Speaker 1: These sees Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim
Speaker 1: Stenovic on Bloomberg Radio Carol Masser along with Katie Grifeld.
Speaker 1: The only reason Katie agreed to do the show is
Speaker 1: because of this segment. You can be honest, I heard
Speaker 1: this was happening. I had to be here, all right.
Speaker 1: It's been another nutty week. Katie was traveling lots of
Speaker 1: news as you know, markets, a little bit of some
Speaker 1: gyrations here. We know we needed to wrap up with
Speaker 1: a segment on wine, and so with us right now
Speaker 1: is Josh Green, editor in chief for Wine in Spirits Magazine,
Speaker 1: here in our Bloomberg Interactive Brokers studio. And yes we're
Speaker 1: gonna sample someone in a moment. But Josh, first of all,
Speaker 1: how are you great to be here? I'm doing very well.
Speaker 1: It's a spring day outside, That's what. It's beautiful. It
Speaker 1: feels really good. It feels really actually going running after this,
Speaker 1: but still I'm here for the one. You can always
Speaker 1: have a little sip, that's true. Well, extra springing your step, um,
Speaker 1: Big trends and wines last year. Talk to us a
Speaker 1: little bit about this past year and how this year
Speaker 1: is shaping up. When it comes to the wine industry. Well,
Speaker 1: everyone was very nervous about the pandemic from the industry's
Speaker 1: point of view, because everyone closed their tasting rooms, but
Speaker 1: deep directed consumer did super super well. And um, so
Speaker 1: there's this phenomenon everyone calls it premium. Yeah, a lot
Speaker 1: of people bought more wine, and so um, premium wines.
Speaker 1: Premiumatization is increasing at a pretty stiff clip. So um,
Speaker 1: it means that people are buying up. And what's unfortunate,
Speaker 1: because the industry relies on it, is that things under
Speaker 1: fifteen dollars are sales are are diminishing, but things above
Speaker 1: fifteen are actually on the increase. So um. The Silicon
Speaker 1: Value Bank does their annual report every year, and um,
Speaker 1: it created a lot of buzz in the industry this
Speaker 1: year because there was there was a number of Um.
Speaker 1: There were a number of trends that were scary for
Speaker 1: the industry, including this issue of baby boomers continuing to
Speaker 1: drink a lot of wine and millennials continuing not to
Speaker 1: drink a lot of wine. All right, millennial, what's wrong?
Speaker 1: So that are you a millennial? Actually I know I
Speaker 1: am a millennial. I will say the pandemic. You bought
Speaker 1: more wine. I drank a lot more wine because I
Speaker 1: was with my parents for six months, so I got
Speaker 1: really into white wine. For example, it used to be
Speaker 1: just read only, but my mom loves white wine. Tell
Speaker 1: me about these millennials who are not made well, they
Speaker 1: are often choosing to drink spirits. Um. So the Baby
Speaker 1: Boom generation came to wine really in the early nineties
Speaker 1: when sixty Minutes produced this segment on how red wine
Speaker 1: was good for your health. Now that yeah, now that's
Speaker 1: been questioned, and um, since it's been questioned. It also
Speaker 1: is it a time when younger people who are nesting
Speaker 1: getting married and that's when they usually start drinking wine,
Speaker 1: are not turning to wine as much, So they'll go
Speaker 1: out to a restaurant and the loader cocktails and cocktails
Speaker 1: are booming and spirits are booming. So for that generation,
Speaker 1: they are choosing either not to drink alcohol or to
Speaker 1: drink alcohol other than wine. That is so interesting. Actually
Speaker 1: that does mirror my own life because my husband, for example,
Speaker 1: he loves to cook. He also loves to make cocktails.
Speaker 1: So I don't know, but for me, the pie is
Speaker 1: just getting bigger. It's not necessarily all of the above,
Speaker 1: So it's not really dire. I mean there is there,
Speaker 1: There is a continuing um there. People are continuing to
Speaker 1: drink wine. It's just that the growth is in the
Speaker 1: above fifteen. So nine that was revenue was up nine
Speaker 1: that in that segment of the industry. It's interesting because
Speaker 1: I do feel like we you know, we do a
Speaker 1: lot of wine segments. To be quite honest, on Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business Weekend, I do feel like we often have people
Speaker 1: who you know, come on and say, like, there's a
Speaker 1: range of money you can spend on wines, but there's
Speaker 1: a lot of great wines out there under twenty dollars
Speaker 1: or under You don't the whole concept in this idea
Speaker 1: of you don't have to spend a ton of a
Speaker 1: ton of money to get a great bottle of wine.
Speaker 1: Well that's absolutely true. And in fact, the boomers who
Speaker 1: are older in their sixties are buying more wine by
Speaker 1: volume but at a lower price, and the younger people
Speaker 1: are actually buying higher priced wines to their sort of
Speaker 1: wine curious. They're experimenting, they're looking at things that they
Speaker 1: don't know about and trying them, and so they're willing
Speaker 1: to spend more on on a wine for an occasion,
Speaker 1: but they're not drinking as much every day. Okay, that's
Speaker 1: really interesting. Do you do it? I mean, well, it
Speaker 1: does feel when it comes to different price points, like
Speaker 1: buying something fifteen dollars, I just probably don't do it.
Speaker 1: I probably buy up. And for it is more occasion based,
Speaker 1: it feels like it's not just like, oh, it's to
Speaker 1: sail drink wine like then I might actually make a
Speaker 1: gin and tonic at home. But I don't think I
Speaker 1: speak for an entire generation, So I mean, I am
Speaker 1: curious though when I think about my peers. I know
Speaker 1: that mocktails have seemingly become a really big trend, and
Speaker 1: you were talking about how there's this gravitation towards cocktails,
Speaker 1: But what are you seeing when it comes to non
Speaker 1: alcoholic drinks. We see a lot of growth in that area,
Speaker 1: and we as a magazine don't pay a whole lot
Speaker 1: of attention to that. Um, but there is a lot
Speaker 1: of activity because because we're wine in spirits and we
Speaker 1: don't really cover non alcoholic stuff, but there's a lot
Speaker 1: of activity even among wineries to produce lower alcohol wines
Speaker 1: and no alcohol wines and UM. And there's also you know,
Speaker 1: in terms of dry January, curious, sober, sober, curious people there,
Speaker 1: there's those are terms I here all the time now
Speaker 1: and you never heard them. Super curious. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: whole trend on TikTok. Well, it's interesting. Timstnavik, who's my
Speaker 1: normal co host, you're my abnormal kidding, but he drinks
Speaker 1: non alcoholic beer. Um, and he's a millennial. Like to
Speaker 1: make fun of him, but I feel like that's not okay,
Speaker 1: I can't. In fact, there's some really good non alcoholic
Speaker 1: beers out there, and now some really good, some really
Speaker 1: good products made from wine that are not alcoholic that
Speaker 1: I have friends who are making some that are delicious.
Speaker 1: All right, So what's innovation in the wine industry today?
Speaker 1: I would say that the innovation is really in farming
Speaker 1: because you have this huge challenge. One of the one
Speaker 1: of the huge challenges to the industry is climate change,
Speaker 1: and so people have to develop farming tools and farming
Speaker 1: techniques that will sustain them through these really aggressive extremes
Speaker 1: of weather. And so people are, you know, in certain
Speaker 1: areas where there's a lot of hail, people are finding
Speaker 1: ways of netting that is not driving them out of business.
Speaker 1: So netting the vines to protect the grapes. Um where
Speaker 1: there is where there have been fire fire forest fires,
Speaker 1: it's been really devastating. I just I was I'm headed
Speaker 1: down to Chile next month, to the south where I
Speaker 1: love the wines from the far south, where these very
Speaker 1: ancient vineyards, year old vieyards, and they've been wiped out
Speaker 1: by forest fires in the last week. So people need
Speaker 1: to find tools to deal with protecting their vines and
Speaker 1: to deal with protecting them from heat. Um, you have
Speaker 1: a lot of people. I guess the biggest trend farming
Speaker 1: wise is that even in places like Burgundy, you're seeing
Speaker 1: a classification that was based on where the snow first
Speaker 1: melted in the spring, and now the classification is based
Speaker 1: on where the coolest areas are, so you don't get
Speaker 1: sunburned on your grapes, so you don't you want a
Speaker 1: northern exposure suddenly rather than southern exposure. It's so funny
Speaker 1: because I think Business Week has done some reporting to that,
Speaker 1: just saying because of climate change, Okay, so maybe you
Speaker 1: can't really grow here, but in this area where it
Speaker 1: maybe used to be too warm, it's a little cooler.
Speaker 1: Where it was too cool like warmer, so things are
Speaker 1: kind of shifting around the world a little bit. And
Speaker 1: then in those in those areas where you had moisture
Speaker 1: in the soil and that wasn't good for the vines,
Speaker 1: suddenly against drought, it's saving the vines. So all these
Speaker 1: all these places that were once secondary are now becoming primary.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't necessarily mean that the great vineyards are
Speaker 1: bad now, but the great vineage are challenged in a
Speaker 1: way they've never been challenged before. So you can't rely
Speaker 1: on the fact that the vineyard is great. You have
Speaker 1: to know that the producer is really actively farming their
Speaker 1: vines to protect them from the grapes from the sun,
Speaker 1: to protect the vines from drought. You know that it's
Speaker 1: a big deal. Now affects the advantage. So we only
Speaker 1: have like a minute left, but I am curious. Then
Speaker 1: we're gonna open up some bottles exactly. I really want
Speaker 1: to get to that. But you know, innovation when comes
Speaker 1: it comes to farming. But when we talk about, you know,
Speaker 1: the decrease consumption among millennials when it comes to wine.
Speaker 1: Are are wine makers trying to innovate around that? Are
Speaker 1: they trying to reach out to those millennials. I think
Speaker 1: that there will be. I believe that there will be
Speaker 1: a necessary shift in the way that wines are priced. Um,
Speaker 1: because when I was growing up, I'm an old guy now,
Speaker 1: but when I was growing up, I could buy Roumier
Speaker 1: for a bottle at the store. Now, that same bottle
Speaker 1: that I bought eight hundred dollars. The people that I'm
Speaker 1: serious gaggeration, um, and the people that are coming into
Speaker 1: the industry now, they don't get to taste those wines
Speaker 1: and they don't get the kind of excitement around the one.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're showing you two really beautiful wines, but
Speaker 1: they're out of the budget of most people. So Um,
Speaker 1: the industries, I think the people who are going to
Speaker 1: be most successful in the next few years are the
Speaker 1: people who are going to be innovating on creating exciting wines.
Speaker 1: Not commercial winds, but exciting wines. It's wines that will
Speaker 1: excite people at a price point that they can afford.
Speaker 1: Now that makes so much sense. Um, So we're gonna
Speaker 1: open up. First of all, Um, Josh, you brought some
Speaker 1: wine for us to sample, and some champagne actually for
Speaker 1: us to sample. So we're gonna open up. Tell us
Speaker 1: about this bottle that we're gonna that Stephen actually, who's
Speaker 1: in studio with us, is going to open up for us.
Speaker 1: So Steven's opening. Steven's opening the addition to for three
Speaker 1: of Rotor collection too for three, and what this is
Speaker 1: is a completely new kind of wine from Rotor. So
Speaker 1: the two we're doing this big event next week and
Speaker 1: the two champagne producers pouring at the event are both
Speaker 1: pretty significant houses. They put vineyards first, that's Bowling j
Speaker 1: and Ludi Roder. And what Ludi Roder did was they
Speaker 1: their Brute Premier wine, which was their UM, their basic
Speaker 1: non vintage brute wine. They transitioned UM a year ago
Speaker 1: over to this collection wine. So, um, what this is
Speaker 1: that one's for you? It is first of all, can
Speaker 1: I just say, I don't know if you can see
Speaker 1: this all right, it's generous, it's well, it's generous, and
Speaker 1: it's it's gorgeous like the color that the bubbles. So
Speaker 1: this is the two eighteen vintage. It's about eighteen vintage.
Speaker 1: And then Jean Jean Baptiste Lacaillon, who's the winemaker and
Speaker 1: the viticulturist there, he started what he calls a perpetual
Speaker 1: reserve in two thousand twelve, so he started taking wines
Speaker 1: and putting them away. So he's got two eighteen vintage
Speaker 1: from his growers and they're consulting with all their growers.
Speaker 1: Everything else that they make is from their own vineyards,
Speaker 1: but this wine is from growers, including some of their
Speaker 1: own vineyards, but from growers, and then they have this
Speaker 1: perpetual reserve what they add to each year, so there's
Speaker 1: a consistency. So there's a consistency, and that they blended
Speaker 1: into this and then they have some wine from oak
Speaker 1: aged reserves and they blend it all together and they
Speaker 1: make this wine. And it's completely a different style of
Speaker 1: wine from what group Premier used to be Cheers, same wine,
Speaker 1: but it's a Champagne to Champagne. But Champagne is a wine.
Speaker 1: I was a little confused about that. Is it if
Speaker 1: I call it Champagne not at all because from it's
Speaker 1: from Champagne, but it's a wine from Champagne. They also
Speaker 1: make still wines in Champagne. You know what, go ahead,
Speaker 1: no finish. It makes still ones in Champagne, and that
Speaker 1: makes sparking onneagin. You know what's really fun is I
Speaker 1: feel like champagne. At least for me growing up, it
Speaker 1: was holidays and celebrations. But you go now to a bar.
Speaker 1: I went to a work event and that was the
Speaker 1: drink that they were initially kind of having everybody drink,
Speaker 1: and it's it's just you go out and people are like, well,
Speaker 1: let me have a glass of champagne. A lot of
Speaker 1: people a lot of wine to actors at restaurants. We're
Speaker 1: interving a bunch of them right now for a project
Speaker 1: we work on for our next shoe, And I was
Speaker 1: just interesting interviewing Natalie McDade at Craft yesterday talking about
Speaker 1: what's going on to craft, and she said one of
Speaker 1: the things she's seeing is that people are drinking champagne
Speaker 1: as a wine for dinner for the first time in
Speaker 1: her career. That they're not just waiting to have a celebration,
Speaker 1: they're having it at dinner, which is something that I
Speaker 1: love to hear that she loves to see and that
Speaker 1: many people in the industry have been waiting to happen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I see it all the time. I've done it. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: maybe this is just antec data, but to the point
Speaker 1: that it used to be, it still is a celebration drink.
Speaker 1: I feel like I have noticed people order prosecco when
Speaker 1: they're just like casually out for dinner. Maybe champagne feels
Speaker 1: a little bit too much, too serious or you know,
Speaker 1: too much of a celebration. Prosecco seems to have taken
Speaker 1: on this role is like this is more every day. Yep.
Speaker 1: There there's very commercial prosecco and there's also really absolutely delicious,
Speaker 1: very special prosecco, very carefully growing prosecco. So there's some
Speaker 1: really great wines in that category. And that's come up
Speaker 1: a lot, and I think that it's become extreme. It's
Speaker 1: really blown away a lot of the other categories of
Speaker 1: sparkling wine other than champagne. Champagne is continuing to boom,
Speaker 1: and prosecco was really booming. But we what we did
Speaker 1: was um Stephen Stephen brought brought some food that's gonna
Speaker 1: be paired with this um, with this wine. At the event,
Speaker 1: we'll tell us about this. So this is Pizza Bianca,
Speaker 1: which is UM. Robin Wright is the sammier at the
Speaker 1: wine director at Chisiama Chiamo in UM Manhattan, West UM.
Speaker 1: It's a Union Square hospitality group restaurant and yeah, and
Speaker 1: so she said that her favorite thing with this dish
Speaker 1: is champagne and sparkling wine. So we have them right
Speaker 1: next to a prosecco Domi prosecco and right next to
Speaker 1: Um rotor or State Rotor, Rotor, Louis Rotor, Champagne and um.
Speaker 1: So we thought we'd bring it over. We were bringing
Speaker 1: the rotor. We thought we'd bring some some that we
Speaker 1: weren't gonna let Katie eat until she had She's not
Speaker 1: going to eat on air. Well, I'm going to eat
Speaker 1: a second, but I want to get to the second
Speaker 1: one because we've got about almost three minutes left here.
Speaker 1: So tell us about you brought us another um a
Speaker 1: wine here red, Yes, a red wine. So this is
Speaker 1: like this is Les Marchiole so Tincia. Merrily Um has
Speaker 1: this estate in Bulgary, which is on the coast of
Speaker 1: Italy and the coast of Tuscany. And she and her
Speaker 1: her husband who passed away I think in the early
Speaker 1: two thousands, Um he and she developed this estate and
Speaker 1: really found that Cabernet franc performed so well in this
Speaker 1: part of Tuscany. So this is Cabernet franc. It is
Speaker 1: a very I mean to me, this is one of
Speaker 1: the great wines of Italy. Um, it's a very beautiful
Speaker 1: want to make everybody know that we really do have
Speaker 1: the one here. This is true. It's a very elegant wine,
Speaker 1: very delicate red wine with a lot of richness underneath.
Speaker 1: So she's a very beautiful, delicate woman with a lot
Speaker 1: of underneath. My Adorgan, she's she's amazing and um and
Speaker 1: she's you know, after her husband, after her husband passed,
Speaker 1: she really took it on herself to make this her
Speaker 1: project completely and the wine has only ever gotten better
Speaker 1: and better and better. And she she's one of the
Speaker 1: great producers in Italy. Now, I just love what's going
Speaker 1: out we've had. What were you to say? No, I
Speaker 1: just I want to get into like the scoring, Like
Speaker 1: you mentioned that it scores well in Tuscany. What what
Speaker 1: actually comprises how a wine scores. What's the sort of
Speaker 1: criteria there? It really depends on who's scoring it. Um.
Speaker 1: For us, a lot of it has to do with
Speaker 1: our immediate reaction to the wine and what we what
Speaker 1: our expectations are for the wine. Really gentle, Yes, it's
Speaker 1: gentle and beautiful. Yeah, but it's full you were talking
Speaker 1: I just want I just wann't taste it before well
Speaker 1: and only got like forty seconds lefter tell us about
Speaker 1: this event and six pm at Metropolitan Pavilion, which is
Speaker 1: on eight Street west of Sixth Avenue. This is our
Speaker 1: top one hund wines of the year, which we scored
Speaker 1: the wineries of the year, So these are the wineries
Speaker 1: that got the highest scores and the most highest scores,
Speaker 1: and so they're gonna be wineries like um Biggest Sicilia
Speaker 1: will be there, which is probably the greatest estate in Spain.
Speaker 1: Um Corson and Diamond Creek will be there from Napa Valley.
Speaker 1: This is incredible. They're amazing wines here, like wines you
Speaker 1: won't be able to taste virtually anywhere else in your life.
Speaker 1: And it's a very reasonable ticket to get in. So
Speaker 1: we're actually the tickets are going really fast right now.
Speaker 1: We're very excited about that because since the pandemic is
Speaker 1: is sort of on the wayne, people are out and
Speaker 1: about really excited about going out. I agree with you,
Speaker 1: everybody a wants to go do things. Um, Josh, we
Speaker 1: have to run. What a sport. What a great way
Speaker 1: to wrap up our week, Josh, Green, editor in chief
Speaker 1: of Wine and Spirits magazine. Check out on Wednesday, f
Speaker 1: eight pm, Top one Tasting, This is Bloomberg