In the future, I think most wineries will not submit their wines to the critics at the Wine Spectator, Wine Advocate and other wine publications. And this will not be due to the chance of getting a bad score but because those scores don’t influence their consumers. Sure, some wine collectors follow scores and make their buying decisions based in part from them but most wine consumers could care less about scores.
In today’s market scores are only important within the trade where distributors use these as sales tools when convincing restaurants and retailers to carry a wine. Since smaller producers don’t receive as much support from distributors these days, they are increasingly turning to consumer direct marketing in their sales efforts. As wineries strive to connect directly with customers online, more will choose to sample wine bloggers.
The latest winery to go down this path is Sonoma’s Rodney Strong Vineyards with a pre-release sampling of their new Rockaway Cabernet to a few wine bloggers, myself included. I think this effort will get some attention in the wine industry not because this is something new — wineries such as Stormhoek and Twisted Oak have been doing this for years — but because they chose to sample bloggers before established wine critics and the wine is an allocated, mailing list only offering.
Sampling programs are effective in gaining awareness of a new brand quickly or exposing an existing brand to new consumers who increasingly are turning to the internet for their information. Google “Rockaway Cabernet 2005” today and you’ll get two full pages of positive reviews from several leading wine bloggers. If they had chosen to sample established wine critics, they would have no coverage in place 2 weeks before the wines’ general release. And because both Wine Spectator and Wine Advocate are behind subscription logins, search engines will not pickup their reviews when posted weeks or months later.
Not only does Rodney Strong get immediate coverage before the release of this $75 wine, they also are inviting a discussion about the wine directly with their perspective customers. I think this is a trend we’ll see other well known and boutique producers follow once they see the results here.
More information about Rockaway can be found here and my review, with links to the other bloggers involved, here.
Photo by Joe Roberts, the 1 Wine Dude
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{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
How do they describe the impact of those wine blogger reviews? in terms of actual wine sales or some other outcomes?
I think they are looking at traditional engagement metrics such as list sign-ups, blog comments and residual coverage of these reviews. But I wouldn’t be surprised if sales in the first few months after release isn’t also an objective here.
Perhaps the folks at Rodney Strong will comment directly on their expectations here.
Glad to see my “self portrait” here..
My take: I am not sure we’ll see a day anytime soon when the well-established wine mags don’t get the samples at all. These mags make a good deal of money and while the average consumer doesn’t use “score speak”, enough people base their buying decisions on these scores to keep the wine mags around for some time.
There is no doubt to me that you’re right about the general trend towards reaching out to the online community. If brands aren’t involved in social networking in some way/shape/form, then they’re not really on the Internet
these days.
And experiences like this one at the Wine Spectator forums do NOT count as reaching out…
http://1winedude.blogspot.com/2008/08/dont-feed-trolls-how-not-to-respond-to.html
An interesting aspect of this story is that a handful of bloggers were singled out to receive the pre-release sampling. This seems contrary to the spirit of the constituency RS was trying to engage.
Why were these bloggers singled out? Why didn’t RS put out an open invitation to any/all bloggers?
It could be said that RS has missed/underestimated the point that blogging, and social media itself, is an inherently democratic process. Everybody gets to play.
In general, this Rockaway effort makes good marketing sense. Perhaps it will also serve as a cautionary tale for engagement of bloggers and the shifting ground rules of social media. We’ll see…
Joe: I agree that wineries will continue to submit wines to the traditional wine media for scores but they will tend to be the larger brands who partner with distributors and not smaller, boutique wineries. My point is that low production wines will go the social media route exclusively in the future… a few brave pioneers are doing this now.
David: It’s somewhat easier to sample everyone when the bottle sells for $10 at retail as Stormhoek pioneered years ago. I’m not sure it’s as economically viable for a $75 allocation brand. Perhaps someone will send 50 ml samples of higher end juice to a wider audience. That’s all you need to taste and make your judgment. Thanks for stopping by…
Perhaps a small sample is the way to go, because targeting only a select few blogs defeats the purpose of WOM marketing. However, I do believe that the wine rags will be around for quite a long time as less savvy consumers lean heavily on ratings on shelf talkers and such when making buying decisions. Until buyers are able to stop listening magazines will keep talking.
On a separate note, here’s what I decided to do with all my old wine rags:
http://gonzogastro.wordpress.com/2008/09/05/some-useless-information-supposed-to-fire-my-imagination/
Katie: I think most wine consumers, not wine geeks or enthusiasts, will use search engines to find their wine information in the future. Since the established wine magazines don’t publish their reviews in the open, they will not be found. Wine blogger reviews will be.
Excellent point Tim. I write about wine mostly from the point of view of pairings. My reviews are not traditional (no points) but they are an endorsement. Since my readers (who are consumers and learners) are looking for 3rd party validation from someone they trust, they tend to purchase the wine that I recommend. (And they don’t read the mags.)
Rodney Strong Vineyards makes excellent wines, have not tried their new ones.