Hot Then Not: How this adage is shaking up the Wine Biz.
The inciting incident: a webinar where I flat out asked how a producer intended to position themselves in the market to better navigate the clear decline in wine consumption & consumer interest in it. All love to the winery & winemaker, but the answer had me fuming when it was dismissed like something they needed not concern themselves with.
REALITY CHECK: it should be the first thing on your mind as a producer in this day & age.
Having heard enough uninspired, generic responses about how my favorite small producers (often in lesser known parts of the U.S.) compete domestically, I've noticed that many solely rely on their product's quality as the main sales pitch. If even a luxury good like wine can fall victim to the age old adage of “hot then not”, then it is time to wake up to the notion that the quality or taste of a wine is not the only gateway into a consumer’s heart.
There is a timer set on the popularity of every new bottle, every new producer or winemaking technique. Even a new “off the beaten path” wine region has a ceiling of popularity it will eventually hit. What’s hot today is easily forgotten tomorrow with the arrival of the next big thing that wine professionals & consumers will find themselves fawning over. With there being a noticeable plateau and, in some instances a decline, in wine consumption over the past few years, a question arises: how do wineries, specifically those from lesser-known regions or winemakers, position their brands at the forefront of a consumer’s mind? The pool of non-drinkers is suddenly overflowing—that’s fact, not fiction—while the pool of drinkers with disposable income is slowly, but surely, becoming stagnant.
Gen Z is loving spirits & RTD (ready to drink) cocktails, and the once premium demographic of millenials has slowed their buying. That doesn’t even begin to unpack the sober curious & California-sober in the mix of it all.
Wine is a fashion industry.
I've talked about Super Tuscans & how they approached repositioning their region in the market by blending international varieties with native varieties to create wines that stylistically charmed a more american demographic. It's the same thing that fashion houses did when taking traditional italian fabric, design, etc. and blended it with more modern sensibilities to allow their fashion houses to truly compete on the global stage.
Guess what? That strategy worked, and has even been notated by some of those Super Tuscan producers in recent years. The act of blending isn’t even that groundbreaking of an innovation, but the marketing is what propped it up to be so. I don’t believe that we need to be earth-shaking in future pushes of our marketing in this industry. The end consumer is going to require more than just broad stroke responses like “our wines are more old world” to identify why they should spend hard earned money on one wine versus another. When producers are all fighting for the stretched attention of a dwindling group of buyers, a single marketing campaign will not be enough to win over brand loyalty. We have to focus on converting those marketing campaigns into tangible experiences to create lasting connections between the end-consumer, wine professionals, and the brand, ensuring guaranteed longevity.
Creative activations with BIG houses like Louis Jadot have made me well aware that we are about to see an approach to the experience market that will define the next decade. Value now comes to us in more than just juice, but in the stories we weave around that juice.
If you are looking to revisit wine in a new way, I behoove you to check out any of my upcoming events or book me for your own tasting experience. It is exactly that: an experience. The kind that bind you to the wine and extend past the 90 minutes we spend together.
Sip thoughtfully.
Savor memorably.
Wine, but make it fashion.
Cheers,
The Certified Wino
