Xavier Planty and his son Luc Planty may not be direct descendants of the 16th century owners of Château Guiraud in Sauternes, but they definitely inherited their revolutionary spirit. In fact, if there’s one word that best describes the wine business modus operandi of the Planty family, it’s rebellious. Which is exactly how one might…
Tag: marketing
Tasting the 2018 Bordeaux Futures: a palate-expanding experience
Tasting red wine en primeur is not for the faint of heart or faint of palate. Wine tasters participating in Bordeaux’s annual spring “futures” marathon go long and go hard. They must push themselves physically and mentally. Tasting schedules can be gruelling, demanding ~14 days of heavy lifting and one hundred plus Grands Crus Classé…
Bordeaux’s Château de Reignac: a Case Study in Risk and Reward – PART 2
In a region with over 7,000 chateaux, it’s hard to find an estate offering a truly unique selling proposition. Quality is the attribute most Bordeaux producers hang their hat on. But how are you going to convince audiences of your quality when all 7,000 of your competitors are making the same claim? You start by…
Bordeaux’s Château de Reignac: a Case Study in Risk and Reward
If you’re of a certain vintage – or a student of advertising – you may be familiar with the seminal 1962 advertising campaign for Avis. The car rental company summed up their ‘customer promise’ in the pithy advertising tagline “We Try Harder”. Of course, consumers everywhere wondered try harder than whom? Without saying as much,…
Bordeaux’s Château Cos d’Estournel: A Digital Future Guided by the Past
“Is the wine as good as the architecture?” asked my professor-of-architecture friend when I sent him a photo of Bordeaux’s Château Cos d’Estournel. “And then some!” I say, as I attempt to absorb a lecture on “Saracenic style” – a mix of Indian, Islamic and classical architecture, a result of the British colonization of…
Anthony von Mandl: British Columbia’s God of the Grape (& other fine beverages)
Who is Anthony von Mandl? Let me first admit I haven’t had the pleasure, but visiting British Columbia’s idyllic Okanagan Valley, it’s clear he casts quite a spell both for the international esteem he’s bestowed on the region and for his unprecedented level of investment in the local wine industry. Twice, von Mandl and his…
Another Canadian in Napa! Meet James Harder of James Cole, Tank Garage and T-Vine Wineries
It’s fair to say James Harder captured a little of my patriotic, wine-loving heart when his Tank Garage Winery website and sentient IP geo-bot acknowledged our shared homeland. It’s a small thing, but that patriotic nod to his Canadian roots is just one of the many savvy insights that James and his partners bring to…
Counter Culture goes Mainstream: The arrival of Weed Wine (part 2)
When 60’s folk icon Bob Dylan wrote “….everybody must get stoned,” he could never have imagined a counter culture drug would be so common, so regulated, sooooo corporate. But here we are at the end of 2017, pot will be legal in California come January and across Canada by July 1st. Riding into the middle…
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