27th June
A Flower Day becoming a Leaf Day at 1500
Surviving in troubled times…
The world has an almost unprecedented selection of threats right now and more than a few leak down to the world of wine. One of my responsibilities at Felton Road is to be the company ‘navigator’. I try to look ahead and chart a course trying to avoid the storms and seeking out the friendly winds. We are a wine grower and what I am saying here reflects our feelings in our specialist craft. That doesn’t mean it isn’t valid in a wider sense, but it is what we know about, so it doesn’t hurt to start there.
So, let’s start with the storm warning; it might sound negative but, where there is danger, there is always opportunity.
We face a host of warnings, some of which may well be better described as cyclones: climate change, global nervousness, political turmoil, economic decline, social shifts.
Climate change
This is the big one, but the easiest to address in terms of what we can do. I have been horrified to sit in seminars and conferences at which wine makers are discussing the threat of climate change and hear an endless list of what they may need to change in order to adapt to it, without a single speaker talking about what we can all do to slow it. It starts with personal responsibility, both as an individual and as a producer. It is always front of mind for us as we are a small producer in global terms, but we sell our wines in about 45 markets worldwide. First, we measure: it is a ruthless audit of all our carbon, to grow, to make, to package, to ship, to manage. As members of International Wineries for Climate Action, we do this to the most rigorous standards in the industry, and from that audit, we can see exactly where we do damage and how we can reduce it. It takes some bold decisions: our standard wine bottle for all our Pinot Noir and Chardonnay is 390 grams. We were told customers wouldn’t accept premium wines in such thin glass. Nonsense, we have not had a single complaint and no issues with extra breakages. Our current 120 solar panels will be more than doubled in the near future. All our company vehicles are electric, other than the tractors, and with regenerative viticulture the tractors are increasingly being confined to the barn. Autonomous aerial vehicles are being trialled for sulphur sprays, which means we now have two of our vineyard team who hold commercial pilot’s licences. And we simply say no: we realised that a huge cost in carbon was customers buying wine then having it couriered home, almost always by air. We now have a total ban on delivering customer wine by air. We have some upset customers about that, but, as they say, you can’t make an omelette…
Global nervousness
Obviously a concern for those who export a lot. Of course there is a real limit in what we can do here, but small things matter: we always offer our distributors in other countries the option to have their offers from us in their local currency. That causes us to see how currency fluctuations affect each market and helps us to adjust so that nobody is getting any nasty shocks. Price stability is at least as important as the actual price. Then, communicating to our distributors clearly, with everything that matters to them, but nothing that doesn’t. A wine importer imports dozens, or probably hundreds of different producers. Don’t clutter their inbox with irrelevance, but think about what they need and make sure you deliver reliability, quality and predictability.
Political turmoil
Nothing you, or us, can do here, other than think about where we stand and don’t be afraid to follow our position. Everything is a political act, including commerce. Ethics is about compassion and understanding, not about emotional triggers. But without an ethical dimension we are lessening what we do.
Economic decline
Of course, economic declines don’t affect everybody. There is more rapid wealth being carved off than ever before. But the bigger that pie gets the smaller the rest is.
While these global patterns are well beyond our ability to change, it is important to think about how, as a smooth current becomes a torrent, there are more and more eddies in the turbulence. Small producers have the opportunity to thrive in an eddy: a shelter from the larger trend. Seek out opportunities in that turbulence and see how you can adapt to become a specialist there. I have seen many great examples in the past few years of small producers grabbing a tactical market opportunity through paying attention and jumping in to an eddy in the market. A couple of ex Felton Road team members now have a small business in Burgundy called Le Grappin. They started augmenting their small Burgundy sales by getting supplies of well priced, good quality wines from the Rhone and Beaujolais, and created the ‘Bagnum’: a 1.5 litre wine, packaged in a bag, with a life of a few weeks once opened. They are low carbon, easy to ship, easy to fridge, cheaper than bottling and have become a big success.
Social Shifts
The young are drinking less. Good… that’s a good thing. People are far more interested in healthy options. Excellent… they should be.
Our enemy isn’t the people, it is the rising number of organisations who try to covertly kidnap such issues as health then use deceptive data to pursue their own, often unrelated goals.
We don’t want to ever be a source of harm but a source of good, and we can be just that. Wine is a fantastic social glue, a liquid focus of communication and camaraderie that is a desperately needed quality in today’s world. I would suggest that the smartphone is a far greater social problem than wine: when we gather around a bottle of great wine we look each other in the eyes, rather than doomscrolling on a screen and we see into each others hearts. The world needs this as never before.
The last 20 years has seen increasing sections of the wine industry abandon its ties to a lot of customers in a foolhardy pursuit of becoming “Fine Wine”.
I don’t know what that term means, other than pretentious, over-priced, luxury goods. Abandon it.
Wine is a craft. It is pursued, at its best, by artisans, not corporates. That isn’t being anti-corporate, it is simply that it can take generations to fulfil what land can do to produce great wine and families have a built in motivation for things that run longer than their careers. I’m not demonising corporates, but I am championing the families who seek to hold their own in a world where so many of the laws and controls are directed against them.
I never want to see the word exclusive next to the word wine. It is at the heart of wine to be inclusive. We need to welcome, not close doors, to our customers.
Lastly our greatest tool; our greatest power, lies in the fact that this world of wine is almost unique in that it is naturally collaborative among the producers. We are a tribe: a gang who share. New Zealand is a nation where the concept of the Iwi: the tribe, is fundamental, as is the Whanau: the enlarged family. Hunter gatherers have always shared their catch among those who caught nothing because they know that one day they will be the ones who will fail to catch. We need to continue to collaborate. There is a lot to do and not enough time. Share your ideas and your knowledge among your tribe.
Nigel
27th June
A Flower Day becoming a Leaf Day at 1500
Surviving in troubled times…
The world has an almost unprecedented selection of threats right now and more than a few leak down to the world of wine. One of my responsibilities at Felton Road is to be the company ‘navigator’. I try to look ahead and chart a course trying to avoid the storms and seeking out the friendly winds. We are a wine grower and what I am saying here reflects our feelings in our specialist craft. That doesn’t mean it isn’t valid in a wider sense, but it is what we know about, so it doesn’t hurt to start there.
So, let’s start with the storm warning; it might sound negative but, where there is danger, there is always opportunity.
We face a host of warnings, some of which may well be better described as cyclones: climate change, global nervousness, political turmoil, economic decline, social shifts.
Climate change
This is the big one, but the easiest to address in terms of what we can do. I have been horrified to sit in seminars and conferences at which wine makers are discussing the threat of climate change and hear an endless list of what they may need to change in order to adapt to it, without a single speaker talking about what we can all do to slow it. It starts with personal responsibility, both as an individual and as a producer. It is always front of mind for us as we are a small producer in global terms, but we sell our wines in about 45 markets worldwide. First, we measure: it is a ruthless audit of all our carbon, to grow, to make, to package, to ship, to manage. As members of International Wineries for Climate Action, we do this to the most rigorous standards in the industry, and from that audit, we can see exactly where we do damage and how we can reduce it. It takes some bold decisions: our standard wine bottle for all our Pinot Noir and Chardonnay is 390 grams. We were told customers wouldn’t accept premium wines in such thin glass. Nonsense, we have not had a single complaint and no issues with extra breakages. Our current 120 solar panels will be more than doubled in the near future. All our company vehicles are electric, other than the tractors, and with regenerative viticulture the tractors are increasingly being confined to the barn. Autonomous aerial vehicles are being trialled for sulphur sprays, which means we now have two of our vineyard team who hold commercial pilot’s licences. And we simply say no: we realised that a huge cost in carbon was customers buying wine then having it couriered home, almost always by air. We now have a total ban on delivering customer wine by air. We have some upset customers about that, but, as they say, you can’t make an omelette…
Global nervousness
Obviously a concern for those who export a lot. Of course there is a real limit in what we can do here, but small things matter: we always offer our distributors in other countries the option to have their offers from us in their local currency. That causes us to see how currency fluctuations affect each market and helps us to adjust so that nobody is getting any nasty shocks. Price stability is at least as important as the actual price. Then, communicating to our distributors clearly, with everything that matters to them, but nothing that doesn’t. A wine importer imports dozens, or probably hundreds of different producers. Don’t clutter their inbox with irrelevance, but think about what they need and make sure you deliver reliability, quality and predictability.
Political turmoil
Nothing you, or us, can do here, other than think about where we stand and don’t be afraid to follow our position. Everything is a political act, including commerce. Ethics is about compassion and understanding, not about emotional triggers. But without an ethical dimension we are lessening what we do.
Economic decline
Of course, economic declines don’t affect everybody. There is more rapid wealth being carved off than ever before. But the bigger that pie gets the smaller the rest is.
While these global patterns are well beyond our ability to change, it is important to think about how, as a smooth current becomes a torrent, there are more and more eddies in the turbulence. Small producers have the opportunity to thrive in an eddy: a shelter from the larger trend. Seek out opportunities in that turbulence and see how you can adapt to become a specialist there. I have seen many great examples in the past few years of small producers grabbing a tactical market opportunity through paying attention and jumping in to an eddy in the market. A couple of ex Felton Road team members now have a small business in Burgundy called Le Grappin. They started augmenting their small Burgundy sales by getting supplies of well priced, good quality wines from the Rhone and Beaujolais, and created the ‘Bagnum’: a 1.5 litre wine, packaged in a bag, with a life of a few weeks once opened. They are low carbon, easy to ship, easy to fridge, cheaper than bottling and have become a big success.
Social Shifts
The young are drinking less. Good… that’s a good thing. People are far more interested in healthy options. Excellent… they should be.
Our enemy isn’t the people, it is the rising number of organisations who try to covertly kidnap such issues as health then use deceptive data to pursue their own, often unrelated goals.
We don’t want to ever be a source of harm but a source of good, and we can be just that. Wine is a fantastic social glue, a liquid focus of communication and camaraderie that is a desperately needed quality in today’s world. I would suggest that the smartphone is a far greater social problem than wine: when we gather around a bottle of great wine we look each other in the eyes, rather than doomscrolling on a screen and we see into each others hearts. The world needs this as never before.
The last 20 years has seen increasing sections of the wine industry abandon its ties to a lot of customers in a foolhardy pursuit of becoming “Fine Wine”.
I don’t know what that term means, other than pretentious, over-priced, luxury goods. Abandon it.
Wine is a craft. It is pursued, at its best, by artisans, not corporates. That isn’t being anti-corporate, it is simply that it can take generations to fulfil what land can do to produce great wine and families have a built in motivation for things that run longer than their careers. I’m not demonising corporates, but I am championing the families who seek to hold their own in a world where so many of the laws and controls are directed against them.
I never want to see the word exclusive next to the word wine. It is at the heart of wine to be inclusive. We need to welcome, not close doors, to our customers.
Lastly our greatest tool; our greatest power, lies in the fact that this world of wine is almost unique in that it is naturally collaborative among the producers. We are a tribe: a gang who share. New Zealand is a nation where the concept of the Iwi: the tribe, is fundamental, as is the Whanau: the enlarged family. Hunter gatherers have always shared their catch among those who caught nothing because they know that one day they will be the ones who will fail to catch. We need to continue to collaborate. There is a lot to do and not enough time. Share your ideas and your knowledge among your tribe.
Nigel
