Wine

ALLOCATIONS: A CONTINUATION

In our last ‘dribblings’ piece we talked about why allocations as a marketing strategy were created. Essentially it started as a way to apportion in demand goods to a wide range of customers, as well as a way for the seller to control the distribution patterns of his wines. Admittedly, the fact that wine is a unique product that cannot be replicated or reproduced creates some scenarios that most businesses do not face, though the wine industry (mostly wineries themselves) have gone beyond what would be enough to effectively deal with the problem of limited stock to supply overwhelming demand.

Many wineries have taken the position that they not only want to sell their juice, but also micro-manage who gets the opportunity to purchase said juice. Why would someone care about that as long as the wine gets bought and paid for? We are not the people to ask, and can generate volumes with stories of wineries going out of their way to control where every bottle goes. But it is a fact of life in the wine business and has been for a long time, both among those who have those high-demand, limited items, and those who’d like to think they do.

We regularly see special offers from wineries that have been so effective in ‘allocating’ that they haven’t sold much of anything. But that is a story for another time.

At the end of our last piece, we made reference to some of the new techniques wineries are using in their ‘allocations’. Another term for it would be ‘bundling’. Wineries that have a successful item or two that people clamor for every year on their mailing list are now adding other products to peoples ‘allocations’ with the tacit understanding that the consumer is expected to take the entire offering. If they don’t, it may adversely alter the amounts they are offered on the future.

We’re sure some of you have been in situations where your allotment letter of a particular in-demand, high dollar Cabernet comes and you note that the winery has also blessed you with a few bottles of their new $45 Sauvignon Blanc that they will tell you is very special, too. You may not even like Sauvignon Blanc, but if you care about the Cabernet, the winery figures you’ll pony up for the Sauv. Blanc as well. This is an aggressive tactic that takes FOMO (fear of missing out) and uses it to shoehorn more items into the consumers ‘cart’.

Hey, it happens out in the trade to some extent as well, though it is on the wane because, these days, there is simply too much great wine out there for a single winery to get away with it for very long. We hear from a lot of consumers who want to sell their multi-year verticals of the ‘other wines they had to buy’ in order to get the wines they really wanted. We stopped playing those games with suppliers decades ago but understand that people get super passionate about certain wines and will put up with a lot of silliness to get them.

The winery knows that, too. If the winery is hot enough, they’ll just figure if you don’t want to play, someone else will. It seems to be accepted practice these days, particularly among some of the direct-to-consumer wine programs. We think the days of such things might be numbered. The power of the single critic to create an instant icon isn’t what it used to be in the ‘print’ days, prices have soared on such wines to greatly reduce the potential demand, and we seriously doubt the next generation would respond to this kind of nonsense anyway.

Still, for whatever reason, people who make wine seem to believe it is their birthright to decide who can buy their wine. We’ll go out on a limb and say that as much as vintners will try and tell you they allocate because they want to ‘protect their brand’ and ‘insure the widest possible distribution’, there’s more than a little ego involved. Plus vintners would be indignant if you suggested to them that this process might create some of the problems they seek to resolve.

A number of ‘cult’ California wines turn up at auction every year because people on the mailing list have created a nice little income supplement by reselling their allocations. The wines have become too expensive for normal people to drink, but there are some people out there willing to pay ‘mad money’ to get some of these items. So people on the ‘mailing list’ will continue to take their allocations because they don’t want to lose them, and simply resell some or all of it. Allocating didn’t solve that problem, it prolongs it.

“Wine, like water, will often flow to the place it is destined to be.”

You have likely heard about the ‘grey market’ in certain higher end European wines. This market exists because of the allocation process. We’ll illustrate how it works with a curious American example that happened years ago. A certain sales manager of a famous California winery was bragging that he exported wines to 25 countries and was about to add a 26^th. He was going to send 3 cases of his highest demand reserve Cabernet to Lichtenstein. Could he have sold them here in a nano-second? Clearly. Does anyone in Lichtenstein care about this wines? He couldn’t answer, but was going to do it anyway so he could add another pin to his map.

Now to illustrate how the ‘grey market’ works, let’s use our Cabernet in Lichtenstein. Obviously the three cases are not enough to stimulate international trade, but it is the reason and mechanics we want to show. So let’s say the buyer in Lichtenstein has no idea what he is going to do with this big time California Cab, nor does he think he can sell it for enough to make it worth the effort. He will look around the world and see who is willing to pay a premium and perhaps try to sell it all in one shot to some other market, maybe even back to America if the price is right. The American winery guy still smugly has his 26^th pin in the map, but it really didn’t accomplish anything.

Wine, like water, will often flow to the place it is destined to be. Say some top notch Burgundy house has a relationship with a distributor in Switzerland, developed over the years because the winery felt it needed to be represented in that country among others. If there is enough profit, or an easier transaction to sell Switzerland’s allocation out the ‘back door’ to another market, it will happen. The winery intended for this wine to be in Switzerland for lord-knows-what reason, but the mechanics of the marketplace will often prevail.

The winery/domaine decided to allocate its wines in a certain way to various world markets to achieve some perceived marketing strategy and distribution. Why? Again, don’t know. But the point is he isn’t balancing supply and demand appropriately if the wines are being resold to other markets. So what did this ‘allocation’ do really? Clearly one or more of those markets didn’t need all they were given…and what were they supposed to do with the wine?

It is one of the great mysteries why the wine industry spends so much time worrying about apportioning wines to entities who may not care at all about them. But it seems to be ingrained in the system, and we don’t see that changing any time soon. If you ever wonder why our California section is more moderate these days, far too many wineries make it way more difficult than it needs to be to simply get products we’d be interested in selling. Thankfully there is enough great wine in the world that such things as ‘allocations,’ and other such gamesmanship, really don’t have the impact they used to because there are simply too many great choices, most of which don’t have some sort of ‘sales prevention’ agenda.

The Price is Right?

Being in business today is challenging. We could go into a lot of detail about costs of doing business, fierce competition, and the constant exposure in a world where everyone has an opinion and posts it on Yelp without fear of recourse no matter how outlandish, incorrect or vindictive. Are we bitter? No, we’re doing fine in these turbulent waters. That’s just the way it is, and everyone has to deal with it.

The world is a different place than it was a few decades ago, and technology has sped up the cycles of change and empowered the everyman to speak his mind whether they know what they’re talking about or not. Again, that’s just the way it is. Back in college (about 100 years ago) we recall being in some pretty heated discussions in business school about the coming age of consumerism. It just seemed like the children of the 60s questioned everything, including whether or not companies could run roughshod over the public with impunity any more.

What followed were drastic changes in consumer laws, Ralph Nader, and having to sign a mountain of paperwork just to have your teeth cleaned. It’s a better world, right? Company practices are much more consumer friendly and fair (United Airlines not withstanding) and things like the ‘cooling off period’ and liberal ‘return policies’ are all there to protect consumers against themselves. Even so, there still seems to be an itchy trigger finger when it comes to decrying someone’s business practices.

“you should always assume stupidity and ignorance before maliciousness”

It’s as if there is some sort of mass paranoia that all businesses are out to deceive the public. These days it only takes a couple of chat-room threads to turn something into a full blown brouhaha. Yet in this day and age, when the consumer is allowed every opportunity to back out of a purchase, retailers are vilified for things that could have just been mistakes by employees. We jumped to the defense of a competitor for being slammed on the news for ‘deceptive practices’ because some shelf talkers on wines were misplaced or were for a prior vintage. If it were intentional, to what end? Ticking off consumers is not good policy. Likely errors or lack of diligence by employee were the cause. Our creative director Patrick has a good saying that “you should always assume stupidity and ignorance before maliciousness”. Seems like a pretty useful mantra for life in general, no?

This particular rant came about because we recently read Amazon was being chastised for misstating the ‘regular prices’ on items to make their ‘sale’ price look more attractive. We can’t imagine why a company that visible and that clearly in a position of power would do that. The accusation apparently stemmed from them quoting ‘regular prices’ that were not actually out there. Apparently some conspiracy theorist found a price that was a couple of bucks lower somewhere (without noting if there were special discounts from the manufacturer, coupons, club membership allowances or any one of a thousand other tactics used to make people think they are getting a deal) from the other source. Suddenly Amazon was a bad guy. Really? Frankly, in the end, all that really matters is the final price, and whether it is 38.9% off or 41.6% really isn’t the issue.

Clearly Amazon doesn’t need our help. They surely have a phalanx of lawyers for this sort of thing, and maybe they didn’t actually, or intentionally, do anything wrong. But there seems to always be someone willing to rattle a saber and defend the common man, and some news agency looking for a headline. That is the world we live in. Hey, a lot of folks offer deals in the wine business, too, and use ‘regular price’ as a barometer to demonstrate the magnitude of the discount. No doubt there are people that are ready to pounce there, too, on some perceived misrepresentation of price.

Now we aren’t saying all wine merchants are saints. Quite the contrary, some shoot prices for merchandise they don’t actually have and some, yes, state an inflated price to make their deal look juicier. For our part, we make every effort to find a real price before we bring it up. With wine, there are industry wide standards for pricing, although even those are becoming more ‘fluid’ as wineries trying to sell direct to consumers undercut their own retail prices with gimmicks like club member prices etc. So if the ‘retail’ price per bottle is $200, but anyone can call up on the phone and ‘join’ a ‘club’ for no cost and get the same bottle for the ‘membership price’ of $175, what then is the real price?

For the record, the standard markup for the wine industry is as follows, and we aren’t going to confuse the issue by calling the result a ‘markup’, ‘mark on’ or ‘margin’. If a wine costs $10 wholesale (before any discounts or allowances), the ‘list’ price is $15, whatever you choose to call it. Other businesses (jewelry, clothing, luxury accessories, etc) are substantially higher. When a retailer buys direct from the winery, on a wholesale basis, that structure is traditionally the assumption. Now once there are other parties involved (like a distributor or broker), the numbers can play out a little differently because there are more fingers in the pie and different parameters. The ‘base’ price can change and that might cause the presumed ‘retail’ to be a little different.

Thus if a distributor took a little extra bump, say $11 wholesale, and there was no winery price guidance, then the ‘stated’ retail price would be more like $16.50. A very common occurrence is on out of state shipments, where the f.o.b. (freight on board) price of wine from California to say Texas, or Washington to California, is slightly higher than the direct ship price within the state. Given a higher cost, a retailer might state the ‘retail price’ based on a higher cost. Re they inflating the price? Not necessarily. Imports are even dicier because of the varied shipping cost not only from the point of origin to the U.S., but to whichever coast or parts in between the wine eventually goes within the U.S. So what’s the real price? It’s not always that easy to determine.

We get it. There is a lot of skepticism about how businesses operate. There are a few bad apples, this is true. But sometimes actually determining the ‘retail’ price isn’t that easy. Are we defending Amazon? Not exactly. More to the point, while we aren’t naïve, we don’t think everyone is out to get you. People are far too inclined to point to a couple of minor mistakes over thousands of products and suggest there is institutional deception happening. Yeah, we have a few people that do that in our business, too, but only a few.

In the end if you are getting a superior product for a better price, isn’t that the issue? But what about those price search engines like wine-searcher? Well even those aren’t definitive for establishing a true ‘list’ price because the range can sometimes be 40-50% between the top and the bottom of the range of a wine’s price, and that’s without even knowing if all of the prices are backed by actual physical inventory or what the provenance of the particular wine is.

We try our best to be accurate. Usually a winery will have a posted price on their website and that’s our first choice to represent as ‘original retail’. If we can’t find the winery pricing, or in the case of imports where there isn’t a relevant price listing, we’ll consult the reviews which usually list a suggested or ‘full markup’ retail price. We also try to say where we got the price whenever possible if it is the context of an article. If we are making the point that something we are selling is a ‘percent off’ of an original price, we do the research to find an appropriate price comparison that we are comfortable with. Wines come and go, but integrity and trust are long term plays.

Finally we’d like to make the point. Yes we have been doing marketing for a long time. We understand how it works. Back when we started the ‘one price’ system, offering our best price ‘bottle one’ (which was pretty novel three decades ago), it took some consumer education. Many consumers had gotten used to the fact that, under regulated ‘fair trade’ pricing in California (which ended in 1979), they got a discount for buying twelve bottles or more. They would point out that ‘store XYZ’ gave them a 10% discount when they bought a case. After calculating their ‘discount’ at XYZ, our price was still lower. What really matters in the end is what you actually pay, not the real (or imagined) percentage discount you received to get there. Happy Weekend.

Gauging Temperature: What happens when my wine gets hot?

Throughout the years we’ve always found ourselves caught up in discussions about the effects of certain things on a bottle of wine, predominantly temperature. Now we could be like much of the industry and simply stick to the perfection rule that all wine must be kept between 52 and 65 degrees through all of its life or it will be ruined. That not only refers to the storage in your home or office, and the temperature of the place where you acquired the bottle, but all points in between including the weather through which it is shipped from beginning to end. In a perfect world, sure, why not? But let’s face it, things in your life are rarely this perfect.

It gets warm, it gets cold, and people make mistakes. We aren’t going to try and tell you that those fears are overblown. But there are people out there that think anything short of perfection is actionable. They think that the UPS driver should be there at a specific time to avoid any prolonged ride on the truck when the temperature is over 70 degrees, and that the driver should wear insulated gloves so as not to transfer any body heat to the wine when he touches it. Yea…right. With all of the new virtual reality stuff that’s happening these days, maybe someone will come up with that perfect world. But in the meantime, it isn’t realistic.

We once saw a merchant claim in a written advertisement that all of his wines came in refrigerated trucks. Hmm… ‘Long haul’ trucks might be refrigerated. We shipped a lot of loads from a Washington State importer with a company that also hauled fish. Sometimes the truck smelled, um, like the sea? But the wine arrived in great shape. Shipping containers for expensive wines, and even not so expensive wines, were usually refrigerated. But as far as trucks that delivered from the local distributors, or couriers around town, we only saw one refrigerated truck per year…the Romanee Conti release. The rest of the time they were at ambient temperature. For everyone.

Our merchant ‘friend’ was being less than honest, but often consumers are over-the-top the other way, saying two hours on a truck at 80 degrees is ruinous. It isn’t, and we say that knowing there are plenty of holier-than-thou types in the industry that will call us out because it is easier to be elitist. It’s easy to preach perfection, a lot harder to actually do it where weather and human beings are involved.

We’ll tell a short story about an experience a few years ago. I put a case of mixed Burgundies in the car after work and went off to do a bit of ‘research’. Upon getting home, I went straight into the house, forgetting that case of Burgundy in the trunk. I did not have occasion to go into the trunk for another week during a very warm July, essentially driving the case around town until one day when I had a reason to get into the trunk…and saw the case. My reaction was, oh shucks (or…something like that). But I figured it was a way to test the heat/wine thing real time (bear in mind I am a trained professional).

The heat was substantial but not extreme (90s but not over 100). Over the course of the next month I had those twelve bottles. Eleven of them were just fine and one was corked (which it would have been regardless of temperature). We continued the experiment for years testing the occasional shipping ‘mishap’bottles as they came back. For the most part, we found that in the difficult cases, the wine did show some deterioration after a few months, even sooner in the cases where the corks were pushed up (which of course would allow more oxygen to reside inside the bottle)*. But most were good to go early on.

What we are getting at is that, much of the time, if there is a temperature ‘accident’, it is rarely the proverbial ‘bullet to the brain’. It can, and again we are talking extremes, cause deterioration over time probably as often because the airspace in the bottle changed as being the direct effect of extreme heat or cold. If it does happen, like we said, as long as you get to it sooner (let’s nominally say within a month or two), you should experience little if any perceptible depreciation. So if it is a ‘drinking bottle’, as most bottles are these days, go ahead and drink it. The one caveat is ‘natural wines’. Since such wines are not typically stabilized, a change in temperature might occasionally set off an unanticipated reaction within the wine itself .

“wine is a living thing, which means it can take anything you can”

Obviously nobody goes out of their way to create these unfortunate scenarios. We do our best to avoid them and mediate the weather with our shipment timing as best we can. We tell people picking up wine that, when it’s hot, they should put their wine inside the cabin of the car where its air conditioned and go straight home. Some don’t listen, go to the mall for two hours and complain to us because the bottle leaked.

If someone asks us to ship into Phoenix in August, we will simply say no. One must be cautious to a point. However weather being what it is, you never know for sure how it will play out.

In truth, most of the industry doesn’t worry about it that much. But then something like 90% of the wine purchased is consumed with in a couple of weeks so it’s rarely ever an epidemic. The point is we don’t live in a perfect world and sometimes stuff happens. When it does, don’t panic. Move those bottles up in the rotation, serve them at the proper temperature, and most of the time you’ll be just fine. Occasionally unfiltered wines might throw off some extra sediment. In those cases, stand them up a day or two, and then proceed as planned.

While we always practice, and recommend, exercising caution, wine is not as fragile as some might have you believe. As someone told us once, yes wine is a living thing, which means it can take anything you can. In other words, except in extreme cases, it isn’t ‘life or death’, at least in the short run.

* Extreme heat or cold will cause liquid to expand which will push the wine out of the cork or push the cork itself up in the neck. As it comes back to a more normal temperature the wine will contract to where it should be, minus any that pushed out. In either case, there may be a larger air gap in the bottle, which will accelerate the process. It’s basic physics.

And Now, A Look Even Further Ahead: Part II

To briefly recap from last time, the production side of the wine industry is better than ever, more people have the tools and the knowledge to make the best wines ever. There are very few ‘bad’ wines these days that suffer from bacterial, microbial, or other forms of ‘funk’ that hygienic winemaking has mostly eliminated. The most significant source of bad bottles stem from the closures, either those with TCA that cause the wine to be corked, or an imperfect seal that allows the wine to oxidize.

Screw cap closures virtually eliminate all of those problems, and the next generation is not as connected to the ‘screw caps mean cheap wines’ mentality. Millennials grew up with fine wines that came with screw caps and there’s no reason to think the acceptance of screw caps will not continue to increase moving forward to the point where most of the wines that are consumed ‘off-the-shelf’ will come in cap closures, allowing the cork trees to replenish to make better corks for those ‘special’ bottles destined for the cellar.

One must ask a simple question here before moving on. Presumably the wine industry will cater to the market (though it is known to try and manipulate certain aspects) as time marches on. But what exactly is the market? Is it the small upper part that maintains cellars and buys wine on a regular basis, usually with the curiosity to try new genres just because they want to and the itch to keep up on trends? The small, savvy group is the one we maintain has the most impact on the market and spends the most money proportionately. The trends often start here.

Is it the second tier that is willing to spend money on high priced wine clubs and restaurant markups with just enough knowledge to know they want something better? These are professional folks that have the money to spend but not necessarily the experience or desire to sort through the rhetoric. They are more susceptible to price (more expensive is better, right?) and marketing (‘being in a wine club makes me a special insider’) impressions. There’s a mediocre, single vineyard $60 Petit Verdot Reserve out there somewhere for these folks but they do make up a sizeable buying force. Certain market brands (not mentioning names) have established remarkable followings with this largely loyal group. This is the ideal target for most wineries and direct-to-consumer entities. Some will take the step to the smaller group, others will become disenchanted with the lack of value, but the remainder is still a sizeable group with buying power.

The third group is the largest in population though probably far less connected. These are the more occasional buyer that purchases wines pretty much the same way they buy potato chips and soda. They find a brand they like and stick with it unlike shaken out of the pattern. Of course they make up the largest group in terms of tonnage and are the targets. For the most part these are the folks that like wine but aren’t fanatics about it. They will see things when they filter down to the grocery/’big box’ level, and won’t see or seek out many opportunities to try something different. These are the ‘brand buyers’ that corporate wineries seek.

We aren’t casting judgment from our perspective, just observing. At this point we have described these groups from a multigenerational context. In truth the big change in wine perception came with the baby-boomers, arguably the first American generation to have some sort of wider-spread wine culture. It was rare to see people ordering wine in restaurants or bars as an aperitif or cocktail back in the day. But it is pretty common now and the next generation, the millennials, grew up with this around them. Most ‘boomers’ are now in their 60s and 70s and aren’t buying a lot any more. The industry looks to the next-gen buyers to try and figure it out.

“It was rare to see people ordering wine in restaurants or bars as an aperitif or cocktail back in the day.”

It’s a little hard to cover all the bases, and our perspective is certainly a bit skewed as we deal largely with the savviest group. But there are a few things we have noticed over the last few years. The media has changed buying patterns. We hardly ever hear the term ‘vertical’ from a buyer any more. For those that don’t know the term, a lot of folks would find a few wines they liked and buy some every year, year in and year out. These days a buyer will be more sensitive to reviews on high end wines and cluster buy the highest rated vintages and top wines from the media. He is more attuned to score than brand if push comes to shove.

Back in the olden days, brands established themselves more slowly but on a much more solid footing. In today’s lightening communication world, wines and labels can get hot overnight and disappear almost as fast. In the ‘148 character’, digital world where a lot of folks don’t ever look up from their phones, slow building would seem to be at a disadvantage. It’s hard to get someone’s attention long enough to tell much of a story (unless you have them trapped in your winery tasting room).

Most of the wine purchased is drunk right away, though that isn’t necessarily a massive societal change. It is however on a bit of an upswing. The next-gens seem to be more inclined to meet outside the home, which kind of precludes the whole cellar building process. We would suggest that this trend has supported the explosion of casual restaurants, ethnic eateries, and ‘pub-like’ venues over ‘fine dining’ (that itself is a very fertile subject for another time). Suffice it to say that those are less likely to provide that ‘revelation’ moment wine-wise, and support the more casual buying of wine.

On the production end, things are technically much better as we said. But the combination of the media formats favoring blowsier, more overt styles and the general public’s waning attention span (air a wine for a half hour?…omg, lol what am I supposed to do in the meantime?), favors the sweeter, more commercial, more obvious style of wine. Sadly for the big picture, we see wine, like the world, becoming more homogenized. Busy people don’t have time for details, so simple and non-obtrusive has a ready market.

Another key issue is how wines are sold (we’ll address this detail next time). There are more exceptional wines than ever as we said in our last piece. So let’s take our next-gen buyer, the people that the industry will have to rely on for the next 20-30 years, and let’s make a couple of big suppositions. Let’s assume that a couple a next-geners were at lunch and ordered a glass of wine and actually paid attention to it for a moment. Now this presumes a lot of other things, like the wine they got poured was actually opened within the last 24 (or 48?) hours and the batteries on their smart phones, tablets and smart watches all ran out at once and they left their wireless charging devices at home.

That a pretty unlikely convergence of events but for the sake of theory let’s move on. Under these extreme circumstances, let’s say they find they really like what they were drinking. Suddenly, through no fault of their own, they have the ‘aha’ moment (like we all had at one point or another) and decide maybe they’d like to pursue the wine thing a little bit.

Where are they going to do that? How are they going of do that? Where’s the next generation, the generation that will be expected to support the wine industry, going to learn about wine? That probably is the biggest question because, as much as the wine industry loves to tell itself otherwise, the world has changed a lot since the baby boomers turned 21. But that’s too big a question for right now. We’ll take a swing at it in a couple of weeks…

2017: Good Things on the Horizon

This has become a tradition for us to give everyone an outline of what to expect out of the coming year. Part of the reasoning is that we have the information because we rely upon this info as part of our yearly business plan seeing as there’s always a limit to the amount of money one can spend (even, of course, for the U.S. Government who can simply print it). Since we have already done the homework, there’s no reason not to share it with you so you have the option of strategizing your own purchases and consider cellaring options.

Some years there is a lot going on, other years less so. Last year (2016) had a few strong categories and a few big categories that were not so strong performance-wise. We dare say 2017 has the possibility of being one of the best years for wine buyers in half a decade. We say that without considering an improved economy which some are predicting. We are merely talking about the quality and breadth of really good stuff we anticipate should hit the market.

While the domestic market is not near as volatile from a vintage perspective as Europe, particularly in California, the top domestic regions all seem to be on a continuing ’roll’. California, Oregon and Washington will be mainly rolling out 2014s and 2015s, which are surprisingly uniform in quality, appealing and, from what we’ve seen from 2014, quite accessible.

Domestic quality is such that there should be a trickle down into the next level of players and even the ‘bargain’ producers should be able to find good juice to work with (provided they can find any juice). That’s the one caveat… quantity. It is low in certain areas, particularly in 2015, a consistent theme with most of the California producers we’ve spoken with. What that means to you is that, if you see something that strikes your fancy (particularly among those 2015s), you should move in some haste as they may not be around long if they get any critical attention at all.

The big news of course is the ‘foreign’ 2015s. The vintage promises to be a watershed for quality wines. We haven’t seen this much uniform success across borders since 2010, and can only think of a few other times (1985, 1990, 2005) where so many folks from virtually anyplace that grew grapes had a smile on their face.

“The good times are going to roll.”

The good times are going to roll. As northern Italy gets through the remainder of their rain-affected 2014 whites, they will be (and are being) replaced by the sensational 2015s. We haven’t had anything this good since 2010, though the more fruit-driven profile is more specific to 2015. Very tasty. We have been pleased with some of the whites from the Rhone as well, but will admit that the 2015 whites from Burgundy, while quite good, are a little riper and lower in acidity that the outstanding 2014s. They will however make for an excellent bridge for fans of domestic Chardonnays who are used to ‘fatter’ wines. Buy up those 2015 Loire Valley whites as they arrive and the Cabernet Franc-based reds in particular appear to be the finest since the 2005s.

We have already talked at length about the 2015 Germans and Austrians which are both very special vintages. For whatever reason, the media has not given these wines their due as yet (if they ever will…it’s a Cabernet and Bordeaux world…still). This has afforded a longer buying window, which is not necessarily a bad thing, and we continue to tell anyone who will listen that this is a vintage of historic quality in both regions.

Bordeaux has the opportunity to really make a comeback, provided that they don’t lose sight of reason when it comes to prices. The 2014s are delicious and should provide some really appealing earlier drinking, the 2015s are definitely vins de garde, and the 2016s, which should be offered as ‘futures’ this spring, are rumored to be spectacular in certain areas (clay soils, old vines) that were able to handle the unprecedented drought that hit the region. Good times for Bordeaux lovers, particularly if the euro stays on the low side (the euro was around $1.35 back when the 2010s came out, it’s now around $1.05).

Sadly, the euro probably isn’t going to be much help in Burgundy because the highly anticipated 2015 vintage was also short on quantities (and because it’s Burgundy). But the little red Burgundies we have tasted so far have been remarkably appealing as a group, which only means good things for the ‘bigger dogs’. It’s definitely a vintage to keep an eye on the entry-level Bourgognes, well priced village bottlings, and places like the Cote Chalonnaise and Marsannnay as well as Beaujolais. If you are super ‘brand conscious’, acquiring certain labels might be frustrating, but we anticipate there will be some opportunities if you love the genre and are looking for some very tasty juice.

There will be lots of ample southern Rhones and seriously good northern Rhones. We suspect the 2015 Chateauneufs will require some attention as there hasn’t been a vintage this good since 2010. As to the ‘top notch’ Cote Roties and Hermitages, etc., quality will be ‘amaze-balls’, but a lot of the small, famous names will be hens teeth when it comes to sourcing.

The great thing about 2015 reds is that they are generally gregarious and outgoing. We have seen that all over France and in the ‘little’ reds from northern Italy. If you can’t find something delicious, you’re not trying. There will be those that will say that, because of their outgoing fruit, these wines aren’t structured enough to be considered ‘serious’. They are ‘fat’, true, but also fresh, which bodes well for development. We have tasted enough ‘super jammy’ vintages that have been declared ‘great’ that haven’t necessarily aged as well or as uniformly as some experts said they would. Besides, what’s wrong with being pretty and precocious?

We expect South America will continue to be one of the biggest surprises. We keep finding really compelling start-ups and producers previously unknown to us that have raised the bar considerably. We said they same thing last year about Argentina and Chile, which at the time, probably raised a few eyebrows. In fact, we ran across a lot of stuff that exceeded even our expectations and have to presume that there is a lot more to be found. What is perhaps even more telling is that some of the labels that have been around a while have upped their games as well (just today a Malbec from Bodega Neomia showed a touch and fruit component that got us excited…we don’t recall something of this fineness from this source in the past).

Finally, our ‘dark horse’ prediction for 2017 is…South Africa. Now we have been trying to create a niche for South African wines since the 90s. The wines were often parochial, sometimes solid, and occasionally breakthroughs. But sustainability of the genre proved to be elusive. As soon as we stopped promoting them, they seemed to have little carry through on their own. We have happened upon a few interesting, some maybe a little quirky but delicious items that indicate there is another tier of innovative South African small producers that we have not seen in this marketplace.

By ‘dark horse’ we kind of mean these South African boutiques haven’t had, nor do we expect that they will get much media exposure, and there are all kinds of marketing and distribution issues with small importers and unknown genres by definition. In other words, we aren’t going to bet the grocery money on their success, but only because market mechanics kind of work against them. The wines we are talking about got us really pumped, and we have to assume there are some others out there like them. These wines definitely deserve an audience.

This promises to be a very exciting year for wine drinkers. Besides all that we have alluded to thus far, there are still remnants of the 2010 Reserva and Gran Reserva Riojas from Spain to be had, and Italian reds will certainly have their share of successes (2013 Tuscans, 2015 Barbera and Dolcettos, 2015 ‘little’ Chianti Classico wines) on an individual basis. The only question we can’t answer yet is if this will be Australia’s time to recapture the market share they deserve, that will be up the consumer as the wines are better than ever. We’ll also be on the lookout (and hoping) for ‘deals’ on the delicious 2014s from the southern Rhone and Burgundy, a vintage that got largely overlooked as buyers focused ahead on the more ‘newsworthy’ 2015s. At reduced prices, we will be all over those wines.

Are we looking forward to 2017? You bet! Happy New Year…