How to enter the Chinese market with Valencian wines?

I really have no answer to this question yet. But I am in China now! We still have one day to go with the Wine Fair and a Bloggers tasting is tomorrow night, with Weiguokong, the Chinewinelover.

The least thing I could do is to share some of the experience I had in Guanzhou at the Interwine Wine Fair so far. Although for now just some photos (which I haven’t uploaded to flickr yet) , and later you can read here my update!

Do you have any questions about the Chinese Wine Market? Ask them now!!!

Maybe I can still respond or pass on the question to more experienced people around here at the fair.

Drop an email or comment, or twitter me at http://twitter.com/casavides

1 Casavides Interwine 2008 stand Guangzhou

2 Opening Interwine 2008 Guangzhou

3 Stand of the Region of Valencia (ivex)

4 Great Wall Chinese wine

5 Wines from Spain handing out information about Spain to Chinese wine professionals

6 Emilio of La Casa de las Vides doing a presentation about his wines for 60 Chinese Wine professionals

November INTERWINE and Wine bloggers tasting in China, Guangzhou

It started as something unexpected. I was exploring the Chinese wine websites and blogs, as a part of my market study for my upcoming trip to Guangzhou, where la casa de las vides will participate at the INTERWINE wine fair. As I asked around on twitter about a wine bloggers in China, weiguokong, a Chinese wine blogger offered me his help to set up a tasting.

I am writing this at the airport of Charles de Gaulle where waiting for 4 hours in terminal 2E is not my favourite way to spend my time. I was glad to find a good internet connection here, although the French keyboard is difficult to zrite on, you see, I cqn0t find the q, the , qnd the w and the z are qlzays turned qround, but qpqrt fro, thqt it)s ok, i guess:

So back to typing with two fingers and some extra attention to my keyboard, tomorrow 26 November I will arrive in Guangzhou, where on 27 to 29 November the INTERWINE Canton wine fair takes place.

I know it will be very difficult to enter the Chinese market, and this fair will be tough one for our wines. Nevertheless it is important, especially now, to keep on investigating and trying to make new contacts.

As an extra event Casavides will organise an extra tasting on Friday evening especially for wine bloggers in China as a way to get new and above all different contacts. Last month in Boston a similar tasting resulted in has some great contacts, and in the end it doesn`t really cost me a lot of extra effort to open a few bottles and taste the wines in a downtown restaurant. Actually I love opening our wines, the more the better, especially for those who never before tasted our wines before.

I was told that there would be somebody to translate for me from english to chinese, because I have not been able to find the pomegranatephone yet in the stores here in Paris

The tasting has been prepared by CHINEWINELOVER. To know is behind this carefully selected name: check chinewinelover on twitter on 29 November (chinese time), and his blog http://blog.sina.com.cn/tigerlikewine to find out who Weiguokong, the most active Chinese wine blogger is.

I will publish some INTERWINE AND BLOGGERS TASTING photos soon on this blog!

How Social Media and Social Networking Has Helped Wine Exports in Valencia, Spain

Late August 2008, La Casa de las Vides introduced its blog under the name Casavides.com. The idea of the blog was to create a marketing tool for the export department.  And by default, as a blog is a marketing tool, we also agreed to add all the necessary Web 2.0 tools as well, such as Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, Dopplr, OWC, Linked in, Youtube, Delicious etc.

So, how did we use the various Web 2.0 tools to export our wines? And have we, as a winery, seen any results in the past 3 months? I am writing this post to evaluate my own choice in involving an entire winery in a Web 2.0 strategy that is starting to become a part of our daily life. I am almost 40 now, and I am stuck in between the enthusiasm for Web 2.0 and the lack of knowledge about it to be 100% sure how Web 2.0 works best for me. Convinced as I am to follow the guidelines as lined out in Catavino’s pdf Social media for wineries, I have committed myself to welcome just about everything that comes along my Web 2.0 path. In three months, the strategy has had its ups and downs, like who is writing what post and when and above all why? Well, we do know why, in theory I mean, but our lack of discipline and not having our priorities straight is probably keeping us from doing the things we have to do. This post is about what happened over the last three months at La Casa de las Vides and how Web 2.0 has helped us to export our wines?

In short, we are not exporting yet! Zero, niente, nada, nichts, rien du tout. BUT we do have some very interesting leads, and many of them came through the web 2.0 tools I use!

Do you want to know how? read on…

Introduction at EWBC 2008

The unique event that helped get started was without any doubt the European Wine Bloggers Conference. In one weekend, I received enough contacts to get started on Facebook, OWC and Twitter at the same time. Without all of these invaluable contacts I made there, I probably wouldn’t have had the feedback and comments I needed to get me focused on all these tools.

TWITTER

Twitter was probably the tool I was most obsessed with. In the first weeks, I was watching every single message from everyone I was following. After a while, I understood that life goes on, even if I don’t follow Twitter on a minute by minute basis. However, my astonishment regarding the amount of information coming at me at once, and the dynamics behind it to have a conversation in 5 continents at the same time, was something inconceivable for this export director till now. Now after more than 400 tweets, I use twitter in a more moderate way. I do follow some of the interesting links some leave in their tweets. One of the better posts I read lately came from Wine Brands. Twitter now has become a source of information, a place to hang out, and a great way to get response, like when I introduced a new label for our new casavides 2008 wines. Or the twitter wine box of Slijterijmeisje in Holland who interviewed me at a wine fair Megavino in Brussels, and who will now put some samples of our wines in her Twitterwinebox. Twitterwineblox is an idea that Petra de Boevere put into practice when she discovered that she could get more clients through twitter offering them a six wines in a box that can only be ordered through twitter on her account (slijterijmeisje).

Meisje van de Slijterij meets Emilio Saez van Eerd from Slijterijmeisje on Vimeo.

SOCIAL NETWORKS

During the  month of September, I spent many free hours on checking out all the profiles on OWC, Linked in, Facebook, of interesting people, directly or indirectly engaged in the wine industry. I am still amazed how easy it is to contact people through these social networks. Off course, as an export director, my job is to sell wine.

I used to go wine fairs to try to meet up with importers. Mailings, cold calls, whatever was necessary to get attention, I did it. In general if you are doing a good job, the average response on those mailings would be  around 5% - 10%.  My experience after many wine fairs is that a good wine fair gives you more or less 25 leads, of which 10 are really interested, and if you are lucky, one or two want to start working with you. For that you have to wait until the fair, be lucky and have patience.

Now, with social networks the amount of interesting contacts I got through the above mentioned Web 2.0 tools are much more interesting than the few contacts you can get from a wine fair.  First of all, if you connect with somebody through a network, you already share two of the same interests; the social network itself AND wine. Whereas on a wine fair you only have wine in common. The fact that you both belong to a new and exciting network, makes the cnnection even stronger, because from both sides you want the networks to give you results (why else do you spend time on the social networks?)

The second advantage is that through a social network the communication is relaxed, without the pressure of the wine fair, where most of the visitors already have to work down a list of producers they want to meet, before they want to spend time on you.

The third benefit is that you can be “direct”. You get direct questions and answers if you are both online. In this sense social networks are not less personal, especially if you imagine that you can send al the relevant information about the winery and wines as you speak to each other, share a video of the winery, send technical details, show tasting results on tasting note sites. No way that you can do this on a wine fair. But also for my own information as an export director, I want to know who I am really talking to, and that I don’t waste my time talking to somebody who pretends to be bigger. Internet gives you normally enough information to get a good first impression. No information, or a crappy website, is a serious warning for me. I do spent quite some time on checking out an importer’s website or blog, if he has one (although, until now I haven’t seen many importers with a blog. Does anybody know why importers don’t have blogs?)

In my free time I often follow links and comments through OWC, facebook and linked in, and I found some valuable information read between the lines in the comments of for example linkedin answers and questions section. If an importer is looking for a wine, or an exporter offers his wines, have a look at the comments!

I trust that there are  much more advantages I did not descirbe here! Feel free to add them in the comments.

DOPPLR

The tool that convinced me less, until now is Dopplr, not because of the philosophy of the site, but more because of I don’t find other dopplr users as easily as I find people on twitter, facebook or OWC. For me, Web 2.0 starts when I travel. On Dopplr, though, I can’t find how to use the site on a more frequent basis. I have tried out a few things (read the post about dopplr here), but am still researching Dopplr’s best use. Where Dopplr has helped me to change my perspective is the way in which I view travel.  I now travel around the world with an easy to reach new goal: I force myself to open at least one bottle of my own wine during a trip to anywhere, and share that bottle with bloggers, any blogger, that I can meet through any Web 2.0 tool.

Reflection on Dopplr: probably I need to give it more time, and be more active myself. Check out my next trip to China and Singapore

Web 2.0 EXAMPLES

This led to the best example of how Web 2.0 tools has aided me as a wine exporter: the Casa Vides tasting in Boston. I try to imagine how it must have been in the pre Web 2.0 era to organize this type of event. It probally would have taken years. We (I did not do this all by myself) organized a tasting in Boston only 2 weeks before I went to the US. How did we do this? Simple!

I was looking for Boston bloggers on Twitter, and within seconds, I got a response. Check out “how” through this Boston tasting post I wrote in October.  In the end, two great posts were written about the Casa Vides Boston Bloggers Tasting. One by the hand of Passionatefoodie and the second by Bloviatrix

Casavides got a lot of attention on twitter through many posts, we did a Twitter Tasting Live thanks to Binends. It went all so fast, and being a Web 2.0 dummy, I couldn’t understand the impact at the moment itself.

Bloggers tasting: THE RESULTS

For me, the blogger’s tasting was a success by itself, because it received some great feedback from people stemming from different backgrounds. Food, media, marketing, wine, sales, retail, etc. Put this mix together and you receive more information than you can process.

My surprise was even bigger when I got an e-mail from a major Boston wine importer, who contacted me two weeks afterward. He was seriously interested in our wines after hearing about the tasting notes from one of the participants.

Other examples include a trip we did to Ireland with Bubbelbrothers, a.ka. the blogging wine importer. I met Julian through an interesting conversation last year about undisclosing the process of exporting wines through internet, when I did some blogging for Tintoralba, another Spanish wine producer with a blog.  Actually this conversation even got the attention of some wine marketers in Spain. Julian was so kind to invite some Cork based bloggers and clients for a tasting and the effect of this gathering was absolutely felt at the winery.

It’s been one month after the tasting in Boston, and three months after the introduction of the blog. I assume that you would like to see some concrete results. So does my boss! We can’t live from the great feedback we get, do we? More important questions have to be answered soon like, how many bottles were sold this month? When is the importer going to order at all? etc etc.

It’s kind of contradictory that the most non Web 2.0 activity, the wine fair itself, in a way is the driving force behind my trips, which allow me to do some Web 2.0 activities along the way, like blogger’s tastings. Costs for these extra Web 2.0 activities are almost zero, taking into account that the two major costs items, the trip to the country and sending samples are counted as costs for the wine fair. And although Web 2.0 something I almost do in my own time, let’s after or before working hours. So yes you must like to give up hanging out with friends and family, or do as we did and unplug the tv. But hey, if that means that your (net)working time is becoming more effective and fun, then it makes a lot of sense.

So, my conclusion as a export director for now is that Web 2.0 has not yet taken over my non Web 2.0 activities, but it sure helps me do my job better, quicker, directer, and above all, with more fun.  And as I feel we have so much more to tell and to share, the whole Casa Vides team is getting more and more involved in what they are doing on a daily basis. Videos and photos, stories and comments has makes us realise how lucky we are that we can work with wine, every day!

Comments are more than welcome.

Keep you posted about our interesting discoveries about using Web 2.0 for wine exports!

Hasta luego

Emilio

IX Gastronomy Fair of Vall d’Albaida

During the 7th, 8th and 9th of November, the IX Annual Gastronomy Fair of Vall d’Albaida was celebrated in the city of Ontinyent.

The fair was exhibiting artesanal products and produce from the Vall D’Albaida region located in Valencia on the eastern coast of Spain. More specifically, there were regional sausages, cheeses, olive oils, sweets, and of course, wine.

Fortunately, we had an opportunity to showcase our wines to the local people within the surrounding region.

Surprisingly, the majority of the comments over the course of three days were very positive, referring to the high quality of the wines of the area. And considering that many people perceive the valley as being industrial, I think they were taken aback as to the richness of the land in Vall d’Albaida.

In the three years we have been attending this fair, we have seen people become more familiar with our wines, coming to the fair specifically with the intention of trying new vintages - which is very satisfying.

Additionally the fair has grown, doubling in attendance from the previous year, in part due to the new location. And to be honest, it’s been incredibly rewarding to hear people chat among themselves as to how the wines of the region continually grow in quality.

We have also noticed a trend toward rosé wine, which previously didn’t exist here. Many believe that a rosé  wine is very pleasant to enjoy, as long as it is not excessively fruity, and instead showing fresh and natural flavors on the palate.

The only drawback I see is that the fair lacks the attendance of restaurateurs in the area, and I would like to encourage the organizer, the Commonwealth of Valencia, to invite them personally to understand exactly how our products are made.

So that’s it! We enjoyed a sunny weekend and great wines in the company of many wonderful friends.

Saludos,

Reme

Is it Worth Visiting a Wine Fair in Alicante?

Last Tuesday, Emilio and I went to a wine fair in Alicante, featuring not only wines, but also merchandise for hotels, restaurants and cafes. However, there weren’t many visitors, which was a little disappointing, but for me it was an excellent chance to taste and learn more about wine. Emilio and I walked around the fair, while he expounded on other bodegas, their wines and what makes each wine different or special. (Flickr photo by opencontent)

I also tasted a series of wines from the bodega itself, as I had not done this previously. There were 3 red wines, the Aculius, Cup and the Albada, a young red produced exclusively for Valencia. Surprisingly, the tastes were totally and completely different. I preferred the Aculius, because of its soft texture in the mouth. And as I don’t drink much wine, it was a very good wine to start with. I also tried some white wines from various producers, as well as a dessert wine made with Moscatel that I really liked called, Cristalli from Vins del Comtat in Alicante. The wine tasted of pure orange and mango and was quite light and fresh in the mouth.

In the evening, as more people came from work, the fair filled with eager visitors, making the experience more pleasant to stay on. However, a lot of producers were already gone when the visitors started flooding in, which was a shame, as you would imagine that they would want to stay and chat with potential customers.

Would I go again next year? Aside from the fact that I won’t be here in Valencia, and that I wasn’t very stimulated by the fair itself, no I wouldn’t. If it weren’t for Emilio chatting with me about the region and the various wineries, I’d be seriously bored. With few people, and little knowledge as to where to visit, I don’t know if I’d be captivated. Maybe a bigger fair with more activity would be worthwhile, but for now, I’m just happy I was able to have one on one time with Emilio to learn about the wines from Valencia.

Adios,

Sjoerd Heijkoop

Free Advise on How to Use the José Peñin Spanish Wine Guide

José Peñin is the Robert Parker of Spain, and many wine importers around the world, are using his guide to search for new and exciting Spanish wines. In my distant past, when I was wine agent, I used Peñin’s wine guide a lot.  Many of the Spanish wines I worked with, I first spotted in this thick green book that over time has become a Spanish wine bible with more than 8,500 tasted wines, 13,500 references, and 2,900 wineries.

At the end of the book, on page 1,325 of the 2009 edition, there is a chapter called, Las Mejores Compras, or Best Buys. Now, this is the chapter you should pay close attention to if you want to learn which wines are available at a very competitive price. Take into account that most prices are winery prices - meaning the price you pay when you buy the wine at the winery. Normally, the wines are slightly higher priced when you buy them at any store. Wines listed in this chapter are rated with 5 stars, which stands for extraordinary Quality Price Ratio or QPR.

You will find 4 wines scored at 94 points priced at 5,90 euros on the low end and up to 8 euros on the high end. And guess what style all of these wines fall in? Delicious Sherry wines! This explains why I am such a sherry freak

At 93 points and priced only 6,95 euros is the first red wine made with Monastrell from the DO Alicante called Beryna, from our friends in VIllena, Bodegas Bernabe Navarro. The first white dry wine can be found at 7,50 euros with 93 points, is the Etim Garnacha Blanca Verema Tardana 2006 from Agricola Falset Marça in the DO Montsant. And to make this short list complete, the most attractive rosé is the Gran Feudo rosado 2007 from Chivite from DO Navarra at 3,50 euros with 91 points.

On page 1311, the best wines per region are mentioned. As Casavides makes wines in D.O. Valencia, I’ll take this region as an example. The top three wines made in DO Valencia, an emerging wine area in the same league as Alicante and Montsant, we find Maduresa 93 points at 16 euros and Les Alcusses with 91 points at 8 euros made by Pablo Calatyud from Celler Roure.  Venta del Puerto made by Bodega La Viña also scored 91 points and costs 9 euros.

Normally these so called “top wines” are already selling abroad in many countries, or are made in such small quantities that you have to beg for the wines. But sometimes, just below the top wines, you find the extraordinary 90 point wines. And if you are lucky, some of these wines are new on the market, and if you are even luckier, the whole winery is new to the market. So just because you know how to use the Peñin Guide well, you might be able to spot the newest wines from the most emerging areas in Spain.

Let’s take the 90 point wines in Valencia.

Aculius 2006 tinto, Angosto 2006 tinto, Megala 2005 tinto, Pasamonte 2005 tinto, Rafael Cambra 2006 tinto, Sueño de Megala 2005 tinto, Trilogia 2006 tinto, Uva d’or Moscatel, Venta del Puerto 18 vendimia sel. 2005 tinto.  Nine wines in total, 8 of them are red wines, and all scored 90 points. These are worth trying your luck if you can find them. But I can already promise you that with the Aculius, the chances that we are exporting to your country is almost zero, because we started to export our wines just 2 months ago for the first time.

Then, if you want to look up the winery, for example “La Casa de las Vides”, you can go the winery page and get an overall picture of what they are producing. How many wines are rated as best buys? The wineries with a whole range of 5 star wines and with consistently high points, are usually the most interesting ones. These are the wineries worth following, or even worth asking samples from.

One thing though that is missing in the Peñin guide is an overview of the last 3 years to compare the previous vintages of the same wine. There are enough guides that offer this valuable piece information, and to be honest, opening three or four of these dense books does require some extra skills and space on your desk.

Good luck with your search for your next top Spanish wine!

Hasta luego

Emilio Saez van Eerd

The Club of Wine Enthusiasts of Valencia Discuss Our Wines

As has been their custom since 1988, a group of friends, wine lovers, meet every Tuesday to taste wines. This group has evolved from what was principally a gastronomic institution into what is now the Club Enófilos of Valencia. Last Tuesday, on the 28th of October, this group met to taste three of our wines: Vallblanca, Aculius and Cup, which were presented by Ramon Roig.

Ramon called me to tell me that the tasting was a success, while I was cooking dinner, and that Marques de Caceres, of Bodegas Marques de Cáceres wanted to congratulate me over the phone. But as I was unaware that the president of the Club Enófilos was with Marques de Caceres, I thought it was a joke, and told him to leave me alone as it was late. When they called me back, Marques de Caceres himself was on the phone conveying the same message that the tasting was a success and that in general, they very much enjoyed the wines for their quality and their sleek and innovative presentation. And that although we were a young winery, we are producing wines of high quality, and when they returned from their trip to South America, they would like to visit our cellar. I thanked him for his comments and for having the graciousness to call me by phone.

The results of the tasting are summarized as follows:

“Cup” - the majority agreed that the wine is dark red in color, with clean and bright appearance. On the nose, the wine shows intense aromas of spicy red fruit, with a pleasant flavor. Full bodied, fruity, well balanced and a good personality. Overall, a very balanced wine.

“Aculius” - the wine came off with a brilliant and clean appearance, with a dark red color. Intense aromas of forest fruits, vanilla and licorice, with a nice round mouthfeel. This is a full-bodied, balanced and elegant wine, with a long lingering finish.

“Vallblanca 2007” everyone agreed that the wine is clean and bright, with a yellow straw color. In the nose, the wine shows a fruity and white floral aroma, such as pineapple.  On the palate, the wine showed good fruit and a very pleasant taste, with a medium long finish. Very balanced.

From here, I want to thank En Club de Enófiles for choosing our wines for the tasting, and its chairman for having the consideration to call me on the phone to share the results.

Un Saludo,

Reme