Thursday, July 21 2011

Is there anybody still out there?

Nooooooo!

In the parlance of the spy-thriller, I’ve gone dark for a while. Sorry about that, but it’s been an epic period for me: between a lot of travel, a bunch of conferences, a boggling trip to China, a video production (with yours truly as the writer, director, producer, researcher, narrator and actor—I’m a credit-hog) and the production of sales and marketing copy for the 2011 Limited Edition program, along with a couple of complex internal documents, not to mention stories for magazines (one I still owe at this point, gulp) and other obligations (oh yeah, I’m still married—I hope) I’ve been swamped.

Time for a round-up. First things first, China.

Chatting with Mr. Li in Xinxiang winery

I had a marvellous trip. If you’ve ever been, you’ll know how fundamentally different China is. If you’ve ever been to the interior, rather than Hong Kong or Shanghai, you’ll know how profound that difference can become. I was there to attend the opening of the Xinxiang Winexpert winery. It’s a combination venture, incorporating a winery operation, a wine-on-premise and a home winemaking supply centre. I had a great time at the opening, enjoying the hospitality of Mr. Li and his family and had a lot of fun figuring out ways to improve the operational capacity of the winery, which is trickier than it sounds. In Canada I’d just make a couple of calls and get a bag of winemaking acid delivered, or go to a hardware store to pick a few things up. Not so much in Xinxiang—I had to get a colleague in Canada to send some measuring spoons out for their winemaker, because such things just don’t exist!

Check out my photo album of the trip here.

Overall I really got a lot out of the trip, not the least of which is a much better understanding of the challenges our retailers face in China. Between delivery lead times, infrastructure challenges and the need to educate every customer, one at a time, about consumer winemaking, it takes a lot of dedication to make it work. Fortunately, Mr. Li and his crew have all it takes, and more.

One minor misfortune of the trip was that between a change in diet and a stomach bug I picked up it exacerbated some digestive issues I have. I had planned to stay an extra day and visit the Great Wall of China, but no such luck—I wound up not being able to leave the hotel until my flight out of Beijing. It was pretty frustrating to be less than a two hour bus ride from one of the most spectacular man-made objects on earth, and not to be able to get near it! Maybe next time . . .

Writing the 2011 Limited Edition stuff has really occupied most of my waking hours since I’ve been back. LE is one of those iceberg thingies, where you only see the 10% that pokes out of the water (and gouges a hole in your ship). The 90% you don’t see is divided between the research needed to place the wines in the geography and context of their origin and history, and the give-and-take between the need to write good marketing copy and to make accurate representations of what the winemakers are doing.

For example, if we were producing, say, a Chateau-neuf du  Pape style Limited Edition wine, based on Grenache, Syrah, Mourvedre and a bunch of other varieties (we’re not, so don’t inundate your retailer with calls) and I described it as ‘ripe berry fruit with hints of liquorice, anise and aromas of violet, spice and leather’ (classic C-ndP description) the Product Development team might come back and tell me that the violets aren’t going to be prominent in the style they’ve settled on, and it’ll have a riper, plummy flavour from the excellent Syrah they’ve scored, and don’t forget the oak has a heavier vanilla flavour . . . suddenly I’m back at the drawing board. Not their fault, but it’s a big give-and-take, chasing down producers, getting harvest information and vetting technical details.

Back in the wild ‘n’ wooly days a decade ago I’d sometimes give it my best shot and with the resources we had, and let the chips fall where they might. I’m proud to say that it worked out quite well, but nowadays we’ve got sharper marketing, and a lot of talented folks to help criticise and guide the direction we go in. But that means more due diligence and time spent writing, stuff that’s anathema to a shoot-from-the-hip dude like me. Still, I can’t be sad: it’s turning out pretty well.

I did say ‘most’ of my waking hours. I’ve spent a significant amount of time working on a new positioning paper for Winexpert wines. You might ask yourself, ‘Positioning? Don’t they fit on the shelves neatly?’ and that’d be a perfectly reasonable response. But when you’ve got a bunch of different product lines, with different attributes, value propositions (‘prices’ to non- Sales and Marketing types) and usage types (early drinking, cellaring, refreshment beverages, etc.) it really helps to put them all in perspective for the people who have to explain them to customers—especially if you’ve introduced new products since the last time you produced a positioning paper

This has been a double-plus good exercise, as not only has it produced a good document for our retail partners, it’s got the Winexpert team huddled together, hammering out what we all see as the vision for the wines made from our kits. Naturally I think the positioning is obvious, and everyone should simply take what I write and parrot it. But (to my continual and ongoing surprise) I am not always right.

There, I said it. Have mercy!

Anyway, all that is aside, as I’m nearly caught up on stuff (I swear Betsy, I’m worked on the story all week!) and now I’m sitting ensconced safely in my soundproof suite at the fabulous Omni Hotel in Downtown Charlottesville Virginia. It’s the 2011 Wine Bloggers conference, and I’m here to find out what’s the latest buzz on wine criticism, drinking trends and market forces. So it behoves me to get some blogging done! Over the next couple of days I’ll be doing various things like speedblogging, Twittering and Facebooking, partly covering the conference itself (meta-blogging!) and partly trying to get my brain filled up with good social media ideas.

It’s almost 2 am here, and I’ve got to be up and working for registration at nine, so I’m going to put this up and hit the sack. Fortunately for my productivity, the Omni Hotel missed the same opportunity that every other hotel I’ve ever stayed at for wine/beer conferences has missed: they have a hotel filled with people who think nothing of drinking every night of the week, who are captive on their property, and they still closed their bar at 11:30.

Epic fail. If I was still managing hotels and this was my property, I would have laid in extra booze and staff, handed out a few half-price appetiser coupons and stayed open as long as my licence allowed me to. They could have sold every drop of alcohol-containing liquid in the hotel, including antifreeze and window cleaner.

Sigh. But as usual, I’m not in charge. But, more blogging to come!

Posted by Tardy Tim AT 11:10PM

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