Wine Sales In the Last Half of 2013

The Best View of the Housing Bubble Pre-Crash

I recall giving a speech in August of 2008 to about 125 growers and winery owners. The speech was on the economy and I pulled up the slide above to demonstrate what I was seeing ahead of us. This was at a time just after Lehman Brothers collapsed where it had become apparent that we had crested a market high in housing and entering a bearish period. What the chart says in brief, is the historical average ratio of existing home price divided by median 4 family income is 2.8 times. That's what the red line is. With a ratio of 2.8 times, if a family made $100,000 a year, they could afford a $280,000 home. You can see what happened by late 2006 into 2007.

Is Demand for Wine Dropping?

I saw the above video last week referencing demand for wine and the title got my attention. Is the demand for wine really falling? When you watch the video above many people might think so, but I don't really put a lot of faith in LiveEx as a measure of demand for fine wine. This might be speaking to Bordeaux largely and LiveEx might have use in other areas but not for overall consumer demand.

Last week we did a version of a Mid-Year State of the Industry Blog, but in it noted that its hard to do a State of Anything in a blog so we left out consumer demand. With this video clip from Bloomberg hitting the interwebs, I thought it might be worthwhile to debunk the above perspective.

How to Have Others Pay for Customer Acquisition

Last week I had the opportunity to head off to the Bloomberg studios in San Francisco and participate in a wine panel with the still somewhat lovely and modestly talented Michael Honig of Honig Vineyards & Winery, and the witty and much more attractive Bill Price Chairman of the Vincraft Group. If you didn't get a chance to see the give and take, you can take a look above if you give a hoot. The event was also covered by Steve Heimhoff in his Blog so its possible if you are in the wine business, you are probably already saying to yourself,

"Self?...... Who cares about a wine panel even with attractive and slightly weathered male models? I might as well read the back of wine bottles ....... special soils with long days and cool nights ... blah, blah, blah. Time to go watch bud break." 

Mom

My mother's review of the segment was the chairs seemed uncomfortable, I needed to sit up straight, and I was the smartest and most handsome boy on stage. She said it was amazing! Then again, she used to be proud of my finger paintings ( .... no not the ones I did when I was at Hillview.)

You might think the over-educated Ivy-League Bloomberg folks would bail us out and make the panel compelling? Those gentlemen must be worth a listen? Sadly to me, after watching this you will most likely come away saying,

"Self? ....... I can't believe that host dude Jeff made a mistake introducing the name of this Blog! Isn't that some sort of professional breach for a member of the Paper, Ink & Lies Union #911 to insult a fellow professional writer.?" 

Personally, I think Jeff has blog envy. No matter. There is another person who was interested in this wine panel: the wine consumer.