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This week-during a series of trade shows, a couple anecdotes were relayed to me, these are not about a specific rep, but general complaints, suggesting reps, plural. I don’t think I’d be betraying anyone’s confidence by passing them along-

• email-apparently, some reps don’t read their emails. THIS IS INSANE. This is the first thing you do in the morning and the last thing you do before you punch out. You do not need to respond to emails at 9pm, but you have 24 hours. I realize that if you are taking the time to read a blog (how very 2007 of you) about the wine business, you are probably caught up on your emails. If you are a sales manager or an office manager, and you want to find out if your reps are reading the IMPORTANT THINGS THAT THEY HAVE TO KNOW TO DO THEIR GODDAMNED JOB, WHILE THEY’RE DRINKING COFFEE IN THEIR PAJAMAS….you may want to consider a Brown M&M request. That is, bury something actionable and obvious inside of random emails, that are punitive by not reading. GOOD REPS READ THEIR EMAIL, EVERY ONE.

• Texting for orders-So, I’m chatting with a buyer I really like, and he runs a great venue with a dynamic and always changing wine program. His door is always open, he’s always engaged and enthusiastic, and he always buys. If he’s there and has time, he’ll take time to listen to you and support you and your products…IF YOU SHOW UP. He noticed a trend a few years ago, when reps started texting him asking if he was “good” this week. Since he usually buys enough for a run, he only reorders a few things. This is pretty key, knowing his buying habits. I know his buying habits and i might see him 5-6x/ year. This is basic stuff. He told me that his stock response USED to be-”No, thank you, I’m good this week”. Now, he doesn’t even respond. Obviously, things come up, this industry is great at recognizing the curveballs of life. However, if you text an account, and the response “no, I’m good this week”, its very possible they just gave your glass pour to the person that came to see them this week. I’m not saying you can’t text your buyers, but I’m saying that, use it as a last resort, unless the buyers needs or expects you to operate this way.

• Know when to shut it down-Suppliers need to take advantage of every waking minute of face time to connect with the team. Sometimes, that means NOT selling. If you are at a post event dinner, and everyone has finally loosened their ties and started enjoying themselves, take that as a cue to be an actual person. DO NOT talk to reps about sales numbers or goals or strategies or new products. Ask them about their family, what did they do over the summer, etc. This industry is filled with amazing people, if you can connect to them as a person, the rest will take care of itself.
  

What are we selling?

As salespeople, we all strive to develop that elevator pitch. That 2 min or less, explainer on a wine or a winery, that validates it. Before you taste the wine, after you look at the label, there needs to a narrative that brings those 2 elements together, and ultimately, this is the variable that makes a salesperson great, or not. We try to tell the quick story, if its compelling. We try to talk about the methods, if they’re compelling. We try to talk about the what makes the winery or wine unique, if it’s compelling.

So, when we talk about some of the short hand elements, they need to be rooted in something tangible, replicate-able and easily explained. We need to be well-versed in the nuances of sustainability vs Organic vs Biodynamic vs Natural. We also need to understand the “why”, because each buyer is going to have a different standard as to which they hold these wineries, arbitrarily, or not.

If we deign to be that conduit of information, we also need to be accurate. Throwing out some of the aforementioned terms may help you sell something, but if they are inaccurate, it is a massive disservice to the people that ACTUALLY do the things you are saying your producer does. It also confuses the issue for the buyer that is trying to find the through thread of a process in style (spoiler alert-there may not be one).

Further muddying things, may be the Headline grabbing article about 99% of Sonoma is now certified sustainable. That’s a pretty lofty achievement… or is it? First off-This is an incredibly important goal to strive for, especially with the part 2, set to address climate change and impact. BUT, what is their version of sustainable? To simplify, they took 4 existing sustainable standards (California Sustainable Winegrowing alliance, Fish Friendly Farming, Sustainability in Practice and Lodi Rules) and allowed the usage of “Sonoma Certified” if you meet the standards of ANY of these 4 certification programs. Critics argue that this allows for many pesticides that are considered NOT SUSTAINABLE, including Glyphosate (carcinogen) and neonicotinoid pesticides (shown to contribute to colony collapse).

This makes for a very nice press release, and again, it’s aspirations are laudable. The criticism I’d volley, is that, for something, this aspirational, shouldn’t the entire industry get onto the same page, before declaring any victories, at least agreeing to what the standards should be, industry-wide? Are the standards too low, that everyone can walk into certification within 5 years, i mean, there are a lot of wineries in Sonoma? I worry, when we tell the story of sustainability, it may stop being something important and specific. We need accuracy to tell the story, if the measures are heroic.

The thing you can't control

My son is a soccer player, and a fairly decent one. He is in the midst of his High School career. There is much fretting over his perceived ranking within the troupe of guys. Constant worries over JV/ Varsity, starting, not starting. Our repeating pep talk is some version of the following:"you can only control one thing, and that is you". While, that nugget of wisdom that could easily be turned into an ironic demotivation poster, and may not be revalatory, it is 100% true. Hierarchy is very important to a High Schooler and apparently to humans, as well as people in the wine industry.

Wine Sales is much like High School. I am not referring to maturity levels, although, I may circle back another day, on that topic. I'm really pointing out that competition is hierarchical. Sales people, pay a lot of attention to who is doing what, who is buying what, who hangs out with whom. While all of these may impact your sales, ultimately, they are out of your control. This is VERY frustrating. The temptation is to talk shit about competitors, spread rumors, speak of motivations. DO NOT DO THIS. This is a deeply complex business. You will rarely find yourself in a situation where it is a tug-of-war. All of your anger and energy is just being diffused into the cosmos with no impact other than you releasing it. OR, the impact has a direct negative effect, where it primarily damages your reputation, which, once again, begins  to slip out of your control. See-High School.

Imagine if Paul McCartney worried about people listening to things other than The Beatles. while they very well may be the greatest band in rock History, Sir Paul, can't possibly expect you, to only, consume their music. The reality is, the greatest band (arguably, happy to parking lot that conversation), only gets a portion of your attention and affection. Do the Beatles invalidate Radiohead?

As a wine rep, or supplier, or importer or distributor (or even a broker), you have a finite amount of things under your control. Spend 100% of your time spent worrying, worrying about those. 

Monoculture of the "C" grapes

I'm going to try to articulate a pretty out there accusation-we, as a community of distributors and suppliers, have painted domestic producers into a corner. We have done a lousy job of giving winemakers and grapes growers opportunities to evolve. After 200 or so years, the U.S. is still searching for its wine identity. There is no doubt that this is a closed loop system, where the consumers provide feedback and salespeople keep feeding them what they want, because, well, money.

This all, probably started, as American winegrowers first started seeing success. Perhaps the judgement of Paris set us on a course of Cab and Chard. The affirmation, made it seem like, the experimentation could cease. If you wanted to sell wine (for growing profits), you need to get rid of Grignolino, Montepulciano and Charbono. As a result, except for the twin towers of "C" , very few grapes have really punctured that conventional wisdom. The attrition of domestic grapes hasn't been by merit, by what people can pronounce, and more damning, by what we think we can sell.   We still really don't know if we have the right grapes in the right spots. As salespeople, we can empower the forces to figure this out. The utter bullshit of the red blend is a punctuation to what it represents-our very failure of allowing "other" as the hot category. This is what happens in the absence of wine literate.  Do you think winemakers WANT to follow the new world script? Of course they don't. When they tell us about their Trousseau or Muller-Thurgau, we give them a very funny look, and tell them to make it for the wine club. we don't allow them to experiment. There is NOW a fringe that is pushing the envelope.  A few have been doing it their entire careers. Its time we educate consumers,not to sell more wine, but to allow our friends to make the best wine possible. The tonic of education will empower U.S. wineries, to truly stand on equal footing to the Old World producers many of them they aspire to be.

Wine marketing playbook for the disinterested

Marketing is your first crack at showing professionalism, personality, creativity and attention to detail. It is not just a letterhead and business card, anymore. I am equally blown away by the creativity of some of my colleagues as I am, by some of my other colleagues lack of interest in the very word-marketing. Without getting too deep into the swamp, let's review some basics.

• Your brand(ing). You have a name, you may have a font and/or a logo. who designed those? How do they work together? Bigger is rarely better. A good rule of thumb-"as small as is instantly recognizable." 
• Marketing is NOT advertising.
• Marketing is company culture.
• PAY FOR DESIGNS-Artists don't want to "trade for exposure". The very best, will demand to be paid appropriately. Do this. It's worth it, so many times over.
• PAY FOR A MARKETING PROFESSIONAL-Hire someone with a marketing education. Sit them in your office, have them do the marketing. DO NOT hand this job off to the person that is least busy. This is an important job.
• Art does not equal a good logo or label. Stand in an art museum, notice how the canvases are huge? They aren't meant to fit in an area a few inches wide. Your sister is an artist? Great! That has nothing to do with wine marketing.
• Have a style guide-Colors, fonts, logo usage, language, etc. 
• Stop using Microsoft Word. Word Processing programs are NOT design programs. If you really want to do it the right way, invest in Adobe and learn how to use them.
• Pay for better paper and printing-attention to detail leaves a huge impression.
• Wine marketing does not have to evoke French Estates and all of the  Madison Ave clichés about wine, of the last 40 years.
• Figure out how to make your materials inclusive. Give as much information as possible.
• Pay attention to how your target consumes your marketing-printed materials don't equal social media. Price books should be available electronically in .pdf format
• Your website is a tool where your customers go looking for things-what are they looking for? Price lists? Sell Sheets? tech sheets? Make them available.
• Social Media-put yourself on a diet of <20% self promotion. If you want people to follow you, enjoy what you do and say, share usable content that reflects what you do, what you believe and who you are. Boring companies get blocked, snoozed and unfollowed.
• Allow multiple voices to post on your social media accounts-some reps are really only IG focused, some are twitter freaks-you may enlist them to flesh out your presence. 

This is really just a small rant list-it goes much deeper than this. Many of you need to understand what you don't yet know and find resources to help you out. Some of you are teaching me new things every day. At the end of the day, marketing is a great equalizer. You may not have the budget of larger competition, but for a minimal investment of time and money, you can compete at their level.

(Current) Failures of restaurant wine programs

I'm a restaurant guy, through and through. My first job was busing tables at age 15 and my last non-wine  sales, was as a Somm, and I did practically, nothing in between, but work in restaurants. I have great affection for this incredibly difficult business.

As I see it, there are 2 negative trends with wine programs today.

1) Wine is skipped over, in favor of Beer and Whiskey-I do love beer, and I also am quite fond of whiskey (and whisky). There are too many spots that focus all of their energy on these 2 categories, but completely ignore the wine. Even a relatively casual place that takes beer seriously, can and should, spend some of their energy on developing a wine program. How often do you find yourself looking over a 20 beer tap list and only see 5 wines offered, all of which you could easily find at a well stocked gas station? Some of us default to beer, because the wine program sucks.Solution-find 1 trustworthy vendor. You know the rep that sells you the gas station wine? That isn't your person. They have numbers to hit and you've been an easy mark. The craziest part? There is no cost difference between a well curated wine program and a Gas Station wine list.

2) Staff is under-trained-If you DO have a significant wine program, you have a greater degree of difficulty in regards to staff training. In very few cities, can you hire someone and assume they know the stuff they need to. If you invest in a large inventory and list, you need to spend some additional money making sure the staff knows their stuff. What does this look like?

• A staff that understands what a flaw is, and how to handle it
• ability to pronounce most of the list, properly
• knowledge of which wines on the list, refer to grapes vs. regions and which grapes or regions play a part in that wine.
• Weekly staff tasting/ training
• Someone on staff that checks all of the BTG on a consistent basis.
• teaching the staff to acquiesce that many of their customers, may very well, know more about a particular wine, than the staff, and to be humble in their knowledge. 

Neither of these should EVER be a barrier. A great wine program, can put you on the map, and more importantly, elevate a beverage program in ways that beer or booze cannot even touch.

The death rattle of small wineries in distribution?

Once upon a time, distributors experienced sales as a meritocracy. If you had the right fit for the right wine program, and you were a worthy business partner, you earned the sale.There was a safe place for fine wines from all over the world at all prices and at all production levels. These were the halcyon days of independent retail and family owned wineries.It may sound like a far away, sepia-toned, alternate reality, but it was just a scant 10 years ago.

If any of you have asked me how business is, you've gotten a very long answer. And on some level, that's just scratching the surface. 3 weeks away from ampelography's 9th birthday, here's the reality-I sold more cases in 2017, than I have in any other year, and 2018 is looking even better. That is all great news. I get to keep doing what I'm doing, my relationships have never been better or healthier, and I have a pretty predictable sales cycle. Here's where the news gets a little mixed-When I set out, I envisioned a multitude of rotating small family owned producers, along with some solid medium sized wineries and a bunch of imports. That felt like a well diversified mix. In 2018, I stand here with a couple of great import partners, a handful of great medium (medium for me, small for many distributors) sized producers, and very small handful of small producers remaining. While imports and medium sized producers are thriving, setting records each year, the small, <5k case production wineries have all but disappeared from my book. There are several reasons for this, some have sold, some have fully pulled out of distribution altogether, some haven't been successful. For me, personally, this is a gut punch. I really believe in the need for small wineries to gain exposure through distribution markets. During the last recession, one of the first expenses cut from wine drinkers' budget was wine clubs. I worry that the small wineries won't survive the next, inevitable recession. This is also frustrating, because, one of the reasons I started this business, was to champion those small producers. Unfortunately, the market has completely shifted. Here's where we are:

• Too many wineries, not enough distributors-alarming trends you can read about here. "The number of U.S. wineries has risen sharply recently, from around 1,800 in 1995 to 9,645 as of December 2017. Distributor counts, however, have gone in the opposite direction, shrinking from around 3,000 distributors in 1995 to around 1,150 or so today."
• Consolidation favors the people pulling the strings-As retiring, or leveraged, family owned and liquidating wineries sell, they are selling some idea of credibility to the giant wine sales factories, entrenching them further into the fine wine market. This is happening in craft beer as well. Those, once family owned wineries, are now being turned into a commodity. Fewer distributors give less bandwidth to the remaining, less cash rich wineries, leaving many stranded.
• Convenience Shopping-Large, chain grocers have been trying to figure out how to make their stores a one stop shop for years. The idea of "Grocery Store" wine has evolved. Now, mega marts have the appearance of being a fine wine shop as well, even though, every producer on the shelf is cranking out 100k+cs and being chosen by Nielsen data and not quality, 1000mi away.
• The erosion of the Fine Wine Merchant-see above. The corner Fine Wine Merchant used to be your source for the good stuff. Now, it's an extraneous stop.
• Changing restaurant wine programs-Thank you craft cocktail craze! Restaurants have shifted away from white tablecloth service and towards more casual upscale, chef-driven cuisine. Many promote cocktails and craft beer to feel more approachable. This has had an impact on wine sales, although, we are starting to see a shift back, slowly.
• A glut of leveraged, mediocre wine at the sub $20 category. Technology has allowed winemakers to make, uninspired, but not bad wine at a very low price point. Slap a funky label on it, and you give the illusion of something handmade. Inexperienced consumers may not realize what they're missing.

Here is my free advice

• Stake out your distribution channels. If you produce up to 3k cases, you really need 5+ good markets. Spend your time and money in a few concentrated markets
• Take the road less traveled. NY, CA, TX,FL, IL-yeah, that's the obvious shopping list, your time and money is probably better spent in smaller markets with less saturation. It's like baseball-hit 'em where they ain't.
• Choose the RIGHT distributor-If you get in bed with a big distributor, you won't matter unless you are a top 20 supplier, and YOU will NEVER be a top 20 supplier. Find a great distributor that has a great culture. Start by calling the most respected shops and restaurants., Find out how long most of their team has been in place. Don't be surprised if you don't get return calls. If you can't find the right people, look at another state.
• Find your people-Unless it's is your home market, you ABSOLUTELY need people on the streets fighting for you. This could be a broker, but more importantly, a brand manager, sales manager or just a great rep on the street. If you are a small winery, there are actual people behind it. we all want connections and hate selling corporate juice.Get to know the people, they will take care of you. 
• Understand what is happening on the streets. Distributors may be a barely better than break even proposition, but predictability and cash flow are pluses and can help give you leverage. Price to the market, don't price to what you think it's worth on the high end. 
• No one, and I mean no one, cares about medals. Few care about ratings anymore either.

We have a fight ahead of us. I'm not giving up. You shouldn't either.

Be a professional

A recently recurring theme-individuals in this business don't know how to act like a professional. I am hearing about this constantly. I'm not about to throw a generation under the bus either. It's not only the young people. It is all levels, all jobs, all ages. It's almost as if, the wine business isn't a career. The most obvious culprits are the buyers that have gotten a little fame or notoriety. I've also seen it with winery employees, distributors, sales reps. Here is a VERY short list that EVERYONE in this business needs to do every day.

• Return phone call/ emails.
• Be on time
• Communicate before things go wrong (stuck in traffic, dog got sprayed by skunk, etc)
• Keep appointments
• Respect everyone's time (including the competition that's waiting)
• Listen to needs of the people you work with
• Show professional courtesy to the colleagues of your clients (bussers, hosts, dishwashers)
• Don't get sloppy (drunk, flirty, gossipy)
• Respect order cutoffs AND reps non working hours
• Take responsibility for your mistakes
• Respect the bureaucracy of the company you are working with. Don't go over anyone's head unless its 100% necessary.
• Remember, you won't ALWAYS be this important. If you act like an ass now, you're be treated like one on the way back down.
• ALWAYS, thank people for their time and their business.

Reading a list is not an educational experience

"Wine X has been hand harvested, triple sorted, foot stomped, cold soaked, fermented on skins, aged for 22 months in 1yr old puncheons, no racking, no fining, all gravity flow. The grapes are grown biodynamically, are demeter certified. No enzymes, all native yeast, 20ppm sulfur only."

So-that's a list, and it's the sort of thing a rep may say during a sales call. It's almost like the more buzzy words you can fit into the 30 seconds while the client is tasting and possibly listing, the more effective you are. Do any of those terms you just whipped out mean anything to YOU? Have you ever made wine? I sure haven't. You may even know what they imply, but the deeper question is why did the winemaker & grape growers make those choices? In no reality is any version of the listing of steps, the correct. each winemaker is tuning the grapes and their resources. 

I drive my winemakers all around my territories, for hours at a time, and so, I get to also drive them crazy with questions. There is no consensus. I have spoken to some of the best winemakers on the planet, and they do not agree on everything. In each case, they are using THEIR best practices and in most cases, evolving. 

Be careful to not get caught up in the buzzy terms, instead, understand what each of those practices bring to the wine in that glass. Be prepared to engage in a philosophical debate, or more importantly, and educational experience, about any one of those, at any time. If you're not comfortable with native/ ambient yeast usage vs. inoculated, don't pretend you are.

In defense of a House Palate

How do suppliers feel about Trade Shows? Well, it's complicated. Some are great, some are a total waste of time. They are politically important. For many though, these shows represent an important opportunity-to taste other people's wines. This may seem like a courtesy or a gesture to kill the boredom of waiting for customers. In reality, it's a valuable tool. Of course, it's always good to hear other people's presentation, how the competition stacks up, etc. The real reason, and some suppliers will let this slip, they try to avoid having a "house palate".

House Palate? Well, its a thing. This is where you become so intimately aware of all of the nooks and crannies of the wines you represent or make, that everything else tastes inferior. Your subjectivity and critical tasting ability has been too tainted by your affection and familiarity.

If you're a winemaker, this is a very dangerous thing. You stop being able to look at the products critically. You can become obtuse, even disenfranchised. If you are a salesperson, sometimes it's critically important. If you like the wines when you start representing them, they've already passed the first test. I can't really overstate the importance of this. Finding a set of wines you like out of the gate, is everything. If you don't already, you probably won't grow to like them more, and they will represent nothing more than commerce.  As a salesperson, you aren't asked to be objective-you are asked to be an advocate. Affection for your products, gives you expertise. The further down the chain you go from Winemaker/ Owner, the less credibility you'll start with. If you know the wines backward and forward, you give yourself intellectual street cred. 

By all means, taste other people's wines. Enjoy and praise them, every chance you get. Do so, with the knowledge that you can return to bask in the warm glow of your house palate.

"My Team"

As a lifelong baseball fan, I've spent many a late July worrying about my favorite players being traded away, as happened last night with JD Martinez (went from the beloved Tigers of Motown to the utterly souless D'Back of rock gardens and urban sprawl/ mediocrity-I believe he was as enthusiastic as I am). Nevertheless, this is a function of the business of baseball. People on "Your team", is not a lifetime anointment, but rather quite temporary and transient. Stalwarts of your team surely exist, and will have their numbers retired, have bobblehead days, etc. The surreal part is this-Your team tends to take priority over the people that come and go. After a trade (assuming you lost a favorite), you are sad, but the sadness eventually goes away. In fact, when your team, goes up against your former favorite player, there is NO QUESTION as to where your loyalty lies. The person you once admired and rooted for, is now the enemy. Even though, they are the same person, and you are the same person. You now want different things. This is primal, and it goes beyond baseball. 

The wine business operates the exact same way. For me, as a supplier, I have a team (distributors). People I work with, and have shared business interests. These people are anywhere from people I generally like and respect, to great friends. Some of us are fortunate enough to be able to choose our wine team. Sometimes these relationships last a very long time. Due to the transitory nature of this industry (no doubt, as a result of the restaurant creep and the grass-is-always-greener mentality), there is turnover. Fortunately, most of my distributors are on the  end of the food chain that is most desirable (not to mix metaphors). The people I work with, if they lose anyone, they lose those people, not to the competition, but to supplier jobs or relocation. Once in a while though, and this has been going on long enough, and I've been on the other side enough to know what's coming, a person flips companies, and expects everything to stay the same. And sometimes it does, for a while. Business is business, but sometimes, when you're in close proximity, fighting together for the exact same thing every day, one person switching sides, can forever alter than relationship. The flip side, the person that just moved-may now be selling against the ghost of themselves. All of these wines and people they championed, how do they reconcile replacing those wines? I struggled with this, personally. You may find yourself replacing wines you placed and loved. Now you have new wines to sell. It's tough.

Switching teams is tough, and dramatic. Never to be taken lightly. We are all responsible for ourselves and our families, above all else. Just like free agent contracts, we need to think of our livelihoods. It's sort of interesting that with all of the logic, we still go back to our neolithic-type allegiances.

Leverage

Each day, we all receive the same email updates: ____________Family winery has been purchased by _____________ Corporation, for a an ungodly sum of money. we scratch our heads, wonder why, and continue on with our day, slightly sad that a brand we once loved, has been gobbled up by a corporation.

The cynic in us, is inclined to believe that the wines are going to be worse, homogenized, conformed to an "international" style. This may be true, but it's not the real crime, nor the thing we should worry about. The truly nefarious reason behind all of these acquisitions? Leverage.

In a post apocalyptic-consumer wine desert, choice will be stricken. You will have Oregon wine A, B, or C-all made by corporations. What happened to all of the choices you may ask? Simple-The corporations and distributors decided, together, to streamline consumer choices, by manipulating buyers in a myriad of ways. Not the least of which is the illusion of a "great portfolio of historic wineries(that are no longer what they once were), one stop shopping". They make it easy- This is the leverage.

The acknowledgment that the gatekeeper to a wine program is well suited, perhaps for a management role, but often, not beverage specific. When you have  an individual, that is comfortable with groceries or ordering napkins, 15 distributors with a dizzying array of products, fancy names and suited managers, it makes sense to shave your choices down to 2 or 3 people. Unfortunately, those 2 or 3 people, are invariably, the largest, and most powerful, with the recently announced acquisition of __________ Family winery, they are buying a false credibility. Meritocracy-by-dump-truck-full-of-cash.

What can we do? Operating a winery is VERY difficult. It's hard work, long hours, wearing many hats, and the money is hard. If we, in the middle tiers want to have a job for the next few decades, we need to make sure that those family owned wineries get the credence they deserve. Say no to corporate wine, whenever possible. Fight for diversity of portfolios. Help and challenge your customers to work to build wine programs they can take ownership from. Educate yourself, educate your buyers, educate their staffs. It's the only way you can take away their leverage, by making it hard.

An investigation of current clichés-Millennials and authenticity

Let's assume that we all have an idea of what makes a millennial, a millennial. Let's assume we think we know what they like. We think we know, because the cliché of what they like is driving most marketing right now. No place is this more evident than in the food scene. Artisan, chef, authentic, handmade, etc. Those are the buzz words in restaurant marketing, and have been for nearly a decade. Our values have changed very much because millennials didn't want to be sold to. While generalizations, these are very much a positive. Millennials are better at this life than the previous generations and their values align very nicely with real wine. 

So, if we know these values and we have these shared values, why do we fail so horribly at communicating with them? Why do the large companies think millennials like the whimsy of manufactured labels and simple names? Unfortunately, those cubicle dwellers have been successful at crunching numbers and looking at raw data. So if they're right, why are their analogues in the beer industry getting their asses handed to them right now? The craft beer movement, while certainly organic in growth, comes from a place of touching and knowing. In every city, there are now a laundry list of local beer producers making some good, some great beers, but they're made locally. This legitimizes the movement away from the oat and corn sodas occupying the Superbowl ads. It's not just the beer they're loving, it's the authenticity and the story of each brewery. 

We are blowing it on an epic scale right now in dealing with, not just millennials, but the entire buying population. The reason the mid-level tools have been proven right so far is because of the vacuum that the small wineries & importers have created. We haven't attacked the market the right way. We have been selling the way we've always sold.  Market work, scores, winemaker dinners.  If you are a brand with authenticity and with actual people that are artisans behind it, the best thing for you to do is get those people in front of young consumers. They are yearning to start connecting with the actual people that touch the grapes. They have a million questions for you. The road to loyalty in this generation isn't easy, but you'll sleep well, knowing that back room deals don't have to happen. You can stand there as a brand with people behind it, and that's enough. You don't need WS ads, in fact, you're better off without them. Millennials want to discover you, not be told about you by the establishment. If you are brand with a proud history, you have an asset that most upstarts would kill for. Instead, many of these venerable wineries have "suits", travelling the country, selling wine at a Country Club dinner, selling to people that still belong to Country Clubs, and have cellars filled with dead Aussie wines from 2001. You can't build or maintain a brand that way anymore.You need to get out and create a reason for people to come and see you, meet you and get to understand not just where you are right now, but where you come from, what drives you. 

Embrace the B2B Marketing

If you are in the wine business, everything you do is marketing. Every single thing you say or do is compelling people to buy something. They have to be convinced to release that mysterious liquid trapped under 1/8" of glass and cork and the only way to do it is to reassure them that it's worth it. So if we are so quick hang shelf talkers and dust bottles, why are we so slow to address the issue of business to business marketing.

If you are a distributor, you fall into one of 2 categories-You are either ignoring it, and if so, you may have a website, but it really is just some contact info, MAYBE a set of links to the wines you rep and maybe some sad intention for a blog from 2006. Your logo hasn't been updated in years, your social media is either non existent or sporadic at best. OR You have a fully functional and interactive website with a social media strategy, you have tech sheets, great photos, links to social media and something else original and interesting. There is no "in between".

Your web presence is the first place a new customer will look to see what you are all about. Your best chance for a strong second impression lies here. Your FIRST chance at a first impression, aside from the manner in which your salesperson walks in the door and what they say is your marketing. Did you run off a sheet of business cards on your printer to save money? Does your salesperson walk in with an inventory in excel and hand that off? Do you have the logos of every brand or wine label plastered all over your cover page of your price book? Who designed your logo?

Your third and continuing chance at making your customers confident through marketing lies in your attention to the other details-Do your sell sheets look great with a consistent font and spacing? Is everything spelled right?  Do you know how to use the proper accents? é,è,ô,á? What's your email signature? Huge graphic logo? Any logo? Links to important things? Comic Sans? What do your event invite look like? What about the show booklets for when they arrive?

At the end of the day, you want your customer to be continually impressed by all of the details you are worrying about. The more professional and articulate you are about your business, the more authoritative you will seem about your products.

Why are we dumbing it down?

Wine is complicated. Thousands of variables of oenology, history, terroir & winemaking come together to make something that is borderline magical. Yet, we as an industry, are trying very hard to oversimplify the very things that make wine special. We try to dupe consumers with fake names of fake places and incredibly broad and generic terms like "Blends" become the hottest category out there. How do you educate someone that thinks they only like blends? Why would we back ourselves into that corner in the first place, besides the hell that is Apothic Red. well-here's why-

• Big monolithic-brand-producing-corporations want consumers to be uneducated because this breeds fear of the unknown label. If they don't understand it, they won't buy it.
• Those same corporations try to take the variables out of the mix by making a homogeneous, lab created concoction that effectively lobotomizes the consumer and takes the joy of wine away from them. By controlling this recipe, they control the consumer and the brand. 
• The popularity of these practices and the big corporations wrapping buyers in a warm incentive-laden hug make once good, critical buyers, submit and follow the money train.

The thing is-WE are the gatekeepers. WE don't have to follow the dumb road. When we marginalize the efforts it takes to make something magical, we become disrespectful. And it's not disrespect for the wines, it's disrespect to ourselves and why we're in this business and it's disrespect for allowing our customers to be "dumbed down". And if you think it's at your own peril to educate and turn people on to the nuance of wine-just look at the craft beer business right now. People are fleeing at a record pace away from adjunct filled rice pale beers, which were the dumbed down wines of the last 30 years.  Superbowl ads won't save them either. People want to drink unique things. We need to have the confidence not dumb things down, we need to resist the temptation to put Zin & Malbec together, we need have articulate ,concise explanations of the significance of OUR favorite wines to turn people on to our mission-selling the magic.  

Who do you work for?

Being in the middle of the supply chain can be a little confusing. On a daily basis, you find yourself serving many masters. Your employer, who at the end of the day, would seem to trump all, but you are also getting pressure from your customers and in the other direction on the supply chain-suppliers, wineries etc. Unfortunately, these 3 are basically never aligned in their needs. You have a very crappy decision to make on a daily basis-Which do you serve?

In order to find peace and the right answer, all you need to do is observe which direction the money flows. It starts with the consumer then goes to the retailer or restaurant then to the distributor, then to the winery. As long as it flows in that direction, the health of the person you sell to is the most important thing. If you are a distributor representative, you need to make sure your clients are getting what they need, and that's not just weekly deliveries, but feedback, honest opinion, ideas, creativity and support. This will help them bring money in. Your boss may have different ideas. They may lock you in a room until you sold the entirety of your quota, or berate you in front of a roomful of your peers. A winery supplier rep may call you and act like your friend as ask favors, they may also fish for info while in your car.

Blind shipping, writing wine lists with nothing but goal items, lying about out of stocks to sub in goal items are all a  violation of trust. This is why so many large distributors have bad reputations: They often behave this way because they don't respect or empathize with their customers. They're numb from being middle managers. Fortunately, not everyone at large distributors works this way. Conversely, I've seen small distributors act even worse on occasion, so the big guys haven't exactly cornered the market on questionable behavior.

The company you work for, the distributor is EMPLOYED BY (or contracted by) your client. If you are acting in the best interest of your client and not violating the trust of your employer, you are doing right. If you employer doesn't see this, you should go find one that does.

The peril of becoming "An Industry of Cool"

We're all guilty of it, judging people by the wine they (think) they like. Some of us actually (but not sincerely) tell people to "drink what they like" There are certain things you are supposed to say you like at every juncture of your wine evolution. Eventually, you start saying things like "Americans are so dumb, they don't even know the  wines of (blah, blah, blah obscure region). This reminds me very much of the rise of College/ alternative Radio in the 80's/ 90's. There were certain bands you were supposed to say you liked. Instead of risking turning this into a musical discussion, I'll just say this-It's The Replacements. That's the answer. It took 25 years to prove what I always thought, that most of the stuff was trendy, but shit. The Replacements are still great.

See how this can go? Everyone has an opinion. Most of that stuff was actually just noise. all of the bumper stickers, skateboard stickers, hand painted names of bands on denim and leather jackets, bad tattoos. Just noise, that we let define us by making us think that it validated our coolness, because we liked the seemingly unlikable, and related to the seemingly unrelateable (not a word), We judged people by their specific tastes. See the correlation? The scary thing is-we're not 14 anymore.  

We love largely undrinkable wine far too much right now. And when I say we, I mean the wine dorks, and somms. Yellow wine, Orange wine, Natural Wine, wine from untraveled roads and obscure grapes. While these are all noble pursuits and fascinating, rarely are they enjoyable on anything more than an academic level. I never understood Vin Jeaune. It's the hottest thing in the biz right now. These oxidized yellow wines of Jura, But I never liked them or enjoyed them. Now I can say I think I get them, but not because I drank so many, but because I visited one of the great producers and tried their 40yr old version. That was the yellow wine that made sense. The rest was just like trying to The Misfits or something. Was I supposed to love this unlike-able stuff? I was sold on the idea that this stuff was the next hottest thing, but restaurants aren't putting 1973 Vin Jeaune on their wine list, they're putting 2003 on their list. At this point, we're trying to one up each other in obscurity. To paraphrase the Lester Bangs character in Almost Famous: "And then it just becomes and industry of... cool".

He have to be careful here. We absolutely don't want homogeneous palates or wine lists.We want discovery, nerdom, obscurity and curiosity. These things help us understand all things wine that much more. And a sincere fascination, appreciation and application are all equally vital. However, there is a group of us that won't admit it out loud, but our inner 14 year old self knows it- "There are some things we say we like, to make ourselves sound cool".

"Have an extra shot of tequila and move on"

I've been wanting to write this post for some time, but each time, it became too specific and autobiographical. You see, breaking up with someone in this business is more emotionally complex than one would expect. I've done it many times. I have parted ways with 17 different wineries in 5 years. 17! I've stopped working with some half dozen distributors. I've had brands traded a bunch of times that I had no control over. Each and every time, emotions, to varying degrees, were a side effect.

Then, yesterday, something happened, that had nothing to do with me: Allegrini dumped Winebow in favor of Gallo as a U.S. importer. Now, I could rant for 1000's of words about how Gallo is a bully and plonk factory, intermittently gobbling up formerly famed producers to try to add credentials to what is essentially a lowest common denominator operation. I could tell you all about how in some markets, they'll  (allegedly) dangle 1 on 2 deals, just to grab points of distribution. But I won't mire in those details, let's just say, I don't love the way they (allegedly) operate and we don't exist in the same universe. On the other side, Leonardo LoCascio (Winebow) has built one of the most respected Italian portfolios in the country. I sold his wines 10 years ago while I lived in Southern California, and I liked their operation then and I respect it today.  Oh, and I've always really liked the Allegrini wines.

So, Shanken Business Daily sends out their Wednesday a.m. news blast yesterday, announcing the Allegrini news. I read it, was dismayed, but didn't think much of it. Then a Facebook friend posted on our local Ohio Winebow reps wall-WTF? Allegrini? Here's the bummer-he didn't know yet. Winebow was assembled in Mexico for their annual company meeting and they were about to be told when Shanken and then Facebook broke the news. I can imagine how they all felt. Betrayal, frustration, heartbreak, depression. These are all normal. You spend your time and energy selling and promoting the wines, but once you get to a certain level and you start selling certain wines, you must become emotionally connected to those wines. This must have been the case here. We all spent time on our friend's Facebook wall consoling and bashing Gallo, and then word comes in that Leonardo said the following to his team:  "Have an extra shot of tequila and move on". Boom. That's it. It's done. He's a smart man. Shit happens. As a bystander, this Gallo move bothered me. Leonardo was exactly right. You can't dwell on it. It's tough, but you can't. You will lose brands. You will lose friends. It's still, mostly because of the business. As much as I'd like to vilify Gallo, I can't. I don't know why they left, it may not have been anything juicy, it may have just been a better fit. Maybe the companies had grown apart. We can't worry about the salacious details. This is something that happens to EVERYONE in this business. Brand movement happens at every level. distributors, brokers, salespeople, owners, importers, winemakers, all change.

I've learned over the years that sometimes, things just don't make sense from a business perspective. Even though I'm 17 wineries lighter, I just had my best year by a mile. Sometimes subtracting makes you better. Most of us call upon the ancient art of Schaedenfreude to imagine that the winery will be worse off without us. Sometimes that's true. Sometimes its not. If you are in this business, know this-you will love and lose and love again. It's life, you do an extra shot of tequila and move on.

Do you get it?

There are exactly 2 kinds of buyers in the world. Buyers that get it and buyers that don't. Buyers that get it, endeavor towards balance, diversity and harmony, buyers that don't, are too caught up in one thing (for everyone, that one thing is different).

The buyer that "Gets it":
Looks for a solid worldview for their selection, diverse enough to have something for everyone that walks in and balances commerce/ profitability with being a great steward for wine. They positively challenge their clientele, educate themselves and build a community around what they are doing. They never brag or bully, rather, they empower. They view the wineries and distributors as partners.

The buyer that DOESN'T "Get it":
Is always chasing after something. They buy to either feed their ego, brag about what they got that no one else could, or ride a wave of popularity. They are likely to buy on scores and articles about vintages over trusting their own judgement. They price shop on the internet. They don't respect the distribution or care about partnering with the people that sell them the wine. They are always looking for the next "deal". They want to gossip about their competitors. They are likely to put a wine on a list or a shelf because 1 customer complains, rather than helping that customer find what works within their carefully chosen set.

Because there are people that don't get it, we have wines where marketing and labels are more important that terroir or character.We have companies that try to fill the price point and demographic. We have concocted animal labels. We have $25 crappy Pinot Grigio and $200 over oaked Napa Cabs. Bordeaux changed their winemaking. Australia Burned too bright and then burned out, because people didn't get it.

If you are a buyer, please, "get it".

Jiro dreams of..... salespeople?

Sushi is a special and magical product. It may take a lifetime to master the balance of flavors, the perfect cuts, the technique. In the seminal film, Jiro Dreams of Sushi, this is the theme that is hammered home from the start. Jiro seemingly places sushi above everything, even family at times. The 85 yr old master believes that his son is still too green. When Jiro is pressed as to why he is so good, he heaps praise on his vendors. The brokers that deal with the fish markets always take care of him. Jiro believes he can be no better than his raw (literally) ingredients.A lifetime of trust and understanding of needs has helped to propel Jiro to the very pinnacle of sushi.  If Jiro simply price shopped or bullied his vendors, he would not be at the top, and the converse is also true, if his vendors had betrayed his trust, sold him low quality products, wasted his time or tried to make a quick yen, then the relationship would crumble.

Why don't we look at wine in the same context? Salespeople know which are the best wines in their books (if they don't, please excuse them from calling on you until they do). Maybe more to the point, they should know which are the best wines for each account. Which wines do they represent, that they can select to show to their accounts that make their wine program better, and that they can propel enthusiasm all the way down the chain? Which wines are they dumping on their accounts? Which wines are they placing on the reserve list to hit their unreachable goal for some giant, monolithic corporation? Do they even care? If you want a world class wine program, if you want a great wine program, if you want a smart wine program, you must view your wine vendors the same way Jiro views his fish mongers. You must be able to trust (or be trustworthy), you must know that your "wine mongers" have good palates, that they actually care. Salespeople sell, it's the nature of the beast, if you can take time to find the ones that aren't selling but connecting you with the best grade of fish or wine, the relationship can be in perfect balance, just like Jiro's sushi.