PUBLICATIONS
Wine Spectator is once again adjusting its editorial outlook: witness the latest TOP 100 WINES (published annually in December). The number one wine for 2005 was Joseph Phelps Insignia. A very safe choice, like many others on the list, which included Napa Valley heavy-hitter Cabernets, Grand Cru Bordeaux, DRCs, Top DOCG Italians, California Super-Star Pinots and the like. This year, Joseph Phelps was… what’s your guess, Number three? Number eight? How about not on the list at all. The other top wines? Not there either. In their place we find $12 wines, unknown wines, supermarket wines.

And I can tell you why. After years of plugging the same old safe choices (who, by the way, really don’t need the publicity), it appears the Wine Spectator has taken a different tack: having turns on the Top 100. Joseph Phelps is as fine a wine as ever, but this simply wasn’t Joseph Phelps’ year. Nor Mouton, nor Screaming Eagle, nor any of the other prestige labels you’d care to name.

But why such a drastic change in course? Publicity. Nothing gets tongues wagging, pens scrawling (witness this column) and people reading like a shocking splash of cold water in the face. And, in publisher Marvin Shanken’s bold gamble, publicity will hopefully elicit new subscribers, and thereby new advertisers and therefore enhanced revenues.

Here’s Marvin’s dilemma: Wine Spectator’s current paying subscriber base represents only a tiny percentage of the actual wine buying public. This may be because, to date, the publication has focused on the stodgy old male collector and the trade, while today’s actual wine market is dominated by females buying in the grocery setting. Most everyday wine consumers know the name Wine Spectator only from “shelf talkers;” those cardboard tags hanging below wines bellowing out ratings (96 points! Gold Medal!), and from framed awards hanging in restaurant lobbies.

Here’s the challenge Marvin Shanken is up against: There’s another publication with “wine” in the masthead, Food & Wine, with an audited paid circulation of  894,103 (ABC,  June 2006). Wine Spectator only made it to 381,444 by December 2005. Worse yet,  Food & Wine has managed to squeak into the Top 100 Circulation nearly every year, while Wine Spectator doesn’t even come close. How can Marvin get back in the game? Reach the real consumer, the one who’s reading Food & Wine (and Gourmet  and Bon Apetit, both also solidly ranked in the top 100).

Here’s the telling part: most of the ads in Wine Spectator are not wine ads. They are luxury goods ads. Cars, cigars, jewelry, resorts, cruises. Wine, by contrast, is not a luxury good; it’s an everyday pleasure enjoyed by everyday consumers. Anyone with half a brain and one eye can flip through Wine Spectator and see that the publication is missing the boat on mainstream wine advertising dollars. How to remedy this? A sea-change in editorial. Hence the sudden inclusion of many wines like Hess Select Chardonnay, a $12 wine found at supermarkets everywhere, instead of 200-case-production, $1000-per-bottle wines that sold out a year ago. Look for monster changes in coverage as well. Trust me: Marvin is ready to kick the old collector to the curb, as sure as he’s got a manicure appointment set for next week.

MORE PUBLICATION TEMBLORS:
Also set to rock the wine publication world by March (and possibly take a monopoly on the old geezers Mr. Shanken is dumping): a new online service called Just Points. As the name indicates, Just Points eschews all of the pabulum normally glossed over by most collector-types: lower-rated wines, esoteric articles, recipes and, most importantly, wine descriptions.

Turns out that collectors seem to care mostly about how high a wine is rated, and couldn’t give a rattus nowegicus’s tiny, twitching behind about the flowery descriptors and poetic nuances ascribed to their potential investments. Just the numbers, please. The publishers, who currently publish another wine magazine but wish to remain anonymous due to “journalistic ethics,” claim that their ratings are the most “honest simply because they lack all pretense and deliver to their end user that which is desired and nothing else.”

The ratings will be given free of charge at their website. For a nominal fee the publishers provide a monthly download which allows the subscriber to sort through the results by producer, vintage, rating, variety or any combination thereof.
 
Oh, and one last thing that will really warm collectors’ hearts: no time wasted on wines scoring less than 90 points. That’s right. Just Points will only feature wines that score between 90 and 99 points. (The publishers claim that 100 points is not achievable upon release – only with ageing). How’s that for honesty?

Full disclosure: regular readers of this column know how I feel about the 100-point system used by the publications above. I firmly believe such rankings are not worth the paper they are printed on. Rely instead on the descriptions of wines to see if they mesh with your tastes, and look for reviewers who use time-tested 3 to 5 point (or star) rating systems, which, to my mind, more closely reflect human opinion. Sorry—nobody is a wine barometer.

WINE GADGETS
With each year comes a fresh crop of doodads to accessorize the world’s oldest alcoholic beverage, and 2007 will be no exception. Let’s start with glassware. Last year’s new entry (and resounding flop) was the opaque wineglass. This was so you could embarrass your friends who couldn’t tell whites from reds by tasting them. Charming,eh? And this nonsense was put out by the snobs’ choice, Riedel. (Attention Snobs: that’s REE-dull, not rye-DELL, like most of you say. That would be the sporting equipment, or where Danny Zuko attended high school.)

Stemless glasses were a huge improvement over stemmed wineglasses, cutting down tremendously on the snob factor while actually appealing to the same crowd—so you can expect these vessels to remain popular. Traditional stemmed wine glasses will be stepping up their game in 2007. Look for:  a) lower prices due to competition from other countries b) better endurance (less breakage) due to innovative technology in the composition of the glass and c) new glass shapes, which you absolutely can avoid. Do you really need a special glass for the one time you will drink Madeira this year? You can also expect to see a wider range of smaller glass sizes. This represents a step away from the recent fashion of wretched excess and enormous, balloon-sized glasses.

In last month’s column I mentioned the Verre de Vin, a wine bottle vacuum which everyone simply must have because every-important-restaurant-has-one (price tag: around $4,800). Here’s the good news: Remember when the original Rabbit corkscrew came out for around $150 and, due to the availability of near-exact replicas at Costco, soon dropped precipitously in price? Similarly, you should be on the lookout for the Verre de Vin Home Edition, coming soon to an affordable retailer near you.  I would imagine Costco will be first on the block (they are the largest retailer of wine in the US), with a model for about $499. It will probably be right next to the wine refrigerators for $299.

PACKAGING AND MARKETING
Bye-bye, animals and funny names. The world of wine style is wildly swinging pendulum, and most wine marketers are just trying to hold on. They follow the trend until is swings completely out of sight, then wander around in circles until it comes back into view.  Meanwhile, the savviest of the marketing crew and the lucky pitchmen who stumble onto the right idea at the right time clean up.

Last year, things called Bingy Bongy Boomerangy and labels featuring marsupials finally ran out of steam, even in the under $10 category. Because the wineries Down Under produced a ridiculous volume of wine in the last two years, we can expect to see these products sink below $5 as the Australian segment completely collapses in 2007.

There is one brand that bucks the downward trend: It’s called Molly Dooker, and it features a cartoon of a boxer. (Get it? Dooker? Put up your Dooks? I guess the Aussies just can’t help themselves.) Anyway, the only reason it’s doing so well is that the over-esteemed wine-rater Robert Parker gave it over 90 points (whatever that means), and it sells for less than $20. Therefore, it requires no sales effort on anyone’s part. I’m sure it’s tasty, too.

The passing of the Aussie mania heralds a broader shift away from funny names and kitschy packaging gimmicks. In 2007 expect a refreshing return to simplicity, elegance and authenticity in wine marketing and display. If you mourn the loss of all those cute critters, fear not. The pendulum is sure to swing again.

CONSUMER DRINKING TRENDS
If 2006 was the year of Pinot Noir, then 2007 will be the year of… Pinot Noir. Yep, hate to tell you, but Pinot Noir is here to stay. One change you can count on, however, is more white wine consumption. Since a lot of folks are moving away (finally!) from 70s and 80s style heavy-oak chardonnay, look for no-oak chardonnay to be the big white of 2007. Riesling and Pinot Grigio have seen their crest in popularity and will be replaced by an obscure industry “darling” white wine, yet to be determined. South Africa is a strong favorite in this regard.

MACRO WINE ECONOMICS
Snoresville! Quick! Quaff down that triple-espresso! Burn your tongue? Actually, that wasn’t necessary at all. I’ll give it to you short and sweet: There’s more merlot than anyone knows what to do with. That’s partly because of that movie, and partly because the industry is slow to react to consumer preferences and has continued to plant merlot following the predicted growth curve,* even though merlot has reached its market plateau. On a secondary note, there’s a glut of Cabernet, too.

What does this mean? Several things:

a) Pinot Noir (#1 in growth and profits) will be blended with up to 25% practically free merlot. Result? Probably better tasting Pinot. Why? Up to this point, less expensive Pinots were blended mostly with central coast Syrah, making them unnaturally dark and heavy. One of the best things made in Long Island are their merlots, which are more like Pinots because they are so light in the skins they often have to be open-top-whole-berry fermented, like a fine Pinot. And these Long Island Merlots end up tasting more like a great pinot, so much so that many of them are bottled in the same bottle-shape as a Pinot. A secondary result is that this better tasting pinot noir will, hopefully, be less expensive.

b) Cabernet—typically blended with up to 25% merlot in many instances—is likely to be off-the-charts cheap this year.

c) You can assume that pretty much any red wine you find for under $10 is blended with up to 25% merlot.

c) Merlot will be really, really, really cheap.

For those interested in peeking a little further in the future: Guess who’s planting Pinot Noir and “budding over” all of their current plantings to Pinot Noir? That’s right. Everyone. But this is a classic error. In five years’ time the plantings of pinot will far outstrip the demand, and merlot and cabernet, two classic varieties, will be short, just like chardonnay is this year, driving prices for those wines back up. Oh, by the way, chardonnay, which no one could seem to get rid of two years ago, will be escalating in price, due to that short supply.

RESTAURANT CHANGES
Like wineries and vineyards, restaurants are extremely slow to change their ways, so don’t expect any revolutions in 2007—just little things here and there. By-the- glass prices will continue to inch their way up (the profit margins here are almost as ridiculous as mixed drinks) while, surprisingly, bottle prices on the printed wine list will continue to come down.

When it comes to the wine list itself, expect shorter overall lists with more wines offered by the glass. This trend is due to a focus on profitability (by-the-glass is a much more profitable strategy than by-the-bottle), customer preference and better technology (that $4,800 wine vacuum that allows open wines to be stored for longer periods of time).

WHERE THE BARGAINS ARE
All in all, 2007 looks like a year of continued good luck for wine drinkers, with particular bargains in merlot and cabernet, and better quality, supply and pricing in pinot noir. Watch out for price increases in fancy chardonnays, but no-oak chards from Down Under will probably be practically free, and a sure bet to start a party.