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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 Aziz BloggerAugust 15, 2020AdminBandung Indonesia
kiratni.blogspot.comEveryone loves an unlikely hero.Currently, Piquette – cheap, cheerful, eco-friendly and low-ABV wine alternative, made from the byproducts...
The wine industry has a reputation for being snooty and exclusive. Now, like so many other predominantly white business sectors, it's reckoning with a widespread lack of diversity. But the owners of a small wine shop in Boston are planting seeds for systematic change in the beverage business – one scholarship at a time.
Urban Grape owner TJ Douglas tastes a sample of a J. Bouchon Pais Salvaje at the store. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)
On a recent summer day TJ Douglas pulled the cork on a bottle of Pais Salvaje and explained how its old, wild Chilean grapevines grow in trees high above a family-owned vineyard. He loves the kinds of stories he finds in every glass and has been pouring, swirling, savoring and assessing wine for more than two decades.
“Look at that color,” Douglas gushed. “It's a little cloudy. It's unfiltered. There's a lot of texture and this is a wine that does go down easy.”
As owner of the Urban Grape in Boston's South End he tastes about 7,000 wines a year to stock his shelves that are arranged by body rather than varietal or country of origin. When Douglas and his wife Hadley opened their boutique store in 2010 they set out to make wine buying less intimidating. But a few years ago Hadley witnessed her husband's passion and knowledge being dismissed.
“I was at our big tasting table, and a couple came in,” she recalled, “and TJ kept trying to go over and help them.” They were looking for something specific from Italy, a place TJ has visited many times, “and they kept brushing TJ off and talking to our inventory manager,” she said.
The manager was white and didn't know all that much about wine. And Hadley is white. Her business and life partner – who's like a walking wine encyclopedia – is Black. She asked him how often that happens and TJ told her, “Pretty much every day.”
“A lot of it is me having to prove myself to someone I shouldn't have to prove myself to,” he explained, “so they would trust that I know what I'm talking about when I'm trying to talk to them about a bottle of Pinot Grigio.”
Urban Grape co-owners TJnDouglas and Hadley Douglas taste a J. Bouschon Pais Salvaje at the store. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)
As the Black Lives Matter protests erupted TJ began reflecting more deeply on the biases and barriers he's faced over his career. He wondered if all the times he didn't get a job in the food and wine industry had more to do with his race than his resume. And he thought about all the times he was the only Black person at wine conferences. “I don't know if I'm the only black liquor store owner in the Northeast – I doubt it,” TJ said. “I do know that I'm the only, you know, fine wine shop – at least in Massachusetts, if not the Northeast – who's (owned by) a black man.” Then he added, “and I don't want to be the only one anymore. I never wanted to be the only one.”
TJ and Hadley have long dreamed of founding an award for an aspiring wine student of color. The idea was born after they posted a bunch of jobs at their shop hoping Black or brown applicants would respond. They never did.
The couple points in part to a lack of exposure to wine for people in communities of color — even for those who work in fine dining restaurants — because they're more likely to be spending their shifts in the back of the house.
“You don't see the candlelit dinners, you don't see the sommelier, you don't see the bar,” TJ explained. “All you see are the dirty glasses, or the plates or the food that you're prepping. And creating access to these communities, to these people of color, this is going to help change the landscape.”
Turns out pandemic sales and the new racial justice movement helped make their wine scholarship a reality.
Urban Grape's storefront was shattered during the protests in Boston, and after learning about the vandalism customers from around the country rallied to support their business. This helped them raise more than $120,000 to launch a model they say will create a pipeline for diversity in their overwhelmingly white industry.
“It has really made us think of this time — and even what happened to the store — as a necessary step,” Hadley said, “And I think when you can reframe a trauma as a growth flashpoint, that's really a gift ultimately.”
The couple is happy to have the opportunity to turn something bad into something good. The winning wine student will learn about every aspect of the complex, competitive business over the course of a year while also attending the Certificate in Wine Studies program at Boston University where TJ studied. The protégé will also serve as an ambassador to show more people of color that their might be career paths for them in the industry, too.
Suhyal Ramirez is applying for the Urban Grape scholarship. (Courtesy Suhyal Ramirez)
44-year-old Roxbury resident Suhyal Ramirez threw her hat in the ring. "I got into wine via chocolate,” she said. Ramirez's eyes were opened as field marketing manager at the Somerville-based chocolate company Taza. She trained her palate with cocoa beans, which like wine are also fermented. The experience fired Ramirez's passion for grapes and her journey into the vast world of wine and spirits took off.
Like TJ Douglas, Ramirez has years under her belt in the hospitality industry — and she's also been ignored and made to feel invisible because of the color of her skin.
“Nine times out of ten I could walk in and out of any wine shop and I'll never get a second glance,” she said. As a knowledgeable lover of wine Ramirez has been “OK” with perusing labels and vintages on her own, but she added, “The hospitality person in me is not OK with it – and then the black woman that I am is certainly not OK with it – because it just seems to me that there's no respect for my dollar.”
Ramirez is an “industry attaché” as part of the newly formed Black consumer group called Tfluxe that promotes education and equity in the restaurant and beverage businesses. The Urban Grape scholarship dovetails with her current mission.
“Thinking about what's important to me and what's important in my own activism – as a black Latina – what are the things that I feel like I could affect change in? And one of those is really food and wine,” she said.
If she wins the scholarship Ramirez plans to embrace the role as ambassador. “It takes a few of us...and there will be a few more...and it'll just keep growing and growing,” she said.
In addition to the BU coursework, the scholarship also includes internships and mentorships at the Urban Grape, the wine importer/distributor M.S Walker and chef Tiffani Faison's restaurant group Big Heart Hospitality. Ramirez believes the hands-on deep dive would boost her confidence and her credibility.
“To be able to walk into the room and say, 'no, I actually do know what I'm talking about,' and to be an expert voice like that, is just a dream,” she said with her infectious laugh.
The application deadline is tomorrow and Ramirez will be waiting nervously for the answer – with a glass of wine in her hand. The Boston University wine program will select the winner in a few weeks and the scholarship begins after Labor Day. The Urban Grape owners say they've almost raised enough money to add a second student next year.
"wine" - Google News August 15, 2020 at 04:17AM https://ift.tt/3as9eir
A New Scholarship Aims To Help Fix The Wine Industry's Diversity Problem - WBUR "wine" - Google News https://ift.tt/3d98ONZ https://ift.tt/2KTSYuD Wine Aziz BloggerAugust 14, 2020AdminBandung Indonesia
kiratni.blogspot.comThe wine industry has a reputation for being snooty and exclusive. Now, like so many other predominantly white business sectors, it's...
