Wine Tasting with the NRA

This is one of those ideas that just odd enough that I had to stop and re-read it several times in the Press Democrat. The National Rifle Association has launched a monthly wine club (NRA Wine Club) to help raise lobbying funds to bear arms. Their tag line is "Now you can support the 2nd amendment with every wine you buy". They are also touting that their wine club seeks out the boutique wineries in California that aren't readily available or accessible.

Now no press is bad press and I'm sure that I am helping their cause just by linking to their club here, but I'm a little concerned that we have a portion of our society purposely combining alcohol and firearms. As a marketer however, I think it's just plain, well, smart. The idea might turn me off personally but you just have to appreciate the simple genius. Martha Stewart brand wine. Single portion bottles. Wine tasting at Disney World. Wine competitions at fairs. None of these things would be automatically paired up in my brain. And yet someone thought of an idea and had the gumption to follow through.

This type of fund raising will work on a National level and will have a huge grass roots following from NRA supporters. It will also help out some of the smaller wineries here in California. Disturbingly, it's actually a win-win.

Marketing Wine for Women

I don't normally get bothered but this has been gnawing at me for some time. Please just stick with this little rant.

Let's start with the facts. Did you know that 60% of the wine sold in the United States is to women? So if we start there, logic dictates that the wine market is already on target with its products. If women are already buying a good deal of the wine, why would marketers suddenly change their market to better accommodate them? We already like wine.

Why are the marketing companies shifting their focus? We don't want to be pandered to. We want to learn and grow into sophisticated wine drinkers. We DON'T want to buy Italian wines labeled 'Mommy's Time Out' and we don't all want lower alcohol roses. I have girlfriends who wouldn't touch a white wine or rose if their lives depended on it (unless it was going to go to waste and that's a totally different conversation). And other friends who love the heat that comes from a high alcohol Zin (yours truly included).

Hello?

We're being sold special PMS chocolates (ok this one makes sense, never mind) low taste, I mean low carb, beer and femine rum (yes it exists - pink label and all). So if it's pink we'll buy it? Novelties. Do we really want our wine to be a novelty too?

I think that as women develop as wine drinkers, and we are seeing so many more women enter in to the male dominated profession of wine directors and makers, we don't want the experience cheapened. How can we be taken seriously as winos if we're interested in too sweet shallow gunk with the tasting depth of a SoCal rain storm?

So my plea is this. Leave male verses female out of wine and concentrate on making better wine.

Temecula Winos Gone Wild

O.K. seriously. Here's a story brought to our attention by fellow blogger Marisa D'Vari at A Wine Story about our little wine country here in Temecula, CA. I thought the epidemic was prevalent only on the East Coasts (see Lenndevours for details on this story) but evidently I was wrong.

Here is a top news story on CBS posted a couple of days ago.

I cannot say that I have not noticed drunken tours going through town, but when you have paid for a designated driver the tasting automatically turns into more of a pub crawl. We have over 20 wineries here in town. Even if some are banning the tours many are not. Locals wishing to avoid the chaos pick the smaller wineries. Do the tours make tasting a miserable experience? Absolutely NOT. People watching is as much fun as tasting the wine. I would object more if the tours were self directed with drunk drivers on the road.

Any thoughts on how Temecula compares to other wine regions? Is Napa Valley really so sophisticated as to not hold limo tours? I personally know of a group of friends that visited 11 wineries in one day with 24 people. Chaos? You bet. It's to be expected!