Tag Archives: event

Jacobs Creek champions wine regions

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“Jacobs Creek has almost got a responsibility, as one of the major brands out of Australia, to teach the consumer about some of the great regions within Australia” – Bernard Hickin

A refreshing point of view by Bernard Hickin, Chief Winemaker at Jacobs Creek. [apologies for the background noise, but it was busy]

I was invited to take part in a dinner at 28-50 recently, to mark the (re)launch of Jacobs Creek Reserve range as region-specific wines, which coincides well with Wine Australia‘s under-fire “A+ Australian Wine” campaign, to act as a step-up from the Jacobs Creek Classics that have been around since 1976.

The wines themselves were interesting, individual and fairly priced (at an RRP of £9.99 but presumably not immune from promotions). You can read the reports of the evening from some fellow diners such as Stuart George (Creek Mythology) and Heather Dougherty (Jacob’s Creek at 28-50) and some thoughts of mine below. Overall I thought they were good, well made wines that did show something quite different from the normal ranges we expect from bigger brands, but I also felt that they showed quite a young character and might benefit from rounding out with a little extra age as, being all under screwcap, they have obviously developed slowly.

The pricing is the issue. So many of the producers who might be used by a region to showcase the uniqueness of its style are expensive, limited production wines – as was reasonably obvious at the recent Wine Australia tasting. Great wines but hefty price tags (not helped by currency issues, of course). These may be the very best examples, but being unaffordable means that the message does not get through to consumers – who then cannot be blamed for a lack of interest or knowledge of “regionality” in a country.

This is why what Bernard Hickin said struck me. You might disagree with the marketing and promotion activities associated with big wine brands (and they don’t come much bigger than Jacobs Creek) in the supermarket channels, but if the message needs to reach a mass audience, this is an effective means of achieving it. Having a big brand strongly committed to the cause, assuming it is doing a reasonable job of presenting the regional character, benefits everyone.

I’ve always thought that regional ‘brands’ were more interesting marketing tools than varietal labelling, so I look forward to seeing how this “regional” message is received by consumers, and how winemakers across the world take advantage of this.

Tasting Notes:

Jacobs Creek Reserve Riesling 2010 (Barossa, Australia): very floral, lime, lemon and elderflower nose, and tight acidity (almost underripe fruit) but a hint of tropical fruit on the finish. Very young and crisp.

Jacobs Creek Reserve Sauvignon Blanc 2010 (Adelaide Hills, Australia): strong passion fruit, not grassy, and mango skin aromas. The palate was tropical, but not overly ripe. Might need to round out a little

Jacobs Creek Reserve Chardonnay 2010 (Adelaide Hills, Australia): very ripe apricot and citrus nose, but on the palate there is a lot of weight and texture from the lees ageing (but not heavy oak). Well rounded and drinkable, but will it convert Chardonnay-sceptics?

Jacobs Creek Reserve Pinot Noir 2009 (Adelaide Hills, Australia): baked strawberry nose, opening to black cherry. The palate has some more herbal, almost eucalyptus notes (not expected) and high acidity. Lighter and more delicate than I might have expected, maybe trying too hard to avoid “over-ripeness” tag?

Jacobs Creek Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon 2008 (Coonawara, Australia): Black fruit, but also some (green) pepper and that eucalyptus, minty notes associated with the region. Big texture. You can almost feel as well as taste the thicker skins. Pepper spice on finish masking the fruit a touch. Young but very nice.

Jacobs Creek Reserve Shiraz 2007 (Barossa, Australia): A (pleasant) burnt match, fruitcake nose. Some spicy, candied fruit but also a hint of spirit despite not being too alcoholic. Tons of acidity to accompany the fruit, so it never strays towards jammyness. Pleasant finish, but young.

Update: 17/2/2011 – minor updates to correct factual errors in the tasting notes

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Imbibe and some lessons to be learned

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The recent Imbibe show was a curious demonstration of the divisions in the alcohol business, and hopefully one that will encourage things to change.

Imbibe

In a lightly packed Earls Court 2, Imbibe Magazine brought together players from the worlds of wine, spirits, beer (mainly from the craft world, not big brands) and a few mixed others such as Teapigs (… though strangely no coffee I could find). It was very interesting to see the effort spent not just on the exhibition, but also the 5(!) separate seminar areas.

I was only there briefly, mainly to say hello to people I know and to get to know the event. I was not disappointed in that – lots of familiar faces were among the crowd, but the crowd itself also included a lot of new faces you do not see at existing events – bar staff!

Therein lies the rub.

Bar staff do not buy alcohol for their business, but they do influence what alcohol is sold to consumers. In other words, the main behaviour that this show might influence was not the action of getting products listed in bars and restaurants, but ensuring the products are poured when they already are.

Almost all wine stands had tables around the edges of the stand, … creating a physical and psychological barrier

In the case of spirits, with lots of BIG brands with broad distribution, this is very useful. It is a chance to encourage existing customers to recall your brand and incentivise them to sell more … but that only works if the staff already know the brand and have it available to them. With tens of thousands of wines available in the UK alone, this is highly unlikely for the wine brands.

What particularly stood out for me was the difference in the approach to customers taken by the spirits brands compared to the wine stands, and it seems I was not alone in this view – even the editor of Imbibe, Chris Losh agrees (see his Just-Drinks column here)

Almost all wine exhibitors had tables around the edges of the stand, each with dozens of different wines available to taste, creating a physical and psychological barrier between taster/outside and exhibitor/inside. They probably intended this as a benefit; “Look at all my wines you can try.” Instead, it looked more like a gauntlet for any passing attendee to run.

Wine was coming across as challenging, testing and exclusive, something to be examined and learned rather than enjoyed.

On the other hand, the spirits stands were focused on many fewer products, maybe even just one. Their boundaries were open & inviting. The stands themselves included music, carpets, sofas, mock bars, tables and chairs. Attendees were invited to join in, rest and spend time experiencing the brand … and maybe also interacting with the exhibitor.

Which do you think might be the more effective of the two?

In the end, wine stands often had more staff than visitors, whilst dozens of visitors congregated in groups to chat and enjoy themselves on the spirits stands.

There will always be the issue of budgets. Spirits are products with big margins and bigger promotional budgets. They can afford to work on loyalty and relationships because they often already have distribution for their products, and drinkers expect to find the same brands in each bar. This forces new products to do the same and arrive not only with unique products, but with marketing plans and promotional budgets. It means that launching a new spirit brand is expensive, but the rewards are potentially high.

How might wine replicate some of that success?

It may be time for wine to stop trying to “educate” customers and consumers and more time entertaining and involving them.

If the Imbibe exhibition has another edition, I wonder if we will see a different approach?

The two-minute wine blog video challenge

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This to be filed under: “It seemed like a good idea at the time …”

What wine bloggers do when they get together

What wine bloggers do when they get together

When preparing for the sponsorship of the London Bloggers Christmas Networking meetup I contacted my wine blogging friends with a challenge:

“As you probably cannot make it in person to the tasting, how about making a SHORT video, say 2 minutes maximum, explaining a little about you, your blog and your wines, so that the London Bloggers can learn a bit more about the people behind the blogs?”

Of course, it is a good idea, but despite the fact that some of us have been blogging for ages, and the multimedia capabilities of the blogging platforms and our computers, most of us are firmly wedded to our keyboards. I have never produced a proper film (with editing) before, and nor had anyone else I think.

However, everyone was up for the challenge and we got an amazing reaction and variety of presentations.

My absolute favourite is below, but rather than load them all on this page, please follow the links below to the videos on YouTube – and if you were at the tasting, why not check out the producer of your favourite wine from the night?

Thomas Lippert – Winzerblog.de

[Make sure you check out the credits to this video regarding “Beckham” & “Gascoigne”!]

BTW, this is a picture of Thomas

The other bloggers and their videos (click on the name for the video):

Robert McIntosh :: thirstforrioja.co.uk
My first video (this is take 15 or so!)

Javier Navarro :: tintoralba.com
Javier and some photos of the Cooperative winery near Alicante

Gianpaolo Paglia :: poggioargentiera.com
Gianpaolo, one of the top Italian winery bloggers but now based in the UK, gives us an overview of his wines

Emilio Saez Van Eerd :: casavides.com
Lots of photos of many different aspects of the business and some tunes to keep us humming along (!)

Jose Eduardo J Silva :: cortesdecima.com
Get everyone involved. Vineyards look a little wintry, but these are the guys behind the wonderful Syrah we tasted

Jan Pettersen from Fernando de Castilla talking to Justin Roberts :: jerez-xerez-sherry.blogspot.com (who also writes about sherry here)
Justin cheated (!) and interviewed the guy who made the sherry so we never get to see him, but a nice introduction to this sherry bodega and a wonderful wine

Oscar Quevedo :: Quevedoportwine.com
Uber-youthful Oscar and his mountain bike in the vineyards of the Douro.