Reaching the New Wine Consumer

Sacramento, Calif. -- In creating a lineup for the 2009 Unified Wine & Grape
Symposium, program director Dr. John Thorngate said he and 28 others held to a
single mantra: "Show me the message." And on Thursday morning, that message was
change.

Speaking to a crowd of winemakers, grapegrowers and other industry leaders, four
speakers addressed the importance of social networking sites, making wine a part
of American culture and connecting with the Millennial generation.

Wine writer Paul Lukacs offered the perspective of someone on "the edge of the
industry" with an eye toward history. In the late 1800s, he said, wine was
poised to become part of daily American life. Recent immigrants already were in
the habit of drinking wine with meals, and many Prohibitionists favored a ban on
alcohol that included an exception for wine. But winemakers viewed the fortified
wines served in saloons as a cash cow, and by not differentiating their product
from the beer and spirits sold in saloons, they aided in its ban. Reverberations
from that choice still are felt in the North American wine industry--Americans
haven't reverted to their previous traditions and embraced wine as a cultural
norm.

"Bring wine to the home. Bring wine to the supper table.…For a long time we have
presented wine as something special, as something fancy, not as something
(consumers) should have every day," Lukacs said.  "We've already succeeded at
getting wine on the table at the Four Seasons in New York--that was 30 years
ago. The challenge is getting wine on the table of the busboy at the Four
Seasons, and we're not there yet.

"For the first time, I think, in history, we are poised to really make wine a
foundational part of the American lifestyle."

Millennials

Part of that change lies in the hands of the new generations of wine drinkers.
John Gillespie, president of the Wine Market Council, presented a study of 600
people polled in April 2008 and October 2008. The Millennial generation (those
between age 15 and 32) are the largest generation since the Baby Boom that
followed World War II. According to Gillespie's study, that age group also
drinks the most wine. Millennials polled were the most likely to belong to wine
clubs, the most likely to visit wine bars, and they were the only group that
still reported buying more wine than the year before--even after the stock
market crash of 2008.

Also, since some members of the Millennial generation are not yet 21, "You've
got wine drinkers in the pipeline," Gillespie said, with an average of 4 million
turning 21 each year.

Of course, communicating with Millennials presents another challenge. Jim
Trezise, president of the New York Wine & Grape Foundation, said that the old
ways of communication are failing, and if the wine industry wants to stay
relevant, it must adapt.

"If you go back to President Obama's campaign, a lot of his success was brought
about by the change in traditional media. He set up a system that had never
existed before, and it was very much seamless," Trezise said, referencing
Obama's adoption of Facebook, text messaging, e-mail updates and other
technology through which the campaign communicated information about
fundraising, rallies and volunteer opportunities.

Courtney Cochran, a certified sommelier and wine consultant, spoke extensively
about the ways in which wineries can communicate in the digital age. In addition
to groups such as Wine 2.0 and the OpenWine Consortium, many wineries have
created pages on websites Facebook and MySpace. The microblogging site Twitter
allows users to ping their contacts with periodic updates about the latest
releases, events and updates.

"We are in an unprecedented era of connectivity," Cochran said, adding that when
creating your brand image, "You don't have to wait for someone else to declare
you the best."

In spite of the plethora of connection options, Cochran believes that the wine
industry has missed out on one very important trend. According to a Nielsen
survey, one in five households reports having a gourmet chef. The "foodie"
phenomenon has reached a fever pitch, and yet, "In the foodie culture, wine is
still a sideline," she said.

So while the Food Network has sent several unknown chefs into the far-reaches of
stardom (the number of "foodie" shows has tripled since 2000, Cochran said), few
people in the wine industry have achieved such status. Meanwhile, neglecting the
foodie cultural phenomenon is an expensive mistake: Through his daily video blog
Wine Library TV, Gary Vaynerchuk regularly talks to chefs, then broadcasts their
chats on the site. Since starting the service on tv.winelibrary.com, retails
sales at Vaynerchuk's Wine Library have grown from $4 million to a whopping $50
million.

Making the connection between wine and food doesn't have to mean beating down
the doors of the highest-end restaurants, Lukacs reaffirmed. It means getting
into America's kitchens.

"Emeril is not the big star," he said. "Rachel Ray is the big star. And what
does she do? She tells you how to make food at home."