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Happy Sunday! We hope you’ve had an amazing week filled with wine. In this week’s edition, you’ll read about how nutritional labels influence wine sales, storytelling at LVMH, new wine club software, Argentina’s wine currency and much more.

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INTERESTING THIS WEEK

🇷🇺 Russian founder of hedonism wines raises £4.5 million for Ukraine READ HERE

💯 Napa Valley's legendary winemaker turns 100 READ HERE

🇩🇪 German monks create the world's first powdered beer READ HERE

🥷🏼 Napa winery employee steals $10,000 worth of wine READ HERE

📈 Why Spanish wine could benefit from rising living costs? READ HERE

🕵🏼 Fraud investigation in the Veneto READ HERE

WILL NUTRITION AND INGREDIENT LISTS ON WINE LABELS BOOST SALES?

Winemakers can’t talk about health on labels, but there is a worthy argument arising on how they can (and should) talk about ingredients and calories. Kathleen Willcox reports. Pick up a bottle of grape juice, and you have a wealth of information in your hands. At a glance, you know if it’s made from fresh grapes or concentrate, and if it has other ingredients, like added sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, food dye, ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) or citric acid (for tartness). You can also see how many calories, carbs, protein, sugar and fibre it contains. Pick up a bottle of fermented grape juice, though, and you find out the name of the producer, its region and perhaps even vineyard of origin, its vintage and, frequently, the grape or grape varieties from which it was made.

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MOËT HENNESSY’S CEO ON HOW THE ART OF LUXURY IS ALL ABOUT STORYTELLING

When Moët Hennessy CEO Philippe Schaus discovered the world of luxury goods, he knew he’d found his calling. His entrepreneurship and business acumen impressed his colleagues, although Schaus still wasn’t sure he’d found his calling. In fact, he didn’t stumble across it until he was in his late 20s. But once he did there was no turning back.

“Early on, I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do,” he tells The CEO Magazine during a sit-down chat on a flying visit to Sydney. “I had a degree in engineering, had tried finance and consulting, but it wasn’t until I discovered the world of luxury goods that I realized what I would do for the rest of my career.”

“I tell our teams that every morning they should think about what they are going to do to elevate desire,” he says. “It’s about the product itself, the packaging and the way it’s displayed at the point of sale.

“It’s about telling those stories. I mean, when I talk about icons like Ruinart or Hennessy, there’s so much to talk about. It was the same when I was at Louis Vuitton – we had all this history to tell our customers that created a desire and provided an experience.”

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CELLARPASS LAUNCHES REVOLUTIONARY WINE CLUB SOFTWARE

The innovative folks of CellarPass are pleased to introduce their brand-new direct-to-consumer platform designed for the craft beverage industry. Synergy Commerce is being premiered at Wivi 2023 in Paso Robles as the most modern groundbreaking direct-to-consumer platform. The platform offers a comprehensive suite of features that include point of sale, wine club management, loyalty and points, customer relationship management, multiple inventory location management, and eCommerce.

The Synergy Commerce platform is designed to help wine and spirits retailers and producers of all sizes increase their revenue and grow their businesses. With its user-friendly interface, the platform provides a seamless and integrated solution for all aspects of direct-to-consumer sales, from managing inventory and processing payments to engaging customers and tracking sales data. Finally, a DTC platform that does it all including lead generation.

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WEIGHING UP ARGENTINA'S WINE DOLLAR

The new exchange rate for Argentinian wine exports could offer stability in a volatile economy. Earlier this month, Argentine finance minister Sergio Massa announced his government’s intention to introduce the wine dollar. It is a currency that will trade between the official and black market rates of the peso – modeled on the soy peso which was launched in September 2022 – in order to stimulate wine exports and profits. The exact rate it will trade at is expected to be announced on April 1.

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WTF IS THE MEGA PURPLE?

As much as we might like to believe that the gentle rosés and hearty burgundys that line store shelves are no more than aged grapes, the truth is slightly more complicated. The cops on the beat — the FDA and the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau — restrict the use of the great majority of potential artificial additives and colorants, with the exception of: FD&C Yellow No. 5, cochineal extract, and carmine. According to these government agencies, wines containing artificial colorants will disclose that fact on the label.

But there are some additives — known to insiders as Mega Purple (and the lesser used Ultra Red) — that winemakers can include in bottles without needing to disclose the fact. The answer as to why gets into how wine is both made and marketed, and also how much consumers really care about knowing everything that goes into a bottle of wine. If you get a couple of winemakers or even passionate wine enthusiasts together, the words "Mega Purple" are likely to induce eye-rolls, provoke arguments, and possibly both.

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NATURAL WINES THAT CHANNEL BERLIN, DOWN TO THE SPRAY-PAINT LABEL

The Berlin native Marleen Franke first learned about winemaking in 2018 when a friend suggested she lend a hand harvesting with the brothers Jonas and Daniel Brand, fifth-generation vintners in the Pfalz region of Germany. The Brand brothers had some unorthodox ideas, and Franke, a former impact investing consultant, had access to a cellar in Berlin below a building owned by her family. Later that year, she launched the wine label Chateaumoabit, selling natural, or low-intervention, wine — so called because there is minimal handling or filtering of the wine. Named after Moabit, a multiethnic, mixed-income area in Berlin, the wine is meant to represent a blending of old and new Europe. Rather than labeled, each bottle is spray-painted in a homage to the city’s graffiti.

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FÉLIX SOLÍS OPENS WINE WORLD’S MOST ADVANCED BARREL CELLAR

Spain’s Félix Solís Avantis has completed the construction of the wine world’s most advanced barrel cellar, which is fully automated and powered by solar energy. Following a €70 million investment, the Spanish wine group has just opened the new facility, which is not only state-of-the-art, but also vast: it can hold as many as 130,000 barrels. According to Richard Cochrane, who is managing director of Felix Solis UK, the building is run entirely using robotics, which means that “there are no forklifts”, with everything from steam cleaning to moving the barrels done by machine (see video below). The cellar is found at the Spanish company’s headquarters in Valdepenas, and replaces two former cellars, one of which held 60,000 barrels, while the other had a slightly smaller capacity.

With the new building, which is 18 stories high, Félix Solís Avantis can hold all its barrels in one place, and increase its capacity, while significantly improving efficiencies, including staffing costs, with the whole operation requiring just two people to manage it, down from 12 before. Among other savings are energy costs, with the facility featuring 6,000 photovoltaic cells, which produce enough electricity to ensure the building is self-sufficient.

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WINE REGION OF THE WEEK: MENDOZA, ARGENTINA

Synonymous with Malbec, Mendoza is Argentina's largest wine region and its most well-known, boasting incredible vistas at the foothills of the Andes as well as a majority of the country's top wine-producing estates. Located on a high-altitude plateau at the edge of the Andes Mountains, the Mendoza province is responsible for roughly 70 percent of the country's annual wine production. The French grape variety Malbec has its New World home in the vineyards of Mendoza, producing red wines of great concentration and intensity. While Malbec is undoubtedly the star of the region, there are also extensive plantings of Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Syrah, Torrontes and Sauvignon Blanc. Mendoza is also beginning to position itself as a producer of sparkling wine.

The province lies on the western edge of Argentina, across the Andes Mountains from Chile. While the province is large (it covers a similar area to the state of New York), its viticultural land is clustered mainly in the northern part, just south of Mendoza City. Here, the regions of Lujan de Cuyo and Maipu (around Mendoza itself) and the Uco Valley (to the south) are home to some of the biggest names in Argentinian wine.

Mendoza's winemaking history is nearly as old as the colonial history of Argentina itself. The first vines were planted by priests of the Catholic Church's Jesuit order in the mid-16th Century, borrowing agricultural techniques from the Incas and Huarpes, who had occupied the land before them. In the period of colonisation that followed, Spanish missionaries are believed to have introduced grapes, predominantly South America's ubiquitous Mission/País (known as Criolla Chica in Argentina), from Spain. The resulting wine destined for sacramental use. It is understood Malbec was brought to Argentina around the mid-19th Century and its introduction to the country is generally credited to French agronomist and ampelographer, Michel Aimé Pouget (sometimes refered to as Miguel Aimé Pouget). Some sources, however, claim Malbec's establishment in Argentina predates Pouget's arrival.

Text by: Wine-Searcher

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GRAPE OF THE WEEK: MALBEC

The black grape Malbec is originally native to France where it is still important to a few select regions like Cahors where it is revered more than any other. However, it is in Mendoza where it has become synonymous with superb, elegant Argentinian wine. The advent of Mendoza Malbec could also be credited with Argentina's rise as a world-class wine-producing country whose wines are now rivaling those of Napa.

The history of Malbec in Mendoza can be traced back to the 19th Century when cuttings were first brought over from France over to Argentina. Malbec had actually reached Chile before it made its way to Argentina with Chile bringing over French viticultural experts like Michel Aimé Pouget to plant European cuttings. During the 1850s, Malbec was planted in Argentina alongside other Bordeaux varieties like Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. Sadly, during the 1980s many of the original vines that were planted were pulled up in favor of more economical varieties like Criolla Grande and Cereza which were excellent for making cheap jug wines.

However, Argentinian Malbec rose to prominence again in the late 1990s and early 2000s and has continued on a relatively astronomical pathway ever since. Much of this can be credited to Nicolás Catena Zapata who comes from a long line of Argentinian winemakers of Italian descent. Nicolás' intense experiments with growing the grape in high altitudes made Bodega Catena Zapata a pioneer of Mendoza Malbec.

Text by: Wine-Searcher

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DID YOU KNOW THAT?

💰 Wine has been used as a form of currency throughout history, with ancient Egyptians and Greeks using it to pay taxes and trade goods.

🍷 The world's largest wine glass can hold up to 1,200 bottles of wine.

🧠 Wine tasting can activate pleasure centers in the brain, similar to listening to music or eating food.

🔴 Red wine gets its color from the skins of the grapes, which contain pigments called anthocyanins.

🍾 The shape of a wine bottle, such as Bordeaux or Burgundy, can indicate the style of wine inside and the region it comes from.

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