In looking over the iTunes App Store this morning, I noted a few wine related applications in the more than 500 now available. I think this will be a hot area, even in something as niche as wine, based upon the ease of development and the millions of units sold worldwide. I would expect to see some applications targeted at the wine trade (winemaking and vineyard data collection, for example) as well as at consumers. The first couple applications seem targeted at non-wine savvy consumers which is what I expected. I should also note that I have only installed and tried one of the applications below at the time of writing but I think I got a good idea of the functionality from the pictures and descriptions.

The first application I noticed is called Wine Log, not to be confused with the eponymous Wine 2.0 site, which is a simple wine note taker. Although this might be handy for consumers wishing to keep track of wines they taste on the go, there is little here for the more advanced wine lover. But at just $2.99, this app seems to deliver decent value for those with modest needs. I also can see where this basic layout could be modified to handle other scoring systems and a few more bits of information to make a “pro” version in the future. I’m sure this will evolve along those lines with user feedback.

Wine Snob is an educational reference app that looks similar to others I’ve used on Palm and Windows Mobile platforms. From the screenshots and description, it seems to provide mobile access to wine terms, food pairings and other useful information. Like Wine Log, this app sells for $2.99.

In browsing the rest of the store, I noticed an iPhone version of my favorite note taking application, Evernote. Available as a free download, I installed and connected to my account on my duahgter’s iPod Touch. Like the Windows Mobile version I’m currently using, the feature set is limited to reading existing notes or posting text and photo notes. The iPhone version extends this with the addition of audio notes and direct integration with the onboard camera. This is a good start and might be enough for iPhone users looking to keep some wine notes on the go and syncing them with their desktop.

But I think we will see better wine related apps for the iPhone in coming months as Wine 2.0 players like Snooth and VinCellar look to extend and embed their web applications into the mobile space. As this space gets more interesting I’m sure I’ll be tempted to jump on the iPhone bandwagon even if I can’t type worth a darn on the thing

To be continued…

This is one of those posts.

I started writing this post on August 2, 2007 after 6 months inside what I began to call, “The Cult of Gary.” Of course, I was a lurker only commenting on the odd episode and not really participating with the discussion Gary Vaynerchuk has led for the past two years at Wine Library TV. And I think I nearly missed the point of why Gary connects with so many people; it’s his humanity.

But the first draft of this post did not mention humanity but focused on the ethics of using a scoring system in his reviews, lack of disclosure on the podcast of being a wine retailer and his unorthodox approach to palate training (I still would like to know what Bob Parker, Jim Laube or Steve Tanzer thought of Gary’s schtick on Conan O’Brien and Ellen). It also bothered me that Gary was so opaque to the wine blogger community who socialize on Twitter and often email each other on various subjects. Each time I hovered over the “Publish” button, something held me back from sharing my insights on the most celebrated wine podcaster in the world. Sometimes it would be to soften the language so it wouldn’t sound like sour grapes, other times it would be something Gary did that provoked more investigation.

So months past and the post stayed in my drafts folder waiting for more context in order to complete it. I found that context last week with this short video Gary published on his personal blog:

I have come to the conclusion that Gary is one of the most influential people in wine today not because he’s got the best palate — although he’s got mad skills there — but in the way he’s almost single handily changing wine marketing. He’s often quoted saying that the wine business is “broken” and he’s trying to fix it. I agree and applaud his efforts in demystifying wine and making it fun for those outside the wine blogosphere. Watching Robert Scoble’s video from last weekend shows this first hand:

My earlier concerns diminished as I realized that those of us in the wine blogosphere are not Gary’s audience. As the hardest working man in wine podcasting, he’s delivering the goods to tens of thousands who would be bored stiff reading about wine. Yes, I’d like to see some disclosure but this seems like a quibble when looking at the amount of good Gary is doing for wine podcasting and blogging.

So I think everyone interested in wine should watch Wine Library TV at least once a week. Because the kid has heart. And skills.

Twitter chatter broke out this afternoon as Steve over at Vinfolio posted a good analysis of Amazon’s opportunities and obstacles to success in the wine business. His conclusion was that Amazon would put pressure on, “…online retailers selling mainstream, high-volume wine brands…”

While I agree with Steve on one hand, I think he missed what we will look back on in 5 years as the most important change in U.S. wine retailing since the repeal of Prohibition:

Amazon will be the the first long tail wine retailer.

For those not acquainted with Chris Anderson’s work on the subject, a short aside. In 2004 he wrote an influential article for Wired magazine which was later turned into a best selling book, The Long Tale: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More. Mr. Anderson’s premise is that businesses can exploit inefficient distribution and inventory costs and offer niche products to millions of customers. His hypothesis that 80% of the market — the Long Tail — can be significant to sales for these niche retailers who sell small amounts of goods to many customers is at the core of the Amazon business model and is used as a key case study in his piece.

I know of no other industry with a more inefficient distribution system than the U.S. wine business. In the 1980’s and ’90’s, I worked in the publishing industry and watched what Amazon did to that inefficient business, particularly in book distribution. I think they will repeat this again with wine.

But it will be quite a bit more difficult for Amazon to operate with all the entrenched special interests and government regulators who control the sale of wine, beer and spirits here in the U.S. While the book market is not nearly as regulated, with only differing tax rates as an annoyance, the wine business is far more complex with diverse shipping costs throughout the country and differing state and local taxes. Not to mention the burden of compliance record keeping and reporting and various shipping laws. In short, it’s a mess, but I think Amazon stands a fighting chance of changing the status quo which will only be good for consumers.

And I don’t think that just the high-volume brands will benefit from Amazon’s move but nearly every brand looking for distribution. The irony is that smaller wineries need more distribution help but often can’t afford it due to the costs of supporting the distributor. And vice-versa the larger brands, who do have feet on the street with distributors, get the majority of distributor attention but probably don’t need as much. This gap in the market is what I think Amazon will capitalize on and many smaller producers will find an efficient way to sell their wine online. Amazon will sell millions of customers small amounts of wine and literally make it up in volume. It’s their way as consumers can often find bestselling books cheaper at Costco or Wal-Mart while more obscure fare is often only available via Amazon.

This will be a very interesting story to follow and I truly hope that Amazon, along with Costco, will change the U.S. wine distribution business for the better.

A while back I predicted that Facebook would most likely be the “Facebook of Wine” but today I’m not so sure after spending a few minutes inside the OpenWine Consortium social network.

“Great, just what we need, yet another social network,” I expect to hear from some but hear me out first.

Unlike Facebook, the OpenWine Consortium is narrowly focused on the wine industry and seems to be initially interested in bringing together Wine 2.0 developers and wine industry business leaders for networking and to drive open standards online. Early membership is a who’s who of the wine blogosphere where I’m sure lively discussions will ensue, when we’re not on Twitter. I also don’t expect to see all those annoying requests to compare movie quiz scores or install another application as is the standard on Facebook these days.

Where his goes is anyone’s guess but I’m impressed with the potential I see with this platform. If you are in the wine industry or interested in Wine 2.0 then join me.

I think this development has profound implications on wine podcasters, particularly video podcasters like standard-bearer Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV. This is not lost on Mr. Vaynerchuk as he is putting up 5 Apple TV’s as prizes for a contest he is running right now (BTW, Gary, subscribed). And I fully expect the circulation of Wine Library TV to double as a result of the improvements to Apple TV.

This will provide the first platform for cross-over of niche content to a larger audience outside the digerati. I might even dust off my video podcasting skills and produce a Tony Bourdain influenced wine show if I can raise enough money to do it properly. Plenty of others in the growing Wine 2.0 movement will also jump on board and I expect to see another surge of interest in wine podcasting.

So if you have ever wanted to be on TV, now is the time to get started.

How could this happen to a wine brand that has grown so quickly in sales while spending so little on marketing?

The retail wine business is cruel and unforgiving. And it’s worse in the UK.

For those not in the wine trade, a winery sells to distributors for 50% of the retail bottle price. The distributor, in this case Orbital, then sells to retailers and restaurants to give them something like a 25-30% margin. They also have to pay for shipping of the wine, storage, some taxes, marketing and staff expenses. So what seems like a large margin becomes razor-thin particularly when dealing with large retailers like supermarkets.

Since the UK market is not nearly as fragmented as in the US, retailers have more leverage to get the lowest price for wine especially for products in the ₤10 and lower range. It’s also sort of a Catch-22 situation with wines selling in this range since shipping cost becomes such a large factor unless consumers buy in case lots; thus a totally direct strategy is not possible for brands like Stormhoek.

So to answer Josh’s question, yes, social media does work for wine, particularly for lower production, higher-priced wines like he will be selling. For brands like Stormhoek, they will need to forge distribution relationships with those who have a portfolio to support the low margins in their price range. From Jason’s post today, it seems that process is now going on.

Stormhoek is far from dead and social media is the future of wine marketing even if most of the trade in the US hasn’t yet noticed.

Cartoon by Hugh MacLeod of gapingvoid.com

We don’t need another online profile to manage; please, stop the madness!

What we do need is a place online for wine lovers of all levels to gather and share their passion for wine. Perhaps features like cellar management and finding wine online and off-line would also be part of this wine community. It would be one part eBob, one part CellarTracker, one part Wine-Searcher/WineZap/Snooth, a dash of Twitter, all chased down with a bit of Scrugy and Wine Life Today.

It seems most of the new entrants are trying to be the Facebook of wine, which is not the right model as I think Facebook will fill this role. What we do need is one place to go with a single sign-on (OpenID, please), slick user interface and engaging feature set that will attract everyone who is now scattered across the multitude of Wine 2.0 sites.

So who will build such a service? Certainly eBob could be expanded and improved but I don’t think this will happen as the current model is working well right now. The same goes for the folks at Wine Spectator who seem so focused on their paid service that you have to even pay for their blogs. I think it’s likely that there will be a roll-up of leading Wine 2.0 contenders to make up such a service; my money right now is on Snooth doing this next year.

But another player has recently emerged that I think bears closer study: WineZap (disclosure: I am a WineZap affiliate). They have added social media features to their core wine search service turning it into more of a community site. Although they don’t have many of the features of the ideal wine community outlined above, I think they have the potential to roll these elements together. I’ll post a review and comparison with Snooth and Vinquire over the holiday break.

Interesting times ahead and perhaps it’s time to make a few more predictions.

But this has not happened. Today we have about a bunch of wine social networks all fighting for attention. The only ones that have built any critical mass are WineZap, Snooth and Cork’d/Wine Library TV. And it’s not clear if any one of these will break out of the pack and become the de facto Facebook of Wine. Right now I think that Facebook itself stands as much chance as any Wine 2.0 sites but it will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next few months. I expect to see consolidation in this space and one or two leaders emerge.

Check out the article here and slideshow profiles of some of the leading Wine 2.0 sites here.

Fast forward 15 months and wine.mobi sells at auction for $30,000. Not bad for a few moments of work and several months. It remains to be seen what will come of this domain but this sale was enough for me to buy my .mobi domain today. What I’ll do with it is another story.

Of all the Wine 2.0 sites I’ve seen to date, I think Snooth shows the most promise to make a business out of this category. The design and feature set are very well done and the wine database is impressive. The only thing that remains to be seen is if they can attract enough users to make the social networking and ecommerce elements of Snooth viable. My guess is yes, but we shall see in coming months. My full review of Snooth will be posted here soon.

Congratulations, Philip and team on this milestone!

So everyday from now to harvest, I will blog about each decision and invite readers to comment that will influence our decisions for each item. Those who join the Winecast Crushnet group will have inside access and directly effect these decisions because this is our wine, not my wine. The first 50 members will be assured a one-case allocation of the final product and the opportunity to lend a hand directly in San Francisco or virtually via the internet. Should the group exceed 50 by harvest, I will work with the folks at Crushpad to increase production.

To join the group, just sign up over at Crushnet and request to join the Winecast group. It’s free and easy to do in just a couple of minutes. Depending on the timing of the harvest, I will be on hand for the sorting and crushing of the grapes at Crushpad. I hope to see many group members there. We’ll also get together for barrel tastings in San Francisco and Minneapolis as the wine develops.

When I first announced this project a few weeks ago, I knew there was another blogger/podcaster working with Crushpad on a wine but had no idea it was Gary Vaynerchuk from Wine Library. I think this is great and will definitely join his group to make a Napa Cab. I also hope to be able to get Gary on Winecast to compare notes on our approaches in making our first commercial wines.

A very interesting Wine 2.0 adventure awaits, join us.

Rating: 1 out of 5 stars Flawed, Not Recommended
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars Average
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars Very good, Recommended
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars Delicious, A Wine of Distinction
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars Outstanding, A Classic Wine

Note that this is an overall reflection of a wine’s quality and value as having a second scale for value seems too complicated.

It’s great to see other Wine 2.0 sites support this proposal (thanks, Philip, and great Facebook app!) and I expect others to follow. For devotees of the 100-point scale, I will also include that score in all reviews for the foreseeable future along with this 5-star rating.

I know this is somewhat of a contentious issue but I’m hoping some other wine bloggers join me by adopting the 5-star scale (I have noticed Andy begin to use this scale recently). Perhaps we might have some standardization in the wine blog world that seems to exist in the established wine press.

It’s been a while since I posted here at Good Grape so I thought I would get back into action with a meaty topic I think a lot about in my day job as a wine marketer.

How has wine marketing changed in the era of consumer generated content?

At one end of the spectrum is the ground-breaking work by Hugh MacLeod harnessing the power of social media to reposition Stormhoek as a “social object.” You can check out Hugh’s account of his campaign by viewing a 25 minute video of a talk recorded at the PSFK Conference in London last month.

What is most interesting about Hugh’s story is how simply — and almost by accident — he implemented a global marketing campaign in a very fragmented and traditional industry. Like a lot of wine brands, Stormhoek is a volume play where critic’s scores, aggressive sales practices and shelf-talkers are the standard marketing approach. So what did Hugh and Company do? They engaged the blogosphere and started a global conversation about their brand. The result was more than doubling sales in less than 2 years for an investment of about £20,000 (approx. $41,000 USD).

The other end of the spectrum is where 99% of the wine industry is at the moment with their heads in the sand about the internet and little clue about social media. They live in fear someone uneducated consumer will bad mouth their wine on one of the new Wine 2.0 sites such as Cork’d. This level of spin control and anxiety is understandable given the subjective subject of wine tasting where a $2 Chardonnay could be judged superior to a $40 Chardonnay.

But I have three words of advice for winery owners - Join the conversation!

We have seen a few brave wineries start blogging and engage the growing wine blogosphere. Although the jury is still out on their efforts, I know wine has been sold and word of mouth has resulted in new customers.

Don’t have a tasting room? Use your blog to create a “virtual porch.”

Have a limited marketing budget? Spend some time reading and responding to wine bloggers and they will say some good things about your wine and drive traffic to your blog.

The theme of this week’s Wine Industry Technology Symposium underscores the urgency of wineries adopting new online marketing strategies. My favorite quote was from wine podcast superstar Gary Vaynerchuk from Winelibrary.com who said in his talk to , “Embrace your website as your business.” Amen, brother; I hope a few wineries there got the message.

So the bottom line is that wineries who are not part of the social media conversation are doomed to let consumers determine their word of mouth. Like any online endeavor there are trolls but if you engage and extend the conversation you are more likely to encourage partisan customers to come to your aid. If you do nothing, you are likely to suffer in “Google Hell” for some time.

All it takes is a bit of time and focus. The rest — like what Stormhoek has done — could be history.

As Om Malik posted Tuesday, the iPhone will change the mobile phone landscape but it will also power Wine 2.0 because the application programming interface (API) for the iPhone is the web itself. At first, I thought this was pretty insignificant; in fact, my first reaction was “so what” but the more I think about a mobile phone running a fully featured desktop web browser the possibilities for interesting Wine 2.0 applications come to mind.

Want to post a tasting note to Cork’d or Bottletalk while sitting in a restaurant? No problem. Check prices or scores via Snooth or WineZap while in the aisle of your wine store? Go for it. Read your wine blogs? Of course.

Anything you can do on the web can now be consumed on the iPhone which will be great for Wine 2.0 usage and innovation. Sure, the pricing for this device is way too high now but the same could be said for my Motorola RAZR a few years ago; now they are free with contract.

Give this a couple years and you will really see some interesting traction in the marketplace and anyone with online wine information, recommendations and a wine store will benefit. As long as they make their user interface simple and easy to navigate with a mouse, that is.

For a taste of what’s to come, just fire up Safari on your Mac, and now Windows PC, and check out some of the early iPhone sites.

Photo credit: Engadget

Please either publish an API to your tasting notes feature or build a Wordpress plug-in so I don’t have to cut and paste my reviews into your site.

Whoever delivers this first will be the exclusive site for republishing my reviews for a period of time. This is my main gripe about all these sites as it creates more work for me. I’d rather create more content than spend time pasting it into other site(s).

I’m even open collaborating with a site in order to build such a plug-in (yes, I have decent php coding chops). What I want to do is publish the review here and have it tagged in such a way to automatically be imported into your site in my ‘winecast’ account. Microformats would be a nice touch, but not required in the first release.

Who’s game?

BTW, I have about a hundred unpublished tasting notes that I will be posting on a more or less daily basis this summer starting today. I’m planning on tasting quite a bit more this summer on a few road-trips but that’s a post for another day

Since I get to the Bay Area on a regular basis these days, I was planning a trip around the same time frame in order to attend. Unfortunately my trip was moved up to the week before so I’ll only be there in spirit unless they rig up an iChat or Skype video setup for me (hint, hint; this is Wine 2.0 after all).

If you are in San Francisco June 1st and have an interest in the intersection of Web 2.0 and wine, this will be the event to attend. I’m hoping to be able to attend the next event.

A bit of clarification about how I will manage the friends vs. followers on this account since I think this might become somewhat larger over time. All bloggers who put me as a friend will be added as a friend only if they Twitter wine related subjects. For example, I will most likely use this for micro tasting notes of wines I am drinking at any given time but others might use it as sort of a mini email system about wine. An exchange between Dr. Debs in California and Andrew in the UK shows the power of such discussion. Everyone else will be added to my friends list on my personal account but you will still get notifications of my wine posts as a follower. Or you could just subscribe to the combined feed. I’ve added the Twitter feed to my right sidebar here for you to follow along, too.

Let’s see how many others will join the wine twitter movement… you don’t even have to be a blogger to join us.

So I mashed up this idea in a Wine 2.0 sort of way and started to post short reviews of the wine I am drinking right now. These will be posted well before formal reviews and will sometimes have scores if my description is short enough. I invite anyone else to join me and add their Twitter feed to my friends list. If there are enough wine loving Twitter users, I might even create a community blog to aggregate all our posts. A domain has been purchased for the purpose. I think this has a lot of potential but could be just too geeky to see the truth

Will anyone else join me?

Like last month, we will ask each participant to post their question for the group in our Google Group sometime before Thursday (preferably as early in the week as possible so we have time to think about it). I’ll moderate and anyone who didn’t get in on the last chat will be put to the front of the queue with their question. Anyone with an interest in the intersection of Web 2.0 and wine is welcome but we do have limited space so please indicate your attendance by posting a comment here or in our Google Group.

My question will be more of a presentation of the meta-data scheme for the hReview wine tasting note plug-in I’m writing for Wordpress. Pretty geeky stuff, but there are others who are more business model focused so I’m sure there will be some balance to the discussion. And maybe we can find out what’s behind the holding page at the Wine 2.0 site...

Basically, Twisted Oak is asking it’s customers to write the back label of the soon to be released white Rhone-style blend called %@#$! Customers have plenty of ideas to inspire their writing from past examples on the Twisted Oak blog. All entries must be received by March 16th and the winner will be announced March 19th and their back label will be printed on the back of the next release of %@#$! later this summer. Everyone entering the contest will receive a 20% off coupon for wine purchases and the winner will receive a full case of %@#$! with their custom label.

Like other promotions that invite customers to co-create the product, I think this one will be successful in spreading the word about Twisted Oak and get more people to try their wines. Current customers will tell their friends and this word-of-mouth will spread virally. All without expensive ads in Wine Spectator and the like. Very Wine 2.0, El Jefe.

Whatever the cause of Wine X ceasing publication is really not that interesting to me anymore so I started to think about what a successful wine publication would look like targeted at Millennials. For one, it would be online and more like My Space or Facebook than Wine Spectator. The social aspects of sharing tasting notes and linking to friends and blogging about wine would be the main focus with perhaps a bit of eCommerce thrown in for convenience (and site monetization). In short, more about the wine experience than degrees brix and terroir.

Sounds like some Wine 2.0 opportunities to me. Talk amongst yourselves

All the details are at our Google Groups page. I’ll post the transscripts there after the chat for future reference. I’ll let you know when the next chat will be held in a wrap-up post in the next couple days.

Update: The chat today was much more focused and easier to follow than earlier meetings. We will get together again on March 1st at 7:00 pm EST/4:00 pm PST/12:00 am GMT (Fri.)/ 11:00 am AEST (Fri.). The transcript has been posted to the Wine 2.0 Google Group. Thanks to all who participated.

“Niche Social Media Sites Achieve Critical Mass: I touched on this topic in my last column, but it’s worth revisiting as vertical (or special interest) social networking sites are getting traction. Senior citizens, pregnant mothers, pet owners, wine collectors, sports fanatics, and adventure travelers are all examples of passionate communities offering opportunities. Look for lots of merger and acquisition activity in this space in the coming year as companies try to build their communities — fast. Why? Any media property or entertainment company with a connected audience is quickly developing communities. People want to connect and they generate a lot of page views when they do.”

This statement had me thinking back to our Wine 2.0 chat in December where this very subject came up. Hmm, most interesting and I seem to be right in the middle of the action… cool

Wrong! I am a geek (from a purely technical sense, of course).

And I may be in conflict with myself but I am a marketer with technical expertise, as noted

I’m also for hire, but that’s another story… thanks, man.

Nothing about this gathering was out of the ordinary except in the way the attendees came to be invited. We all are members of Alan Baker’s Rat Pack at Crushpad who are part investor, part collaborator and part customer; welcome to the world of micro cult wines, Wine 2.0 style.

So it occurred to me that this kind of “high-touch”, online communities who form into occasional face-to-face gatherings, is an element of Wine 2.0 that I haven’t yet touched on. Everyone in the room was there to taste some of “their wine” and talk about how it is being shaped by the winemaker; a really interesting example of wine education and collaboration facilitated by the internet. These kind of gatherings will be more common as the lines between “professional” and “enthusiast” are blurred by places like Crushpad.

More established wineries can also benefit from the synergy between online communities and real world gatherings through blogs, podcasts and even old school groups like wine clubs. All they need to do is plan an event and show up with some wine to taste and an educational attitude. Examples might be a blending session with the winemaker or barrel tastings. The sales will come after customers become “part of the family.”

That’s high-touch from a Wine 2.0 perspective.