Failing Dead Tree Media Discovers That Wine is Sold .... Online!

[AKR]

It's almost like no one there knows there paper is owned by THE online merchant overlord

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(WPT) Buying Wine Online Is Another Pandemic-era Shift That’s Poised to Stick Around
Buying Wine Online Is Another Pandemic-era Shift That’s Poised to Stick Around
2021-05-14 16:10:20.115 GMT

By Dave McIntyre

(Washington Post) -- Pandemic restrictions are beginning to ease, and we may
soon feel more comfortable returning to our favorite restaurants, wine bars,
wineries and stores. But what about all those "pivots" we made last year —
will any of those become permanent aspects of our everyday lives?

One new habit likely to stay with us: buying wine online. Some venture capital
investors sure think so.

"Covid was a great awakening," both for consumers and wineries, says Paul
Mabray, a longtime e-commerce advocate for wineries. "How often before the
pandemic did you order groceries or restaurant meals to be delivered to your
door? Or wine?" The pandemic had us turning to our phones or computers to buy
wine from wineries, from local retailers for curbside pickup, or for home
delivery through apps, such as Drizly.

The Internet's portion of winery revenue jumped to 16.2 percent in 2020, up
from 8.6 percent in 2018, says Rob McMillan, executive vice president of the
Silicon Valley Bank and a leading analyst of market trends in wine. McMillan
will release his annual report on direct-to-consumer, or DtC, sales on May 25.
Tasting room sales, traditionally the biggest portion of the DtC channel,
declined because of decreased tourism. We were staying home, after all.

"Digital sales have ramped up, and there is every reason to believe they will
continue at a high pace," McMillan wrote in an email.

Mabray is hoping to tap into that increase in e-commerce as CEO of Pix.wine, a
new digital wine sales and media content website set to launch in June. He
describes it as a "discovery platform" that will act as "the Google of wine,"
connecting consumers to wineries. Mabray dismisses as "hooey" the algorithms
sites use to suggest wines based on how bitter you like your coffee. Pix will
"watch what you click on and what you search for, to learn who you are and
what wines you like," Mabray says. Sort of like those banner ads that seem to
know your every thought.

Pix, based in Napa, Calif., with 18 employees, is funded by wineries and
retailers, as well as some professional investors, Mabray told me. It will be
going up against established wine commerce sites such as Wine.com,
Wine-Searcher.com, Winestyr and Naked Wines, all of which recorded strong
sales growth last year. Sippd, a new app with apparently more modest
ambitions, aims to point users to wines they will like on a restaurant list
and help them buy it at retail.

And then there's Vivino, the app that began as a way for wine lovers to record
and share their own tasting notes (and show off their collections), and
evolved into an online marketplace to connect retailers and wineries with
consumers. Vivino boasts more than 200 employees and 50 million "community
members" — up from 29 million in 2018 — spread over 18 countries, according to
Theis Sondergaard, Vivino's co-founder and chief product officer.

Earlier this year, Vivino secured a whopping $155 million in Swedish venture
capital, bringing its total to $221 million since its founding in 2010. The
company aims to use that funding to enhance and expand its wine recommendation
software and sales platform.

Vivino users "taste and rate a lot of wines, even the lowest shelf in the
grocery store," Sondergaard told me in a Zoom interview. "The voice of this
community is pretty spot on when compared to how the experts rate wines."
Ratings are one to five stars, and users may enter their own tasting notes.
The software mines these ratings and descriptions for keywords such as peach,
oak, fruity, earthy and mineral. The more ratings and descriptions you enter
into the app, the more it learns about you and your preferences.

"Don't call it artificial intelligence," Sondergaard implored me. "It's
machine learning." He was also okay with "data mining."

For the consumer, Vivino's best feature is its ability to scan a label or
restaurant wine list using your phone's camera. It's lightning-fast and
accurate in recognizing all but the newest or most obscure wines and makes
rating wines a cinch. When you scan a label for the first time, the app gives
you a percentage score of whether it thinks you will like the wine, based on
your own ratings and the consensus of the "community." This new Match For You
feature has tried to steer me away from a few wines I really liked, but
perhaps I haven't been using it long enough for the app to get to know me.

Online orders also helped many retailers stay in business during the past
year, when in-store shopping was limited or banned. Michael Sands, president
of Calvert Woodley, a major retailer in D.C., says many customers enjoyed the
experience.

"You can put an order online at 10 at night, then pull up to the store the
next morning and you don't even have to get out of the car," Sands explained.
Online sales and curbside pickup helped compensate for lack of foot traffic
last summer. And now, even though some customers come into the store to pick
up their orders, "curbside pickup is here to stay," Sands says.

More from Wine archives:

Chillable reds and low-alcohol pours: Winemakers try to bottle success with
younger consumers

A special wine can change your perspective forever. What was your epiphany
bottle?

Go 'green' with your wine: Choose cans or boxes, drink local and consider
farming practices