Following up on our first ideas for marketing fine wine to Millennials, here are my final thoughts.

In a nutshell here it is:

Your Customers are WAY Different Now!

This means:

You must adjust out of the old, outmoded world of wine

Quit trying to force Millennials into your old system:  The industry carefully created a wine world based on secret wording, vague and confusing descriptors, critics, snobbery, hundreds of ‘rules’, a myriad of ‘do this’ and ‘you can’t do that’ with wine. Plus they priced it into the stratosphere on most menus. Now the industry doesn’t understand why young consumers don’t get with it and want to keep this old system running. Well, guess what? There’s a new sheriff in town and they’re running things their way – not your old way! So it’s time, actually beyond time, to CHANGE!

Be genuinely YOU: It’s time to market you and your brand and not market what others think of your wine. Be authentic, transparent, and approachable! Younger consumers want to know WHO is making their wine! What are the owners’ beliefs on ecology, herbicide/fungicide use, supporting their workers, recycling, and more? You make the wine so they want to know your thoughts on it! Plus they want to know WHO the brand is. Family-owned, multi-generational, single proprietor, first vintage, or 50th? When I’m speaking with younger people interested in the fact I collect Napa wines the most often asked question of me is ‘who makes this wine’ and they don’t want just a corporate name. They want to know who is guiding, directing, and making the decisions that came before the wine entered the bottle that sits before us. Don’t be the invisible hand behind the wine, be the wine for a CHANGE!

Google: Wondering about a wine? Millennials just Google it and they grab hundreds of useful pages of information on their phones. Not familiar with the names of the authors of those comments? From Wikipedia? No matter! These days most folks don’t know the names of any wine critics anyway. Plus they aren’t using critics’ names as they search! As Steve Burgess of Burgess Cellars pointed out in a recent video they produced “Listening to the (wine) knowledge and the wisdom of people over the decades has really skyrocketed”. In the old days you read a critic’s comments in the newspaper. Now folks follow Instagram to be influenced! A huge CHANGE!

Don’t rely on the Critics: These days critics remind me of the old Abbott and Costello gag of ‘who’s on first’. Sure folks in the industry know more than one, but I’m pretty sure the average customer has no idea who they are and care less and less. Maybe our parents and grandparents needed some unknown expert telling them what they should like and what good was, but this isn’t their world any longer! Those generations are gone. The Boomers are almost gone, at least as wine buyers. So to put it in a single word: CHANGE!

CellarTracker/Vinious/et al: Access to wine information is totally different now! On CellarTracker alone there are over 100 million bottles tracked and more than 7 million free, public tasting notes and ratings. We are inundated with every Tom, Dick, and Henrietta who sips a glass assigning a more and more meaningless number to it. It’s silly enough to think a critic’s palate is the same as mine let alone the same as millions of people across the e-universe. Points may make a few critics rich these days, but the days of making your wine for them is past. Make and market your wine for your customer. In other words, CHANGE!

Don’t hang your marketing hat on the points shtick

If a number really was what defined a wine then every wine label would have nothing on it but a huge number. Any marketing ploy that is 40+ years old is way past its prime and should head to the marketing trash heap! Points actually say little about a wine. I’m sure, in defense of points, a high point count can turn a wine into a bigger seller. But for how long? Other than getting the winery sucked into an annual marketing churn, what does it really say about a wine beyond one critic, at one tasting, for the minute she/he actually tasted it, thought about it, and picked a number to paste on it? And it’s fakery to pretend it’s actually a 100 point scale! When was the last time you saw a wine with anything under 90 points? I suppose they happen, but get buried by the winery. The other day I got an email asking me to buy a wine that got 92 points. My first thought was ‘hmmm, must not be all that good to only get a 92.’ Indeed, this past summer I had a 100 Point Tasting Night for our extended family. Of all the wine theme nights I did over the summer, the 100 Point Wines Night was the biggest bust. Several folks didn’t know what it meant, others didn’t care, and none of the wines that night were anyone’s favorite. Points are antiquated and need to CHANGE.

It’s past time to be upfront on fine wines’ ingredients

Put nutrition information on wine labels: Everyone I know looks at food labels these days! So why the insistence on keeping wine ingredients a mystery? Why tout your wine as ‘organic’, your farming as ‘sustainable’, or your efforts as ‘biodynamic’, but refuse to tell your customer what they are getting in their bottle? Our son often picks his beer based on its carb content. I like to be careful about my salt and sugar intake with my foods so I read labels and ask at restaurants. Why must we guess when it comes to a glass of fine wine? Guess what folks? If you don’t tell there are a whole lot of folks these days who will automatically believe you are hiding something! If you don’t add junk to your wine, list the ingredients and CHANGE.

Tell us what’s in your blend: This one is a personal irritant.  I get that wine blending is a big mystery and is seen as a proprietary business secret. However, with the prices of good red blends going ever higher, consumers want to know what is in that bottle besides ‘red wine’. Selling Two Buck Chuck? Fine. Selling a high quality, Napa red blend for over $50 a bottle, then I’d rather not have to play Russian roulette with what varieties might be in that bottle. Nine times out of ten when I ask the vintner, they willing tell me what the makeup of their blend is. So quit hiding it and CHANGE!

He may make whiskey rather than wine, but Bob Dylan was right! The times they are a changin’!