Stormhoek Sales Star Garech, visited a few Thresher stores yesterday. The pics speak for themselves: Two days into the promo and the wine, beer and spirits look pretty well all picked over. Seems that the fastest moving stuff was the most expensive, which kind of makes sense.

Hugh had a few points to make about the whole thing.

A very interesting week

Nick was down in South Africa as the guest our indusry trade group, Wines of South Africa, addressing their Annual General Meeting. He talked about how we’re building Stormhoek and the power of the web, etc. By all accounts, it was a successful presentation and there will be some video that we should be able to post next week. By the way, Nick invited all of our winemaking brethren to provide some blog posts. We hope to have some interesting ones up soon.

Meanwhile, in London we were trying to both help out a customer, The Thresher Group, and give our loyal readers a bit good cheer. For our non-UK readers, Threshers are the largest wine and spirits specialist chain in the UK.

Our ‘helping’ out I am afraid may fall into the basket of ‘careful what you wish for’ as we were hoping to help them sell a few more bottles of Stormhoek and the other great wines and champagnes they carry, but, it seems that maybe we were a bit over enthusiastic about how we promoted the ‘private sale’, or maybe the offer was just too good.

In either case, the 40% off voucher went viral and it seems that anyone in th UK who drinks has one.

BTW- The Threshers website is apparently down due to traffic, but you can just go into any store. They’ll all honour the coupon.

For those of you who’ve been asking, Friday alone we had about 711,000 hits on this site.

Here are some links to the various news stories:

BBC Five Segment

BBC Online news article

Times Online

Many Blog Posts

Our Head Sales Honcho, Alistair was on BBC Radio 2 this evening and our Main Marketing Man, Andrew was on Radio 1 Thursday night.

Mostly though, are just happy that as a little winery in the middle of nowhere, we are help our mega corporate customers do more business.

We’re thinking that over a few bottles of wine, we might be able to talk some of our other customers into letting us post some other crazy offers. Let us know what you think about this.

Oh, and by the way, with the Threshers frenzy ongoing, we’d be grateful if you could pick up a bottle or two of Stormhoek or The Storm (exclusive at Threshers), we can use the business. Stormhoek is also available at Asda, Waitrose, Sainsburys and a bunch of independents — and they all have some excellent holiday offers on.

[Click here to download coupon etc.]

Back up the truck!

We know the numbers and sometimes we just shake our heads and wonder, ‘how do they do it’?

For ten days from 30 November until 10 December Threshers will be running a 40% off sale at their stores. The sale won’t be advertised and they are not promoting it at all, even in the store.

That means 40% off Stormhoek and all of the other wines and Champagne in the store.

You’ll need a coupon. Download it here [PDF file].

We know great minds think alike and all that, but we couldn’t help but notice a thread of newpaper articles that appeared in The Daily Mail, The Times and then all the way over in Australia after our post a couple of weeks back about the London International Wine and Spirits Competition

I’m not sure if we started something, but we posted that despite the fact that we won a Trophy, we were a bit uneasy with the whole thing: The cost of entry, the awards ceremony, etc.

The articles I think, were filled with inaccuracies and hyperbole and unfairly critical of all wine awards. More importantly, they really missed the point: From where we sit, over the coming years, online information will marginalize the need for many awards anyway.

Historically, authority in the wine business has been very “top down”. The few bestow authority on the many. Whether we are talking about awards, Wine Spectator ratings or newspaper columns, a relatively small group of people control and dole out ranking and authority to the hundreds of thousands of producers around the world.

If you speak to a producer about their wine, it often starts with “we won this medal or that award or got xyz rating in The Spectator”. Ratings are valuable because they simplify communication with the consumer. They deconstruct complicated messages about appellation, production techniques that the trade think the consumer cares about, but generally don’t.

But the problem remains: Relatively few people control the topics and quality of the discussion.

We talk about the fact that the “ New” web (web 2.0) has changed the world. Web 2.0 gives everyone a voice: Every consumer, every member of the wine trade and every producer. We believe that this will ultimately more evenly distribute control from the hands of the few journos, publications and awards businesses to the control of the consumer.

After all, logically, what should matter more? The opinions of a few tasters at an awards contest or the consensus of hundreds or thousands of consumers?

If a consumer wants to know about a book, one can get lots of reviews just by going to Amazon or doing a google search. You can still read book reviews in the Sunday New York Times, and this is a valuable resource to the reader, but there is wisdom in the collective opinion of the masses and we will start to see this with wine.

Ultimately, what makes the perception of a wine over time will not be about the opinions of a few, but the collective opinions of thousands of drinkers around the world.

We do live in interesting times.

Despite my slightly bitchy post about our best-pinotage-in-the-world-trophy from the IWSC, we were in fact, honored to have received it, even if has an ad for a competitor baked into it.

While the guys were receiving the trophy last Wednesday night in London, over in Boston, Mass., our buddy, Dave Parmet, was attending a much different kind of gala on our behalf: The annual Society of New Communications Research Ball.

[David Parmet]

SNCR is a non-profit think tank dedicated to the advanced study of new communications tools, technologies and emerging modes of communication, and their effect on traditional media and communications.

According to SNCR, the awards were in recognition of innovative organizations and professionals who are pioneering the use of social media (i.e., blogs, wikis, podcasts, collaborative tools and other forms of participatory communications) in the areas of marketing, public relations and advertising, politics, entertainment, academics, and community and cultural development.

We received an Award of Excellence for our use of this blog and social software over the last year.

The folks at SNCR posted a nice précis on our UK work.

For us, the most gratifying acknowledgement was to see (a partial list) of the companies who also received the same business award:

· Cisco Systems, Inc.
· Bain & Co. and Atwood Partners
· Microsoft Xbox (with Edelman)
· Seagate Technology

It was just about a year ago when Hugh did a post which resulted in our new Siren offering, wherein he asked: “Why can’t a small wine company think of there competition as Apple and Google?”

Despite the fact that Robert Scoble at Microsoft agreed, some people scoffed at the idea.

These days, much of our inspiration comes from the world of tech, fashion and pop culture, not wine.

We find that this makes for better quality wine, and not the usual inspirational channels that winemakers adhere slavishly to.

[Bonus Link:] Great interview of Dave by Shel Israel.

Alistair, Chris and Nick went off to the London International Wine and Spirits Awards dinner Wednesday night at Guildhall, in the City of London, to pick up our Best Pinotage Trophy.

Here is a short vid of Al getting ready in the office for the dinner.

Nick received the trophy and it is now sitting in my office.

As you’ll see, Al was a little under whelmed with the prospect of going to the dinner and the Trophy itself.

It is interesting that while Al is a bit disdainful of the Trophy, Graham has said that it was the best thing that has ever happened to us in the South African market. He has done tons of new business and our 2005 Pinotage is now a hot commodity in the local market.

From my position, it’s all good. However, there is one thing that I find really disturbing about the Trophy. If you take a look at the engraving on the trophy, it reads: “KWV International Trophy for Pinotage”.

As far as I know, KWV had nothing to do with this Trophy. They certainly had nothing to do with the making of the wine and the judging was done by an independent panel. So, why is their name engraved across our Trophy?

It appears that it is some sort of sponsorship. The organizers list all of the sponsorships are here. So, it seems that for a bit of cash, you can have the appearance of having produced some trophy winning wine, or get the implied status of having granted a competitor a trophy for their wine. Either way, it’s a bit of sleight of hand that I think undermines the gravitas that the organizers try very hard to foster.

The conflict is obvious. Many awards organizations are for profit businesses. They need to earn a profit. Entries for this IWSC award cost, if memory serves, about $200 per wine. Thousands of wines are submitted.Tickets for the awards dinner are nearly $300 each, around 700 people attend. You get the idea. The sponsorships must generate some cash and then if you want to put the medal on your bottle, it costs for the stickers, etc.

I prefer the old California County Fair system. Respected members of their respective fields get together and judge the best bred pigs, goats, cattle, roosters; most delectable apple pies, cookies, ribs, etc. Wines include homemade wines and commercial wines. Commercial wines cost $44.00 to enter. If you have a great homemade beer, there is a judging for that, too. A gold medal from one of the California fairs carries a lot of weight.

People get together, have a good time and enjoy the harvest bounty. No pretense. Just Fun.

The UK wine trade have for the last twenty years been like proverbial
hogs at the trough. The market has been growing like mad, in all sectors.

Lately, there has been a huge amount of collective hand wringing
amongst the trade, blaming the UK grocers for the ever deepening
discounting, worseing margins and tough times all round.

The trade seems to be in denial about the fact that wine in the UK is
now a slightly declining category.

The market is in oversupply.

And if there is one thing that people in the business have not yet
recognized, it is this:

The current market situation is defined by one word: Mature

It happened with cars, railroads, overnight services, fast food, beer, supermarkets, newspapers, etc.

And now it’s wine’s turn.

Something interesting happens when markets mature: Competition mercilessly weeds out the weak and uncreative.

It used to be, a good wine and a nice label resulted in business.

Those days are gone.

The reality is, if you are in the “Let’s sell a nice wine with a nice label” part of the wine business, and you don’t have a “B Plan”…

You’re fucked

All of us in the UK trade need to think hard about how we are going to make a difference in the short term. I suspect the UK wine landscape will look much different in a few years.

Amongst the first UK bloggers to receive the now famous “bloggers freebie” back in 2005 was Gia Milinovich.

One of the great things about being in the web 2.0 space is that we meet very smart, cool people who have interests as diverse as one can imagine. Gia is one of these people.

As we got to know Gia, we learned that she is brilliant, a gifted writer and a talented tv presenter. We consider ourselves very fortunate as Gia has agreed to join us as a guest blogger.

Hugh, Graham, Nick and I are really pleased to have her on the team. We’ve got the feeling that whether we like it or not Gia’s going to be doing her own thing and could possibly upset a few people by sacrificing a few wine trade holy cows. But hey, isn’t that what keeps things interesting?

Cheers Gia, good luck!

Last week UK regulators announced that they intend to put health warning labels on wine.

The powers that be seem to feel that the masses of binge drinkers that fill the pubs and streets of the UK on weekend nights will suddenly put down their glasses if they realize that drinking to excess is bad for your health.

The UK binge drinking phenomenon is a product of fundamental social problems. It is not due to the broad availability of alcohol. Warnings and ever increasing taxes will not remedy the problem. It will not cure the breakdown of the nuclear family or the fact that in the UK, public drunkenness is socially acceptable.

Cigarette smokers and drug abusers prove that people are happy to trade off a bit of hard-to-perceive ill health for some narcissistic self indulgence. A better message would be for the government to use respected members of popular culture to communicate: Only losers stagger down the street senselessly drunk. If the government advertised that alcohol causes impotence (like the cigarette folks did in the US), then maybe a few of the mostly young male offenders would start to listen.

Visit Italy, France, Spain. Public drunkenness is not the problem that it is in the UK, primarily because it is socially unacceptable. Change the acceptability in the UK and the problem takes care of itself.

BTW- UK industry folk, don’t worry, “health warnings” have been required on US labels for years and it has had no negative effect on the business. In fact all of the “wine is good for your health” buzz was generated after warnings were put on the labels.