I spend most of my day helping companies do a better job connecting with their customers. It would be really easy for me to turn this blog into a constant conversation and critique about marketing in the wine industry. But that’s not nearly as fun as drinking the stuff, so I try to hold off on the discussions about brand experience. However, on occasion I come across industry-related goings on that are worth talking about.

As regular readers know, I spent some time in Australia back in March of this year, exploring some of the wine regions I hadn’t been to and visiting some of the country’s smaller producers. My summary of that experience included some thoughts on the challenge that Australia faces in the wake of the global financial crisis and shifting preferences of global wine consumers. In particular I was interested in the dichotomy between where the money is in the Australian wine industry (the big exporters) and where I believe the future is for their industry (smaller producers).

I wrote:

“Indeed, some of the most exciting wines I had in Australia are made by tiny producers who don’t make much wine, and export even less to the U.S. It seemed rather clear to me that Australia hasn’t figured out a way to easily make this diversity available to the world at large, perhaps as a result of scale, but perhaps also as a result of a focus of its energy on “simpler” ways of communicating to global consumers about Australian wine. Australia (by which I mean primarily the Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation, the main trade body in the country) should be celebrating and promoting its smaller producers more.”

Well I learned recently that the folks in Australia have been thinking along the same lines, and have launched what I think is the best marketing campaign I have ever seen or heard of for a wine region.

It’s called A Plus (Australia Plus) and it’s so brilliantly simple, the tag line explains it completely: “every one has a story.”

It’s a web site where every winery in Australia can submit a photo, a brief story about what makes them interesting, and put a link to their web site. Visitors can browse all the stories, vote on the ones they like the best, and share their favorites with friends. But most importantly they can see the stories.

The stories are short. Some are funny, some are profound, but mostly they’re all at least interesting, which is more than you can say about 95% of the winery web sites and marketing campaigns in existence.

According to Paul Henry, the director of the Australia Wine and Brandy Corporation who responded to my questions about the campaign, this is merely the first phase of a dedicated effort over an extended period of time to use these stories as the basis for retelling the larger story of Australian wine, or as he put it “I believe the artistic term is ‘finding one’s voice.’”

Stories are what we care about. Stories are meaningful, and they are memorable. Wine is ultimately a story, of a place, of the people who farm it, and the unique circumstances that lead to the creation of every vintage.

Despite this, it’s the story that gets lost in all the concern for points, tasting notes, and pricing that pervades the wine marketplace today.

And that’s why I’m so impressed with this A+ campaign. It’s such an honest, soulful departure from the usual ways in which countries or wine regions go about marketing themselves. You’ve certainly seen those campaigns before — the ones that could be selling anything from Viagra to time-share vacation rentals. They always remind me of the campaign that ad exec Dudley Moore created in the movie Crazy People: “Come to Greece, the French can be Annoying.”

The A+ web site is well executed, and it has a ton of potential. There’s a lot more that can be done with these stories as they begin to accumulate, but the site is a great start and just what Australia needs. Provided that they can:

1. Actually get Australian wineries to participate (they’d be silly not to)
2. Get global consumers to the site (not an insignificant challenge)
3. Figure out how to leverage the content and the buzz on an ongoing basis

I predict it will be a great success. Of course, there’s still the challenge of selling the wine, but stories have sold stuff since the beginning of time.

Check it out.

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I think the very nature of coffee table books encourage them to be over the top. What else do we want, lounging around in the living room, than to be transported to someplace wonderful? A good coffee table book is better than TV in my opinion, if only because you want to experience it multiple times, which is more than I can say for pretty much any given TV show episode.

I’ve now leafed through both The Most Beautiful Wine Cellars in the World and Living With Wine several times, and probably will again. While it’s somewhat crude to us the word pornography to describe each of these tomes, perhaps the authors and those familiar with the increasingly acceptable phrase “food porn” will forgive me. The books, replete with centerfold after centerfold of stunning images from wine cellars around the world, are surely the wine collector’s version of Playboy, albeit more highbrow. One focuses mostly on the wine cellars of some of the world’s greatest wineries, the other focuses on private cellars. Together they represent a drool-worthy composition of what you get when you combine design, history, architecture, wine, and (almost always) gobs and gobs of money.

Living With Wine, by Samantha Nestor with text by Alice Feiring and Photographs by Andrew French came out last year in time for the holiday gift-giving season, and offers an intimate view into roughly thirty temples built to honor that luxury of luxuries: the wine collection.

Most of the cellars showcased in Living with Wine are in private homes, though the book includes New York restaurants Alto and Adour. Ranging from the stark modern expanse of an Asian influenced museum piece to a barrel-vaulted, limestone brick nave, the cellars are beautifully lit and photographed. Each includes a profile of the owner (though some remain anonymous) and often some dialogue with the designer or architect. As if the money shots of magnums of grand cru Burgundies or California cult cabs weren’t enough, the profiles also include a listing of the owners most prized bottles.

To some, the very notion of a wine collection — at least one that contains valuable bottles to be cherished for a time as opposed to just a few more than can be drunk in a single setting — represents a sort of overt luxury that is not only out of reach, but distasteful. Anyone who might scoff at the pages of the Robb Report or Architectural Digest, will find plenty to disdain in the pages of Living With Wine, which clearly showcases a wanton disregard for cost as much as it does the craft of showcasing wine collections big and small. But that, after all, is part of the fantasy, is it not?

If Living with Wine gives us the opportunity to fantasize about what we might like to build for ourselves, The Most Beautiful Wine Cellars in the World, edited by Astrid Fobelets, Jurgen Lijcops, and Janneke Sinot, on the other hand gives us the opportunity to fantasize about where we might like to visit. Instead of private homes (though the book does include a few stunning private cellars) its pages reveal the “back rooms” of some of the world’s greatest wine estates, hotels, and restaurants.

Lacking a table of contents or any apparent organizational principle (that’s just how much the editors want you to simply flip your way through) and offering only a paragraph or three about each location, The Most Beautiful Wine Cellars in the World becomes simply a visual feast of Old World wine history embodied in the remarkable fusion of glass bottles and architecture.

My eyes widened with delight at the incredible crypt-like staircase that leads to the cellar of the hotel Don Alfonso south of Naples, Italy; I marveled at the quarry-hewn caves of Chateau Ausone in Bordeaux; and I delighted at a view of the vaults of dusty bottles in the cellars of Massandra in the Ukraine and Chateau Ksara in Lebanon that I have imagined while appreciatively sipping their progeny.

Anyone whose pulse quickens at a pile of bottles overgrown with mold (but not so much that you can’t read the little sign: 1934 Clos Vougeot) will want to ensure they enjoy The Most Beautiful Wine Cellars in the World with a full glass of red wine. A pencil and notebook may come in handy as well, to write down all the places that need to be added to the bucket list of places to see (and drink) before you die.

Both Living with Wine and The Most Beautiful Wine Cellars in the World offer many different flavors of perfection when it comes to the celebration of wine in ways that don’t involve actually opening a bottle. The armchair collector and armchair traveler will find inspiration in both.

Samantha Nestor, Living With Wine, Clarkson Potter 2009, $47.25, (Hardcover).

Astrid Fobelets, Jurgen Lijcops, and Janneke Sinot, editors, The Most Beautiful Wine Cellars in the World, 2nd ed., Van den Heuvel 2009, $56.39, (Hardcover).

Full disclosure: I received review copies of these books.

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I was poking around in my wine cellar last night, taking stock of what I might be drinking soon, now that I’m through some serious crunch time at work. In particular I was looking for some nice bottles of rosé that I might enjoy on the back porch, on those rare evenings where the summer fog doesn’t make such activities tantamount to frostbite.

I found some nice bottles that all had one thing in common: none of them were made in America. Most were French, some were Italian. I wouldn’t have really given that much thought except for the fact that hours earlier I had been unboxing wine samples and groaning at the massive influx of rosé, or more correctly what passes for rosé in California — clear bottles filled with a liquid so dark it might be Benadryl. Or Pinot Noir, for that matter.

Great rosé is light and lithe, and dances on the palate with bright acidity. It is crisp and bright with faint floral and fruit flavors twined with rivers of wet stone and maybe fresh herbs. Hints of orange peel or hibiscus, strawberry and watermelon are all welcome.

Bad rosé, which includes 95% of the rosé made in this country, is overly fruity yet with a bitter aftertaste. It tastes of cherry and cranberry and cough syrup, and in some cases, it’s actually sweet. Of course, let’s leave aside White Zinfandel for the moment, which is its own category of beverage that isn’t exactly trying to be a proper rosé. The folks who make that stuff and the folks who love it get a pass in this rant.

Of course, this isn’t the first time I’ve cursed in frustration at the sorry state of rosé in this country, but what I don’t understand is why it doesn’t really seem to be getting any better. It’s not like there aren’t plenty of examples of how to do it well. It’s not like American winemakers haven’t managed to figure out how to make decent Pinot Noir. It could hardly be as difficult as growing The Heartbreak Grape.

The only reason I can think of for the pitiful state of rosé in this country is that most consumers don’t know the difference between good rosé and bad. Otherwise why in the world would they keep drinking Merlot that is only one or two shades of red lighter than the wine it was pulled out of a few days earlier? Or maybe it’s just that most American winemakers are too lazy to be bothered with learning how to make rosé properly and can’t be bothered to pick their grapes before they hit 26 Brix?

Well in the event that you’re a consumer who’s not sure if you know the difference between good rosé and bad, here’s a quick lesson.

Good rosé is simple to spot, and you don’t even have to open a bottle to get pointed in the right direction at least.

Unless your rosé has the word Tavel on the front label (the rosé-only appellation in France’s Rhone Valley that tends to make darker — but very good — rosé from Syrah) a proper rosé should never, ever look like this:

Instead, this is what rosé should look like:

Or ideally even lighter — light copper, pale salmon, or even just a hint of pink. As light as possible. Not ruby colored. Not garnet colored. Never to be mistaken for a red wine.

And, unless the grapes are in the hands of one of the world’s most talented winemakers, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot really aren’t viable options for making good rosé. Try Grenache, Cinsault, Carignan, Pinot Noir, Gamay, or even Sangiovese or Tempranillo.

While I’m not a winemaker, and couldn’t even pretend to know what I’m doing, I do know that the most important step in making proper rosé is deciding to grow the grapes as if they’re going to be made into one, rather than growing the grapes as if they’re going to be made into red wine. This means, at the very least, picking them earlier.

Yet so few American winemakers seem willing to do so. What they do instead is make a red wine, and then bleed off some of the juice, in a process known to the French as saignee. While this method itself does not spell problems, as much good rose is made that way, but invariably winemakers don’t do it soon enough (hence the rosés that are darker ruby than pink). And because the grapes have been grown, harvested, crushed, and soaked like they are going to be a darker red wine, they have far too many tannins, and other bitter compounds that are fine and dandy in a big red wine, but death to a proper rosé.

Of course, there are a few American winemakers that do know how to make a proper rosé and have proven it by doing so. One of the best rosés made in this country comes from Robert Sinskey, whose ever-so-pale rosé of Pinot Noir has made its way into Whole Foods with some regularity. Other producers who know what they’re doing include Tablas Creek, Fort Ross Vineyard, Clos Saron, and York Creek Vineyards. If you’re buying pink wine from America, I’d stick to those names.

But by far the best way to ensure you’re going to enjoy a proper rosé this summer is to buy French. Look for words on the label like Aix en Provence, Côtes de Provence, Cotes de Ventoux, Bandol, or even Côtes du Roussillon.

Thanks to the efforts of folks like RAP, the Rosé Avengers and Producers organization, we’ve thankfully reached a point in this country where rosé is actually somewhat fashionable. Now if we need to take the next step and actually make it good.

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