{"id":33,"date":"2011-06-08T00:22:11","date_gmt":"2011-06-08T00:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.sostevinobile.com\/?p=33"},"modified":"2011-06-08T00:22:11","modified_gmt":"2011-06-08T00:22:11","slug":"spring-cleaning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.sostevinobile.com\/?p=33","title":{"rendered":"Spring cleaning"},"content":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s not that T. S. Eliot was wrong. The culprit is likely global warming and how it has wreaked havoc on climate patterns around the world. Suffice it to say that, at least for Your West Coast Oenophile<\/b>, May is now officially the cruelest month.<\/font><\/font>
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I have been assiduously developing Sostevinobile<\/b><\/font> for over 30 months now, not only financing it out of my own pocket, but forgoing<\/font><\/font><\/font> (not necessarily by choice)<\/i><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font> almost any personal income in the process<\/i>. In turn, this situation has raised quite a number of challenges on several fronts, and in order to address these, I have had to set aside much of my responsibilities for creating our wine program and maintaining this exhaustive blog over the past four weeks. My backlog of tasting notes is enormous, and while I can feebly try to apologize to those for whose events I owe detailed chronicles, I must still give all somewhat short shrift here if I ever hope to bring things up to date. 
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Of course, if I\u2019d ever learned the art of succinct composition, I might not be in the midst of this dilemma in the first place. Oh well, let me give it a whirl:<\/p>\n
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The 10th Annual Wine Industry Conference<\/a><\/b>: <\/font><\/font>Sometimes, I attend function that\u2014gasp!<\/i>\u2014d<\/font><\/font><\/font>oes not even include a tasting component, but nonetheless offers great portent for the win<\/font>e<\/font><\/font>ries with which Sostevinobile<\/b><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font> will be dealing. <\/font><\/font><\/font>And so I managed to drag myself out of bed, just as the sun was rising, and lumber up to the familiar settings of the Hyatt Vineyard Creek in Santa Rosa for the all-morning session. Growers, winemakers, investment bankers, journalists, and assorted trade and media folks filled the conference room, as two very distinct panels addressed the state of the wine industry in 2011, seen from their particular vantage.
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The first session spoke to the need for the wine industry to engage its newest consumer base with social media. Granted, this is an area where I hold tremendous skepticism, for not only is the convivial and sensory nature of wine the diametric opposite of this phenomenon, much of my impetus for starting Sostevinobile<\/b><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font> stems from a desire to extricate myself from the vicissitudes of content creation (professionally, I\u2019ve written 60+ Websites from top to bottom)<\/i> <\/font><\/font><\/font>and online marketing, <\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font>as well as the emotional placebos derived from Facebook friends, Twitter followers, etc. Still, the four panelists: Bill Leigon of Hahn Family Wines<\/a>, Larry Dutra from the Adams Wine Group<\/a> (owners of White Cottage<\/a> and Adler Fels<\/a>)<\/i>, Ron Denner, whose Denner Vineyards<\/a> markets almost exclusively through their Krewe Comus Club, and Jordan<\/a>\u2019s Lisa Mattson all extolled the potential these new media offer for engaging customers to interact with not only their wine but the entire winery experience, while retaining their loyalty through instant feedback and personalized communications. Despite my lingering ambivalence, points well taken.
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Following the break, a sextet of major players in winery Mergers & Acquisitions took the stage; having practiced in this area throughout the 1980s, I held keen interest in their observations. This blue chip panel included Mario Zepponi from his eponymous Zepponi & Company, which last year had brokered the acquisitions of Chalk Hill<\/a>, Black Stallion<\/a>, and Four Vines<\/a>; Bill Foley, whose assemblage of the burgeoning Foley Family Wines<\/a> conglomerate, earned him the 2010 Man of the Year Wine Star Award from Wine Enthusiast Magazine<\/a><\/i><\/b>; Dan Leese of V2 Wine Group<\/a> that evolved out of Red Truck<\/a> following Fred Franzia\u2019s predation; Vincraft<\/a>\u2019s Peter Scott, the current owners of Kosta Browne<\/a>; megamarketer Peter Byck from Winery Exchange<\/a>; and Stewart Resnick, whose environmentally-untenable Fiji Water<\/a> had recently acquired prominent green proponent Justin<\/a> from Paso Robles. Their uniformly optimistic<\/font><\/font><\/font> observations focused on<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font> how the devolution of large, publicly-held enterprises like Foster\u2019s and Diageo had given enabled the ascendancy of private holdings like Foley, Purple Wine, and Precept, which have been responsible for most acquisitions of premium brands over the past few years.
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Many attendees, however, found this session somewhat disingenuous. Forecasts of future acquisitions of numerous properties from both Foster\u2019s<\/a> and Ascentia<\/a> became far less prescient with the announcement, just two hours after the conference, of the sale of Buena Vista<\/a> to Boisset Family Estates<\/a> and Gary Farrell<\/a> to panelist Vincraft. Conspicuously absent from the discussion, too, was Foley Family Wines\u2019 acquiring a major stake in contract winery Crushpad<\/a>, which they subsequently relocated to their now underutilized Sebastiani<\/a> plant less than a year since Crushpad had built facilities at Premier Pacific\u2019s property at the bae of Silverado Trail.
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In the end, I suppose the 10th Annual Wine Industry Conference offered no earth-shattering revelations, but at least I did get an honest insight into what goes on in the world before 9 AM.<\/p>\n
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In my previous post, I lamented the attrition in attendance at Rh\u00f4ne Rangers<\/a> and queried whether this tasting would be able to continue. I\u2019ve attended several other events in San Francisco since, and have grown even more disconcerted about their diminishing popularity, with both the public and the trade. Moreover, fewer and fewer wineries are pouring at these gatherings\u2014not a good portent, to be sure.
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Whether this downturn is a phenomenon of the economy or a reflection of diminished interest in wine\u2014at least on the local front\u2014I can only conjecture. I do think, however, that the relatively paltry turnout for the 2011 Passport to Cabernet <\/b><\/i>can be attributed to the awkward time slot the California Cabernet Society<\/a><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font> scheduled at the Bently Reserve; not many non-professional \u0153nophiles can afford to spend 3:30-5:30 sipping wine on a Monday afternoon. Or did the Society only want to attract stock brokers and people who work East Coast hours?<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/div>\n

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The other issue that may have precipitated the low turnout was the bracket of Cabernet being poured. Not that there weren\u2019t some truly excellent wines on hand (I will cover my finds in my subsequent entry)<\/i>; it\u2019s just that none of the \u00fcber-ultra-premium marquee producers were on hand\u2014no Dalle Valle, no Dana Estates, no Colgin, etc. Any other varietal, even Pinot Noir, that featured a distinct selection of wines upwards of $150, would likely have attendees spilling out into the street, but (rightly or wrongly)<\/i>, without the draw of California\u2019s corollary to Bordeaux\u2019 Premier Cru ch\u00e2teaux, selling out a tasting, particularly during white collar business hours, will remain a formidable challenge.<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/div>\n

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At least the 7th Annual PINKOUT!SF<\/a> that RAP (Ros\u00e9 Avengers and Producers)<\/i> staged at Butterfly restaurant held its public tasting during conventional Happy Hour. Trade attendees were told that this portion of the event had sold out, and perhaps it had\u2014we were not permitted to attend, and given the small space in which this event was held, reaching capacity ought not have been too difficult.
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<\/font><\/font><\/font>But,
\nunlike in years past, there really was no purpose this time in lingering
\nfor the evening session. I actually visited every table this afternoon
\nand sampled all the wines poured, with nearly an hour to spare<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font>. And therein lies the rub. Only 28 wineries attended this tasting, and all but seven brought but a single wine to sample. Which would be fine, except that it signified a notable decline in participation from last year\u2019s gathering, as well as an attenuation of the types of ros\u00e9 being crafted here.<\/font><\/font><\/div>\n

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In any case, as with the California Cabernet Society, I can only hazard a guess what brought about the attrition at this year\u2019s PINKOUT!SF<\/b>. One would hope the culprit to be the lingering malaise of the economy, not public disenchantment with the wine itself, though weakening economic conditions would be a harbinger of something equally as ominous. In contrast, the third staging of the SF Vintner\u2019s Market<\/a> ostensibly showed no signs of contraction, at least in terms of winery participation and public attendance. Unlike other tastings, this event is geared to enable consumers to buy a variety of wines directly from the wineries, certainly something that offered great benefit, in particular, to the numerous boutique producers on hand, vying for recognition in the marketplace.<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/div>\n

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Whether there actually was a significant amount of wines being purchased was another story. Informally, I heard a number of the vintners grumbling that the price of a ticket virtually precluded many of the predominantly under-35 attendees from spending anything else here, and, at least on Saturday, the event took on an atmosphere more like the Union Street Fair than a focused wine assemblage. Then again, ardent wine enthusiasts like myself often forget that anything that increases wine\u2019s exposure ultimately can only help broaden its acceptance and popularity; even if only 10% of this party crowd developed new insights into the abundance and quality of wine produced here, such events will be worth their while.<\/p>\n
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Obviously, I have a vested interest in seeing these large-scale wine tastings succeed, and it is my fervent hope that they will soon return to the robust attendance and participation they enjoyed at their peak not too many years ago. I have always believed that, the more exposure to and consumption of quality wine we have, the better off all of us\u2014not just in the wine industry but in whole <\/font><\/font><\/font>as a society<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font>\u2014will be.<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/div>\n

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As I mentioned at the outset of this post, this past May proved the most challenging month I\u2019ve faced in keeping the vision of Sostevinobile<\/b><\/font>
\nalive. And while I regret how much I have had to neglect my blog in
\nfavor of attending to the fiscal demands of this venture, unanticipated benefits have been borne from this process, including a number of wine-related
\nprojects. I won\u2019t bore my readership with a logistic analysis of a new
\nproposed wine distribution service in which we have been asked to
\nparticipate, but we also now have under development a second wine venture slated for a different locale and demographic in San Francisco. Most assuredly this bare-bones wine bar operations <\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font> is not intended as a replacement for Sostevinobile<\/b><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font> (which I\u2019ve now brought strongly back on track)<\/i>,
\nnor a competitor, but a decidedly unpretentious contrast to the more expansive operations we
\nhave been developing these past 2\u00bd years. Both operations remain
\nfirmly focused on the sustainably-grown wines of the West Coast, and I
\nam sure that many of our winery friends will want to participate in
\nthis egalitarian version of a European weinerei<\/i><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/b><\/i>.<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/div>\n

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<\/font><\/font><\/font>Look for further announcements in future postings here on the launch of C<\/b>omunale<\/b><\/i>\u2026<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/div>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s not that T. S. Eliot was wrong. The culprit is likely global warming and how it has wreaked havoc on climate patterns around the world. Suffice it to say that, at least for Your West Coast Oenophile, May is now officially the cruelest month. I have been assiduously developing Sostevinobile for over 30 months […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.sostevinobile.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.sostevinobile.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.sostevinobile.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sostevinobile.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sostevinobile.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sostevinobile.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.sostevinobile.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sostevinobile.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sostevinobile.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}