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SPLASH DECANT 12/31/19

The Best of 2019 – a List

The Best of 2019 – a List

I give you the best of 2019…


Best Restaurant Conversation – Heard at Bar Pisellino

Q: What’s the name mean?
A: It means little dick.
Q: Oh, do you have lattes?

BTW, this is a brilliant Bar for Vermouth and cocktails in the evening and incredible coffee and pastries during the day.

Best Wine Service – Andrew Newlin, Raouls

I was lucky to be served by so many greats this year, but Andrew Newlin (now working for Thomas Keller in Miami @ Surf Club) is about as fast on his feet with table side banter as it gets and in my mind, he made wine service great again. Watching him serve wine multiple tables at Raoul’s looked not only like a blast – but he made it look real easy. Slow clap for Newlin.

Best New Restaurant – The Banty Rooster

This was a tough one. The Banty was a late entry and offers a brilliant and delicious menu of southwestern food (you need anything with Hatch Green chiles, thank me later), a room with a purpose, and the most charismatic, intelligent and lovely proprietor and chef team you could imagine. Go here yesterday.
Infatuation review here.

Best dish – Estela

Not really a shocker, but the red shrimp and mushroom dish from chef Ignacio Mattos and the team at Estela was an epic and sensual wave of umami, texture and balance. The dish is James Brown’s Get On Up meets the Mozart Requiem Lachrymosa; a religious experience of dark and light.

And Smeltz + somm crew know how to have fun and pair wines as well as any wine team in the city.

Best Cocktail – Momofuku Ko (Bar)

The 3/4 cocktail at the Momofuku Ko bar could be served anywhere and would be loved. Simplicity and beauty in one cocktail. I drank it and couldn’t help think – “why didn’t I think of that?”

Recipe:
¾ oz. white rum
¾ oz. bourbon
¾ oz. Braulio
¾ oz. Nonino

Stirred, served over large rock. Lemon twist expressed, but not in the drink.

Best Wine – Capellano Super Barolo 1947

Super Barolo from Capellano 1947 shared by a trusted and generous friend. This wine that whispered “carpe diem” like that scene in dead poets society and I didn’t laugh – I took it friggin’ seriously.

Best Winemaker – Nate Ready of Hiyu/Smockshop Band

I admit, I am biased. I also have the pleasure of working with many epic winemakers. But the winemaker challenging current viewpoints while changing the future of American wine is Nate Ready of Hiyu and Smockshop band. The work he is doing is without category and evades the easy bucket we all want to place wine in. He also shepherds (along with a wonderful team), a place that is equal parts faviken, permaculture farm, and monastic meditational dream where the team creates a bit of art everyday with nature.  The wines are not for everyone, but isn’t that the point?

Best Wine Event – Running of the Scales, De Maison Selections

Andre Tamers of De Maison Selections pulled of the most incredible wine event that will ever be put on.
This was like pulling off the fyre festival of wine and spirits that actually worked – ran smoothly and completely as planned.

“ This was like pulling off the fyre festival of wine and spirits that actually worked - ransmoothly and completely as planned.

Best lunch – Alain Passard Farmhouse in Normandie

Lunch at Alain Passard’s garden and farmhouse in Normandy.
Jedi service, incredible company that understood the nuance, execution and soul of the food in an open and generous setting. The farm tour was pretty awesome, even in the rain.
This was a lunch for the history books. Note: you can believe the hype – Alain Passard is not just a charismatic showman, but one helluva cook. Watching him is like watching a Cata. He knows every move, every subtlety.

Best Dinner – Olmsted

After eating at Olmsted this year, it embarrassed me that I hadn’t been there before.
Casual, warm and pulsing – this room and the charming outdoor space is perpetually packed for a reason. All of the food was layered and delicious. And Bonus -the Wine Director, Zwann Gray, could be the most smile inducing and intentional somm you encounter in the city. Go here yesterday. A total must.

SPLASH DECANT 11/15/19

NYC Beverage Market Quickfire – November 2019

NYC Beverage Market Quickfire – September 2019

We are in the last quarter of 2019 and the NYC Beverage landscape is wacky as F#$(&.

Below are some broad trends that are shaping the market today.


Mayday Mayday Rosé

Was this a good Rosé season? Maybe for some, but saturation is pushing the rosé category into the danger zone. For a while, selling Rosé seemed like a sure thing. Not anymore. If we want to Maké Rosé Great Again, the buyers are going to have to adjust – and the importer/distributor is going to have to be smarter.

I will tell you this – my earlier Rosé article holds true; if you DI’d Rosé and let the rest of the season go you are probably laughing at those that have thousands of cases left.

Portuguese Wine…WTW?

Portuguese wine has been building over the last year, but more and more real wine coming from Portugal is flowing through the market. Luis Seabra broke through on the top end and premier NYC retailers are putting Portugal on offers and selling them out like crazy.  Quality, story, price, well-launched. I see this continuing to grow. Look for Importers to start looking for more…

Natty Wine Story – The Tribe and OG’s

Natural Wine is not built on the wine, but the Tribe. Sick of hearing about Natural Wine? So what. What about all the people that are just hearing about it? That’s the build and trajectory. The definition of Natural wine isn’t what everyone says it is or isn’t. IT ISN’T THE WINE. It is the people that make and drink it that define the movement. This is BeBop – it ain’t for everyone, and that is part of the strength.

There are going to be more tussles about who the cool kids are in the natural wine cafeteria and who the uncool folks are; the Natural Wine version of what do you bench…And heads up, the OG Natural Wine ambassadors are not too keen on stepping to the side so the young and new can jump in. Look for some Fratty Natty hazing.

I take over your bar, you take my wines…

There have been and will continue to be many wine takeovers, so many your head will spin.

And they will always be the best deal on wine and food and work out well for everyone involved. Kidding…

Alt-Burgundy

Since the one-percenters burgundies are getting even more expensive as demand grows and the wines are traded like baseball cards at auction, alternative Burgundy is having a moment. Any ghetto category that used to be laughed at like Rully or Givry now has a chance at some play.

“ Is the Orange Man in the white house driving the NYC crowd to drink?  UMMM...HELL YES.

Educate the People

A few wily marketers in the restaurant biz have attempted to stake a claim on educating the consumer at low cost and with a very high impact/return.

Education isn’t just for the retailer anymore – and this will continue to expand. Another interesting attention-grabbing move. Bravo.

The Trump Bump

Is the Orange man driving the NYC crowd to drink?  UMMM…HELL YES. The press got more subscribers and we got the uptick in consumption. This will most likely keep going until he is out.

Wait, we can’t taste that?

Act now or this wine will be gone! Email me for an allocation, this is so rare and hard to get.

Alice Feiring put up a post on instagram about the email blast and the comments are hilarious and at times insightful.

The truth is that smaller importers are starting to get used to offering a few cases here and a few cases there – acting like there is so much demand for the wines they represent that the wines sell out immediately. This model only resonates with me unless they are being honest. So I ask you…are they being honest? Are they using the word allocation as a manipulation?

My take is this: sometimes the wine does actually sell out before release. And if you have an addiction to these wines and want to support them, you should respond. Ask if you can pop a bottle to check out the new vintage.

BUT, anyone who engages with a dishonest messenger or HAS to have that wine (as if there are no other options), or chooses to work with importers who can only buy small amounts for the whole US and fake allocate has decided their own fate.

SPLASH DECANT 10/15/19

Chances are high you have Inventory Bloat Disease

Chances are high you have Inventory Bloat Disease.

Q: Who is having trouble “controlling” their inventory balance?

A: Everyone of a certain size.

For nearly every restaurant, retailer or importer/distributor that isn’t small, inventory will always be the noisy player within the tension trio of buying+inventory+sales. The pattern of the sales, the inventory you carry and the need to buy more are in a state of constant tension.

Distressed inventory in the wine and spirits business is a symptom and not a cause.

Below are the symptoms of Inventory Bloat Disease. If you are failing with two of these, I don’t need to look at your inventory, sales, or committed allocations that you haven’t taken this year – you have IBD big time.

I have simplified as much as possible below, but as always, nuances abound.

If you want a quick refresher on some important info for Importer/Distributors – read a previous post: The Closeout Recipe.


Belief System

Do you really believe in what you are buying, or is it just a commodified category? Polaner had to close out the first release in the market of López de Heredia. THEY CLOSED IT OUT. Let that sink in for a moment. Chapeau to them, they believed it was top-tier and the market would catch up so they brought it back in and didn’t think twice. Now it is the banner bearer of the Rioja appellation.

If you buy with belief, it will strongly impact how you sell. And also, you can always get lucky. Something can fly out and it has little to do with your buying genius.

Belief matters just as much as dollars, likely more.

The top importer/distributors/restaurants/retailers in NYC can articulate what they believe in and this translates to inventory movement. They don’t flip out after some random turn time  – they believe. And in concert, they also know when to make moves when something isn’t right.

Launching

How you launch (sell) a new wine or spirit within the company and into the market is so vital it can literally hide a producer. A great producer with lots of promise can just sit there in the dark, unlit corner of your inventory.

Either you have a plan to launch or you don’t. “Let’s just try” is only good enough 1 out of every 10 launches, and is the long-term tactic of the fool.

How you launch can kill the release of a producer or elevate them immediately.

Timing

There are seasonal buys just like there are seasonal restaurants.  If you can think about when you are bringing something in and acknowledge at the outset that it is seasonal you can avoid some ghastly errors.

Are you bringing in a bunch of Rosé on September 15th? It better be hot as hades and this NYC Market must be showing more commitment than I currently observe with Rosé.

Timing matters. Even when you have to jump to grab a producer…

The Market Decides

This may seem obvious, but you must pay attention to the Market. That portfolio of “small, natural growers” will sound the same as the portfolio that everyone else is offering. That group of tiny producers from Swaartland that you represent that is ‘exceptional’ may be dead on arrival.

Ultimately, the market will decide if you have the goods. And you must be out there in the game – not just an #InstagramPeepingTom. Really out there. Faking market knowledge is obvious to the real observers.

Knowing the market takes real work, but it will save you from the inventory blues. You have to be a savvy observer.

“ Polaner closed out the first release in the market of López de Heredia. THEY CLOSED IT OUT. Let that sink in for a moment.

Internal distrust

If there is internal distrust (normally within upper management) about the quality of product bought or the direction of a portfolio or the list or the section in a store, you will have problems selling internally to the sales staff and by extension externally to the market. Especially with new products.

Deal with it. Not articulating what the company believes in and talking badly of your buying team is a sure-fire way to create a non-trusting environment and create dead inventory.

There are always at least two markets: the internal one of the Company and the external of the Market. Trust is built by actions and not words.

Pricing Purgatory

While pricing will never solely decide the fate of any product (and actually is the first question of the narrow-minded), you MUST be aware of the perception of quality and pricing of the category you are selling within.
If you price off of a formula, you could kill a wine or spirit that has real potential. Even further, it could take multiple releases or vintages to get it launched again properly if you don’t know the reason you have chosen pricing.
EX: I was once asked why a Cru Beaujolais was not selling as fast as it should be. I then communicated what the wholesale cost of the current release of Lapierre Morgon was and the person asking didn’t know. Lapierre was 4 dollars less per bottle wholesale than the Beaujolais we were selling. This is a top producer at a fair price with a serious following.

Pricing doesn’t ultimately decide the fate of a producer, but you have to know the landscape to position a wine or spirit or you will watch it sit there and have to change directions to get it going.

SPLASH DECANT 07/13/19

The Gigantic Meaningless Wine Award (s)

The Gigantic Meaningless Wine Award

Dear Sommelier,

Thank you for your entry fee, cover letter, dinner menu, and wine list for the Award this year.

Congratulations! We have decided to award you with a Gigantic Meaningless Wine Award, second level.

We are thrilled to have you as part of the many thousands that paid the entry fee.

As a winner, you will not only feel validated, but random people from the wine industry will congratulate you. You are finally good enough now. You are likable, highly skilled and your parents will love you more now than they did before.

Your award is being mailed to you. It will arrive in the coming week.

Please do not make love to the award.

Do not reenact that scene with Billy Bob and Halle B from Monsters Ball – (this award will make you feel good, you don’t need to ask it to).

This award consents to hugs, caresses, and since 2014 does not allow special exemptions to “Showering” of any sort.

Please congratulate all other winners and get them to congratulate you (preferably on Social Media).

Grab a bottle and pose! If you just started a few months ago and have had little to nothing to do with the program, no big deal. We love group photos. We keep hearing about “stories” – do it for us your personal sommelier brand and make your awesome restaurant owners notice!

Please privately (or publicly) laugh at the others that did not win or participate.

Shame the others like muzzled handmaidens. They probably don’t have enough cash to pay the entry fee! What a bunch of LO-SERS! They suck big time, amiright?

Also, after you have hugged and caressed your award…

“ Even in well-established culinary destinations like New York City, the Gigantic Meaningless Wine Awards serve as validation for a job well done.

Please display the award prominently in the restaurant so the owners feel so so good.

Make sure that it is prominently placed so customers see it. Give them the opportunity to wonder what the hell it is, or say to their friends as they enter: “Seeeee, this place is great. They won the Gigantic Meaningless Wine Award!”

Finally, please download our app.

We are building a Gigantic Meaningless App that shows everyone where you can find the most Gigantic Meaningless Wine Awarded programs in the city. We promise to bring huge droves of fans of meaningless wine programs to fill your seats.

The code words to know the customers used the app to find you are “Ranch” and “Dressing.” It may appear that they just want Ranch Dressing, but really, they want Ranch Dressing AND they found out about you via the meaningless wine app. You are welcome.

We know what you are thinking: Winning is SUCH an honor…You are right.

And also, you must be thinking: I really really want to GET IT ON with this award. I want to make the award feel what I feel. Please don’t. We have had problems in the past but have signed an NDA and can’t talk about it.

We look forward to your entry fee participation next year.


*the gigantic meaningless wine award is not real.

SPLASH DECANT 06/14/19

You have a good portfolio? Congratulations.

You have a good portfolio? Congratulations.

Having a good portfolio isn’t good enough anymore.

If you bring up any company that imports or distributes wine today, inevitably someone will say “they have a good portfolio.” Try it. I have tried it often recently, and it is startling how confused we are as an industry.

How many times has someone said: “They are so great to work with.” Try it…Zero times, right?

Every importer and distributor with reps walking around this city has good wine that is buyable and in turn, sellable. And further, every single one of them is viewed primarily through the wines they offer.

The most important fact in the NYC Beverage market today is: Every player in import and distribution has good wine, and very few offer something special besides the products they list.


The Next Level “Portfolio”

Graceful distribution (Please see my previous post) will define the future not the wines in your portfolio.

Here are some ingredients:

Who can give the best service

Who can connect

Who has the best “logistics.”

Who can tell the best stories

Who knows their audience

Who can pay their bills

Who delights their partners, employees AND in turn who delights their customers

“ The soul of the company that this market buys from matters now, not just the wines it offers.

The Future

Whoever can build a soulful company will be ahead.

Don’t get me wrong: a waywardly selected portfolio of wines won’t help, but wine will not be the defining piece of the puzzle like it was before. People are the key and the true colors of all of these importer/distributors are on full display.

The soul of the company that this market buys from matters now, not just the wines it offers.

We are going to find out what a truly dynamic market is because the field has been changed forever.

Hang onto your hats, it is going to get wild.

SPLASH DECANT 06/06/19

Faking It

Faking it is a bad plan.

It may sound obvious, but one of the catch phrases I have been hearing a lot lately has been something like “Just fake it and act like you have been there before.” Fake knowing what you are doing until it sticks. Some in the White House believe in this tactic.

This is a bad idea for multiple reasons, but especially true in the wine business. I can tell you with absolute certainty: it won’t lead anywhere sustainable or real.


The Straw Man Effect

Faking it is a road that leads to the straw man effect. The importer or distributor or sales rep or restaurant with a lot of followers but little true engagement.

You have to lie to fake it. You have to bend the truth and invent snazzy and empty stories so that you appear to be real. One prime example is the allocation game…

But a reckoning is coming for those who have used this tactic. If you preach culture or tell stories that hide the ball of actual truth to bolster a cardboard cutout company – pain is coming. As they say on the court: if you trash talk and can’t really play, you are going to get dunked on.

“ The NYC market today has plenty of straw men that are running up against a stark reality called actual reality...

The NYC market today has plenty of straw men that are running up against a stark reality called actual reality. The reality that substance counts. You can only live in the red zone for so long; ultimately you are going to get picked off in a few ways:

Producers will leave.

Customer attention will wane.

Employees will begin to want guarantees because they have lost faith.

The market will slowly turn away and you will wonder why?

Looking around today in the NYC market there are some posers that faked their way to some prominence that are ripe to get beat up a bit- the field is officially wide open for the new players. Importer/Distributors with no core and questionable intentions.

Who will win? The forthright few. The ones who choose intent over chaos.

This is the game. Fake it and you will not make it.

SPLASH DECANT 05/26/19

National Pricing Purgatory

Hello and welcome to National Pricing Purgatory.
A word to the price-sensitive retailer – the below ain’t pretty…but there is an upside, I promise. Within this oversized problem is a kernel of clarity.

Will the pricing of a wine state to state get more varied and complex before it gets better? Absolutely on all counts — and mostly because there is a large amount of confusion.

But I need to clear up a few things first.


The Pricing Email

I am getting emails about pricing in NY and also in other states (this is not new) and they are becoming more and more frequent (very new). They go a little like this:

Dear Looper,
We are very concerned about the Black Friday sale of the “insert Brand here” at this competing retailer in “insert state here.” The price they are selling is well below our price. Please let us know what you are going to do about this before we re-order.
Thanks,
your friendly Retailer

Most recently this email came from a prominent wine retailer on the national stage and was prompted from a forwarded email from a customer. First, let me say this: I get it. This is beyond annoying. Johnny Two-Click that works in Tech on the West Coast trolling wine-searcher for the best pricing is a tough one. He has been buying some wine from you recently and he emailed you angry and annoyed – he may have even threatened to take his biz elsewhere. I completely understand that you feel compelled to take action.

Further, I can’t think of a worse thing than skimming over the pricing in Wine-Searcher all day. That would be up there as my worst wine nightmare.

Fact: Unless a retailer is taking the full quantity of a particular wine for the whole country, there will with rare exception always be a lower price someplace nationally. And, if you add in the random little Direct To Consumer email list operations to this, the pricing situation gets even dicier.

Wine-Searcher

Wine-Searcher is a wonderful tool, but imperfect to say the least.
Human error, virtual inventory* and one-day sales really put a spotlight on the issues of wine-searcher. I take wine-searcher seriously at times, but it is notoriously misleading.

The ‘click it to wine it’ game in wine is a toughie. The real price hunters don’t care about you. They could give a shit about the source or character of the retailer.

Are you offering something besides wine? Is this all just a widget? If so, prepare to race to the bottom, or constantly search for exclusives. which will also end at the worst times. And it won’t be pretty. Price always wins.
Now, there are some shady characters on ‘searcher who use it as if it were a game. They bottom out the price to get phone calls and emails. To them, I say: good luck. These wack jobs will have moments, but I would never bet on them.

That DTC Bullshizz

Is the Direct to consumer email list worth worrying about? As of today, I have never received a viable complaint about a Direct To Consumer email blast.

These lists are blasted out and often claim to have the wine at the best price in the nation, but

#1: they rarely have the wine in any quantity

#2: rarely offer consistently good service to the people buying and

#3. the source of the wine is questionable…

Further, when they are actually a viable DTC, the prices never hit Wine-Searcher.
Most recently, a very important retailer emailed me about a DTC offer and I checked into the wines they were referencing. The total inventory on this Direct to Consumer list offer was one bottle on one SKU and 3 bottles on the other. That was the actual total. I am not kidding.
Considering I was offering a quantity to the sensitive retailer of the same wine that dwarfed those numbers, I must ask: is this really worth worrying about?

The Distributor Matters

In nearly every case when I am contacted regarding a price in another state, the importer/distributor I work for doesn’t distribute the producer’s wine in that state.
Does the distributor matter? Big time. Maybe the California (for instance) distributor needs cash or is going out of business. Or maybe they just suck and sell to anyone. Is it possible they sold the product to a terrible retailer that is closing who had to close the wine out at a major discount? The bottom out of pricing may even be a local competition move.

As you can see, the possibilities are more numerous than you can imagine.

If you are a retailer having problems with a price on searcher that is consistently driving a large number of your loyal customers mad, then you may have to do the noble thing and cut the wine. Get rid of it. If it is that much of a headache, why waste the time?

“ Johnny Two-Click that works in Tech on the West Coast trolling wine-searcher for the best pricing is a tough one.

THE UPSIDE

I know of a gigantic, very successful store that sells not just one but many wines 10%+ higher than everyone else on wine-searcher. You read that right…HIGHER.
We are talking one of the big players that everyone would know – AND the sales volumes of the wines in question are staggering.

How are they doing it? Customer loyalty and attention retention.

They invest big in knowing and connecting with their audience. They market clearly. They know that people like this buy wines from us. This is the opportunity. If you truly know your customers, you can keep them rolling.

I love retail. I love the pace of it, the people. A buzzy, energized retailer is in many ways the inverse of the high-charged, raucous restaurant. They are different genres and I find the dynamic of selling to both endlessly fascinating.

But I can say this with confidence: if price is what you are selling, you are building limited to zero loyalty from your customers. The customers you are chasing think of you as a commodity trader. And with where the world of business is going, they will leave you tomorrow if they find something better.

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