Thursday, May 30 2013
Fermentaton Flooey and the Gooey Kablooie
Posted by Foamy Tim AT 7:06AM | 0 Comments | Post A Comment |
Thursday, May 30 2013
Posted by Foamy Tim AT 7:06AM | 0 Comments | Post A Comment |
Sunday, May 26 2013
I've been thinking about the wine kit business (I know I don't mention this very often, but since it keeps me in cheese sandwiches and pays the kitty-treats bill, I do think about it quite a lot). This is always a dangerous proposition, but I have been coming across the same question from a bunch of different sources, and in most places that I visit where we distribute our consumer winemaking products: 'How do I get new customers interested in my wine/wine business?'
Sure, not a new question, but it's getting more obvious as times goes by. While wine sales are generally increasing across the category, not every consumer winemaking store is growing at the same rate as the commercial side, and it's more significant when you compare the wine numbers to those of beer. To be sure, traditional macro-brew beers (those made by one of the Big Four, who collectively control 50% of all beer on earth) are in the swamp, declining continuously for the last decade, but Craft beer (brewed by independents for reasons in other than quarterly corporate profit), is exploding, continues to explode:for all intents and purposes appears to be a big happy explosion as a default state. Wine people can't help but think, 'Where's my piece of that delicious alcohol-pie?'
Posted by Old, Old Tim AT 11:10PM | 3 Comments | Post A Comment |
Sunday, May 19 2013
So long . . .
Posted by Tim AT 11:21AM | 1 Comment | Post A Comment |
Comments
Annie
Posted 8 months ago
Where do you put the carboys in a 450 sq ft condo without knocking the bikes over?
Nobody needs eleven fixed-gear bicycles--nor does an man require thirty pairs of jeans that would fit a toddler. Toss the junk and make wine!
Tim
David Noone
Posted 8 months ago
A truly accurate and genius description of most industrial American beers as having nothing more than "alcohol and wetness".
I guess I'll have to put the kibosh on the Dancing Gorilla label I was making.... TIIIIMMMM!!! (Screamed a la Capt. Kirk)
Nothing wrong with some alcohol and wetness, but if it tastes like gorilla sweat as well, then I'm out.
Tim
Kirsten
Posted 8 months ago
I won't pretend to be a hipster but my partner and I, who got into wine-making fairly recently, are in the right age group and seem to be living a hipster-ish lifestyle (uh-oh...). I don't know if it's at all helpful to know why someone who only recently got into wine-making didn't do so until now, but I figure it's worth writing a few lines about it.
I had known about wine kits for years but never got into wine-making myself for several reasons that I assume can be generalized to my generation as well as the next: cost, effort, space, and class. The first two are clearly misunderstandings that my local Winexpert retailer resolved in all of twenty seconds.
The third, space, is not really a misunderstanding -- it does take space to store the equipment when in use and not, 30 bottles of wine or more realistically many more than 30, etc. -- but a challenge to be overcome. I have a very small house but I hadn't really started settling in prior to taking up wine-making so I have the luxury of planning renos and decor around the new hobby. For example, my home office is a blank slate waiting for me to find the time to custom build a pub-height desk with wheeled "fermentation stations" underneath. Until then, everything's in the middle of the kitchen and it looks a bit -- okay, a lot -- like I'm a hoarder! Most people don't have the luxury of the blank slate abode; they're already settled in their homes and the space allotted for wine is big enough for a few bottles, not for primary fermenters, carboys, bottles, etc. Most of my friends and family would be unwilling, even if able, to find the space for all the stuff wine-making requires and produces. Setting someone to work on creative solutions for that problem might help as well as making for new product lines for Winexpert or a subsidiary company. Ikea-style furniture that doubles, in typical Scandanavian fashion, as something functional, disguising wine-making equipment? An easy sell to the hipster crowd. Then again, maybe this already exists and I just don't know about it. I tend to go for more DIY problem-solving so haven't really looked into it.
The fourth is, I think, the biggest issue you'll face and I'm somewhat ashamed to admit it was a real stumbling-block for me. Wine kits call to mind the redneck great-uncle who used to make fruit wine in his bathtub, 'shiners out in the sticks who sell their wares through the local taxi service, and folks who can't afford the good stuff and'll drink anything so long as it'll get 'em drunk. At least that's what they call to mind for me and for a surprising number of people that I know -- even on-premise, though using the exact same kits, is thought to be classier than doing it at home. People look down their noses at home wine-making and hipsters, above all else, are "cool". The fact that they still sell wine kits in hardware stores (where I live, at least) doesn't help. Just selling the product won't combat this stigma. It seems to me that you have to renew and sell the whole *idea* of home wine-making. Ideas about how to do that are pretty easy to dream up -- heck, you can snipe them from the beer world because they've already done this. Again, though, maybe you guys have already tried this.
A few other thoughts that may do little more than reveal my ignorance about the whole industry:
1. What about truly local kits that will really give wine-makers a sense of place? I'm from an area where there are quite a few small wineries and a few people who just grow grapes to sell them to home wine-makers. I have no idea how to go from grape-on-vine to wine and I'd pay more than the average wine kit cost to buy, for example, Seyval and l'Acadie kits and produce at home the same wines my local wineries are making. I'm sure the same goes for other wine kit makers here and in other regions. (Heck, I'd even drop everything to cultivate a vineyard here to produce grapes to be turned into wine kits! How much fun would that be?!) This would definitely give a sense of place -- beyond just "in my kitchen" -- and would fit in with the whole "locavore" movement (itself largely motivated by those spooky-magical consumers we call hipsters).
2. How about an "eco-line" of wine-kits? Anything from organic grapes to recycled cardboard for the boxes to a non-plastic juice bag/holder would fit the bill. (This also suggests a marketing strategy -- and not one that depends on any eco-line -- something like the Brita water-filter ads with the build-up of bottles that have to be recycled. Let's face it, making your own wine reduces waste and fits in with the whole eco-friendly thing that's (rightly so) all the rage right now.)