Recently my colleague, Linda Murphy wrote a reflective column about the American wine industry’s stubbornness for clinging to the use of French names and terms for their wineries and wines. She doesn’t like it one bit…and neither do I. It’s an annoying practice that reflects a misguided insecurity by the offending winery owners and the marketing people that serve them.
In her column, Linda admitted her need for screed not speed, and once again I agree with her. But I wonder if speed is the main motivation for wine marketers to stay up with a U.S. consumer market that moves at lightning speed from one technique to persuade consumers to another, while ignoring the inherent quality of the product itself. Who is it, after all, telling owners and winemakers that their wine alone will not sell without a heavier bottle, a higher price and a foreign name? Still, it doesn’t take an astute observer of today’s expanding wine market to see the need for winery owners to step up and admit that it is time to set aside the old marketing axiom: “Sell the sizzle not the steak.” Pushing the package implies the wine isn’t good enough.
Perhaps there is a kernel of truth in the old cliché that maintains: “You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.” It could also be that winery owners and marketing people need to re-define their market. What segment of the market is “Chateau Tres Chic,” a Napa Valley Bordeaux blend, aimed at? Surely not the French, who scoff at the brazen way Americans co-opt French terms to sell their products, like the insistence by some California wineries to continue using the name Champagne to identify their sparkling wine. It’s time for a marketing campaign to coin a name or term for U.S. produced sparkling wine, such as the Spanish successfully did with Cava, that attracts customers and implies a pride in a U.S. wine that doesn’t rely on a French or European term.
Of course, the practice of using foreign names and terms in marketing is not limited to wine. Americanisms, especially those lifted from pop culture, sell worldwide, including some wacky items, popular as souvenirs, like t-shirts emblazoned with the names of American universities that don’t exist.
Marketing wine is different, and the folks who do it should understand that. Instead of selling the packaging, sell the wine inside the bottle. Go anywhere in the world and it’s not hard to find wine people who, in a unguarded moment, will say that while Americans make good wine, they spend too much time and money on fancy winery buildings, expensive caves and packaging that can often cost nearly as much as the wine inside the bottle to produce. Of course, it’s easy for me to encourage marketing to sell the steak and not the sizzle, but if creativity is one of the main tenets of marketing, why not use it to sell wine quality?
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