(More wine news on www.vitabella.fr) I was recently reading a discussion between wine professionals on a social media website. In fact, networking is great on those social media sites and information you can pick may be very useful. The story started with a message posted a few days ago: "The Fine Wine Bank has a special inventory of Rare & Fine Wine thats storage at London City Bond is about to expire. We are looking for buyers for these 90+ scored wines please enquire for the list."
Then started a discussion and potential buyers (mainly from US) were showing strong interest and wanted to receive the whole list. A first major issue was rapidly raised: individuals in the US will have to pay to have it shipped & imported including taxes and this will greatly change the prices of the wines. But this did not discourage most of them as passion comes first.
Then potential buyers started receiving the list by e-mail and discovered that "the offer is all Australian wines" as one mentioned on the forum. "Prices with logistics make these wines totally uninteresting in the US. Aussie cult wines are in the dumper and can be snatched up very affordably (read CHEAPLY) all over the place." was written on the wall.
But at this stage my view had not changed: Passion comes first and Wine, more particularly exceptional wines (or cult wines if you prefer this wording) is a beautiful world full of emotions and passions. And as was mentioned by the person who initiated this discussion in the forum: "Great wine is still great wine and this wine list is about cult autralian wines."
In fact, each visit in Australia is a great opportunity to taste excellent wines. Red or white, great australian wines can show power and elegance with a lovely balance you would not expect if you still think about the big, powerful and mouthful Barossa Valley style you were served, most of the time, 20 years ago. Add to this, lovely and exhuberant aromas and it makes me call some of these wines unique. But Australia is going through a terrible crisis and its cult wines may suffer from this period. Fast replies and short texts make Social medias very severe in the way they send a message. On the same discussion forum, a wine professional replied to the preceding message: "Great wine is indeed great wine - but current pricing structures on given products that result from over supply and lack of demand in any open market are neither deniable nor are they reliant on a critics opinion. I wish it were not so & that Aussie cults were still worth their purchase prices from pre-Oct 2008 - but they are simply not in this market." In fact, Aussie cult wines are suffering from a general crisis in Australia where over supply is a major problem. At their best, some of the Aussie cult wines were compared to First Growth Bordeaux and prices were in accordance with this ranking. Now Prices for top Bordeaux wines have outreached, by far, those of the top Aussie wines. This is what we could call the short-term impact. But, to avoid the long-term impact, Aussie cult wines should be careful in the way they will communicate in the future. Why? Because, in the long-run, they may lose their lure and destroy 30 years of hard work to be among the most sought-after luxury wines in the world. (More wine news on www.vitabella.fr)
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
About Me
- Guillaume Jourdan
- Guillaume Jourdan founded VitaBella – a Wine Marketing & Communication Company - in 2004 and has helped more than 50 international wine estates to develop brand awareness and improve brand image by building customized strategies. He lives in Paris (France) and can be followed at VitaBellaWine on Twitter or Vitabella Wine on Facebook. As consultant, his experience is as deep as it is diverse encompassing the disciplines of advertising, branding, sales promotion and public relations. Most notably he has worked with companies in a strong international environment and had to deal with complicated issues in American, Asian and European countries. As Wine expert, he has a deep knowledge of old vintages (especially Bordeaux from 1900, Burgundy and Rhone Valley) and a very good understanding of most of the fine wines produced both in Old and New World. He is the coauthor of The impact of Label Design on Consumer Buying Behaviour, two VitaBella – Phebos reports that helped the wine industry to make changes on labels in order to increase sales and profitability. Guillaume studied Business School in Paris and Master of Business Administration at Trinity College in Dublin (Ireland).
Posts
