overlapping, slinky style. The soil is primarily clay, which offers better heat transfer than looser soil. The tubing was set up in a series of eight, 100-foot long trenches, 3 feet wide and 4 feet apart, each containing 1,000 feet of tubing. Installation took 1.5 days to put the tubes in place, cover and grade.

32 July 2020 WBM

One of the loop field ditches located 6 feet beneath the winery building

Laying the foundation for the winery building

It is a closed-loop system filled with a pressurized 25 percent glycol solution, which is pumped into four separate heat pumps, two for heating and two for cooling and refrigeration. From the heat pumps, the solution is stored in two 100-gallon reservoir tanks, one each for hot and cold, with proper temperature control measured by computerized settings. It is a liquid-to-liquid system that can also provide, via air handlers, either heat or air conditioning for the office. (It should be noted that the tasting room is in a separate building.)

The 5-ton heat pumps are the maximum size that can be used for the winery’s 220-volt, single-phase electricity line. The pumps are set up to run individually, depending upon the needed temperature; and when the system needs to be activated, the second heating or cooling pump alternates with the first, spreading the motor usage wear evenly. The system is completed through a crisscross of tubing underneath the concrete floor that provides the necessary heat or cooling. Mike noted, “We designed it so it could satisfy all of the heating, air conditioning and refrigeration needs of the building.”

A particularly efficient part of the system occurs when both the refrigeration and heating pumps are running simultaneously. The fluid from the refrigeration pump absorbs the heat from the tanks it is cooling and sends that to the loop field. This flow goes downstream on the heating system line and is extracted by the heating pump to be put into the floors. Mike explained, “The system thus extracts the heat out of the tanks and puts it into the floors, recycling throughout the building. It’s one way to minimize energy loss in the building.”

WBM July 2020 33

Red Tail Ridge Winery—A Road Less Traveled

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The geo-thermal control system includes heat pumps, reservoir tanks and connections.

The winery floor is divided into four radiant heat zones. One is for processing and bottling, one for the barrel room, one for case storage and the last for the winery bathroom. “We can set the temperature in these different areas at different levels,” Irelan added. A prime example of different temperature in one zone is the barrel room, which can be kept relatively cool for barrel fermentation, heated for malolactic fermentation and then cooled again for aging. Red Tail Ridge also has 20 wine tanks connected to the refrigeration side of the system, allowing proper seasonal temperature control. All the tanks are from a local supplier, Vance Metal Fabricators, in Geneva, NY.

System Makeup and Cost The geo-horizontal loop field system, including glycol pumps from Grundfos Pump Corporation of Brookshire, TX, cost $18,000. The four 5-ton heat pumps, made by Water Furnace International, Inc. of Fort Wayne, IN, totaled $37,500 while the geo-control panel with insulated storage tanks, pumps and plumbing added another $15,500. Radiant floor materials from PexUniverse.com of Brooklyn, NY cost $16,000. The computer to run the entire system was $5,000, and the winery’s air conditioning and ventilation system, purchased from Energy Savings Products, Ltd. of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, was completed for $22,000. Electricity service costs range from $4,000 to $7,000 annually.

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34 July 2020 WBM

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What They’re Producing Red Tail Ridge currently produces about 9,000 cases annually. Once their recent plantings mature, Irelan and Schnelle aim to produce some 15,000 cases. Their acreage is split about 50 percent white and 50 percent red, with Riesling and Pinot Noir the majority cultivars, respectively. The wines are done in relatively small batches, which allow for a broad range of products.

Available white wines include a barrel-fermented Chardonnay, as well as one entirely made in stainless steel; six different Rieslings, from dry to very sweet, including a sparkling Sekt; “Miscreant,” a totally skin-fermented wine of 50 percent Chardonnay and 50 percent Gewürztraminer; and a Pétillant Naturel Chardonnay. The goal is to have the majority of their white wines be sparkling.

The red wine line-up includes Pinot Noir, Blaufränkisch, Lagrein, Dornfelder, Teroldego and the winery’s signature red blend “Rebel with a Cause.”

Also available from the 2019 vintage are dry Rosés from Pinot Noir and Cabernet Franc, and two sparkling wines, a Petillant Naturel from Pinot Noir and a sparkling red blend named “Sparkling Rebel with a Cause.”

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Red Tail Ridge Winery—A Road Less Traveled

Back to The Road Less Traveled Irelan has waited almost 14 years to produce the winery’s signature red blend, “Rebel with a Cause.” The current 2017 still version is 36 percent Teroldego, 21 percent Lagrein and 43 percent Blaufränkisch. It is a rich, well-structured wine, offering good fruit, acidity and depth, with complexity added by aging 21 months in French and Hungarian oak. A dry sparkling “Rebel” was also made, with 66 percent Lagrein, 17 percent Teroldego and 17 percent Blaufränkisch. There were 298 cases of the still wine made, along with 55 cases of the sparkler. Each “Rebel” wine retails for $39.95 per 750 ml bottle and was named to identify a wine made from grapes that are best suited and unique to the region. “We need to show people we can make good red wine here,” Irelan said.

Unbeknownst to me before I visited the winery, the back label for the “Rebel” wines carries the following sentence: “Dedicated to those who choose the road less traveled.”

Red Tail Ridge Winery has certainly taken a less traveled road, with construction design and operation, as well as several wines from less familiar grapes to the average wine consumer. In 2006, they were the first Finger Lakes winery to plant Teroldego. The vines were sourced from Novavine, in Santa Rosa, Calif., through their official connection to Vivai Coopertivo Rauscedo (VCR), the world’s largest grapevine producer based in Friuli, Italy.

They are also involved in community outreach. One of their wines has been both successful and beneficial to others in need. Red Tail Ridge donates 10 percent of the gross profit from sales of “Good Karma,” a Riesling made each year, to food banks through a Rochester, NY organization, Foodlink, which distributes contributions nationwide. “Good Karma” has been nationally

36 July 2020 WBM

The exterior of Red Tail Ridge’s winery building with the double-paned “wall of glass” filled with argon.

distributed since 2012, and the donations generated by its sale go to the states where the wine was purchased.

Another expression of a different kind of good karma is the recognition Red Tail Ridge continues to earn. Earlier this year, Irelan and Schnelle were nominated as semi-finalists for the James Beard Foundation Awards in the category of alcohol production in the United States. They were the only New York wine producer named and were joined nationally by Corison Winery (CA), Day Wines (OR), Maison Noir Wines (OR), McPherson Cellars (TX) and RdV Vineyards (VA). This was the second consecutive year Red Tail Ridge made the list.

It has taken 15 years of innovative thought and action to position Red Tail Ridge Winery on its road to success. To see what follows down that road in the years ahead should be of great interest to those of us in the wine industry and to the wine-consuming public. WBM

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winemaking

An Integrated Crushpad: Paris Road Vineyards’ New Home Curtis Phillips

stop by Paris Valley Road winery in Paso Robles, Calif. on the last day they received grapes in 2019. Paris Valley Road is part of The Stoller Collection, which also includes Sextant and Windemere. I wanted to see their crushpad in action because all the equipment, including the receiving hopper augers, is sourced from Pellenc and is fully integrated.

I WA S A BL E TO

Pellenc and Pera Pera was founded by Joseph Pera in 1896 and has a similarly long history of producing winery equipment. Pera commercialized thermovinification, which is also called “flash détente,” in 2001. The agricultural equipment manufacturer Groupe Pellenc acquired Pera in 2014, but the Pera heritage seemed to be evident to me in a lot of the crushpad equipment at Paris Valley Road.

Maybe it’s because I have only used individual pieces of Pera and Pellenc equipment in the past, but what struck me was the degree to which all of these individual elements appear to be designed to work together.

Grape Reception There was an interesting aspect to the grape elevator as it lifted the grapes from the receiving hopper to the destemmer: The elevator itself includes a de-juicing screen that drains off the juice from berries broken by the augers to bypass the destemmer entirely. At Paris Valley Road, the separated juice rejoins the destemmed berries just before the must pump.

Destemmer Pellenc has a pretty unique design for its line of Selectiv’ Process Winery destemmers. The destemmer at Paris Valley Road, model H800, was a more conventional, cylindrical cage-and-paddle design. It looked like Pellenc has modified the design from what I remember of Pera destemmers of the past in order to accommodate integration with the Kliner 800 sorter. I also noticed that the ubiquitous (and very, very big) magnet was installed at the intake end of the destemmer rather than on the must pump feed-hopper.

The magnets are used by any winery that operates a progressive cavity or lobe pump as a must pump to protect the pump from ingesting metallic material other than grapes (MOG).

38 July 2020 WBM

PELLENC/PARIS VALLEY ROAD

Crusher I suppose that I’m something of an iconoclast, but I haven’t used a crusher on my own wines for anything except Muscat for decades. My opinion is that grapes are sufficiently macerated by the destemmer and grape conveyors to make crushing unnecessary. If you don’t have one, though, there always seems to be that one grape variety, vineyard or vintage when you really need one. Since this is the case, I very much prefer it if the crusher can be moved completely out of the path of fruit to leave the destemmer as is the case with most modern crushers, including the Pera F1000 that Pellenc installed at Paris Valley Road.

Sorter - MOG Removal Automated removal of MOG on the crush line at Paris Valley Road is handled by a Pellenc Kliner 800. Pellenc uses similar roller-sorter designs on its harvesters and in its Selectiv’ line of destemmers. The idea is that stuff very much smaller than a normal berry, like shot berries and unripe berries, drops through the initial part of the rollers, and is kept from entering the must-pump intake hopper. The rollers open up to wider gaps where the sound berries can drop down to the must-pump’s intake hopper. Items larger than a berry, such as jacks, which are pieces of grape rachis, continue to the end of the rollers where they are collected for MOG disposal. Long, skinny items, like stems and twigs, which might drop through with the sound berries, are laid down and oriented to roll across the gaps between the rollers and off the far end, along with the rest of the MOG.

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An Integrated Crushpad: Paris Road Vineyards’ New Home

Must Pump The must pump at Paris Valley Road is a big, stationary, 80-ton-per-hour progressive cavity (AKA eccentric screw) pump. This sort of pump is more or less the industry standard must pump. The internal tolerances are so tight that this design is vulnerable to damage when it ingests metal bits, like vineyard staples or trellis cross arms. Progressive cavity pumps are so common in the wine industry that you almost never see one without a very big magnet, which should catch ferritic (that is to say, magnetic) pieces of iron and mild steel as they fall past it.

At Paris Valley Road, the magnet was installed at the destemmer intake.

This is, perhaps, further “upstream” than usual, but I did notice more than a dozen vineyard staples stuck to it. One can assume that this placement was correct for this particular grape reception line.

Note that austenitic steel, like the 304- and 316-grade stainless steel used in most winery equipment, is non-metallic. The same goes for non-ferritic metals, like aluminum. All can damage any progressive cavity pump if they are ingested by it. Exercise appropriate caution.

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Other Equipment Since Paris Valley Road wasn’t pressing or using its flash détente unit when I was visiting, I didn’t get to see that equipment in operation. Because of the winery’s crushpad layout, the flash détente unit would have to be installed first, prior to harvest, as the other crush equipment would have blocked access to the unit if it had been installed post-harvest.

I wasn’t able to crawl inside either of the presses, but I have used them before, and I don’t recall any notable quirks. The ones I’ve used performed well enough, and I don’t recall ever having a problem with one. About half of the circumference inside the press is occupied by the membrane (or “bag”), and about one-third of the circumference is taken up by drain channels while the access door means there is about one-sixth of the circumference gap between one side of the bag and the juice channel.

I’ve always liked the juice channel design for the Pera membrane press. It has a pretty large area, about one-third of the circumference of the press.

What I really like about the press design is that it’s especially easy to clean.

The slotted cover of the channel is made to flip up in sections; the hinges run down the middle of the juice channel. With a section flipped up, it’s relatively easy to use a pressure-washer to clean the juice channel. Just remember, any time a cellar worker has to enter a confined space, like a press, you have to use full lock-out/tag-out safety protocols.

Pellenc Central Automation As a production winemaker, I find the real appeal of this crushpad installation was the single control stand. I think that this is the real secret sauce of Pellenc’s offerings. All the individual pieces of equipment are built to speak the same language. This includes Pellenc’s non-crushpad equipment, like fermentor temperature controls, tartaric stabilization units and even flash pasteurization. This makes crush-line control integration seamless. Even if the winery decides to use multiple control panels, the common user interface should minimize the learning curve for cellar workers as they move between individual pieces of equipment. WBM

40 July 2020 WBM

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Cool Sanitation Products from Unified 2020 New Applications of BlueMorph UV Technology, Plus Winery Sanitation Audits Bill Pregler

42 July 2020 WBM

ALEX FARREN

BlueMorph – Expanding their Science I first wrote about BlueMorph UV barrels and tanks sanitation back in Oct. 2015 after meeting president and CEO Alex Farren at his first Unified Wine & Grape Symposium. Not long after, in March 2016, the company and its breakthrough technology received an award as an Innovative Product at the annual Innovation + Quality (IQ) Conference and Trade Show. [Editor’s Note: IQ is a forum presented by Wine Business Monthly for ultra-premium wineries and focuses on cutting-edge innovation to advance wine quality.]

Since then, an impressive list of major wineries has conducted in-house testing of UV science, along with third-party laboratories such as BevTrac in Napa. All have repeatedly documented the effectiveness of UV sanitation for barrels and stainless vessels.

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The pharma and food industries, as well as water treatment facilities throughout Europe and (increasingly) the United States, have long known the effectiveness of UV sanitation. The key in using the technology is to match the correct wavelength from the mercury vapor light to the specific application. Farren, as a trained scientist with both analytical chemistry and toxicology degrees, successfully determined the necessary algorithms of time exposure to shapes (barrels/tanks), distance and intensity. At Unified this year, he told me he’s currently testing the process with public transit vehicles.

It seems fitting that it was only a matter of time before BlueMorph moved on to the next level of winery sanitation. The key to the company’s latest patent is the word “vessel”—but beyond stainless steel wine storage tanks, a vessel can also be considered a “space.” Given the current situation with virus infection, effective germicidal UV sanitation in large environments can be a game-changer: imagine quick and effective sanitation in airplanes, hospitals,

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WBM July 2020 43

Cool Sanitation Products from Unified 2020

retirement facilities or almost any public space. The possibilities for the wine industry are also significant: think about fast and effective sanitation of the entire cellar or barrel room, or even a tasting room.

By the time this article hits mailboxes, the results of a Metropolitan Transit Authority’s light-rail, public buses and trolley systems’ sanitation protocol will have been released. A Southern California third-party laboratory conducted the analysis and, according to Farren, the results were spectacular and foreshadow a huge future for the likes of BlueMorph.

The key to success for Farren was to, again, determine the necessary algorithms within these new spaces. For the first time, he also included those spaces that contain fabric, vinyl, glass and plastic surfaces, as well as odd shapes, such as head rests, grab rails, even steering wheels and windows. Distances, seating arrangements, light intensity, wavelength and, most importantly, duration of irradiation (dose) had to be established, all within laboratory conditions by utilizing clinical swabbing before and after.

The hope by the Transit Authority was to expeditiously replace ineffective “fogging” and haphazard spraying by field workers in contaminated environments. Typically, they would apply a 60 percent alcohol solution, but that leaves wet conditions that require long drying times and put vehicles out of service until they can dry out. The same holds true for essentially all public spaces when we do not want to spray or irrigate work zones. UV light is dry and ready for immediate use.

The important words here are effectiveness and time. Airlines will be looking for a portable, handheld installation to support rapid turnaround times at a terminal gate, but any industry could take advantage of the sanitation method, from cabs to rental cars and, yes, the wine industry as well, so long as the UV unit is designed to accommodate the individual space.

In prior sanitation articles we have discussed how major sources of contamination in a cellar are the floors, drains and walls. Strategically placing a collection of lights throughout a cellar would effectively sanitize these large spaces, thereby cutting back on excessive hot water pressure washing—saving water, chemicals, time and labor. It is also easy to envision a permanent, suspended BlueMorph unit above a tasting room service area, which could easily and regularly dose the entire public space in minutes.

Currently, all BlueMorph installations record time and duration cycles for permanent sanitation records.

This protocol, bolstered by a daily ATP swab, would go a long way in keeping health departments happy and ensuring consumer confidence in operations.

44 July 2020 WBM

As Tasting Rooms in Oregon Reopen, Willamette Valley Vineyards Deploys UV Light Technology in HVAC Systems Willamette Valley Vineyards, which reopened its Estate Tasting Room and winery kitchen in Turner, Oregon, installed UV light filtration technology inside its HVAC systems to reduce bacteria and viruses in room air. The company will use the technology for all three of its tasting rooms.

“This is technology that’s available and it’s proven technology,” Willamette Valley Vineyards founder and chief executive officer Jim Bernau told Wine Business Monthly. “We don’t know that it’s proven against the novel coronavirus but we know it’s proven against bacteria and other viruses because there’s lots of history on it. We know the spread of this virus occurs in enclosed spaces. There’s a benefit in making sure your HVAC systems have a form of treatment in them.”

The equipment uses a combination of UV Light and a Coated Honeycomb Matrix that converts water and oxygen molecules into oxidizers. The “Air Scrubber Advanced” by Aerus Enterprise Solutions (AES) features this so-called ActivePure Technology. “This proprietary technology has been proven to reduce harmful microorganisms like germs, bacteria and viruses in the air and on surfaces,” Dave Thomas, Regional Vice President of AES,” said. “It’s proven safe and effective in multiple independent research studies.”

While the Department of Homeland Security recently issued a report on the novel coronavirus and its vulnerability to UV light, Thomas said he’s making no direct claims specifically regarding Covid 19 or coronavirus, at least yet. He said independent testing is ongoing. “Our latest round of testing at an FDA certified lab showed that on a wide array of germs, bacteria and virus, we reduced them by up to 99.9 percent.”

UV light is now used to clean and disinfect in various ways, and is seeing increased use in a myriad of applications because of the pandemic. New York City, for instance, is reportedly now using UV light in an effort to kill the coronavirus on subways and buses, UV light has long been used in winery sanitation systems and is sometimes used to clean barrels.

Oregon Allows Tasting Rooms in Some Counties to Open Tasting rooms in Marion County, where Willamette Valley Vineyards is located, are now allowed to reopen. A county-by-county approach, however, has drawn objections because funneling northern Willamette Valley wine enthusiasts into the only county in the area permitted to be open may not necessarily be conducive to “social distancing.”

In the North Willamette Valley, only Yamhill County wineries have been allowed to re-open, concentrating tasting room traffic and creating confusion as to who is open in Wine Country, Bernau said. “The problem is you go out there to visit a winery and you don’t know where you are. You don’t know if you’re in one county or the other.”

Oregon Wine Board Communications Manager Sally Murdoch told WBM that at this point roughly 350 wineries across Oregon’s 31 open counties have opened or are allowed to. The data is self-submitted by the wineries so is incomplete but close, she said. There are nearly 800 wineries in Oregon. WBM

Sanitation Audits – Choosing Your Equipment Prior to attending the Unified Wine & Grape Symposium, I revisited a Sanitation Roundtable article I had written in Nov. 2011. Then, as now, the most important takeaway was for every winery to establish strict, in-house sanitation audits that include dedicated swabbing and documentation, reviewable, written action plans that outline cleaning procedures, and consistent, ongoing training for (often) revolving staff.

At the roundtable’s conclusion, however, I remember thinking that effective sanitation actually begins earlier: with each winery performing a mechanical audit and only purchasing the correct equipment for the specific tasks at hand. It must be affordable and easy to learn, operate, monitor and maintain.

Today many wineries also conduct water audits, now mandated by local and state conservation authorities. Flow meter data and usage benchmarks are regularly part of annual documentation. At the same time, energy costs continue to rise, and OSHA oversight is increasingly an important part of any risk management program. With all this in mind, I again scoured this year’s exhibit halls to look for the best, most adaptable sanitation equipment.

Equipment The key for wineries today is to establish sanitation protocols while also maintaining the ability to adapt as needs change, especially as production increases. I sought out vendors with an extended product list that features versatile equipment any winemaker can accessorize as needs evolve. This year I spoke with Steve Buchan, owner and CEO of AaquaTools. Specifically, I wanted to see the CUBE, a new portable, on-demand, tankless hot water pressure washer.

In the more than 20 years I have spent in the equipment side of the wine industry, there have been numerous variations of sanitation “science.” The best advice always came from wine industry consultants, like Dr. Randy Worobo, food microbiology expert and professor at Cornell University, who will always start a seminar by telling you that sanitization is impossible without cleaning first. You cannot sanitize a dirty vessel, and it’s important to think about adjustable water pressure and temperature when searching for cleaning equipment.

Ever-mindful of water and energy use, I like the on-demand feature of the CUBE. Cellar workers simply set the water temperature on the digital keypad and hit the start button. Hot water up to 185° F is instantly available and comes via two on-board, highly efficient, tankless commercial heaters from Rinnai. I have written about this company before in other applications.

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Cool Sanitation Products from Unified 2020

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The burners are fueled by clean-burning propane, provided by two on-board, 40-gallon tanks with quick-disconnects. These add considerably to the portability of the total unit and are easy to remove for refill.

Pressure is rated up to 2,750 psi and adjusted at the handle of the trigger gun, connecting to the CUBE via a 50-foot extended hose with stainless reel. Exact settings will be based on experience for the task at hand and the accessory, such as an impingement head. Here you might only need 1,100 psi.

Pressure comes via an 8.8 hp KEW pump. Adjustable flow rates vary between 13 gpm at 110° F and 6 gpm at 185° F. AaquaTools has long been a supplier of impingement heads that feature the AaquaBlaster LT design. It is a four-nozzle configuration with a stand for use in barrels and tanks. It is easy to insert and features quick-disconnect. A more recent accessory is the ToteBlaster for plastic totes and containers.

I mentioned adjustable temperature and pressure if for no other reason than the majority of cleaning is usually done outside the cellar during crush season with a near-constant flow of dirty macro bins, destemmers, conveyors, hoppers, and the surrounding work zones and support equipment, though the same can be said for barrel rooms and interior floor space. Because the CUBE is a mere 32 inches (L) x 27 inches (H) x 23 inches (W) and available on casters, it is easily moved to different locations through doors or into tight spaces.

In the Nov. 2011 sanitation roundtable, Dr. Worobo supplied charts that detailed areas of extreme contamination as determined with ATP swabbing.

As you might expect, floors and drains were number one and two, respectively.

Surprisingly, the areas around the bung holes are number three. The lesson here is whatever is on the floor has the potential of migrating to barrels via hoses. (This would also be a good time to think about investing in urethane flooring instead of concrete to aid in sanitation efforts.)

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46 July 2020 WBM

There have been plenty of ideas about sanitation, some of which have worked better than others; but if a facility is audited and outrigged properly, the chances of any method working are much higher.

Steam, as a sanitizing method, came about when people realized that hot water was not “sterilizing” their bottling monoblocks.

With steam, we learned that temperatures of 212° F did the trick and are now standard today. Temperature kills bugs in fillers, which is why quality fillers are solid in stainless. Steam generators are available from companies, like Electro-steam Generator Corp., while AaquaTools has its own design as an accessory.

Then winemakers thought steam might also be good in barrels. The jury is still out, however, as many feel it leaches oak. Steam can also instantly scald the heck out of a worker; and though it uses little water, it uses lots of kilowatts.

For barrels, probably the best method is to use high temperature and pressure quickly to knock off tartrates and other organics before the wood has a chance to open up. Again as Dr. Worobo would say, clean materials first and out the bung hole.

The truth of the matter is that the best solution is to afford yourself options.

You need psi, temperature control and flexibility to suit the task, all in an affordable manner. As with any task in the winery, it is best to perform the equipment audit long before the purchase. WBM

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winemaking

Winemaker Trial

Using Engineered Yeast to Create Stylistically Different Chardonnay

Erosion Wine Co. winemaker Patrick Rue wanted to know—is it possible to customize the aroma and flavor profile on Chardonnay based on yeast choice alone? Here’s what he found out.

is the “winemaker-in-training” and co-owner of Erosion Wine Co. His career in beer started at The Bruery, which he founded in 2008. He has developed hundreds of different beers and experimented with many ingredients, techniques and microorganisms to create unique and delicious flavor profiles. Along the way, he became a Master Cicerone in 2014 (the beer equivalent to MS or MW). Rue, along with his spouse and Erosion Wine Co. co-founder Rachel, and daughter Charlotte, moved to St. Helena in late 2018 to start Erosion Wine Co. He hopes to explore wine with a similar level of curiosity that he brought to making beer.

PAT R IC K RU E

fruit-based terpene notes of pineapple, peach and banana skin. Strain 480, also developed by BFS, is designed to contribute thiol-based aromas and flavors, reminiscent of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. In Chardonnay, this strain exhibits strong aromas of crushed herbs, freshly cut grass, blackcurrant leaf and passionfruit.

Lot 1/Control: Chardonnay fermented with Excellence TXL Lot 2: Chardonnay fermented with BFS Strain 524 Lot 3: Chardonnay fermented with BFS Strain 480 TRIAL CONCLUSION:

The three wines are very different, both from an aromatic and flavor perspective—so much so that they exhibit uncommon varietal aromas and are unlikely to be selected as coming from the same varietal or juice source.

TRIAL OBJECTIVE:

To determine the feasibility of creating multiple stylistically distinct wines from one juice source through the use of engineered yeast.

TRIAL ANALYSIS Analysis Name

TRIAL DESCRIPTION:

In collaboration with Berkeley Fermentation Science (BFS), Erosion Wine Co. fermented the same Chardonnay juice with three different Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast strains. The Chardonnay fruit, from McKenzie Mueller in Napa’s Los Carneros AVA, was grown to create a ripe, rich style. Harvested fruit was pressed on Oct. 3, 2019 at 25° Brix with a pH of 3.45 and 6.6 g/L TA. The yeast strain used for the control was Lamothe-Abiet Excellence TXL, which was selected for its low production of esters and phenols. It produced a wine with typical Chardonnay varietal aromas of ripe apple and mango. Strain 524, an experimental yeast developed by BFS, is designed to amplify the fruit-based terpenes by incorporating genes from edible plants, like mint and basil. In Chardonnay, strain 524 produces a bouquet of flavor compounds that accentuates the

free sulfur dioxide molecular sulfur dioxide total sulfur dioxide titratable acidity pH

Lot 1

Lot 2

Lot 3

Units

<2

4

66

mg/L

<0.10

<0.10

0.92

mg/L

33

32

129

mg/L

7

4

4.4

g/L

3.23 3.68 3.66

volatile acidity(acetic) 0.25 0.34 0.51 g/L L-malic acid glucose + fructose

1.96 <0.05 <0.05

g/L

0.2

1.6

0.8

g/L

ethanol at 20° C

12.84

13.94

13.96

% vol

ethanol at 60° F

12.8

13.9

13.92

% vol SOURCE: ETS LABS

48 July 2020 WBM

ENGINEERED YEAST. WILD FLAVORS.

Winemaker Trial Using Engineered Yeast to Create Stylistically Different Chardonnay

Winemaker’s Post-Mortem Why were you interested in studying the effects of different yeast strains on the Chardonnay grape?

Rue: Most white wine varietals exhibit distinctive aromatic characteristics

that we felt may clash with the distinctive aromatics the yeast produces.

Chardonnay has a recognizable aroma, but it is fairly neutral in comparison to most other white grape varieties. Also, Chardonnay is the most widely planted winegrape in California, so it presents the greatest opportunity for diversifying its flavor perception based upon fermentation alone.

Can you describe the two engineered yeast strains and why you chose to use them?

Rue: Strain 524 is a fruit bomb. It offers ripe stone fruit (peach, apricot) and

tropical “Juicyfruit” characteristics. It’s tough to compare it with a certain varietal, but it offers a slight petrol flavor and banana skin in the finish, so it reminds me a little bit of Alsace Gewürztraminer but with the texture of a Chardonnay.

Strain 480 is very much reminiscent of a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc with its green, grassy character mixed with ripe, tropical and citrus notes. To me, it’s mind-blowing how different strain 480 is compared to the control.

How did you set up the trial?

Rue: Berkeley Fermentation Science provided the two yeast strains in a

direct-pitch, quantity liquid form. We added one strain per 50 gallons of Chardonnay juice in 60-gallon stainless steel barrels. The ambient temperature was kept at a consistent 59° F, and the fermentation temperature did not exceed 60° F during the peak of fermentation. The control was 700 gallons of the same juice fermented with Lamothe-Abiet Excellence TXL yeast at a set temperature of 55° F.

Who else worked on this experiment with you and what were the hypotheses?

Rue: Enrique Hernandez, our cellar master, and Samuel Dearden, our

tasting room manager, assisted with this trial internally. BFS engineered the yeast. I’ve used yeast from BFS previously for beer fermentations; those strains helped produce aromas and flavors that are similar to hop aromatics.

Based on that experience, I had confidence that this trial would produce distinct aromatic differences from the control. I expected the results to be more subtle and was surprised by how much flavor was contributed from the yeast.

50 July 2020 WBM

NEW

2019 What were some of the impressions from some of those who tasted through your wines?

Rue: I expected the results to be more subtle and was surprised by how

much flavor was contributed from the yeast. Strain 480 is a favorite of ours as it provides a flavor profile that we have not experienced in any California wine. Listening to the guests of Innovation + Quality was fascinating. I think people were excited and amazed by how big of a difference there was between wines. There were certainly some skeptics of using genetically engineered yeast, but many of the guests inquired about commercial availability, and I bet we’ll see a number of wineries using BFS strains this coming season.

What were some of the winemaking lessons you learned through the course of this trial?

Rue: In today’s world, I think most of the flavor in California wines is driven

by growing different cultivars in different terroirs. Our major takeaway from this trial is that flavor can also be driven by the strain of yeast that the winemaker chooses.

Given the results of this trial, do you think Erosion Wine Co. will change any of its Chardonnay winemaking protocols?

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Rue: Since we’re a start-up and 2019 was our first harvest, we don’t have

any Chardonnay protocols. However, it does give us optimism to continue experimenting with yeast, particularly regarding Chardonnay.

Do you plan to conduct a follow-up trial?

Rue: Yes, we’re planning on a follow-up trial. One of the issues with the

trial was that the parent yeast strain of the engineered yeast was different from our control strain. In the next trial, we plan to use the same parent strain as the control strain. Additionally, we will ferment trial lots, using the same volume and tank size/geometry/temperature as the control. For this experiment, the control was fermented in a 900-gallon tank, and the two trial lots were fermented in 60-gallon tanks—this may have had some impact on the variances. We’re also very interested in determining the consistency of these strains. Our instinct is that yeast-driven flavors will be more consistent between seasons as the fermentation can be more easily and precisely controlled than viticulture.

We will also trial other strains that BFS is working on and may apply those to varietals other than Chardonnay. We will experiment with Chardonnay from other regions around California as well. I am curious to see whether these yeast strains can increase the perception of quality for economical Chardonnay—or at least make it taste more interesting. WBM

WBM July 2020 51

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A S S O C I AT I O N PA R T N E R S

grape growing A Case Study in Sustainable Vineyard Practices:

The Benefits of Rice Straw for Erosion, Natural Weed Control and Reducing Irrigation Needs Barbara Snider, Hinman & Carmichael LLP

Barbara Snider is senior counsel at Hinman & Carmichael, LLP. She specializes in all aspects of beverage law, most recently counseling clients through COVID-19 regulatory issues and advising on TTB, FDA, ADA, Proposition 65 and Privacy Policy compliance matters. Barbara’s broad experience, as a regulatory, business and litigation attorney, includes her time with Cooper, White & Cooper LLP in San Francisco and seven years as associate general counsel for a NYSE communications company where she was responsible for all legal affairs in six Western states. In her spare time, Barbara and her husband developed an award-winning wine brand from grapes sourced from their two North Coast appellation California vineyards. She handled all legal, regulatory, compliance and marketing matters for the vineyards and wine brand.

we are interested in all facets of winery operations, including sustainable vineyard management techniques. Many of these techniques can be required as a condition of the purchase of grapes by sophisticated buyers, and the use of straw for erosion control and improved yields is one such proven technique.

There has been considerable research and a few experimental trials in vineyards, particularly in Australia and here in California, searching for new, successful and sustainable practices. Developing sustainable viticulture practices is imperative in today’s changing environment. This article discusses a case study in a high-altitude vineyard in California’s North Coast that used rice straw as a sustainable practice. The overall conclusion from the trial is that using rice straw under vines not only provides the expected erosion control, but also provides natural weed suppression, significant reduction in the amount of water needed for irrigation, improved soil quality and, perhaps best of all, improved yields of high-quality grapes.

In developing a new high-altitude mountain vineyard, the vineyard owners only planned to use the sustainable practices they had developed in their AT H I N M A N & C A R M IC H A E L ,

58 July 2020 WBM

existing hillside vineyard but also looked to new research to better achieve the goal of a more sustainable vineyard that prevents soil erosion, decreases the use of herbicides and conserves water.

As part of the planning process, the owners brought in consultant Dr. Richard Smart to assist in the development of this high-altitude vineyard.

He introduced them to the large volume of viticulture research developed in Australia, a country where water conservation is key. They traveled with Smart and other California vineyard owners to each of the key Australian viticulture areas to observe several innovative irrigation control and water use practices used in these vineyards. One practice of particular interest was the use of straw in the vineyards.

After returning to California, they reviewed research on the pros and cons of straw use in the vineyard. Although wheat straw was commonly used to prevent erosion, it could also be expensive to spread and difficult to keep in place, particularly in windy areas. The research, however, did demonstrate that many types of mulch under the vines had enough important benefits to convince them to incorporate some on a trial basis in the new vineyard.

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The Benefits of Rice Straw for Erosion, Natural Weed Control and Reducing Irrigation Needs

The Rice Straw Program Wheat straw was an unsatisfactory choice, particularly for a high-altitude vineyard because it is light and easily blows away. For alternative mulch, they looked to the Sacramento Valley. California is the second largest ricegrowing state in the United States, and 95 percent of that rice is grown on 500,000 acres in the Sacramento Valley on land unsuitable for other crops.

Rice straw is a waste product that, for decades, was burned after harvest to clear the fields. The California Air Resources Board began controlling the ability of rice producers to burn these large quantities of rice straw, and in 1991 the California legislature passed the Rice Straw Burning Reduction Act that required a phase-down in the amount of rice straw that can be burned.

The phase-down is now complete and burning rice straw is banned (with a few narrow exceptions). The result is that large quantities of rice straw are available for other off-field uses. The purpose of this vineyard trial was to determine if rice straw would be a good alternative mulch.

Results of the Rice Straw Trial The trial was conducted over five years to monitor the different possible benefits. In comparing rice straw with lighter wheat straw, the rice strands are finer, longer and more intertwined than wheat straw. The trial demonstrated this composition helps keep the rice straw together and from blowing away. After five years of monitoring, the overall conclusion was that rice straw provided all the benefits of wheat straw that the mulch research cited but was also easier to work with, did not blow away and reduced costs related to both weed suppression and irrigation. In addition it naturally enhanced soil quality and improved both the grape crop yield and quality.

To Summarize: • Because the rice strands are long and intertwined, rice straw was easier to spread under the vines than wheat straw. Placing the rice straw bales at fixed spaces down the vineyard rows eliminated the need for special equipment to spread the straw. Unlike wheat straw that commonly requires special equipment to spread in the vineyard, spreading the rice straw only required walking down the rows while pulling 4- to 5-inch flakes off a large bale and tossing them under the vines. The flakes gradually settled into a permanent position under the vines.

• A definite benefit of rice straw is that the straw flakes must be replaced only every four to five years unlike wheat straw, which needs to be replaced annually.

• Rice straw has excellent insulating properties and maintains a constant soil moisture and temperature underneath the vines, which helps reduce the irrigation required and slows and reduces evaporation on hot days.

• The rice straw trial included continued monitoring of the rice straw’s effect on soil and vine moisture to better control irrigation. The constant soil moisture and soil temperature combined with reduced daytime evaporation ultimately allowed a 50 percent reduction in the water needed for irrigation, promoting a healthy, high-quality crop.

• Further, because rice straw was so resilient and long-lasting, it proved to be an excellent natural weed control and dust reducer (including dust mites).

• Much of the research found that using a mulch under the vines increased the number and activity of soil invertebrates, particularly earthworms, to naturally improve soil quality. Without digging to “count” invertebrates under the soil, the trial nevertheless demonstrated that the rice straw program did facilitate a healthier soil composition and contributed to good vine growth and quality fruit.

• As described in the research, above the ground the rice straw encouraged larger populations of generalist predators (spiders, beetles, flies, wasps, etc.), which exert natural control of pests, such as vine moth, mites, weevils, vine scale and mealy bugs.

• During the trial, pruning weights were recorded, and berry counts and weights were recorded during harvest. The records showed that after the first year, crop yield was increased without sacrificing any fruit quality.

This five-year trial demonstrated that rice straw can be a practical substitute for other types of mulches now commonly used. Amortizing the costs over four to five years and considering the reduction it will cause in other vineyard costs, rice straw appears to be a successful sustainable practice that can be easily adopted. Using rice straw took a waste product from the fields and successfully recycled it as a sustainable vineyard practice. And rice straw is plentiful. The California Air Resources Board’s website (ricestrawmarket. org) contains a link to find sources of rice straw. WBM

60 July 2020 WBM

1 Richard Smart is an Australian viticulturalist and leading global consultant on viticulture methods. (See smartvit.com.au.) Selected References are included below.

2 “The Facts About California Rice Production,” Environmental Sustainability Report prepared by the California Rice Commission, May 2012.

3 The wines from this vineyard trial consistently received high scores with one wine selected as a Top 100 Cellar Wines of the Year by Wine Enthusiast magazine.

4 In “How to Get Mulch to Stay on a Slope” (Carolyn Csanyi, July 17, 2017), the author lists the time-consuming and expensive methods used to keep wheat straw from blowing away, including peg and twine anchors and rolls of netting.

5 Irrigation needs varied both among blocks and within blocks. Adjusting the size of the emitters worked to balance the varying irrigation needs among different sections of the vineyard.

6 See, for example, “Earthworm activity and soil structure changes due to organic enrichments in vineyard systems,” G. Peres, D. Cluzeau, P.Curmi, V.Hallaire, Biology and Fertility of Soils (1998) 27: 417-424; “Effect of Living or Straw Mulch on Weed Management and Soil Quality in Grape Vineyards,” Craig A. Dilley, Gail R. Nonnecke, Iowa State Research Farm Progress Reports, 679. http://lib. dr.iastate.edu/farms_reports/679.

Selected References: “Benefits of Earthworms,” New Zealand, NSW Government Department of Primary Industries, https://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/agriculture/soils/biology/ earthworms.

“Comparison of Weed Suppression and Mandarin Fruit Yield and Quality Obtained with Organic Mulches, Synthetic Mulches, Cultivation, and Glyphosate,” Horticultural Science, 43: 589-968 (2008).

“Earthworm activity and soil structure changes due to organic enrichments in vineyard systems,” G. Peres, D. Cluzeau, P.Curmi, V.Hallaire, Biology and Fertility of Soils (1998) 27: 417-424.

“Effect of Living or Straw Mulch on Weed Management and Soil Quality in Grape Vineyards,” Craig A. Dilley, Gail R. Nonnecke, Iowa State Research Farm Progress Reports, 679. http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/farms_reports/679.

“How to Get Mulch to Stay on a Slope,” Carolyn Csanyi, July 17, 2017.

Vineyard ineyard T Tools ols

“Mulches Reduce Weeds, Maintain Yield, and Promote Soil Quality in a Continental-Climate Vineyard,” Lisa DeVetter, Craig A. Dilley, Gail R. Nonneck, American Journal of Enology and Viticulture, October 2014.

Pruning | Grafting | Tying | Harvest

“Overview of Vineyard Floor Management,” Patty Skinkis, Oregon State University, June 20, 2019.

“Straw and living mulches compared with herbicide for undervine weed control in a Public-Private Benefit Framework,” Tom Nordblom, Chris Penfold, Melanie Weckert, Mark Norton, Selected Paper Presented at 61st AARES Annual Conference at Brisbane, Queenland from 8-10 February, 2017, http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/.

“Sustainable Viticulture and Winery Practices in California: What Is It, and Do Customers Care?” Gary Zucca, Ph.D., National University, Stockton, CA presented at Wine in the World: Markets, Tourism and Globalization, 2nd Int’l Conference on Economics, Management Sciences and History of Wine, Bordeaux, June 5-7, 2008.

“The use of compost and mulch in vineyards–A case study from Torbreck Vintners, Barossa Valley,” Government of South Australia, Natural Resources, Adelaide.

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Viticulture, Volume 2, Chapter 8 “Soil Management,” Editors B.G. Coombe, P.R.Dry, Winetitles, Adelaide, 1992.

“Water and energy savings from using mulch in vineyards–A Case Study,” Australian Wine Research Institute, December 2016.

California Rice Straw California Health and Safety Code Section 41865–the Connelly-Areias-Chandler Rice Straw Burning Reduction Act of 1991.

“Rice straw burning: Alternative policy implications,” Richard L. Nelson, Peter Thor, Christine R. Heaton, California Agriculture, February 1980.

“Rice Straw Diversion Plan,” California Air Resources Board, December 1998.

“2003 Progress Report on the Phase-Down of Rice Straw Burning in the Sacramento Valley Air Basin,” California Air Resources Board, December 2003.

“The Facts About California Rice Production,” Environmental Sustainability Report prepared by the California Rice Commission, May 2012.

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WBM July 2020 61

grape growing

Update on the Spotted Lanternfly:

Invasive Pest Recorded in Eastern United States

Surendra K. Dara

Surendra Dara is a cooperative extension advisor—entomology and biologicals, University of California Cooperative Extension, San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties.

Key Points • The spotted lanternfly is an invasive pest in the United States and a potential threat to the California grape industry.

• Biological control efforts are underway, but other control strategies are available.

• The ability to identify its life stages, early detection and destruction, as well as quarantine efforts, are critical in addressing this pest.

Lycorma delicatula (Hemiptera: Fulgoridae), is a new invasive pest in the United States, first reported in Berks County, Penn. in 2014.1 Native to China, SLF lacks natural enemies, such as parasitoids (parasitic wasps) and predators, in its new home. It is thought to have been in Pennsylvania for a couple of years before its first detection. Egg masses on a shipment of material imported from China are thought to be the possible source of SLF introduction to the United States.

It has established populations in multiple states and has been detected in a few other states. After the first detection in the southeastern part of Pennsylvania, it gradually spread westward within the state and also to neighboring New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia. SLF has also been found, without established populations, in New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut as of April 2020.

The tree of heaven (Ailanthus altissima), an invasive tree from China, is a favorite host of SLF, but SLF can cause significant economic damage to grapes (Vitis spp.), some fruit trees, woody ornamental and landscape trees.

SLF has been previously reported to be an invasive pest in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam, but the United States is its new home.

When there is a potential threat from an invasive pest, proactive outreach measures will play a critical role in preventing its introduction or minimizing its spread. Awareness of the pest, ability to identify and report to concerned local authorities, and developing control strategies appropriate for the region will help effectively address if/when the pest invades a new area. Considering the value of grapes and other commodities in California that SLF could infest, this article provides an overview of its biology, damage, host range and various management options.

SPOTTED LANTERNFLY (SLF),

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Biology and Damage SLF is not actually a fly, as the name suggests, but a large planthopper. The life cycle includes eggs, four nymphal instars, and male and female adults.

Eggs are deposited in batches on living plant material and non-living surfaces, like vehicles, stones, fence posts and other objects. Trees with smooth bark are preferred over trees with rough bark for egg-laying.

Females lay brown, seed-like eggs in batches of 30 to 50 and cover them with a protective waxy coating, which is whitish initially and turns greyish-brown over time. The egg masses can look like splashed mud. Egg laying occurs from September to December in the eastern United States, and eggs start hatching in April of the following year. SLF overwinters as eggs under their protective covering.

Young nymphs climb up the trees soon after emergence and disperse by falling off the trees and moving on to other trees. The first three instars are black with white markings, and the fourth instar is red with white and black markings. The first instar nymphs are about one-sixth of an inch, and the fourth instars are about one-half an inch in length. SLF have one generation per year, and it is not clear how its life cycle changes in milder climates without severe winters.

Adults are large insects that measure about one inch in length. The abdomen is yellow with dark bands. The hind wings are red, black and white with black spots; and the fore wings are tan-colored or greyish with black spots at the basal half and have black markings at the distal half. SLF adults are distinct in their appearance and usually not confused with any other insect of similar size.

Nymphs and adults suck phloem sap from the trunks and branches of the hosts and secrete large volumes of honeydew. When uncontrolled, hundreds to thousands can infest each plant, resulting in the loss of vigor or eventual death. Honeydew promotes sooty mold growth and further affects plant growth or the quality of fruit. It appears that SLF needs certain turgor pressure in the phloem for its feeding. When the host weakens and has lower turgor pressure, SLF leaves it for a healthier host.

YouTube video to provide an overview of the biology, damage and management options for SLF. youtu.be/45103-PFI4M

Egg laying

Egg hatch and 1st instar April - June

2nd instar

Sept. - Dec.

June - July

Egg period Sept. - Jun.

3rd instar June - July

Spotted Lanterfly Life Cycle

female

Adults

4th instar

July - Dec.

July - Sept.

male ALL PHOTOS SURENDRA DARA

Host Range SLF has a wide host range with more than 70 species of fruit, ornamental and woody trees, as well as grapevines, and several of them are present in the United States. Apples, cherry, grapes, stone fruits and the tree of heaven are some of the hosts that are cultivated or present in California. Both red and white Vitis vinifera grapes and hybrid grapevines appear to be equally impacted by SLF feeding. In addition to cultivated crops, trees in urban landscapes and backyards, and various hosts in multiple habitats can harbor SLF populations. As a result, SLF is a nuisance in urban landscapes and other areas, in addition to vineyards and fruit trees.

Infestations in urban areas can spread before being detected, and management in such areas can be more challenging than on a farm. Because of the SLFâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wide host range and its ability to thrive in multiple habitats, both the farming community and the general public should be aware of this pest and its potential threat to California agriculture and landscapes.

MA

NY

CT PA

WV

NJ DE MD

VA NC

Present Detected

Current distribution of the spotted lanternfly in the United States.

WBM July 2020 63

Invasive Pest Recorded in Eastern United States

Management Detection, destruction and prevention of the spread are of primary importance in addressing the pest. Knowing the pest, recognizing its life stages, destroying those life stages and reporting its occurrence, in addition to aggressive and collective action to prevent its introduction to new areas, are the first steps. Outreach to increase awareness of this pest, without causing alarm, would be a proactive approach. As SLF deposits eggs on automobiles, plant materials and inanimate objects, there could be multiple ways this pest could spread to new areas. Pennsylvania enforces strict quarantine guidelines to prevent the spread of SLF within and beyond the state.

For the general public, there is a checklist of items that include vehicles, recreational or camping items, children’s play items, yard/garden/outdoor household items and building materials that need to be inspected for SLF life stages before traveling or transporting items from a quarantine area. Agricultural and non-agricultural businesses, agencies and organizations need to obtain an SLF permit, after completing an online course, when vehicles and other materials are to be moved from a quarantine area.

PD/GWSS Spring 2020 Newsletter Safeguarding California Winegrape Industry Against Spotted Lanternfly The Pierce’s Disease and Glassy-Winged Sharpshooter (PD/GWSS) Board officially added the spotted lanternfly (SLF) to its list of designated pests and diseases, making it eligible for research and outreach funding. As the industry learned from previous pest outbreaks, including GWSS and European grapevine moth, public outreach will play a critical role in preventing the pest from becoming a problem in California.

“While the SLF hasn’t been found in California yet, quick action is essential for addressing emerging threats,” said Dr. Andrew Cline, acting statewide coordinator, Pierce’s Disease Control Program. “This proactive move by the PD/GWSS Board gives the California winegrape industry the ability to respond rapidly, without the need for additional legislation or other delays.”

The SLF, native to Asia, was first detected in Pennsylvania in 2014, and now 14 counties in the state are infested and under quarantine. Parts of New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia are also under quarantine, and SLF has been detected in New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts.

“The best quarantine efforts happen at the points of origin. By showing that this is a pest we don’t want in California, we have a better chance of getting cooperation and action to control its spread,” said Cline.

The California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) has been informing and training county ag personnel involved with GWSS monitoring in California, as well as personnel at CDFA border inspection stations and ports of entry, to identify SLF. CDFA personnel attended an SLF symposium held in Pennsylvania in early March. In 2019, the CDFA, separately from the PD/GWSS Board, provided research funding through the Proactive Integrated Pest Management Solutions grant program for University of California entomologists Dr. Kent Daane and Dr. Mark Hoddle to investigate SLF biocontrol options.

Learn more from the United States Department of Agriculture at bit.ly/2I4xdH7.

64 July 2020 WBM

SURENDRA DARA

Old egg mass of the spotted lanternfly shows empty egg cases after the nymphs have emerged and old, cracked wax covering.

Classical biological control is another important strategy for managing invasive pests like SLF. Introducing natural enemies from the native region of the pest into its new habitats is referred to as classical biological control.

While the size, bright colors and patterns of SLF and alkaloidal compounds (acquired from its favorite host, tree of heaven and other such hosts with toxic secondary metabolites) deter predation by some birds and some arthropods, there are egg and nymphal parasitoids and predatory insects that can offer some control.

Researchers are evaluating the potential of an egg parasitoid, Anastatus orientalis, and a nymphal parasitoid, Dryinus stantoni, both native to China, against SLF.5 Another egg parasitoid, Ooencyrtus kuvanae, introduced in the United States in the early 1900s for controlling the gypsy moth, Lymantria dispar, appears to effectively parasitize SLF eggs.2,3 L.E. Barringer and E. Smyers reported a wheel bug, Arilus cristatus, and a stink bug, Apoecilus cynicus, feeding on adult SLF in Pennsylvania.4 Mechanical control using various kinds of traps on tree trunks to catch the mobile stages seems to be one option.6,7 M.F. Cooperband et al. found that SLF nymphs and adults were attracted to methyl salicylate, (Z)-3-hexanol, and (E,E)-α-farnesene in laboratory studies, and lures and traps with methyl salicylate increased captures in the field.6

Researchers are evaluating the potential of multiple native and imported biocontrol agents and their host specificity. If the imported biocontrol agents can cause significant mortality to SLF eggs and nymphs without negatively impacting beneficial insects or other ecologically important species, they can be mass-produced and released for area-wide control. Such biocontrol efforts are very important, especially in addressing invasive pests.

There are some cultural control methods, such as scraping off the egg masses from the infested surfaces, spraying insecticides or removing the female tree of heaven and using male trees as traps to attract SLF.8 Chipping felled trees of heaven also appears to be an effective strategy for destroying egg masses.9 H. Leach et al. reported that several carbamate, neonicotinoid, pyrethroid and organophosphate insecticides had excellent knockdown effect, with thiamethoxam and bifenthrin providing 50 percent or more control of adults for up to 14 days.10 While they could not see effective control by organically approved insecticides, biopesticides based on entomopathogenic (insectkilling) fungi, such as Beauveria bassiana, could be effective.

A decline in SLF populations by two entomopathogenic fungi, Batkoa major and B. bassiana, was reported by E.H. Clifton et al.11 Entomopathogenic fungi cause infection when their conidial spores come in contact with the cuticle (skin or exoskeleton) of the host. A fungal spore germinates, produces a penetration structure and, through enzymatic degradation and mechanical pressure, enters the body of the host insect. Inside the host, the fungus multiplies, invades the tissues, kills the host, emerges from the dead host and produces more spores that can further spread the infection.

Several formulations of B. bassiana and other entomopathogenic fungi, such as Isaria fumosorosea and Metarhizium brunneum, are commercially available, and some of them are currently under investigation to test their efficacy. Entomopathogenic fungal formulations, in general, are good components of an integrated pest management program particularly for controlling pests, such as SLF, in urban areas. Fungi like B. major belong to a different group and cannot be mass-produced and formulated for commercial use. However, they can cause epizootics (disease outbreaks) in pest populations and contribute to their suppression.

Integrated Pest Management for SLF One or more of these strategies can be used in an IPM program to control SLF. However, effective quarantine measures and a reporting system to detect and destroy early sightings can prevent or delay SLF establishment in new areas, especially in California where table and winegrapes are multibillion-dollar commodities. WBM

SURENDRA DARA

Adult spotted lanternfly References 1. Dara, S.K., L. Barringer and S.P. Arthurs. 2015 Lycorma delicatula (Hemiptera: Fulgoridae): a new invasive pest in the United States. J. of Integrated Pest Management 6: 20. https://doi.org/10.1093/jipm/pmv021.

2. Liu, H. and J. Mottern. 2017 An old remedy for a new problem? Identification of Ooencyrtus kuvanae (Hymenoptera: Encyrtidae), and egg parasitoid of Lycorma delicatula (Hemiptera: Fulgoridae) in North America. J. of Insect Science 17. https://doi.org/10.1093/jisesa/iew114.

3. Liu, H. 2019 Occurrence, seasonal abundance, and superparasitism of Ooencyrtus kuvanae (Hymenoptera: Encyrtidae) as an egg parasitoid of the spotted lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula) in North America. Forests 10: 79. https://doi.org/10.3390/f10020079.

4. Barringer, L.E. and E. Smyers. 2016 Predation of the spotted lanternfly, Lycorma delicatula (White) (Hemiptera: Fulgoridae) by two native Hemiptera.

Entomological News 126: 71-73. https://doi.org/10.3157/021.126.0109.

5. Malek, R., J.M. Kaser, H.J. Broadley, J. Gould, M. Ciolli, G. Anfora and K. Hoelmer. 2019 Footprints and ootheca of Lycorma delicatula influence host-searching and -acceptance of the egg-parasitoid Anastatus orientalis.

J. of Economic Entomology 48: 1270-1276. https://doi.org/10.1093/ee/nvz110.

6. Cooperband, M.F., J. Wickham, K. Cleary, S.-E. Spichiger, L. Zhang, J. Baker, I. Canlas, N. Derstine and D. Carrillo. 2019 Discovery of three kairomones in relation to trap and lure development for spotted lanternfly (Hemiptera: Fulgoridae). J. of Economic Entomology 112: 671-682. https://doi. org/10.1093/jee/toy412.

7. Francese, J.A., M.F. Cooperband, K.M. Murman, S.L. Cannon, E.G. Booth, S.M. Devine and M.S. Wallace. 2020 Developing traps for the spotted lanternfly, Lycorma delicatula (hemiptera: Fulgoridae). Environmental Entomology nvz166: 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1093/ee/nvz166.

8. Spears, L.R. and A.M.M. Mull. 2019 Spotted lanternfly [Lycorma delicatula (White)]. Utah Pests Fact Sheet ENT-207-19-PR. https://digitalcommons.usu. edu/extension_curall/1940.

9. Cooperband, M.F., R. Mack and S.E. Spichiger. 2018 Chipping to destroy egg masses of the spotted lanternfly, Lycorma delicatula (Hemiptera: Fulgoridae).

J. of Insect Science 18: 1-3. https://doi.org/10.1093/jisesa/iey049.

10. Leach, H., D.J. Biddinger, G. Krawczyk, E. Smyers and J.M. Urban. 2019 Evaluation of insecticides for control of the spotted lanternfly, Lycorma delicatula, (Hemiptera: Fulgoridae), a new pest of fruit in the Northeastern U.S. Crop Protection 124. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cropro.2019.05.027.

11. Clifton, E.H., L.A. Castrillo, A. Gryganskyi and A.E. Hajek. 2019 A pair of native fungal pathogens drives decline of a new invasive herbivore. Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 116: 9178-9180. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1903579116.

WBM July 2020 65

sales & marketing

Options Abound for Single Serve Packaging Wineries turn to smaller formats to reach new consumers Andrew Adams

newer wine brand, stylish and sophisticated in a casual way, much like its founders, a young couple who launched the brand through a crowd-sourcing effort while pursuing careers in film and music in Los Angeles.

Laura and Kyle Gabriel launched the brand in 2014 and currently produce around 1,000 cases of Paper Planes in addition to their other brand, Hidden Track. Kyle oversees winemaking while Laura handles the sales and marketing.

The two now live in Napa, Calif., where Laura grew up, and distribute their wines throughout the Bay Area, Los Angeles and a few states.

The Gabriels are themselves similar to the type of young consumer the wine industry is so eager to attract. One successful strategy to capture the interest of younger generations has been to expand the occasions and ways in which wine can be consumed and enjoyed. Paper Planes adopted the same strategy by launching a wine-in-can, dubbed Flight School, in 2017.

“It was kind of personal for us,” Laura explained. “It started with Rosé, and we’d be drinking a lot of it, and it’s not convenient to take glass and cork on a hike or by the pool.”

She said they’d been hearing about cans and decided to launch a four pack of 250 ml cans to have something they’d enjoy—and would hopefully resonate with their customers. In the first year, a few of their accounts purchased a case or two, but soon “they started just burning through cases of cans.” The wine also earned some critical acclaim when Wine Spectator named it one of the best wine-in-cans on the market in a 2018 article.

The wine is sold in four packs for around $30. “The margins are really not great for us right now,” Laura said. “It’s more of something we wanted to do.”

One of the highest costs are the paper labels with gold foil, which are made of the same paper stock and weight as on the Gabriels’ 750 ml bottles. The labels are printed by MCC, and the cases are from Saxco. The Can Van, a mobile canning company, provides canning services, along with the cans from Ball.

“No. 1: we always wanted to have beautiful packaging,” said Kyle, who added that the can needed to reflect the investment the couple has made in sourcing quality grapes.

By investing in quality packaging, the couple also thinks it’s helped them land a few by-the-glass accounts at restaurants. Those accounts have since shut down, but the Gabriels said cans have proved popular with people ordering take-out or delivery. “The first year the cans exploded; now they’re definitely still popular, but the novelty may have worn off a bit,” Laura said.

Paper Planes’ core sales are still from 750 ml bottles, and despite the abundance of quality grapes on the market the Gabriels aren’t planning to scale their program because the packaging costs are too high. But they still see tremendous potential in Rosé in cans.

PA P E R P L A N E S I S A

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Strong and Steady Sales As off-premise wine sales volume has plateaued in recent years, alternative formats have been the exception. Cans, in particular, have enjoyed tremendous success with Nielsen reporting an increase of 80 percent to $129 million in the 52 weeks ending January 2020. The average equivalent 750 ml price of wine-in-cans has steadily increased as well, from slightly more than $7 in 2018 to $8.66 in 2019. Traditional 750 ml glass bottles still dominate by a wide margin, accounting for nearly 90 percent of the $17 billion off-premise market.

Danny Brager, senior vice president of Nielsen’s beverage alcohol unit, said 375 ml bottles did well during the COVID-19 sales surge, with sales up by 43 percent in the 13 weeks ending April 18 and 6 percent higher in the 52 weeks ending April 22. “It’s quite possible that half bottles might be benefiting from consumers stuck at home but without the need for a

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WBM July 2020 67

Options Abound for Single Serve Packaging

whole bottle,” he noted, clarifying, “a couple who only wants one glass each for instance and isn’t eager to store the remains of a full bottle.”

According to a 2019 Wine Market Council survey of wine drinkers, Millennials and the younger “iGen” cohort reported buying wine-in-can in the past six months at a higher rate than older demographics. Forty percent of Millennials and 57 percent of iGen wine drinkers said they had purchased wine-in-can compared to 28 percent of GenX and just 7 percent of Boomers.

Male wine drinkers, in general, had the highest rate of resistance to winein-can, with 41 percent reporting they were interested in the format.

Robert Williams, Ph.D. is the founder of WIC Research, a market research firm focused on tracking the wine-in-can market. He said there are six main drivers that motivate consumers to purchase wine in can: convenience, “occasion expansion,” sustainability or cost savings, quality, portion control and visual imaging or branding.

He said there are three major strategies for a winery to launch a winein-can, and these include taking an existing brand and creating a line extension, creating a wholly new wine brand or producing only wine-in-cans.

“General costs include analyzing the can size for your market, labeling (including) paper, shrink wrap or digital, packaging in-house or using contract canners,” he noted. “These all reflect the level of commitment you are willing to strategically make.”

The number of brands in alternative packaging on the market is tracked in the Gomberg Fredrikson monthly Price Analysis Report that is based on data from the Massachusetts Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission. The April 2020 issue of that report found the 537 SKUs in 375 ml packages accounted for 52 percent of all wine brands in packages smaller than 750 ml. These wines had an average FOB price of $281.

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2020 WBM

Competing with Seltzers As wine-in-can sales took off, so too did sales of seltzers that then maintained their remarkable sales velocity through the height of the pandemic shelter-in-place orders. The popularity of seltzers was a top concern prior to the COVID-19 crisis as the new beverages played right into ongoing trends of consumers wanting to drink something lighter with fewer calories and seemingly healthier. Seltzers also offer all the advantages of portability and suitability for a wide range of occasions.

In March, Trinchero Family Estates launched the Del Mar line of winebased seltzers to compete at a national level with the likes of White Claw and Truly. The seltzers have an ABV of 4 percent and are packaged in four packs of 355 ml cans with a suggested retail price of $8.99. Trinchero is billing the new product as a healthier and more sustainable seltzer option than the malt-based category leader.

“While there’s incredible diversity within wine and other long-established categories, the

same cannot be said about the relatively new hard seltzer category,” said Trinchero’s vice president of marketing Brie Wohld. “Malt-based seltzers with limited ingredient transparency are currently leading the pack, but we anticipate it’s only a matter of time before consumers begin expecting more transparency from their seltzers of choice. We entered the space with a premium wine-based alternative to deliver on that unmet need.”

She said youthful and active wine consumers care about label claims, nutrition facts and ingredient transparency, and all of that went into developing a new product Trinchero can sell that has fewer than 100 calories, and is gluten-free, vegan and based on non-GMO wine.

At the start of the year, the company also launched Fre, an alcohol-removed wine, in a can line that comes in four packs of 250 ml cans and has a suggested retail price of $9.99 to $10.99 per pack. Trinchero employs a spinning cone system to remove the alcohol and touts the new Fre line as right in step with the trend of younger consumers, who are reported to have been moderating their alcohol consumption through 2019 and at the start of 2020.

Wohld included the new Fre enjoyed stunning sales during the off-premise surge in late March/early April. She said April was also the best month the company’s online store has ever seen, with 500 percent more orders that brought in 400 percent more revenue compared to the same period in 2019.

The company designed and developed both brands in-house and declined to name the vendors it worked with to provide printing or canning services.

Wohld said Trinchero is currently selling about 20 million cases a year, and the majority of that is in 750s, which she said still offers the most efficient return on new product development. “But as with our decision to pioneer the 187 ml bottle, we are making the necessary investments in the can and alternative package categories to give consumers what they want,” she noted.

“Initial entry costs are high, but scale efficiencies will arise as we continue innovating in these increasingly popular formats.”

6/4/20 8:59 AM

What’s in the Package?

Early Innovator with Cans Sans Wine Co. entered the market in 2015 at a time when the idea was still something of a novelty. In 2019, it was named a Wine Business Monthly “Hot Brand” in part because it had come to be a leader in the alternative packaging market.

The company was founded by Jake Stover and Gina Schober, both wine industry veterans, who spent about a year developing a business plan based on high-quality wine in a can. “From Day 1 it was important for us to focus on the quality of the wine, packaging and design above price,” Schober explained. “We also have only produced our own wine and have never bought from the bulk market.”

Back when Sans began, she said there were few resources for canning wine, and it took a tremendous amount of planning and learning on the fly. “Essentially, we treated the production similar to how we would make a bottled wine, with some slight variations. The challenges stemmed from the fact that we produce all of our wines; so we are making decisions for the entire year, six months before that,” she said. “From the actual packaging standpoint, we had to customize everything.”

The company worked with designer Drew Wittig to create the overall brand design, as well as labels and packaging. Various printers provide the shrink sleeve labels, and the Lawrence Paper Company in Lawrence, Kansas supplies cartons and boxes. Sans’ cans are from Ball, and the canning is done

by The Can Van. “We have worked with a few different fillers and have been the most happy with The Can Van,” Schober said. “Quality control is really important, and canning wine is more labor-intensive than bottling wine.”

Sans produced 4,000 9 L cases of cans in 2019 and will increase production with the 2020 harvest. The brand is distributed throughout 23 states.

“Because we started our business prior to the canned wine ‘explosion,’ we didn’t open up any distribution until we had actual wine to sell,” Schober stated. “Sales is the most difficult aspect. For a small brand to get noticed by distributors and retail, it takes a lot of work. We are still cultivating those relationships today.”

Schober said any winery that is considering adding a can or single-serve brand to its portfolio should focus on having the sales channel in place to move wine at a volume to make enough return on the smaller format. “Sales is a very important part, and it’s difficult to scale if you don’t have the appropriate outlets.”

In addition to cans and bottles, a few vendors also can package wine in small containers with pull-off lids that double as drinking glasses. One87 in American Canyon, Calif. can fill its plastic containers with wine or cocktails, and G3 Enterprises offers the StackTek, which can be sold as individual 187 ml containers or in a sleeve of four that is equivalent to 750 ml.

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The 187 ml format has been around for years and lately has not enjoyed the same level of sales growth as seen in cans. In fact, according to Nielsen, sales for this format have been declining, and in the 52 weeks ending April 18 were down 6 percent compared to a year ago. Sales for 375 ml bottles were up 22 percent in the same period. The smaller format still represents more value overall with sales totaling $49 million compared to nearly $14 million for 375s.

Some wineries are trying to innovate with 187s, especially with sparkling wines. Tipp Rambler is a single-serve sparkling wine that is packaged in clear glass with a screw cap. The company produces a California appellation sparkling Pinot Noir Rosé in four packs of 187 ml bottles for $28.

The company was founded by Michael and Wendi Green, winemaker James MacPhail and Joy Hallman, who is with the wine and spirits brand design firm Stranger & Stranger. Michael Green works at his family’s winery Black Kite Cellars, and Wendi Green is the director of marketing for the Rudd Collection.

Domaine Chandon launched a 187 ml format of its sparkling wine in the summer of 2018, and head winemaker Pauline Lhote said the response from consumers had been “fantastic.”

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Chandon refers to the format as its “AluMini” bottles, and Lhote said the company wanted its products to go where consumers have taken to drinking sparkling wine. “When we started working on this project, we wanted to provide consumers with an exceptional sparkling wine for occasions where glass was either not suitable or not allowed,” she said. “We felt there was an opportunity in the market for out-of-home and on-the-go consumption without compromising quality.”

That required a significant amount of research and ultimately an aluminum bottle with a screw cap proved the best option. “The technical challenge we solved was that we were working with sparkling wine, which is highly carbonated, so the pressure in the bottle is twice the average pressure of other carbonated products,” Lhote explained. “We did extensive trials to select the right bottles and caps to be sure our sparkling wine maintained its quality, aroma freshness and intensity.”

Lhote added that the aluminum container also helps the sparkling wine retain its cold temperature, and it’s recyclable. Domaine Chandon would not provide sales figures or information on margin compared to a 750 ml, but the smaller format is available nationwide, and Lhote said it has enjoyed healthy sales growth. not going to work for all brands or wineries. But with plenty of wine and grapes available in an excess market, securing supply may be an easy first step in running the numbers to determine if it would work. If a winery already has a strong distribution network or loyal DTC following, such a product could be just the right fit for getting one’s wine into either more accounts or the hands of more consumers. WBM

A SINGLE-SERVE OPTION IS

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Retail Sales Analysis

Wine Sales Gain 26 Percent but Single-Serve Declines Wines Vines Analytics

Produced by Wines Vines Analytics, the Wine Analytics Report is the industry’s leading source of market insights, objective analysis and data.

Sales Value Surges 26 Percent in April Off-premise table wine sales rose 26 percent versus a year ago in the four weeks ending Apr. 18, according to Nielsen scan data, totaling more than $1.3 billion. This helped boost sales in the latest 52 weeks to nearly $15 billion, up 4 percent from last year.

2019

Trended Off-Premise Value

2020

$Million 1,600 1,400 1,200 1,000

Sales Volume Up 24 Percent in April Off-premise table wine volume was up 24 percent versus a year ago in the four weeks ending Apr. 18, totaling 15 million 9L cases. The growth supported a 1 percent increase in case volumes during the latest 52 weeks to 163.2 million 9L cases.

800

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

July

Aug

Sep

Oct

2019

Trended Off-Premise Volume

Nov

Dec

2020

9L Cases (millions) 16 14

Single-serve Wine Sales Drop Table wines sold in 187 ml formats saw a steep drop in sales in the four weeks ending Apr. 18, helping accelerate a decline seen in the latest 52 weeks. Sales totaled $100 million in the latest 52 weeks, down 6 percent from the previous year. However, sales in the four weeks ending Apr. 18 dropped 17 percent versus last year. Volumes staged an even sharper decline, dropping 9 percent to 1.2 million 9L cases in the latest 52 weeks and more than 19 percent to just 78,133 cases in the four weeks ending Apr. 18.

The format is popular in the travel sector, being a familiar sight on airlines.

Shelter-in-place orders and international border closures effectively grounded most flights in mid-March, shifting most wine consumption to home.

Nevertheless, the average price per 750 ml sold in the 187 ml format has steadily increased. The 52 weeks ending Apr. 18 saw the average price of single-serve wines increase more than 3 percent to $7.01 per 750 ml. The latest four weeks saw slightly weaker growth lift the average price to $7.09 per 750 ml. WBM Methodology Sourced from Nielsen, these figures represent off-premise retailer wine sales to the consumer aggregated across a variety of channels nationwide, including grocery, drug, mass merchandisers, convenience, dollar, military, as well as a selection of warehouse clubs, and liquor channel geographies and liquor channel retail chains. Nielsen figures are updated and released every four weeks.

74 July 2020 WBM

12 10 8 Jan

Feb

SOURCE: Nielsen.

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

July

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

Latest 4 Wks - W/E 04/18/20

Off-Premise Sales Value, 187 ml Table Wine 2020

2019

2018

$95 SOURCE: Nielsen Latest 52 Wks - W/E 04/18/20

$100

$ Millions

$105

$110

Nielsen Table Wine Category Segments

MARK ET:

Total US xAOC+Conv+Military+Liquor Plus

Dollar Value

PRICE TIERS BY CONTAINERS IMPORTED DOMESTIC TYPES

Latest 4 Wks - W/E 04/18/20

Latest 52 Wks - W/E 04/18/20

Latest 4 Wks - W/E 04/18/20

1,382,523,689

4.0

25.9

163,209,744

15,077,129

1.2

23.6

7.65

7.64

157,231,824

10.1

45.0

35,672,142

3,580,101

5.7

37.8

3.55

3.66

599,740,679

56,921,096

1.8

26.7

20,417,704

1,893,413

-0.3

22.8

2.45

2.51

918,174,738

100,216,300

16.2

57.9

15,250,259

1,684,829

14.8

59.5

5.02

4.96

13,187,244,514

1,205,339,301

3.1

24.4

124,189,866

11,262,446

-0.1

20.5

8.85

8.92

$4+

613,473,907

52,894,561

-4.0

11.5

15,335,245

1,328,243

-4.8

12.2

3.33

3.32

Popular Glass $4-$7.99

3,166,495,304

289,894,856

-2.6

20.0

47,826,019

4,334,126

-3.5

18.2

5.52

5.57

Premium Glass $8-$10.99

3,279,769,155

301,258,660

-0.1

22.0

28,870,375

2,617,589

-0.8

19.3

9.46

9.59

Super Premium Glass $11-$14.99

3,112,533,369

295,053,832

9.2

32.9

20,565,945

1,935,312

8.5

31.1

12.61

12.70

Ultra Premium Glass $15-$19.99

1,513,666,555

139,132,668

10.2

28.4

7,390,562

676,377

10.0

27.2

17.06

17.14

Luxury Glass $20-$24.99

613,530,638

56,687,867

10.1

32.8

2,332,256

213,549

8.4

30.2

21.91

22.11

Super Luxury Glass $25+

879,750,093

68,968,335

6.5

16.1

1,795,000

144,483

3.6

15.5

40.83

39.76

IMPORTED

3,986,955,129

376,103,135

4.3

28.8

40,903,374

3,849,760

2.0

26.8

8.12

8.14

ITALY

1,284,335,209

125,916,868

6.8

38.6

10,941,165

1,054,838

4.2

34.5

9.78

9.95

AUSTRALIA

735,667,409

68,493,292

1.2

24.7

12,002,668

1,115,923

0.5

23.8

5.11

5.12

FRANCE

505,831,442

42,133,291

5.6

18.6

3,013,635

248,105

0.0

13.4

13.98

14.15

CHILE

264,011,325

26,746,127

3.7

33.3

4,006,036

406,977

5.2

34.7

5.49

5.48

SPAIN

163,701,730

14,593,697

-1.4

20.3

2,051,773

188,500

-0.9

25.1

6.65

6.45

78,201,698

7,266,207

-2.3

28.8

729,796

65,061

-4.5

20.9

8.93

9.31

NEW ZEALAND

535,870,363

51,431,059

11.7

31.1

3,825,208

361,645

10.6

27.9

11.67

11.85

ARGENTINA

328,904,157

31,433,058

-2.8

24.5

3,554,728

340,595

-4.1

23.3

7.71

7.69

SOUTH AFRICA

23,007,941

2,103,976

-5.9

17.7

194,191

17,814

-7.1

16.5

9.87

9.84

PORTUGAL

38,999,217

3,344,483

-7.2

24.0

394,767

33,100

-13.1

18.7

8.23

8.42

DOMESTIC

11,004,141,976

1,006,420,555

3.8

24.9

122,306,370

11,227,369

0.9

22.6

7.50

7.47

9,917,827,093

909,564,115

3.9

25.3

113,547,819

10,443,463

0.9

22.9

7.28

7.26

WASHINGTON

617,952,988

54,605,472

-0.5

18.6

5,101,380

449,500

-1.5

16.2

10.09

10.12

OREGON

231,400,825

20,146,897

14.1

28.7

1,176,876

102,140

14.3

28.7

16.38

16.43

TEXAS

32,228,074

2,752,765

-1.3

9.7

373,308

31,582

-6.2

6.1

7.19

7.26

NEW YORK

38,743,950

4,737,362

9.0

18.9

483,171

59,867

-0.3

9.4

6.68

6.59

NORTH CAROLINA

41,619,337

3,572,702

2.7

23.7

432,061

36,773

2.5

22.1

8.02

8.09

INDIANA

24,083,514

2,369,773

2.0

35.7

262,767

25,327

0.5

32.6

7.64

7.79

MICHIGAN

22,723,184

1,737,415

2.3

22.2

239,904

18,010

-1.0

18.8

7.89

8.04

RED

7,723,910,572

725,630,744

3.6

29.1

74,742,638

7,097,728

0.7

27.1

8.61

8.52

WHITE

6,102,277,440

552,270,717

4.2

22.2

71,935,088

6,479,773

1.8

20.4

7.07

7.10

PINK

1,162,944,617

104,604,345

5.7

24.7

16,514,421

1,499,337

0.4

22.1

5.87

5.81

TOTAL CHARDONNAY

2,612,613,885

227,539,890

2.4

15.3

30,090,850

2,620,212

0.0

14.0

7.24

7.24

TOTAL CABERNET SAUVIGNON

2,837,938,330

263,728,368

6.5

29.4

25,752,639

2,447,879

4.1

28.7

9.18

8.98

TOTAL PINOT GRIGIO/PINOT GRIS

1,395,282,452

124,106,133

5.9

21.3

18,002,071

1,614,934

4.9

22.1

6.46

6.40

TOTAL PINOT NOIR

1,159,235,148

110,552,374

6.3

33.3

8,692,313

846,342

3.0

32.7

11.11

10.88

GERMANY

TOTAL MERLOT VARIETALS

Latest 52 Wks - W/E 04/18/20

$0-$3.99

CALIFORNIA

699,472,180

61,911,653

-4.8

13.9

9,517,344

848,439

-6.9

13.1

6.12

6.08

TOTAL SAUV BLANC/FUME

1,062,021,885

102,953,931

10.9

34.6

9,254,527

897,051

10.0

34.4

9.56

9.56

TOTAL MUSCAT/MOSCATO

656,957,951

66,915,880

1.8

40.0

9,834,902

984,348

-0.2

36.5

5.57

5.67

TOTAL WHITE ZINFANDEL

264,984,580

23,228,110

-6.0

11.4

5,314,822

468,762

-7.0

12.3

4.16

4.13

TOTAL MALBEC

255,181,282

25,154,835

-2.2

28.5

2,374,584

241,139

-2.9

31.2

8.95

8.69

TOTAL RIESLING

238,234,378

22,787,676

-1.7

30.6

2,554,039

240,550

-4.9

26.1

7.77

7.89

TOTAL ZINFANDEL

224,914,917

20,496,356

-1.7

22.6

1,574,518

146,450

-3.1

23.2

11.90

11.66

TOTAL SHIRAZ/SYRAH

142,962,082

12,702,559

-5.8

15.6

1,588,522

142,640

-7.9

15.2

7.50

7.42

WHITE BLENDS (ex. 4/5L)

231,692,991

20,112,131

1.7

19.6

2,784,593

239,264

1.2

16.9

6.93

7.00

1,957,983,883

186,796,533

4.1

34.1

17,584,683

1,693,876

2.3

33.2

9.28

9.19

608,154,060

52,787,836

14.6

26.8

5,153,700

457,946

12.5

29.2

9.83

9.60

10,848,406,549

986,189,017

4.1

24.6

83,911,124

7,551,900

1.2

20.6

10.77

10.88

2,067,383,366

197,332,662

-0.6

26.7

35,093,129

3,283,164

-2.1

22.9

4.91

5.01

3L

59,110,400

5,153,385

-5.4

9.8

1,466,335

125,627

-10.3

4.8

3.36

3.42

4L

75,442,163

6,736,152

-4.8

15.3

2,365,315

209,087

-6.5

13.1

2.66

2.68

100,031,406

6,648,066

-6.0

-17.0

1,189,574

78,133

-9.0

-19.3

7.01

7.09

RED BLENDS (ex. 4/5L + CHIANTI) ROSE BLEND 750ML GLASS SIZES

Avg Equivalent Price Per 750ML

Latest 4 Wks W/E 04/18/20

1,518,132,365

Value Glass $0-$3.99

9L Equivalent Volume % Chg YA

Latest 52 Wks W/E 04/18/20

14,991,097,105

Total Table Wine Glass

9L Equivalent Volume

Latest 4 Wks - W/E 04/18/20

Latest 4 Wks W/E 04/18/20

BOX

Week Ending April 18, 2020

Latest 52 Wks - W/E 04/18/20

Latest 52 Wks W/E 04/18/20 TOTAL TABLE WINE

1.5L

187ML 375ML

23,980,952

2,435,102

22.2

45.0

90,506

8,661

24.3

44.6

22.10

23.45

1,021,352,169

110,462,248

14.5

54.7

18,000,910

1,947,953

12.6

53.5

4.73

4.73

1L

30,853,722

2,302,427

2.6

-3.3

456,639

33,514

0.5

-5.9

5.63

5.73

1.5L

27,239,444

2,255,145

1.5

7.0

533,578

43,709

0.3

5.2

4.26

4.30

3L

746,086,902

91,128,439

16.4

79.1

14,223,149

1,683,417

14.7

71.1

4.37

4.51

5L

496,777,777

46,769,065

1.9

26.4

17,671,170

1,632,136

-0.5

22.8

2.34

2.39

TETRA

248,525,743

17,110,719

10.8

-7.3

3,249,288

221,149

6.3

-9.4

6.38

6.45

ex. 4/5L BOX SIZES

Dollar Value % Chg YA

PER I O D :

Source: Nielsen

WBM July 2020 75

technology & business

2020 Tasting Room and Wine Club Study:

Results Show Opportunities for Growth While most DTC dollars are made through wine clubs, the forced closures of tasting rooms have shown that e-commerce and phone sales should also play an important role in the DTC line-up.

Erin Kirschenmann

Erin Kirschenmann is the managing editor for Wine Business Monthly and has been with the company since 2012. In addition to production responsibilities for the monthly trade magazine, she writes about business, technology, sales and marketing, and also oversees content and programming for WBMâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eight conferences. She speaks on industry trends at numerous conferences, including the Unified Wine & Grape Symposium and the World Bulk Wine Exhibition, and guest lectures on wine, media and public relations. Erin has served as a judge in the international Concours Mondial de Bruxelles wine competition since 2016 and at numerous regional competitions. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in communications with a journalism emphasis from Sonoma State University. Reach her at erin@winebusiness.com or @erinakirsch.

to press, many tasting rooms across the country are just beginning to re-open. Some, like those in Oregon, were able to resume operations more than two weeks ago. In Texas, tasting rooms could open at 25 percent capacity. Others, like those in Sonoma County, just began hosting guests over the weekend, if they were able to incorporate a food service option.

The last few months have presented an interesting opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of any given tasting room as part of a larger direct-toconsumer sales effort. With the 2020 Wine Business Monthly Tasting Room Study, we hoped to create a baseline for discussions about tasting rooms, both before and during COVID-19, as well as show opportunities for growth.

The results presented a few different takeaways. First, that tasting room business was healthy last year, with modest or appropriate growth in some of the more established regions, and robust growth in others. Results also showed that those wineries who pivoted quickly to a re-engagement or service model were able to maintain loyal, local consumer bases throughout shelter-in-place (SIP) and the brands with strong e-commerce presences were able to see incredible gains. Finally, it showed that there are a few areas where tasting rooms and DTC programs are falling behind or, with a little work, have room to grow.

Many of the results reflected areas where tasting rooms have a real need to adapt. In one of the more obvious instances, our second question asked wineries whether their primary tasting room was open to walk-ins, is open by appointment only, or is open by some combination of walk-in and reservation. In any other year, this question on its own might have seemed irrelevant and only useful when taken in context of tasting room sales or visitation.

But in 2020, when tasting rooms on the West Coast are now being pushed to take reservations, and wineries across the country are being asked to monitor and manage smaller capacities in addition to 6-foot distances between parties and accelerated sanitation protocols, the ability to take and AS THIS ARTICLE HEADS

76 July 2020 WBM

What was the annual percent change in direct-toconsumer sales in YTD 2020 (May 1, 2019-April 30, 2020) compared to YTD 2019 (May 1, 2018 - April 30, 2019)?

FIGURE 1

Geo/Case Size ALL WINERIES

CA PAC NW REST OF U.S.

500,000+ 50,000-499,000 5,000-49,999 1,000-4,999 < 1,000

Avg Change in Number of Cases Sold

19%

Change in Dollars

17%

Change in Number of Cases Sold

23%

Change in Dollars

18%

Change in Number of Cases Sold

17%

Change in Dollars

14%

Change in Number of Cases Sold

10%

Change in Dollars

18%

Change in Number of Cases Sold

10%

Change in Dollars

10%

Change in Number of Cases Sold

49%

Change in Dollars

23%

Change in Number of Cases Sold

8%

Change in Dollars

11%

Change in Number of Cases Sold

24%

Change in Dollars

23%

Change in Number of Cases Sold Change in Dollars

7% 13%

SOURCE: 2020 WBM TASTING ROOM STUDY

manage appointments has turned out to be essential. In this survey, only 16 percent of tasting rooms operated by appointment only and a further 25 percent offered both walk-in and reserved tastings. That left a majority (59 percent) of tasting rooms with likely no reservation software, and a need to build reservations into standard operating practices if they wished to reopen earlier in the lockdown easement.

PHOTOS SCOTT SUMMERS

Data Shows DTC Industry Still Healthy

FIGURE 2

How many total tasting room visitors did you have?

Avg

VISITOR NUMBERS

Prior to the pandemic-related forced closures of tasting rooms around the country, many had already suffered forced operational closures due to natural disasters. As a result, much of the conversation, particularly in regions that had experienced multiple wildfires, flooding, and outages over the last four years, centered around decreased visitation. The July 2019 WBM/SVB Tasting Room Survey Report showed that average monthly tasting room visitation was down in Napa County between 2017 and 2019, and Sonoma saw a bit of a slump from 2016 to 2018.

That continued in 2019 in the North Coast. In February 2019, the Russian River area experienced severe flooding which deterred visits. In October, a combination of fires and Pacific Gas & Electric “Public Safety Power Shutoffs” curtailed interest in tasting rooms again. If it weren’t for these events, said Chris Puppione, director of sales and hospitality at Passalacqua Winery in Sonoma, Calif., their visitor numbers would likely have been on par with the prior year; but it’s not all bad news.

“We had a great 2019,” he said. “Even with the rolling blackouts, with the flooding at the beginning of the year, with the fire at the end of the year, we still had a very strong 2019. We managed to do really well in the tasting room all the same. Plenty of people had really good years in 2019 also.”

California wineries reported that visitation was up 6.5 percent on average in 2019 (see F I G U R E 2 ) , an increase fueled by growth in tasting room visitation on the Central Coast, according to WISE Academy founder Lesley Berglund.

ALL WINERIES

Between Jan 2019 & Dec 2019

16,308

Between Jan 2018 & Dec 2018

15,070 8%

Growth Rate

CA

Between Jan 2019 & Dec 2019

15,038

Between Jan 2018 & Dec 2018

14,123 6.5%

Growth Rate

PAC NW

Between Jan 2019 & Dec 2019

15,927

Between Jan 2018 & Dec 2018

13,183 20.8%

Growth Rate

REST OF U.S.

Between Jan 2019 & Dec 2019

18,841

Between Jan 2018 & Dec 2018

17,872 5.4%

Growth Rate

SOURCE: 2020 WBM TASTING ROOM STUDY

“If you talk to local tourism offices, overall, tourism is up,” Berglund said.

“Pre-COVID, what was happening was that as the escalation of the guest experience has occurred—meaning longer experiences, more expensive, the addition of food and wine pairings—people were no longer cramming in six winery visits in a day. They might only visit three, but they’re still spending a lot. It’s more competitive for sure, but this trend doesn’t mean death of the tasting room, it doesn’t mean death of tourism.”

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WBM July 2020 77

2020 Tasting Room Study: Results Show Opportunities for Growth Over the last few years, the Tasting Room Survey has shown a move toward more casual and formal seated tastings, rather than a more traditional bar format—a move that encourages guests to remain on property longer and provides the potential for greater brand engagement. While, yes, this means that the number of visitors is lower, it has also resulted in higher average order values (AOV) and higher wine club conversion rates. This has allowed highly attentive and individualized hospitality, something Puppione has attributed to the growth at the winery.

“The best thing you can do for your customer, for your guest, for the people in your life is to help them tell their story by giving them a genuine ear. Boy, it’s amazing what comes out. That’s where real engagement happens,” he said.

“That’s what’s missing. If you’re delivering that in your tasting room, if you’re delivering that in your virtual tastings, in your telesales, whatever it may be, that’s where you’re going to win.”

Up in the Pacific Northwest, tasting rooms saw even larger growth in tasting room visitor numbers, a 20.8 percent increase for 2019.

“Oregon in general was still seeing robust increases in our sales in all channels, both direct-to-consumer and off-premise,” said Tracy Timmins, vice president consumer sales at Stoller Wine Group, based in Dayton, Ore. “I think that Oregon has finally solidified our place in the wine world and was experiencing, year-over-year, large growth. And this was not only true to some of the large direct-to-consumer programs like Stoller, but it was also being seen in the smaller tasting rooms throughout the state.”

Berglund agreed, stating Oregon winery tourism and sales are “absolutely on fire,” with growth even escalating.

Across the rest of the country, wineries saw a healthy 5 percent increase to tasting room visitation, averaging more visitors per year than those on the West Coast. How this will change considering COVID-19-related social distancing and new requirements is yet to be seen, though most think that tourism will bounce back, if slowly.

WINE CLUB ATTRITION

Respondents to the 2020 Tasting Room Study reported strong growth in wine clubs (see F I G U R E 3 ). At first glance, 5 percent growth for California clubs seems small but, as Berglund said, these are older clubs and the growth is off a larger base.

FIGURE 3

How many active club/loyalty members did you: Avg Have at the beginning of 2019?

358

Acquire in 2019?

ALL WINERIES

269

Lose in 2019?

Have at the beginning of 2020?

7%

Growth Rate Have at the beginning of 2019?

446

Lose in 2019?

357

Have at the beginning of 2020?

1,749 20% 5%

Growth Rate Have at the beginning of 2019?

REST OF U.S.

1,660

Acquire in 2019?

Attrition Rate

PAC NW

1,373 20%

Attrition Rate

CA

1,285

1,140

Acquire in 2019?

320

Lose in 2019?

190

Have at the beginning of 2020?

1,271

Attrition Rate

15%

Growth Rate

11%

Have at the beginning of 2019?

565

Acquire in 2019?

182

Lose in 2019?

116

Have at the beginning of 2020?

630

Attrition Rate

18%

Growth Rate

12% SOURCE: 2020 WBM TASTING ROOM STUDY

“As the clubs get bigger and bigger you’re not going to have this exponential growth rate, whereas in the Pacific Northwest, they were really underdeveloped on club a few years ago and have made great inroads there—a growth rate of 11 percent makes sense,” she said. “But let’s be clear, California is still acquiring new members at a large rate, larger than the Pacific Northwest on average by winery.”

Attrition is also operating at a healthy rate, though she added this could change. “A recession is all but upon us. Attrition rates have not been high, and the rate of ‘on-holds’ is not unreasonable yet, but it will start happening,” she said. “As an industry, if we can crack the code of how we can use virtual tastings and phone sales to also sign up new club members it could be a game-changer.”

78 July 2020 WBM

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The distribution of sales across the various DTC channels has, by and large, not changed much at all since 2015 (F I G U R E 4 ). While e-commerce has emerged as its own channel, it still accounts for less than 10 percent of direct-to-consumer sales. For now (or at least pre-COVID), the tasting room and wine club are the main sales drivers as a percentage of total DTC. F I G U R E 4 What percentage of your direct-to-consumer sales in 2019 were made through these channels?

ALL WINERIES

2019

2015

Visitor Center/Tasting Room

49%

47%

Wine Club/Loyalty Members

32%

33%

Onsite Events

6%

8%*

Offsite Events

4%

*

Telesales

2%

7%*

E-Commerce

8%

*

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Mich artifa colle Franc Cana Mike wine “View stayi

SOURCE: 2020 WBM TASTING ROOM STUDY

See 357 images of the corkscrews: www.bullworks.net/Papay.pdf View a 2017 Las Vegas exhibit on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BxRimLH36E

WINERIES - ADD A WORLhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXVvom3ygbU D CSeeLMike’s ASSappearance ATTRAonCPawn TIOStars: N $250,000 WORTH OF INTRIGUE BY SEPTEMBER SIMPLE/FAST/LITTLE START UP COST! BRING IN AN EXTRA 50 -100 CUSTOMERS PER DAY BE ONE STEP AHEAD OF YOUR COMPETITION! WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO LOSE? MAKE A N O F F ER !

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For further details about the collection and help setting up your “museum” email Mike Papay at mpapay2@gmail.com or call him at 1-904-557-3422 See 357 images of the corkscrews: www.bullworks.net/Papay.pdf

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WBM July 2020 79

2020 Tasting Room Study: Results Show Opportunities for Growth FIGURE 5

made via:

In 2019, what was the average dollar value of orders

Geo/Case Size

ALL WINERIES

CA

PAC NW

REST OF U.S.

In California, wineries see some wider distribution of total DTC sales between the tasting room (40 percent), wine club (41 percent), events (7 percent), telesales (3 percent) and e-commerce (10 percent). The same holds true in the Pacific Northwest where tasting room sales account for 48 percent of all sales, wine club 34 percent, events 8 percent, telesales 1 percent and e-commerce 9 percent.

However, across the rest of the United States, tasting rooms account for 67 percent of all DTC sales, with wine clubs accounting for only 14 percent and events 15 percent, showing what could be considered an over-reliance on the tasting room channel. Most of the responding wineries were not actively engaged in phone sales, and e-commerce accounted for just 5 percent.

Where it gets interesting is when you compare the sales distribution to the average order value of each type of purchase (see F I G U R E 5 ).

“If this was an individual winery and they showed me these average order values, I would say that the fact that the tasting room average order value is so much lower than telesales and web means that their tasting room sales skills (or lack thereof) might be dragging down the average order value,” Berglund said. “Consumers left to their own devices when shopping online are spending $160 but when they’re in the tasting room and spending $95, that means likely the person at the tasting room is saying ‘So would you like to take a bottle home with you today?’”

She said this unintentional depression of sales, sometimes supported by a tasting room’s programming, leads to one- or two-bottle purchases. Wineries that waive the tasting fee with only one or two bottles (or a dollar equivalent that is less than their AOV), further suppress the number. With telesales and e-commerce, programming, particularly around shipping deals, can encourage customers to increase the number of bottles per order.

The data shows that there are some real opportunities to build other channels, and some of the fuel necessary to drive that change may have come from public health and safety quarantines.

80 July 2020 WBM

500,000+

50,000-499,000

5,000-49,999

1,000-4,999

Avg Visitor Center/Tasting Room

$95

Wine Club/Loyalty Members

$203

Onsite Events

$195

Offsite Events

$68

Telesales

$162

E-Commerce

$160

Visitor Center/Tasting Room

$123

Wine Club/Loyalty Members

$234

Onsite Events

$197

Offsite Events

$114

Telesales

$247

E-Commerce

$200

Visitor Center/Tasting Room

$89

Wine Club/Loyalty Members

$251

Onsite Events

$176

Offsite Events

$120

E-Commerce

$171

Visitor Center/Tasting Room

$52

Wine Club/Loyalty Members

$89

Onsite Events

$203

Offsite Events

$32

Telesales

$20

E-Commerce

$72

Visitor Center/Tasting Room

$73

Wine Club/Loyalty Members

$125

Onsite Events

$30

Offsite Events

$0

Telesales

$100

E-Commerce

$222

Visitor Center/Tasting Room

$104

Wine Club/Loyalty Members

$171

Onsite Events

$528

Offsite Events

$5

Telesales

$238

E-Commerce

$170

Visitor Center/Tasting Room

$118

Wine Club/Loyalty Members

$243

Onsite Events

$251

Offsite Events

$98

Telesales

$225

E-Commerce

$201

Visitor Center/Tasting Room

$78

Wine Club/Loyalty Members

$190

Onsite Events

$86

Offsite Events

$67

Telesales

$86

E-Commerce

< 1,000

$49

Telesales

$123

Visitor Center/Tasting Room

$84

Wine Club/Loyalty Members

$148

Onsite Events

$72

Offsite Events

$40

Telesales

$40

E-Commerce

$121 SOURCE: 2020 WBM TASTING ROOM STUDY

COVID Presents New Opportunities to Funnel Sales Perhaps the greatest lesson taken from the results of the tasting room survey is that the e-commerce, telesales and newly created virtual tasting channels present real opportunities to build stronger and more well-rounded DTC programs. F I G U R E 6 .

After shelter in place and lockdown orders, your online DTC business has: FIGURE 6

%

ALL WINERIES

Increased > 20%

48%

Increased by 10-20%

12%

Increased by 0-10%

9%

Stayed the same

8%

Decreased by 0-10%

4%

Decreased by 10-20%

3%

Decreased by more than 20% Total

CA

48%

Increased by 10-20%

16%

Increased by 0-10%

10%

Stayed the same

6%

Decreased by 0-10%

5%

Decreased by 10-20%

3%

Total

PAC NW

12% 100%

Increased > 20%

53%

Increased by 10-20%

10%

Increased by 0-10%

8%

Stayed the same

5%

Decreased by 0-10%

5%

Decreased by 10-20%

3%

Decreased by more than 20% Total Increased > 20%

REST OF U.S.

16% 100%

Increased > 20%

Decreased by more than 20%

16% 100% 47%

Increased by 10-20%

7%

Increased by 0-10%

9%

Stayed the same Decreased by 0-10% Decreased by 10-20% Decreased by more than 20% Total

Now that consumers have, essentially, gotten used to ordering online, even if only out of necessity, e-commerce is something more wineries should invest time and energy into.

“Even before all of this I would have told you we’re not putting enough emphasis on e-commerce as an industry as a whole anyway,” said Puppione.

“You didn’t need to burn down my home to help me realize that. I didn’t need to be at risk of a pandemic to know that.”

As he pointed out, the importance and success of e-commerce has been touted around the conference circuit for years, but the industry, in general, has been slow to change. “Well, now we got locked in our houses and locked out of our tasting rooms. We didn’t have a choice but to change,” he said.

“To that end, am I saying tasting rooms are totally obsolete? Not at all.

People still want to be seen. People still want to go to beautiful places. They want to experience new things,” said Puppione. “What you do need to do is give them the opportunity to love you even when they can’t come see you.”

15% 1% 1% 21% 100% SOURCE: 2020 WBM TASTING ROOM STUDY

The survey was launched in the early weeks of shelter-in-place, but 69 percent of all wineries reported growth in e-commerce in the days following lockdown orders—“pantry-loading” wasn’t just for off-premise brands. Only 8 percent reported stagnant web sales and 23 percent saw declines. Wineries producing less than 5,000 cases were more likely to report decreased web sales.

Some managers have reported e-commerce sales increases of 100, 200 or even 300 percent, according to Berglund. She added that those that had invested the time in building a strong online presence—through their websites, shopping carts, mailing lists and social media—prior to quarantines tended to do better than others and that wineries that have focused on capturing contact data from their guests were, and will continue to be, at an advantage. Through COVID, they had names to send emails to and to call, Berglund said.

The Pivot Owing to the circumstances surrounding quarantines during the study’s response time, we asked about some of the measures wineries had taken to maintain DTC programs and redeploy employees where possible.

One of the most overwhelmingly popular options was the drive-through, or curbside pick-up. Eighty-seven percent of California winery respondents, 94 percent of Pacific Northwest wineries and 87 percent of all other wineries adopted the technique. Its popularity was simple: It was one of the most low-cost and easiest to implement options, gave employees something to do, and did not cost wineries dollars on discounted or complimentary shipping.

“Basically overnight, we set up an option for our direct-to-consumer visitors to come and still pick-up wine in the drive through, and that was quite successful,” said Timmins. “Overall, those wineries that were able to keep some semblance of the sales force, either by providing curbside pickup, or operating through shipments and online or phone sales, weathered through OK, us included. We were fortunate that we didn’t have to lay off any of our full-time workers, whether in the tasting room or any of the other areas of our business throughout the two months that we were closed down.”

It didn’t stop wineries from looking into other options, like case sales, discounts on bottle purchases or shipping, or even hand delivery to locals, but it did become an appealing option for local members or loyalists looking for an excuse, any excuse, to get out of the house and go for a drive.

WBM July 2020 81

2020 Tasting Room Study: Results Show Opportunities for Growth TELESALES

Only 18 percent of wineries have had a phone sales process in place for a while, and a further 17 percent recently started a program. Berglund said that for the 64 percent of wineries who have not implemented telesales, there is potential for a huge upside. On average, respondents to the Tasting Room Study reported that 27 percent of right-party contact calls result in a purchase which, as previously shown, averages about $162.

How do you compensate employees for succesfully selling through telesales?

FIGURE 7

Avg Paid hourly - avg hourly rate

CA

Paid salary - avg annual salary Receive % of sales - % received Paid hourly - avg hourly rate

PAC NW

Paid salary - avg annual salary Receive % of sales - % received Paid hourly - avg hourly rate

REST OF U.S

Paid salary - avg annual salary Receive % of sales - % received

$20 $52,519 7% $16 $51,666 8% $11.18 $45,000 8% SOURCE: 2020 WBM TASTING ROOM STUDY

“Telesales is so underdeveloped and it really works,” Berglund said. “We’re missing 100 percent of the shots we’re not taking on the phone.”

For many wineries, phone sales became a more attractive channel under quarantine: employees could call from anywhere and customers were home and more likely to answer the call—many were feeling the effects of social distancing and were willing to pick up.

Berglund reported data from the WISE Outbound Phone Sales Mastery Course which, as of press time, had been taught five times since COVID-19 lockdowns began. As part of the coursework, students were required to make outbound calls for their wineries. On average, students saw average order values of $389 and right-party call conversion to sales rates of 47 percent (historically, the average ran from 30 to 35 percent in this course).

Up in Oregon, Timmins experienced some of the same growth. “We also expanded to an old school call campaign coming out of both of our tasting rooms. My team members that normally would have been assisting guests at tables learned how to hone some phone skills, and we started managing our way through our databases,” she said. “Anybody that we had a phone number for that had a transactional history with us in the past 18 months or so was given a call to see how they were doing, if wine was part of their shelter-inplace to plans, and if our wine would be the wine they’d want to choose.”

For Puppione, the success of phone sales is not too much of a surprise.

“The interesting thing that I’m seeing is that the tasting rooms or the businesses that were employing certain principles before COVID were able to pivot and adapt really quickly in the time of COVID because they were already practicing certain things that made it possible for them to adapt,” said Puppione. “When you’re on the phone you have to listen. You can’t just rely on your eyes. Their words matter more than anything.”

82 July 2020 WBM

The Sixth Channel: Virtual Tastings

Looking to the Future

Personalized virtual tastings, whether held through Zoom, GoToMeeting or some other online conferencing or webinar platform, will continue to grow in prominence. Thirty-three percent of respondents to the Tasting Room Study offered one-on-one tastings with their customers; of those, 28 percent required the purchase of a special multipack, while 38 percent required no purchase at all. While some were not as enthused on the channel (“Zoom fatigue” ended up becoming a popular phrase), others saw the benefits immediately.

“Let’s be honest, conference calls are not fun. But what’s the best topic in the world? Talking about the things you love and you care about. All of a sudden that call becomes a lot more interesting when I become more curious about who you are,” Puppione said. “There are people who are joining my club who might never come and see our winery. They may never step foot into my winery. It’s just not in the cards for them but they’re joining my club because we did a virtual tasting, they loved the wines, they loved the engagement, and they love that they can be connected that way. I think that having a different platform or modality in order to reach people is huge.”

In total, when accounting for one-on-one as well as live social media tastings, 27 percent of the respondents are providing virtual tastings without a purchase, instead preferring to use the opportunity to engage with new and existing customers. While the survey did not ask which platform the virtual tasting would be held on, many found that social media became a great channel broaden reach.

For many wineries, the last two months have served as a testing ground, as many dipped their toes in the water and took note of what their competitors did and whether they succeeded or failed. Once DTC managers have had a chance to think through the programming, flow and choreography—in the same way one would design a tasting room experience— virtual tastings will be here to stay. Berglund says a silver lining of COVID-19 is the birth of this sixth DTC channel (joining tasting room, wine club, online and phone).

While overall DTC growth was healthy this year, the results showed true opportunity; whether it’s in new tactics to increase the average order value in the tasting room or to diversify with e-commerce and phone sales opportunities, where the average order value is higher on average.

Will the lessons the industry has learned from COVID-19 and the tasting room closures last? Berglund seems to think so. “COVID-19 is different.

When we come out of this, we will be stronger and better and eventually tourism will come back,” she said. “We can’t put all our eggs in one basket because we can’t control what happens.”

Stoller will continue many of the practices implemented this spring. “One of our big takeaways was to expand how we operate,” she said. “After the success we saw from things like the drive through and the virtual tastings and the call campaigns we know those are things that we should be doing all the time. We shouldn’t only be doing those out of necessity.”

Berglund also predicts the emergence of the “uber” tasting room employee as well. “There is going to be a subset of employee who can do it all, be it in the tasting room, on the phone, or in a virtual tasting. We’ve entirely eliminated the concept of downtime in the tasting room,” she said. “Those team members who embrace all three are so valuable and we’re going to fight over them as an industry. They’ll raise the bar on skill sets.”

And though we don’t know what the future could bring—true drops in tourism, a “second wave,” a recession, or something different—the DTC managers said that diversification and hospitality will win out.

For Timmins, success in the tasting room will continue if it’s all brought back to the relationship. “Our most successful point is that people feel valued as our guests. That the wine that we’re serving them and the story of our individual properties are secondary to why the guests are coming out to visit us,” she said. “If we all have hospitality is our number one priority and making sure that the guests are feeling welcome and appreciated just because they chose to come and visit us specifically, the sales are going to follow from there. If everybody keeps that that focus, sales are naturally just going to continue.” WBM

Methodology 2020 Wine Business Monthly Tasting Room and Wine Club Study.

The WBM study was conducted between April 30 and May 14, 2020. The survey sampled tasting room and direct to consumer management, as well as owners and marketing management at wineries with tasting rooms throughout the U.S. The responses were structured to enable reporting by winery size (annual production) and geographic location within the total universe of 10,550 U.S. wineries, allowing us to accurately report activities of the total market. Accepted statistical techniques were employed to allow segmentation as indicated in the data presented.

WBM July 2020 83

people

For people news you can search or filter visit winebusiness.com/people

Wineries & Winemaking Castle Rock Winery appointed Meghan Rech director of winemaking. In this role, she succeeds Eric Laumann, who has elected to retire. A graduate of UC Davis in Viticulture and Enology, Rech has 14 years of winemaking experience, most recently at Francis Ford Coppola Winery in Geyserville, where she had the position of winemaker. Castle Rock has its bonded winery at the Francis Ford Coppola facility, and one of her key roles has been to oversee Castle Rock’s wines there from the crushing of grapes to final bottling.

Graham Pierce joined the Kitsch Wines team as winemaker and general manager. Many know him as the winemaker behind Black Hills Estate Winery and its famous Note Bene, a Bordeaux-style blend with many prestigious awards under its belt. Pierce has a deep understanding of the Okanagan wine region alongside extensive experience in the business of operating a winery. This pairs with a lengthy and comprehensive viticulture and winemaking background.

He joined the Okanagan wine industry in the early 2000s when he joined Summerhill Pyramid Winery Graham Pierce as culinary director after many successful years spent in and around the Vancouver restaurant scene. At Summerhill he discovered a passion and interest in both winemaking and viticulture. While studying winemaking at Okanagan University College he worked as assistant winemaker at Mt. Boucherie Estate Winery before progressing to head winemaker in 2003. He worked at Black Hills Estate Winery in Oliver, BC for 10 very successful years before joining Time Winery as director of wine.

Gold Hill Winery owners and brothers Gurbachan and Sant Gill announced that Val Tait, co-owner of 2house Winery, joined their team as winemaker and viticulturist. The Gill family has been farming in the Okanagan Valley for almost 40 years providing the highest quality varietals to BC’s top wineries. With production of 3,500 cases, a new winemaking facility, and a growing loyal following, the timing couldn’t be better to enlist viticulture and winemaking expert Val Tait. Val trained in molecular genetics and plant biochemistry at SFU and went on to earn a degree in enology and vticulture from UC Davis, Napa, California. She has been a hands-on viticulturist in the Okanagan Valley for three decades and winemaker for two decades.

84 July 2020 WBM

Diamond Estates Wines & Spirits Ltd. announced that Geoff Kritzinger, CPA CA, joined the company as interim CFO in the wake of the news that Sean Byrne, who was appointed in this capacity last week, relinquished this role due to unforeseen personal reasons. Kritzinger has a long history with Diamond, dating back seven years when the company first went public.

He served as Diamond’s first CFO until July 2014 and has been involved with the company on a consultative basis for the past five years. Kritzinger has also served as the CFO for numerous TSX companies including Currie Rose Resources Inc. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto and was a partner in Shimmerman Penn LLP in Toronto.

Adelsheim Vineyard, one of Oregon’s founding wineries, announced that Rob Alstrin will take over the reins as the company’s president and CEO. Alstrin will take over all day-to-day operations, including vineyard and winery, financial, administrative, marketing and sales. Alstrin joins Adelsheim from Argyle Winery, where he was responsible for all business aspects of the Argyle brand from new product development, P&L, wholesale, DTC and expansion plans. Previously he was founder and owner of Northwest Core Collection, a national sales and marketing company representing several Oregon and Washington wineries such as Bergstrom, Penner-Ash, Bethel Heights, A to Z, and more. Alstrin will report to owner Lynn Loacker and the winery’s board of directors. Founder David Adelsheim remains active within the winery, especially in the areas of distribution, export sales, and shaping the legacy of the winery.

Gloria Ferrer named Mayacamas Olds as its first general manager. Olds will oversee operations, hospitality, DTC, marketing, winemaking, viticulture and sustainability. With a master’s degree in corporate sustainability management and passion for wine and sustainability, she will spearhead Gloria Ferrer’s sustainability efforts. Olds’ comprehensive and diverse experience ranges from viticulture and sustainability to business management at iconic organizations including Napa Valley’s Newton Vineyards and Diageo Chateau & Estate Wines. She also has great ties with the community as a member of Napa Valley Grape Growers and of the Mayacamas Volunteer Fire Department Board.

Sullivan Rutherford Estate announced new developments at the historic Napa Valley estate, founded in 1972. Since acquiring the property in early 2018, Juan Pablo Torres Padilla, managing partner, has quietly assembled one of the valley’s most impressive leadership groups, which includes general manager Joshua Lowell, estate director Lisa Barker-Mullen, vineyard manager Mike Wolf and national sales director Daniel Horsch.

Jeff Cole, who joined as winemaker in 2013 under the tutelage of Scott McLeod, continues as winemaker.

people Joseph Phelps Vineyards named Kim Beto vice president, sales following the retirement of current vice president of sales, Mike McEvoy. Prior to joining Joseph Phelps Vineyards, Beto served as vice president of key accounts in Northern California for Southern Glazers Wine & Spirits, working closely with restaurants, hotels, and retailers over the past sixteen years. Beto began his career in the Bay Area as a restauranteur/owner of 231 Ellsworth Kim Beto Restaurant in San Mateo, followed by a general management and wine director role at Postrio with the Wolfgang Puck Group in San Francisco, where he met Joe Phelps. His career journey next led to a complex role as food and beverage director at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas before joining Southern Glazers Wine & Spirits in 2004 where he held several key roles with progressively increasing responsibility and influence.

Kevin Travis joined Star Lane & Dierberg Vineyards as vice president, sales and marketing. In this role, Travis will oversee the company’s sales and marketing efforts, including wholesale and retail sales. He will report to Tyler Thomas, president and director of winemaking. Travis brings extensive sales and leadership experience to Star Lane & Dierberg. Most recently he was brand manager for Buccella, a Napa Valley winery. Prior to Buccella, Travis served in a general manager or beverage director role for a variety of top-flight restaurants in Los Angeles and Hawaii.

Revel Spirits announced that award-winning actor, producer and director Justin Hartley has joined the organization as partner. Trailblazing a new path in the world of agave spirits, Revel Spirits has introduced a completely new category called Avila, one that joins the likes of tequila, mezcal, sotol and baconora. Hartley brings incredible energy and passion to the organization and will be working alongside its CEO and Founder, Micah McFarlane. Together, they’ll be further raising awareness of not only its premier brand, REVEL Avila®, but the larger movement of expanding the horizons of consumers when it comes to what it is they drink and what it is they know about one of Mexico’s most famous exports.

Distributors, Importers & Retailers LibDib, the web-based wholesale alcohol distributor, announced that wine and spirits industry veteran Rob Foss joined the company as the new vice president of revenue. Foss joins LibDib after 22 years of experience at Young’s Market Company, where he most recently served as the vice president of digital commerce. While at Young’s, Foss directed company-wide design and development, and launched their B2B e-commerce sales platform which generated $2 million in e-commerce sales in the first year.

He also provided customers with access to account information, dramatically reducing the number of phone inquiries.

Drizly Group, parent company of Drizly and Lantern, an alcohol e-commerce marketplace and the first on-demand cannabis e-commerce company in Massachusetts, respectively, announced three additions to its leadership team. They are Cathy Lewenberg, formerly of CVS Health, who serves as chief operating officer at Drizly; Meredith Mahoney, a veteran of Wayfair, named president of Lantern; Deborah Poole, another Wayfair alumna, who has joined Drizly Group’s board of directors. The company also named in-house counsel Jaci Flug, a regulated consumer products legal expert, as general counsel for Drizly Group.

START HERE. GO ANYWHERE. Allan Hancock College offers degrees and certificates in agribusiness where students study viticulture and enology in the college’s beautiful vineyard and fully-bonded winery on California’s Central Coast.

For information contact:

akoch@hancockcollege.edu 1-805-922-6966 ext. 3760 www.hancockcollege.edu

86 July 2020 WBM

The wine industry has trusted Kennedy Jenks for professional environmental engineering services since the 1950s. We specialize in providing cost-saving, sustainable solutions to meet winery needs.

OUR SERVICES INCLUDE: Wastewater Water Supply Storm Water Solid Waste

Facility Planning Design Construction Management Hazardous Materials

e: BobChrobak@KennedyJenks.com t: 415.243.2150 www.KennedyJenks.com

Water/Energy Audits Air Emissions and Odors Regulatory Compliance Land-Use Permitting/CEQA

For people news you can search or filter visit winebusiness.com/people

In Memorium The Stewart family quietly celebrated the life of their father Richard “Dick” Stewart, who passed away at the age of 94. Dick was born in Kelowna on April 8, 1926, one of four children to Dick Sr. and Mary (Whitworth) Stewart. Growing up in a family that embraced others, generosity and support were values Dick upheld his entire life in the community, with his family and at the winery. After graduating UBC with a double major in agriculture and commerce, he worked in father’s business, Stewart Brothers Nursery, for 10 years before venturing out on his own. A natural visionary, Stewart purchased the former Allison Ranch property on Boucherie Road, West Kelowna in 1956 to fulfill his keen interest in grape growing. He proceeded to plant experimental grape varieties at the site which would go on to produce world class wines. Stewart was a founding member of the Association of British Columbia Grape Growers and member of the Grape Growers’ Marketing Board where he subsequently became its chairman. Interested primarily in grape growing, he encouraged his son Ben to establish Quails’ Gate Winery in 1989.

Industry Services & Suppliers Born and raised in the Napa Valley, Steve Leveque has launched a new venture, Leveque Wine Consulting. Leveque is not only a winemaker, but also a viticulturist, spending significant time working in concert with vineyard managers and winemaking teams to produce exceptional grapes at an unparalleled level of quality. He honed his winemaking techniques during his 11-year tenure as winemaker at Robert Mondavi Winery, and also gleaned ideas from leading viticultural research and visionary collaborators including Michel Rolland. Leveque went on to work as executive vice president and winemaker of Chalk Hill Estate Winery in Sonoma where he handcrafted an award-winning portfolio from small-lot Bordeaux varietals and Chardonnay. Under Leveque’s direction, more than 200 of his wines have been rated 90-Points and above for HALL, WALT and BACA.

Susan Johnson joins Bucher Vaslin North America as area sales manager for Sonoma, Mendocino and Lake counties. With 28 years of sales management experience in the wine industry, Johnson is known for her commitment to the wine industry and her ability to develop viable solutions for her customers while offering impeccable customer service. At Bucher Vaslin North America, Johnson focuses on offering the vast array of winemaking solutions, including Bucher Vaslin equipment, Cazaux pumps, Costral bottling lines, CITF Alien optical sorting and Lamothe Abiet winemaking products.

Bouchard Cooperages, an international representative of premium oak barrels, casks and French oak barrel alternatives, as well as premium eggs, jarres and amphorae, welcomed Oscar Cervera to the team as a barrel and tank consultant, representing Bouchard Cooperages in Mexico. Through his current position as an independent representative at AEB Group, a leader in biotechnology products for the wine and beverage alcohol industry, Cervera has been successful in developing more than 40 customers in the wine, cider and tequila industries. Cervera is also a partner in a winery in Central Mexico: Vinos del Marques.

Gino Colangelo, president of Colangelo & Partners shared that industry veteran Felipe Gonzalez-Gordon joined the agency as chief operating officer and partner. Gonzalez-Gordon holds a B.S. in business management. He spent the earlier part of his career in the financial industry and with several entrepreneurial ventures before joining his family’s company, Gonzalez Byass, in 2001 (Felipe currently serves on the company’s Board of Directors). He worked for years developing international markets for Gonzalez Byass before leaving the family business and founding a consulting company, Parallel 36, to help clients develop routes to market in the U.S. His consulting company also helped find importers for clients, execute on and off-premise promotions, expand distribution and help companies place their brands in restaurants and retail. WBM

Aperity, Inc., a provider of data management and analytic solutions for supply chain partners, announced that beverage alcohol industry veteran Mario Gutierrez has joined the team as vice president of business development, responsible for developing the client growth strategy in Aperity’s growing beverage alcohol vertical. Gutierrez has more than 20 years of research and data experience working to ensure client success at CPG manufacturers, and specifically, beverage alcohol suppliers and distributors, much of it spent at Nielsen. Having first become enamored with the beverage alcohol industry while helping to run the family wine shop, he brings a unique and innovative perspective to clients through his years of experience working with big data. In his tenure at Nielsen, Gutierrez held a number of increasingly senior roles and most recently led the Nielsen TDLinx team where he created the product’s first beverage alcohol “Roundtable” – a gathering of key suppliers and distributors to discuss the challenges facing the industry in an increasingly data-driven world.

Legal Counsel to the Beverage Industry • Applications for ABC and TTB licenses • Distribution agreements & direct shipping advice for all states • ABC and TTB Business Practice Counseling • Accusation, Defense and Protest Hearing Representation • Regulatory clearance of promotions, point-of-sale material, labels and advertising ATTORNEYS: John Hinman Beth Aboulafia Rebecca Stamey-White Erin Kelleher Sara Mann Adie Sherwood

260 California Street, Suite 700 San Francisco CA 94111 Telephone 415.362.1215 Facsimile 415.362.1494

Gillian Garrett Barbara Snider

beveragelaw.com

WBM July 2020 87

advertiser index Thank you to all of our advertisers!

Company

web address

page

Company

web address

page

ACIC Cork and Closures

www.acicclosures.com

43

Gallo Glass Co.

www.galloglass.com

41

Acrolon Technologies, Inc.

www.acrolon.com

34

Guala Closures North America

www.gualaclosures.com

53

Admeo, Inc.

www.admeo.us

Gusmer Enterprises

www.gusmerwine.com

AgCode, Inc.

www.agcode.com

61

Hinman & Carmichael, LLP

www.beveragelaw.com

87

Ager Tank & Equipment Co.

www.agertank.com

34

Iron Heart Canning Co.

www.ironheartcanning.com

70

AgFast Corp.

www.agfast.com

61

Kennedy/Jenks Consultants, Inc.

www.kennedyjenks.com

86

Allan Hancock College

www.hancockcollege.edu/ viticulture/

86

La Garde

www.lagardeinox.com

Amcor American Canyon, LLC

www.amcor.com

29

Laffort USA

www.laffortusa.com

51

American AgCredit, CoBank, Farm Credit West, Northwest Farm Credit Services

www.farmcreditalliance.com

59

Michael Papay Collections

mpapay2@gmail.com

79

Amorim Cork America

www.amorimca.com

Napa Fermentation Supplies

www.napafermentation.com

46

ARS/SWASH Sanitizing Equipment

www.swashequipment.com

60

Oenofrance USA, LLC

www.oenofrance.com

30

ATPGroup

www.atpgroup.com

39

Portocork America

www.portocork.com

Barrel Associates International

www.barrelassociates.com

23

Quality Stainless Tanks

www.qualitystainless.com

Bergin Screen Printing and Etching

www.berginglass.com

Saverglass, Inc.

www.saverglass.com/en

Berkeley Brewing Science

www.bbsbeer.com

49

Scott Laboratories, Inc.

www.scottlab.com

11

Berlin Packaging

www.berlinpackaging.com

71

Shelco Filters

www.shelco.com

54

Bin to Bottle Winery

www.bintobottle.com

Sonoma Cast Stone

www.concretewinetanks.com

36

Blackstone Ventures

www.bsvtanks.com

Spec Trellising

www.spectrellising.com

60

Boswell Co.

www.boswellcompany.com

Spokane Industries

www.spokaneindustries.com

27

Bouchard Cooperages

www.bouchardcooperages.com

22

St. Patrickâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s of Texas

www.stpats.com

36

BSG Wine

www.bsgwine.com

30

StaVin, Inc.

www.stavin.com

21

Can Van

www.thecanvan.com

68

Tonnellerie Quintessence

www.tonnelleriequintessence.fr

19

Carlsen & Associates

www.carlsenassociates.com

40

True Brands

www.truebrands.com

77

Castoro Bottling Co.

www.castorobottling.com

70

Unitech Scientific

www.unitechscientific.com

54

CDR s.r.l.

www.cdrfoodlab.com/ analysis-systems/cdrwinelab/

39

VA Filtration USA

www.vafiltration.com

28

Central Coast Insights

www.centralcoastinsights.com

56

Vintuitive Winemaking Tools, LLC

www.vintuitivewmt.com

50

Clearwater Tech, LLC

wine.cwtozone.com

17

Waterloo Container Co.

www.waterloocontainer.com

69

CO2 Meter, Inc.

www.co2meter.com

35

Western Square Industries, Inc.

www.westernsquare.com

25

ColloPack Solutions

www.collopack.com

91

Wine Packaging Conference

www.wbmpack.com

73

DeLaval Cleaning Solutions

www.cleaningsolutions. delaval.com

47

Winejobs.com

www.winejobs.com

85

ETS Laboratories

www.etslabs.com

92

Wines & Vines Directory/Buyerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Guide

www.winesvinesanalytics.com/ order

55

Free Flow Wines

www.freeflowwines.com

67

WiVi Central Coast

www.wivicentralcoast.com

56-57

GAI America Inc.

www.gai-america.com

72

World Cooperage

www.worldcooperage.com

20

Zenport Industries

www.zenportindustries.com

61

88 July 2020 WBM

35,45

9

7

32,33 24 22,23

24,40,46,51

5

3 31 2

winemaker of the month Jeff Pisoni, winemaker, Fort Ross Vineyard & Winery, Sonoma, CA

“I always read Wine Business Monthly and see it as an amazing resource for the wine industry. It is the go-to reference when one is looking for a new piece of equipment, packaging or other technical matters. There is always a comprehensive article on whatever topic I search for, written in such a practical way for winemakers to make the best decision. We bought a new destemmer in 2018.

When I started my research, the first place I looked was Wine Business Monthly.”

WINERY NAME AND LOCATION: Fort

Ross Vineyard & Winery was founded

by Linda and Lester Schwartz in 1994. The vineyard covers 33 different blocks and elevation ranges from 1,400 to 1,700 feet in the coastal mountains of the Fort Ross–Seaview AVA. ANNUAL CASE PRODUCTION: 5,000 PLANTED ACRES: 50 CAREER BACKGROUND: I’ve

made wine all my life. My family background is farming, and my father, Gary Pisoni, started growing grapes when I was three years old—which is when my brother and I started helping stomp grapes. At the time, he was also making wine at home and introducing me to winemaking. I loved everything about it then and still do today: the aromas and flavors, the science, the geology, the art, the history, the mystery. I went on to study at CSU Fresno and earn my enology degree.

It’s been a focused approach to winemaking all along. Now I make wine for both operations—my family business in Santa Lucia Highlands and Fort Ross Vineyard & Winery on the Sonoma Coast, in the Fort Ross–Seaview AVA, where I’ve been the winemaker since 2009. I think a lot of winemakers enjoy exploring, and I do, too. I love the fruit and these vineyard sites that I get to work with.

WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR BIGGEST PROFESSIONAL CHALLENGE? I

took over as head winemaker for my family’s wine brand (Pisoni Estate) when I was 22 years old. I was a bit nervous, to say the least! I had just finished school at Fresno State, carried out some wonderful internships, and was headed back to the family business to start working. While my family had farmed for generations and my father had made many vintages of wine, this was our first commercial wine label, so I felt even more pressure. One of my internships was at Peter Michael Winery, where we made our first couple vintages. I took copious notes during my internships and fortunately had relationships with some great winemakers that we had been selling grapes to. This all helped build a network of people to explore ideas with.

Given my age, I was probably less aware of the pressure in that role. I remember being particularly paranoid about stuck fermentations. I would watch those tanks close—Brix and microscope checks twice daily!

VARIETIES THAT YOUR WINERY IS KNOWN FOR: Fort

Ross is known for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. This is 95 percent of our production and a natural fit given the climate. The only other variety is a small slice of Pinotage. The owners are from South Africa and brought the proprietary clones overseas when they first planted the vineyard. It’s a fun grape to work with and tells a special part of their journey in making wine here in Fort Ross–Seaview.

WBM July 2020 89

Day by Day A D E L I G H T F U L G E N T L E B R E E Z E dances in spurts across our porch as Jake Lorenzo marvels at the pristine sound quality oozing from my outside speakers. I know that this success has more to do with the DeoxIT D100 that cleaned the contacts on my 20-year old amplifier than anything I did, but I feel a sense of accomplishment, nevertheless. Danny Gatton’s soaring guitar fills the air and this detective sips a very seductive 2017 Vignerons des Terres Secretes Macon Verze. Isolation could be a lot worse than this.

The sun is shining, and the garden is bursting with blooms. Irises, roses and Peruvian lilies are dominating the scene, but various Japanese maples and Green Goddess lilies provide a dramatic backdrop. My vegetable garden is starting to take off as I harvest the last of the fennel, cilantro and arugula. If I find a few more tomato plants, some chile peppers and Japanese cucumbers, I should be set.

Yesterday, Jake Lorenzo opened the door to find a box sitting on my front porch. I tore the box open, flailing at the bubble wrap and styrofoam popcorn, until it looked like Christmas Day after the grandkids had finished unwrapping their presents. I carefully removed the six-pack box of Ron Cooper’s Del Maguey Mezcal buried in the filling. Opening the six-pack revealed more bubble wrap, but with careful, patient work I was able to extract three pristine bottles of mezcal, three collapsed water bottles partially filled with mezcal samples identified by hand-written notations, and a lovely hand-woven basket filled with ceramic discs for sipping mezcal.

gorgeous stars pretending to be detectives or murderers, and their crimes are truly twisted. Mostly, I love the daily life touches, like the detective who pulls up to a drive-thru window and orders a roasted goat’s head for dinner. We watched the Valhalla Murders and discovered you never want to be a police officer in Iceland. Those poor people get the crap beat out of them by the bad guys every week.

It is inspiring to see how people are adapting to this ongoing shelter-inplace stuff. Neighbors who had those little library boxes that they filled with books for people to take have switched over to free canned goods and staples.

This detective was so motivated that I constructed a brightly painted cubicle and affixed it to my fence next to our mailbox. I titled it Jake’s Liquor Store and offered free bottles of wine and tequila, but within hours, I realized there was no way to keep up with demand, so like most of my chef friends, I had to shutter my business. Now I am just waiting for the neighborhood kids to tag the thing.

For us, the high point of the day remains deciding what to eat, preparing the meal and selecting the wines to accompany the food. Jake Lorenzo does his prep work, selects a white wine and moves to the porch to listen to music while I wait for Jakelyn’s mother to complain that she is hungry, which means it is time to fire the meal. While I am waiting, I select one friend to call each evening and we will have a nice chat getting caught up, reminiscing about past experiences. I limit myself to one call figuring that since we are all staying home, we don’t have much to talk about.

Since this detective refuses to discuss politics, Trump or the virus and I know full well that no one likes to hear about what I am cooking and drinking unless I have invited them over to share it, the calls could get redundant unless I space them out.

So far, I have successfully resisted most forms of social media. I have never used Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat or Zoom. I only watch YouTube when I am looking for music or to learn cooking techniques. LinkedIn has something to do with finding work, and Jake Lorenzo is opposed to most work on general principles. My friends think this abhorrence for social media is ridiculous.

Maybe so, but this detective still reads real books, listens to CDs and vinyl record albums, and I prefer a corkscrew to a screw top unless I am in some wilderness area in desperate need of wine. The last thing I want to do is watch you on my telephone while I am trying to drink. Jake Lorenzo is a private eye, and one thing I know for sure is you don’t want recorded evidence of any kind around if you can help it, especially when you’ve been drinking.

I am a firm believer in this shelter in place. Fortunately, we have a very nice place in which to take shelter. That said, Jake Lorenzo is a social animal. I have researched this as best I can. I have checked with Dr. Iggy Calamari and discussed it with Chuy Palacios. We have all been locked down for six full weeks. This afternoon Chuy is coming over. We will sit in the back yard about 10 feet apart (to maintain social distancing) while we share a good bottle of wine. It will be social, but without media. Is there risk involved? Possibly, but we have determined it is minimal and feel it is worth the risk to maintain our mental health.

We also remember that in case of emergency, you should start with the oldest vintages first. WBM

We also remember that in case of emergency, you should start with the oldest vintages first.

Jake Lorenzo met Ron Cooper just after he started his Del Maguey Mezcal Company. We spent time together in Oaxaca several times. I visited him in Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico where he lived, and he came to Sonoma more than once. We had a lot in common. We enjoyed travel, eating and drinking and had a great appreciation for Mexican culture and tradition. I loved sipping his mezcals with him and he enjoyed sucking down bottles of wine with me. We were surprisingly good friends for six or seven years but hadn’t done much beyond an occasional email for the past 15 years. Out of the blue, he contacted me two weeks ago looking for wine. I sent some and was now reaping reciprocal benefits. In this COVID-19 world any diversion is welcome.

Jakelyn’s mom has two of her looms warped up and shifts her weaving between them. Jake Lorenzo has no idea what she is making. The weavings are way too long to be masks unless she is making masks for elephants. She weaves and works in the garden, but most of her time is spent watching foreign detective programs. Her favorites are English like Father Brown, Vera, and Death in Paradise. Those are a bit treacly for me, but I can handle Luther.

I get intrigued with Scandinavian whodunnits. There is something so cold and foreboding about the settings. The actors look like real people instead of

90 July 2020 WBM

ILLUSTRATION BY BOB JOHNSON

jake lorenzo

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E N H A N C I N G

C R A F T S I N C E

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