East Bay wineries uncork virtual wine tasting
A virtual wine tasting in Oakland, linking East Bay sellers with Singapore buyers by video conference, offered local wineries a chance to target a market where the popularity of Californian wines is growing.
Signature Wine Cellars Inc. of Hayward, Livermore’s White Crane Winery and Lucas & Lewellen Vineyards of Solvang participated in the synchronized tasting event, organized by the Department of Commerce’s U.S. Commercial Service, which helps businesses find new trading partners abroad.
Singapore imported $8.8 million of U.S. wine in 2007, up 50 percent from 2006, according to U.S. Department of Commerce statistics.
Singapore is a small market relative to that of bigger countries, such as South Korea, which imported $18 million worth of U.S. wine, or Japan, which consumed $63.2 million in U.S. wine the same year.
But the Southeast Asian country is a fast-growing consumer of high-end wines, said Eric Pope, the Wine Institute’s regional director for emerging markets.
Connoisseurs have driven demand by seeking new wines to add to their collections, while sales at casino-related restaurants and entertainment venues boosted consumption too, Pope said.
Singapore’s role as a regional transit and logistics hub, paired with its policy of taxing wines by volume instead of by value, has also made the country a regional re-export leader for high-end wines, he said.
To build ties between California winemakers and Singaporean buyers, such as the supermarket chains Cold Storage and NTUC Fairprice, Rod Hirsch, director of the Commercial Service’s Oakland Export Assistance Center, invited wineries to the Oakland Federal Building on the evening of Aug. 21. In Singapore, tasters met at the U.S. Embassy, in time for breakfast and California wines, which FedEx Corp. shipped for free to support the event.
“Singapore is a very dynamic and affluent market,” said Hirsch. “They have the ability to purchase our wines at all price ranges. Not all markets can afford that.”
Hirsch asked Signature to showcase its Elvis Presley wines because he believes they present a unique marketing approach to Singapore. “You look at Mickey Mouse, Marilyn Monroe – these are iconic images of America abroad that have real marketing power internationally,” he said.
Denis Weil, senior director of sales for Signature, said he participated to expand his company’s international business, which now serves Canada, Japan, South Korea, Germany and Norway, and accounts for 15 percent of the Elvis label’s sales of 34,000 to 35,000 cases per year.
Weil discussed his company’s marketing strategy as well as the character of the California Merlot, Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon he brought to the tasting.
But moments into his presentation, the room lights in Oakland switched off, following the building’s set schedule. Weil, wanting to fully capitalize on the 15 minutes he had for his presentation, didn’t miss a beat as curtains were opened to cast the evenings’ last light on his presentation.
Though lighting hadn’t been restored by the event’s end, Weil said he still felt it was “a great experience,” one he hopes will help him establish direct ties to buyers in Singapore.
California wineries have significant competition in the global wine market, Hirsch said.
Next, he and his colleague plan to contact the Singaporean tasters and to find out what they thought of the tasting. “Then we can help provide feedback to sharpen their competitive pitch.”