{"id":10575,"date":"2012-09-24T01:05:05","date_gmt":"2012-09-24T01:05:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/?p=10575"},"modified":"2012-09-25T12:22:23","modified_gmt":"2012-09-25T12:22:23","slug":"wine-and-women-national-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wine-and-women-national-post\/","title":{"rendered":"Wine and Women Go Hand in Hand – National Post"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

By Hollie Shaw<\/p>\n

Wolfgang Blass says women are his long time weakness and the secret to his success.<\/p>\n

In a recent interview with the thrice-married raconteur behind Australia\u2019s Wolf Blass wine label, females were a frequent topic, both for a good bon mot \u2014 he repeats his oft-quoted trope, that his wines \u201cmake strong women weak, and weak men strong\u201d \u2014 and detailing a canny business strategy.<\/p>\n

Mr. Blass, 78, was in Toronto last week to support the brand\u2019s extensive film festival sponsorship, and chronicled how he left war-torn Germany at age 23 to pursue winemaking. Now the fourth largest wine exporter in the world, Wolf Blass Yellow Label is the best-selling cabernet sauvignon in Canada, topping two million bottles a year.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cGermany was totally deflated,\u201d he recalled. \u201cThe only way my parents thought they could get rid of this boy [as a teen] was to send me to a wine farm where there would be accommodation, food. Once I got my feet on the ground, I later moved from viticulture into winemaking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Blass first went to France where he studied champagne-making, then worked in England for an importer before being approached by Kaiser Stuhl Wines, a Barossa Valley co-operative, for a three-year contract.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had tasted some [Australian] wines at the importing organization in London, and the bloody wines were awful,\u201d he said. \u201cI thought \u2018I can\u2019t go wrong,\u2019 and I took a three-year contract with Kaiser Stuhl to make 80% of their pearl and sparkling wines.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the 1960s, Australia began transforming into a wine and coffee-drinking culture. \u201cBefore then it was all beer, port and sherry.\u201d<\/p>\n

If wine is not suitable for women to enjoy, it will not sell.<\/p>\n

The same phenomenon has happened in Canada over the past two decades. Beer sales dropped to 45% of overall Canadian alcohol sales in 2011 from 52% in 2000, according to Statistics Canada, and wine\u2019s share of the market grew to 30% in 2011 from 23% in 2000.<\/p>\n

Mr. Blass sold his business to the Australian wine company Mildara in 1991, which was later acquired by Fosters Brewing in 1997 and spun off last year into Treasury Wine Estates, which also owns the Penfolds, Beringer, Rosemount and Lindeman\u2019s brands. He has worked since as the public face of the brand, flying around the world as an ambassador for his label, and is derisive of most traditional European wine, deeming it less \u201cdrinkable\u201d and enslaved to tradition.<\/p>\n

\u201cNew world wine, including Canada, has been far more innovative in producing products because they are applying technique and concentrating on drinkablity to the consumer \u2014 not being stale, which is the big problem in Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Mr. Blass struck out on his own in the 1970s, he decided to make an overt play for the female consumer, both through the flavour profile of his top-selling wine and his bold, monochromatic labels, and in doing so helped put Australian wines on the global map.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf wine is not suitable for women to enjoy, it will not sell,\u201d he said. \u201cThe softness and easy drinking has brought about that women actually enjoy drinking wine.\u201d<\/p>\n

The solid-colour labels were a ploy for attention but also made it easy to distinguish grape varieties, said wine expert Natalie MacLean, author of Unquenchable: A Tipsy Quest for the World\u2019s Best Bargain Wines. Wolf Blass\u2019s labels played a key role in appealing to women.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are very striking compared to European wines where the label is all white, there is a castle in the middle distance and no grapes [listed] on there,\u201d she said, making the Blass wines more accessible.<\/p>\n

To that end, numerous winemakers have made an overt play for women with such brands as Girls\u2019 Night Out, Little Black Dress, Cupcake Red Velvet and Mad Housewife. \u201cSome labels are kind of hit-you-over-the-head marketed to women,\u201d Ms. MacLean said. \u201cSome of them are OK, but they make me skeptical about how much of that is marketing. I am trying to find out what is behind the label.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s critical in a market where women consume 55% of wine but buy about 80% of it<\/a><\/strong>, the case in Canada and Australia.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are the household purchasers of just about everything from Shreddies to SUVs, we are the dinner planners, the social planners, and the cooks \u2014 if you want to get stereotypical,\u201d Ms. McLean said. \u201cWine is more of a lifestyle thing, it is part of a beautiful life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yellow Label\u2019s price point is also appealing to female consumers, according to an LCBO study that showed women buy twice as much wine in the mid-end price range where Wolf Blass trades.<\/p>\n

George Samios, global spokesman for the Wolf Blass brand, said the brand has a history of sponsoring arts and cultural events in Canada. \u201cWe sponsor a lot of things like the film festival, the Playhouse in Vancouver, the food and wine festivals, because you can\u2019t do mainstream, above the line [ads]. But if you can associate with food and the arts and fashion \u2014 things that women also tend to be interested in \u2014 there is a nice link.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the recent Toronto International Film Festival, Wolf Blass was the wine of official parties and events. Samples of the wine were in TIFF gift bags, and a contest was held to have dinner and a wine-tasting with Mr. Blass.<\/p>\n

The company also markets through a heavy social media presence and is one of the most popular wine sites globally on Facebook, where it was recently ranked in the top 10 for daily engagement. And wine drinkers seem to be a social bunch<\/strong><\/a>: a U.S. survey by the Wine Market Council found that 73% of regular wine consumers in the U.S. were regular Facebook users.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Hollie Shaw Wolfgang Blass says women are his long time weakness and the secret to his success. In a recent interview with the thrice-married raconteur behind Australia\u2019s Wolf Blass wine label, females were a frequent topic, both for a good bon mot \u2014 he repeats his oft-quoted trope, that his wines \u201cmake strong women weak, and weak men strong\u201d \u2014 and detailing a canny business strategy. Mr. Blass, 78, was in Toronto last week to support the brand\u2019s extensive film festival sponsorship, and chronicled how he left war-torn Germany at age 23 to pursue winemaking. Now the fourth largest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wine-marketing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10575"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10690,"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10575\/revisions\/10690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}