Friday, August 28, 2009

Vilafonte becomes the first ever South African wine in the New York Times Wine Club


The Vilafonte flag was flying high today as the New York Times Wine Club went live. The NY Times Wine Club launch has been one of the most hotly anticipated launches of 2009 and certainly one of the most high profile wine clubs to launch - ever. With a massive readership, enormous online following and a high profile readership demographic, this launch has been anticipated to create quite a buzz.

It was extremely gratifying therefore that a South African wine was included in the intial luxury 'Reserve' pack. This was none other than the Vilafonte 'Series M' which has had considerable success in Wine Spectator, the New York Times and is the only South African winery to have ever been nominated twice for the Wine Enthusiast 'New World Winery of the Year' in 2005 and in 2008. Vilafonte has also been the subject of an extensive New York Times double page article by the late great Johnny Apple - read it HERE.
Click here NEW YORK TIMES WINE CLUB
South Africa in general and Wines of South Africa in particular has chosen 2010 as the year in which America becomes 'Taget number one'. It is gratifying to see a number of top-class South African wines creaping up the rankings and making an impact. The South African category, will still very small, has not been driven by the huge brands and is still showing promise of emerging with some dignity - rather than chasing pricepoints like the Australian 'critter' brands. it is going to be interesting to see how this develops.
Mark your calendar for May 11th 2010 - that is the New York City launch event at which the South African wine industry is going to stand up and be counted!

Thursday, August 27, 2009

SecondBase - The digital media 'how-to guide' for the South African wine industry [Part 1]

Blogging can be a very powerful marketing tool - when done right. Same goes for mobile tools, which are generally fairly inexpensive but can take a degree from MIT and a few episodes of Heroes to muster up enough geek in you to understand, let alone develop yourself.

We've therefore invited the legendary Fred Roed from World Wide Creative and Chris Rolfe from Mobilitrix to join us for an afternoon of 'how-to' in the winelands for our second SecondBase workshop.Fred runs an extremely successful online company and is an expert on designing, jump-starting and making profitable websites and blogs work. He knows the psychology behind what readers enjoy and how to produce websites that people are really going to want to become fans of. Chris is an expert in mobile marketing and runs a company that sells innovative mobile marketing products. We've asked him to come along, show us what they do, how they work and how they can drive your sales. We've used them before ourselves - so we know they rock. As part of the SecondBase workshop, which as you know is less talk and more touchy-feely, we'll let you push and poke and play with all the toys so that you leave not only with the info, but the know-how too.This workshop has been designed specifically for the wine industry, so for the first time we'll be hosting it at Mike Ratcliffe's vilafonté wine cellar in Stellenbosch.
As part of the afternoon, we'll also be using the occasion to arm you with some of our brand-new equipment courtesy of Nokia and show you a few exciting and practical uses of some of the tools in one of our legendary 'urban adventures'. Jon Cherry from Cherryflava also has a hunch as to how Steve Jobs would market his South African wine farm and will share those 'unusual' insights with you.If you're thinking of lifting your marketing game and need a practical guide to the best digital tools and trends right now - then this is your event.
Tickets are rarer than 5-stars in Platter, only 45 available.
Price: R950 per ticket
Date: Tuesday 8 September 2009
Time: 12:00 pm - 5:30 pm
Venue: Vilafonté wine cellar, Stellenbosch
To book your seat: E-mail Jon Cherry - jon@cherryflava.com
TICKET STATUS: Tickets for the SECOND BASE workshop are still available.

Monday, August 17, 2009

Do Wine Blogs Impact Your Brand?

New Study Highlights Wine Blogger Activity

by By Liz Thach, Ph.D., SSU Wine Business Professor

Should wineries pay attention to what wine bloggers are writing? Do they really have an impact on a wine brand? According to a new study just completed by Sonoma State University Wine Business Institute, it appears that the answer is yes -- especially for wineries with less well-known brands or located in new and upcoming wine regions.

How Many Wine Blogs Are There Anyway?

In order to conduct the study, it was necessary to obtain a random sample, so we consulted the Complete List of Wine Blogs, compiled by Alder Yarrow at www.vinography.com. You may be amazed to know that in the last 5 years, the number of wine blogs has grown from 1 to over 700. Of these, more than 570 wine blogs are in English, with an additional 170+ wine blogs in other languages, including Italian, French, Catalan, Czech, German, Spanish, Dutch, Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, Hungarian, Norwegian, and Indonesian.

Focusing on the English language wine blogs, we applied a decision rule of selecting a minimum of 10 blogs per alpha letter, and discarding those blogs that were not active. This resulted in a total sample of 222 blogs which were subjected to content analysis by 42 trained wine business students.

The 9 Major Categories of Wine Blogs

The first analysis included a thematic sorting of the blogs by major topic. This resulted in 9 categories as illustrated in the chart below. The most common type of blog is a Wine Review for which an individual blogger tastes and writes a review of the wine -- usually adding a rating from the standard 100, 20, or 5 point wine rating scales.


Blogs on Wine & Food with matching recipes, as well as information on restaurants was the 2nd largest category. This was followed by Wine Education where the blogger educates the reader on wine issues such as wine styles, varietals, how to taste wine and related topics. Blogs that focused specifically on Winemaking and Viticulture were placed in a separate category.

In addition, there were blogs that focused on Specific Wine Regions, such as a city, state, appellation or country. Some examples we found included Washington D.C., New Orleans, San Francisco, Paris, Seattle, Washington State, Oregon, California, and Britain. These blogs also emphasized wine shops and/or wineries available in these areas, as well as restaurants. A related category was Wine & Culture which focused on the association of wine with art, poetry, music, and literature.

Only 9% of the sample included Winery Blogs -- or those created by wineries to describe their wines and news at the winery. This illustrates an opportunity for more wineries to create their own blog. Other less frequent blog categories included Wine Business and Winemaking & Viticulture. The category of Other was created for those very unique blogs that didn't fit into major themes. Examples included "wine & hiking; wine & politics; wine under $20; and an emphasis on a specific grape, such as shiraz.

Numbers of Wine Brands and Ads on Blogs

 

Other analyses included counting and recording the number of wine brands and advertisements on the first page of each blog (we did not analyze older posts). Amazingly within the 222 wine blogs, 813 different wine brands were listed. These were sorted to determine which wine brands were cited most often. Interestingly only 3 brands were listed 4 or more times: Kendall-Jackson, Ridge and Penfolds. This analysis showed that many small unknown wine brands are described on blogs, as well as international brands from around the world.

Just under half of the sample (47%) included advertisements on the blog, for a total of 451 ads. These varied from simple ads provided by Google, to sophisticated winery, food, and wine product ads. It is important to note that the major way wine bloggers create revenue is through online ads, with professional bloggers able to make $20,000 - $30,000 per year in this fashion. Most wine bloggers have other jobs to supplement their online income. (Note: There have been some ethical discussions at the past two Wine Blogger's Conferences as to whether or not bloggers should accept ads from wine brands they review.)

Why Should Wineries Pay Attention to Bloggers?

There are several reasons that wineries need to pay attention to wine bloggers. The first is that the number of wine blogs is continuing to grow, and this provides an opportunity for wineries to have their brands featured on blogs. For wineries with a small public relations budget or those that can't get the attention of the larger media publications, this can be a positive alternative -- especially since some of the more popular wine blogs have thousands of followers and receive 30,000 to 40,000 hits per month.

Another reason is that we have entered a period of "democratization of media on the Internet." This means that anyone can easily establish a wine blog on the Internet using free blogging software (wordpress.com; blogspot.com; typepad.com, etc.). Since there are no official guidelines regarding what can be published, the stories and reviews may be positive or negative. Likewise, bloggers have diverse backgrounds in that some have a high level of wine knowledge and experience, whereas others have none and just want to share their viewpoints on wine. Therefore, in terms of writing quality and level of sophistication of wine blogs, there is great variation. Because of this wineries need to monitor what is being said about their brands online.

How Can Wineries Work With Wine Bloggers?

The advent of wine blogs and other Wine 2.0 applications (social networking sites, online videos, podcasts, message boards, etc.) has created both more opportunities and more work for the public relations function within wineries. Because of the fact that your brand may be discussed online by anyone who happens to buy a bottle -- and that the story can easily be circulated around the globe in a matter of hours, it is important to pay attention: 
• Monitor your brand online to keep track of what people are saying about you. Most wineries have now utilized the Google Alert system, but there are others such as Twitter Search, http://www.trackur.com, and http://www.monitter.com which can provide more information.
• If you find a positive review or mention of your name, consider sending an email to thank the blogger for featuring you.
• If you find a negative review, contact the blogger and ask them for more information. Consider inviting them to visit your winery or a tasting you are hosting so they can learn more about you. DO NOT get in an "online flame war" with a blogger (which has happened in the past). 
• Identify several wine blogs you enjoy reading and keep track of them to see what topics are "hot" on the blogs. 
• If you are a new winery with a less well-known brand consider contacting the blogmaster of wine blogs which interest you. Invite them to visit or taste your wine. 
• If you are in a wine region that is less well-known, identify bloggers who write about your region and invite them to visit or taste your wine. 
• If you are considering starting your own winery blog, make sure to implement it in a professional manner. This means making sure to write new posts at least once a week, but preferably more often. It also means writing interesting stories about what is happening at the winery and other issues, rather than just trying to market your wine. Finally, it means monitoring and responding to the people who post on your blog.
Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!

Friday, August 14, 2009

Neil Pendock, the Sunday Times wine guru has an impromptu Vilafonte wine tasting

I’d always thought that Vilafonté would make an excellent brand name for an añejo tequila with a minature of Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa on the label, like a Cuban cigar band. But Mike Ratcliffe got in first and Vilafonté is a brand name for two serious red blends from Paarl as well as a handmade Cuban cigar from the same company.

Vilafonté winemaker Bernard le Roux
We drove past Vilafonté, the farm in Simondium, on the way to Nederburg cellarmaster Razvan Macici’s top secret Canon Route vineyard earlier this month, access to which is strictly controlled to deter lookie-loos and other unfashionables.
In a strange coincidence, I was sitting next to Kathy de Wet at a Great Gatsby dinner on Excelsior farm on Saturday night. Kathy was born on Babylonstoren farm and her late brother David Louw developed the secret Canon Route vineyard. Back at Vilafonté, the two reds are called M and C, which I’d always thought referred to the dominant cultivar Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon respectively.
Which works for the 2005 vintage but in 2006 the M is a mixture of 43% Cabernet Sauvignon, 39% Merlot, 15% Malbec and 3% Cabernet Franc and very nice it is, too. Far fresher with more supple tannins than M 2005 (52% Merlot, 31% Cabernet Franc and 17% Malbec). This confusion of recipes and changing horses between vintages is a common problem for wannabe icons. Just ask Giulio Bertrand whose Morgenster red blend changes recipe more often than the excellent Chris Kelly changes winery.
M 2006 can’t segue into C 2006 as that wine is already released (Cabernet Sauvignon 54%, Merlot 40% and Cabernet Franc 6%). Not that it would necessarily want to, as the C 2006 opened up with disturbing notes of coffee and mocha which thankfully soon blew off after the vigorous agitation of a Mexican revolutionary. I got to taste the illustrious trio after bumping into Vilafontéwinemaker Bernard le Roux slumming it at Chenin, the made-over Nose Wine Bar in the Cape Quarter.
So what does the M stand for? 007’s crotchety old bag boss in the James Bond franchise played by Dame Judi Dench? Probably not, as Bernard says ladies prefer C: “they have more demanding palates than men.” And deeper pockets too, as the C costs R110 more than the M at R375 a bottle.
Could it be that savvy Mr. Ratcliffe is paying court to the two most powerful wine opinion formers in SA, Michael Fridjhon (M) and Christian Eedes (C)? Or is that one conspiracy theory too many? If a name change is being mooted in the smoky cigar bar at Warwick, perhaps Z would work, in honour of founder Zelma Long and the rapier-like mark of Zorro that fits in with a Mexican theme.
But that won’t fly as Emile den Dulk got there first with his De Toren Z, even if he does pronounce it “zee.” So it’ll have to be N or P then, after Norma (Ratcliffe) or Phil (Freese), naturally, with any resemblance to my own initials, purely coincidental!

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

We present a wine marketing workshop

An all-new SecondBase workshop for wine people

Blogging can be a very powerful marketing tool - when done right. Same goes for mobile tools, which are generally fairly inexpensive but can take a degree from MIT and a few episodes of Heroes to muster up enough geek in you to understand, let alone develop yourself. We've therefore invited Adriaan Pienaar from WooThemes and Chris Rolfe from Mobilitrix to join us for an afternoon of 'how-to' in the winelands for our second SecondBase workshop entitled: SecondBase - The digital media 'how-to guide' for the South African wine industry [Part 1] Adriaan runs an extremely successful blog theme company and is an expert on designing, jump-starting and making blogs work. He knows the psychology behind what readers enjoy and how to produce something people are really going to want to become fans of. Chris is an expert in mobile marketing and runs a company that sells innovative mobile marketing products. We've asked him to come along, show us what they do, how they work and how they can drive your sales. We've used them before ourselves - so we know they rock. As part of the SecondBase workshop, which as you know is less talk and more touchy-feely, we'll let you push and poke and play with all the toys so that you leave not only with the info, but the know-how too.This workshop has been designed specifically for the wine industry, so for the first time we'll be hosting it at Mike Ratcliffe's Vilafonté wine cellar in Stellenbosch.As part of the afternoon, we'll also be using the occasion to arm you with some of our brand-new equipment courtesy of Nokia and show you a few exciting and practical uses of some of the tools in one of our legendary 'urban adventures'.

Jon Cherry from Cherryflava also has a hunch as to how Steve Jobs would market his South African wine farm and will share those 'unusual' insights with you.If you're thinking of lifting your marketing game and need a practical guide to the best digital tools and trends right now - then this is your event.

Tickets are rarer than 5-stars in Platter, only 45 available.
Price: R950 per ticket
Date: Tuesday 8 September 2009
Time: 12:00 pm - 5:30 pm
Venue: vilafonté wine cellar, Stellenbosch map: www.vilafonte.com
To book your seat: E-mail Jon Cherry - jon@cherryflava.com
Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!