Nielsen Schmielsen

I was asked recently by someone, who didn't know my tendency to overexplain everything, what's been the most significant change in the wine business in the last 25 years. And, while it would be easy to signal out the phenomenal growth in the number of wineries and the amount of wine consumed, that's not it.

No, for me, it's the UPC, the Universal Product Code, that ubiquitous bar code that now adorns every product and will probably be genetically engineered onto our foreheads soon.

I predate the UPC on wine bottles. This is the wine business equivalent of saying "I predate electricity."

Before bar codes, every bottle was hand-marked with a price sticker. Most grocery stores had a wine key on their cash registers, so had a reasonable idea how much wine was sold, but only a vague idea about what wine sold. The UPC changed all that.

Enter Nielsen.

That's the A.C. Nielsen Company, famous for its TV rankings, but which also collects wine sales data from all major chain grocery stores, thanks to the UPC. So, now wineries and wine companies can see where, when, and how much their wines sold. Most large wineries and wine companies now employ armies of sales analysts (ever notice the first four letters of that last word?). They dissect the minutest of detail hoping to ferret out significant trends.

Meanwhile, most wine distributors, at the insistence of their supplier wine companies, report back all of their sales, so the analysts can also see what restaurants and shops buy their wine.

So, what does all this rear-view mirror gazing mean to you and me?

It means that the status quo is reinforced, time and again. It's why chain grocery stores display the same wines year in and year out. It's why a few large companies with data in hand hold enormous sway over retail buyers. It's why that large wine section seems to be all about Chardonnay, Cabernet, Merlot, and a little bit "Other." Breadth they got, depth they don't.

It's why a beauty such as the Cotes de Brouilly I mentioned in my last post won't be found in most stores and why the real treasures in wine take some digging.

Thanks,
Jim