Berita Anda, Halo Pengunjung blog dimanapun anda berada semoga kalian tetap dalam keadaan sehat, saat ini anda sedang membaca Artikel dengan judul Wine's Next Big Thing: Not Wine - Wine-Searcher, semoga bermanfaat dan selamat membaca
Everyone loves an unlikely hero.
Currently, Piquette – cheap, cheerful, eco-friendly and low-ABV wine alternative, made from the byproducts of winemaking – is being cast as the much-sought-after unicorn the barely legal set will ride into wine country.
"Piquette can definitely be an on-ramp for beer nerds who think their palate isn't suited for wine and health-conscious drinkers gravitating toward hard seltzer,” says Todd Cavallo, co-founder of Wild Arc Farm winery, based in Pine Bush, New York. "There's a wide range of flavors that appeal to beer and wine drinkers, with sour and lactic flavors and fresher red berry flavors. Like hard seltzer it's crushable and day-drinking friendly."
Glossy mags echo Cavallo, and breathlessly tout Piquette as the winiest alternative to hard seltzer on the market, dubbing it the "White Claw for Wine Lovers", and positioning it as a sort of starter kit for younger consumers who will – fingers crossed!! – then finally set out to explore wine.
The wine business has been wringing its hands over health-obsessed Millennials and Gen Zers who drink less alcohol, have less sex, do fewer drugs than other generations of young people since scientists began tracking these things. They don't even seem to enjoy driving. While these mysterious beings are and should be closely studied by teams of researchers, the wine industry is more concerned about practical versus existential quandaries, such as how to move product.
These days, Boomers are still doing more than their share of contributing to winemakers' bottom lines (representing just 33 percent of America's population, they consume 45 percent of the alcohol), but their grandchildren appear more inspired by low-cal malt liquor libations than liquid poetry. We've all seen the data: as wine and beer sales flatline, sales of hard seltzer skyrocket. Between 2020 and 2027, Grand View Research predicts that hard seltzer will expand by a compound annual growth rate of 16.2 percent among consumers in the US, Australia and Canada, and by 17 percent in Asia Pacific.
Simply introducing younger people to wine, the straight-forward and perhaps unimaginative, but inarguably effective marketing method deployed by winemakers for thousands of years previously, simply isn't cutting it these days. The younger generation needs more.
Experts like Rob McMillan, EVP and founder of Silicon Valley Bank's Wine Division, warned the industry in this year’s State of the Wine Industry Report that boomers cannot be a "target for growth given that the last of the cohort will hit normal retirement age in 10 years," and that "hoping Millennials will adopt boomer values as they age – and as a result, move away from spirits and gravitate to wine – just isn't a sensible business strategy."
Could Piquette be part of that sensible business strategy?
Piquette for the people
Piquette, unlike ye olden Claw, has a long and fascinating sociopolitical history, much of which likely appeals to the all woke kids playing on the TikTok (if they know about it).
Piquette has been made for hundreds of years across the world. Essentially, it is a wine product made from grape pomace left over after a wine is produced. Producers add water to grape pomace and ferment it from leftover sugar, making it a lower-alcohol product that typically clocks in at between 5 and 9 percent ABV.
Many winemakers, like Gilles Lapalus, a Burgundy-born winemaker behind the Adelaide-based artisanal natural wine brand Bespoke and the more traditional Domaine Maurice Lapalus, have been home-brewing Piquette for their own delectation for decades, without seriously considering it a marketable product.
Lapalus first experimented with Piquette in the early aughts when he was trying to make a lower-alcohol, summer-friendly wine. He made it once and moved on, but then returned to in 2018, and began trials with Grenache, Mourvèdre, Syrah, Nebbiolo and Sauvignon Blanc. But he and his friends drink through the 100 or so bottles that result.
"It was a surprise to see how popular it is becoming in the US," he says. "And now, in Australia, producers are going to market with Piquette with fermented fruits and wine added. Is that really Piquette? It seems that producers that are marketing it are increasingly blurring the lines, and the result seems to appeal to the 'kimchi' generation, where vinegar flavors are not an issue."
In addition to having a halo of sustainability and upcycling (though the pomace would likely go toward compost), it has serious working-class roots – something both winemakers and consumers, who spurn what they see as wine’s exclusionary and posh vibe, find appealing.
"When my wife Crystal and I launched Wild Arc, we wanted it to be accessible and decidedly not elitist," Cavallo says. "There is an important conversation happening in wine right now about class, race, structural issues and opportunity, and I think the appeal of Piquette plays into that. I was already thinking about finding a way to use the grape pomace to distill it when a friend showed us passages on piquette from Leo A. Loubere's The Red and the White: The History of Wine in France and Italy in the Nineteenth Century."
Piquette was the only thing workers in the vineyards and often the winemakers and owners themselves could afford to drink, because so much of their salary went to support the monarchy, according to Loubere's book, a work of cultural anthropology and economic history as much as an examination of winemaking history. Cavallo says that the tone of dissent Loubere noted among the winegrowers and workers not only foreshadowed the French Revolution, but echoed many of the problems the wine industry has today.
"I appreciate and admire many winemakers who sell wine for $40 or more a bottle, and I want to make a living and make great wine too," Cavallo says. "By making Piquette, and using a product that I would normally throw away and then turn it around and sell it for $15 a bottle, we're able to sell our regular wine for $20-$25." Cavallo’s Piquette comes in four versions: Traminette, Cabernet Franc, Teroldego and Riesling.
A game changer?
But. Even after scraping up all of that pomace, only so much Piquette can be made, when you produce 1600 cases a year. Wild Arc, the first winery in North America to make a Piquette, introduced it in 2017, with a 100-case trial. It was so popular that, in 2018, Wild Arc released 200 cases in bottles and 100 cases in cans. This year, 200 cases will go to cans, and 200 will end up in bottles and be distributed across the country. It typically sells out in a couple of weeks.
Can those growth numbers scale for other producers?
Mass-production of classic Piquette, without additions of other fruits or fillers, would be a challenge, Lapalus notes. Most producers currently making it (the vast majority of whom are based in North America and Australia) are making it on micro-scales of hundreds, or single-digit thousands of bottles and cans. Hard seltzer, meanwhile has sold $2.7 billion worth of product in the 52-week period ending June 13, 2020 alone, according to Nielsen.
McMillan, who has repeatedly urged winemakers to find new ways to welcome young 'uns to Bacchus' feasting table, sees potential if the "lower alcohol and unique story could combine to create the right kind of product for a younger consumer if it were marketed well. As a niche product, it could find a place competing against seasonal sour beers or possibly someday finding a following the way Beaujolais Nouveau has."
But underline, bold and italicize "niche", because McMillan doesn't see it happening, and proceeds to tick off the numerous roadblocks our heroic unicorn would have to bypass.
"This will have no shelf life, a producer can't really make this in scale to compete in the spiked seltzer category; it's a spoilable product with increased risks that will make many nervous," he says. "Imagine your brand blowing caps off in the grocery aisle or enduring a recall."
In other words, McMillan says: "It won’t make anyone rich."
But others aren't so sure.
"The reception for our Piquettes in New York, San Francisco, Oregon and Missouri has been really enthusiastic," says Chris Berg, winemaker at Roots Wine & Vineyard in Yamhill Carlton, Oregon, which produces 4000 cans of Piquette from Sauvignon Blanc. "Younger consumers especially are excited to try the wines. I believe it has the potential to grow exponentially."
If Piquette does turn into more of a market force, it may require a boost from the powers it defines itself against.
"I'm just waiting for Gallo or Constellation to figure out how much pomace they're sitting on," Cavallo says. Barefoot just dipped its big toe in wine-based hard seltzer. Perhaps Piquette is next."
"wine" - Google News
August 16, 2020 at 07:04AM
https://ift.tt/3iNk3hM
Wine's Next Big Thing: Not Wine - Wine-Searcher
"wine" - Google News
https://ift.tt/3d98ONZ
https://ift.tt/2KTSYuD
Wine
Thanks for reading Wine's Next Big Thing: Not Wine - Wine-Searcher. Please share...!
0 Komentar untuk "Wine's Next Big Thing: Not Wine - Wine-Searcher"