Ep. 2042 When being collective leads to uniqueness | wine2wine Business Forum 2023
Episode 2042

Ep. 2042 When being collective leads to uniqueness | wine2wine Business Forum 2023

wine2wine Business Forum 2023

August 8, 2024
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Business Forum
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Episode Summary

Content Analysis Key Themes and Main Ideas 1. Defining and Differentiating Terroir Branding: The presentation distinguishes between traditional product branding and ""terroir branding,"" emphasizing its unique characteristics tied to a specific geographical location and collective ownership. 2. The Importance of ""Coopetition"": A central theme is the necessity of cooperation among competitors (""coopetition"") for the successful development and protection of a collective terroir brand. 3. Elements of a Successful Terroir Brand: Discussion focuses on placial distinctiveness, craftsmanship specificity, and processing traditionalism as core components. 4. Challenges and Pitfalls in Terroir Branding: The analysis highlights issues like unevenness among host brands, unstable rival sets, fragmented ownership, and the impact of too many competitors on brand integrity. 5. Case Studies: Champagne vs. Italian Wine Regions: Champagne is presented as a prime example of successful collective branding, while Italian DOCs/DOCGs (e.g., Chianti, Prosecco) are used to illustrate the complexities and challenges of establishing strong collective identities. 6. Moral Obligation and Collective Efficacy: The speaker stresses that a shared sense of moral obligation and belief in collective efficacy are crucial for maintaining brand value and cohesion. Summary In this session, marketing professor Natalie Spellman delves into the concept of ""terroir branding,"" differentiating it from conventional product branding. She defines a terroir brand as a combination of a proprietary ""host brand"" and a shared ""location brand,"" rooted in verifiable and authentic resources of a specific region. Key components include unique geological conditions, specialized craftsmanship, and traditional production methods. Spellman argues that ""coopetition""—the act of competitors collaborating—is fundamental to building and sustaining a strong collective terroir brand, using Champagne as a prime example of its successful implementation through organizations like the CIVC. She outlines critical success factors such as collective efficacy and a shared moral obligation among producers, which help protect the brand's value and prevent commodification. The discussion then pivots to the Italian wine context, with moderator Robert Camuto raising challenges faced by Italian DOCs and DOCGs. These include historical issues (like the 1985 methanol crisis), the sheer number of appellations, and the struggle for producers to balance individual brand promotion with contributing to a collective regional identity. Spellman advises that uneven host brand strength, unstable competitive environments, and a lack of unified protection can undermine a terroir brand. She illustrates this with examples like Chateau Saint Michel and the split in Cava leading to Corpinat. The conversation also touches on Prosecco's dual DOC/DOCG strategy, suggesting a positive move towards nuanced terroir expression, provided consumer education keeps pace. Ultimately, Spellman underscores the vital need for early brand protection and ongoing collective effort to safeguard the unique value of a terroir. Takeaways - ""Terroir branding"" is a distinct marketing strategy focused on collective regional identity, requiring cooperation among competitors. - Authentic resources, craftsmanship, and traditional processing are foundational to a strong terroir brand. - Collective efficacy and a shared moral obligation among producers are essential for maintaining the value of a shared brand. - The Champagne region serves as a benchmark for successful terroir branding due to its robust collective management and protection. - Challenges in terroir branding include an imbalance of power among individual producers, lack of internal cohesion, and the failure to protect the brand legally and collectively. - Italian wine regions often struggle with collective branding due to historical factors and a tendency towards individualistic marketing over broader regional identity. - Early and comprehensive protection of a terroir name is crucial to prevent its commodification and loss of unique value (e.g., Cheddar). - Consumer education is vital for regions developing more nuanced terroir expressions (e.g., Prosecco DOC vs. DOCG). Notable Quotes - ""Terroir is a marketing argument. It's the ability to make what happens in a place have some sense of value for consumers."

About This Episode

The speakers discuss the importance of brand definition, seamless branding, and protected products in the luxury industry. They emphasize the need for differentiation and a brand that is authentic and verifiable, as well as the importance of protecting resources and creating a memorable story for consumers. The speakers also discuss the challenges of maintaining a unique brand and the need for morality and group norms to emerge. They emphasize the importance of marketing mix and promotional aspect, and the need for a master's level marketing class to maintain brand image. They also discuss the importance of creating a positive marketing message for Prossecco and the need for a better marriage counselor and awareness of protecting the brand's legal aspect. The speakers emphasize the importance of protecting the brand's legal aspect and creating a more nuanced expression of Prossecco.

Transcript

Who wants to be the next Italian wine Ambassador? Join an exclusive network of four hundred Italian wine ambassadors across forty eight countries. Vineetly International Academy is coming to Chicago on October nineteenth is twenty first. And Walmatikazakhstan from November sixteenth to eighteenth. Don't miss out. Register now at Vineetri dot com. Official media partner, the Italian One podcast is delighted to present a series of interviews and highlights from the twenty twenty three one to one business form, featuring Italian wine producers and bringing together some of the most influential voices in the sector to discuss the hottest top fix facing the industry today. Don't forget to tune in every Thursday at three PM, or visit the Italian wine podcast dot com for more information. Thank you for coming. Indeed, I'm gonna be talking about something that we rarely talk about explicitly, but we tend to talk about implicitly. So as Robert pointed out, why am I here, beyond the free trip to Verona. Right? So I'm a marketing professor. I'm originally from Canada. I live in Champagne, which is actually a really good place to be if you wanna learn about territorial branding and branding, not a place, but a terroir. And I'm gonna make that distinction a little bit later on in my presentation. So I'm based in Reis. It said Reis. It's really hard to say. And here we go. Okay. So the first thing is obviously about definitions. And I think the first thing we should do is talk about what is a brand? Right? And brands are usually easily identifiable because they have a name that people recognize. They have icons. Right? So the fiasco is one of the best ways that, you know, especially in the eighties, we would identify a wine that came from Keon T. It can also be in terms of rituals. Here, I've put the champagne sebring. I mean, it's a I mean, don't do that. I would say don't do it because I come from champagne, but it's really part of the ritualization just like the wine glasses are part of the ritual champagne, and it's part of the brand champagne. And then we also have icons and, you know, it can be at like critter wines, like for yellow tail, but we definitely have These are ways in which we start with branding for consumers to find us and for consumers to recognize us. Okay? The basic tenets of good branding. This is what you'll learn in, you know, my marketing class like marketing one zero one would be that your brand story has to be, you know, relevant. It has to be seamless. It needs to be more of a than just a product. It needs to be an experience. And most importantly, we tell students that it has to be differentiated and proprietary. Okay? So it has to be unique, and it needs to belong to you. And I highlighted those because I wanna get back to those because when you do territorial branding, that's not quite how it works. Okay? And that's a bit of a way that people need to wrap their head around that concept, that it needs to be something that doesn't just belong to one entity. Okay? And I'm obviously gonna pepper this presentation with champagne because other than living there and representing, Everybody in the world knows what champagne is. They might not know where it is. Right? You ask people where is champagne in France and they're like, around Paris. Like, they do this sort of thing at their hand, but they certainly know what the product is. And they certainly know that it's a very, very protected product. Okay. So nobody really messes around with champagne. And that has a lot of value. So differentiated and proprietary. And then our next term of definition is terroir. So this is a bit of the research. This is in one of my papers, but essentially terroir is a sort of magical combination. Right? It's gotta have some sort of craftsmanship You have to have, you know, something surrounding people, culture, tradition. There's an aspect of geology, which we saw yesterday at the tasting, you know, with a lot of chalk subsoils. There's geography there's, you know, below ground, there's above ground, and that sort of microclimate if you can have it and identify it. And there's also obviously a bit of marketing savvy. Right? Tahoe is a marketing argument. It's the ability to make what happens in a place have some sense of value for consumers. Some terroiras are better known than others. And I also wanna highlight that that doesn't mean that they have to be older. So we have this sort of European perspective that tawa equals old and it equals history. But that history can be very short. It can be Malboro. And they still have a sense of terroir, and a very well defined one by the way. Okay? So here's, case in point. Right? We do this really well in Champaign. We're also really good at having you know that we do this really well. So we have our, you know, unique, chalk sub soils. We have our craftsmanship that starts at the vine and even at harvest in the way that we harvest. We have the magical aspect of, you know, these ancient cellaring caves, where all these bottles take on these extra sort of magical properties. And then we have also myth. Myth is great because it adds to our storytelling and it adds to the sort of mystery of the product. Right? Great story, blind monk, invent champagne. Like, I mean, you can't make that stuff up. Right? I mean, it is so somewhat made up, but people like that story. It sells, which is why, you know, we now have dom perignon as one of the highest selling cubis. In luxury wine. And then we obviously have the ritualistic aspects. Right? And, I mean, right now, we serve champagne in flutes. We're moving towards white wine glasses before we had coops, you know, the really wide. So we we're also really good at sort of changing those rituals to get people to continually be interested in the product champagne and to find ways in which we can insert it into people's lives. But here's the thing. Let's get back to our strategy and marketing aspect They're four thousand different brands in Champagne. I'm just gonna let that sink in for you. Okay? Thirty three thousand hectares and four thousand brands. So they're all using the same brand name champagne. And this really makes us wonder from a marketing perspective, how do you differentiate yourself if you have three thousand nine hundred and ninety nine competitors? All technically using the same process, right? Like give or take, maybe, you know, months of aging and, like, you know, at what time they harvested. They're all pretty much using the same grapes. Main three, and then maybe, you know, now there's five other ones that they're allowed to use. And then from a marketing perspective as well, who owns this brand? Who owns the brand champagne? Anybody? Technically, they all own it. Right? But none of them technically own it either because they can't walk away with it. So this is anybody in finance here? I love asking finance people this question. You know, would you ever pay for a resource you could never own? And that's when finance people look at marketing people and they'll know you guys are officially crazy. Yeah? Yeah. We have the CIVC, which is the territorial brand manager, but they're not owners of it. They're managers of that brand. So, yes, growers, houses, cooperatives, they all contribute you know, royal not royalties, but you know, like dues, fees every year. But let's say they leave, which they can't in Champagne, but let's say they could. If they're not allowed to take back what they invested, So it technically doesn't belong to anybody and are investing in something that they can't walk away with, which is bizarre from a marketing perspective. Okay? How is it created? How is it maintained? This is the question some of you might be asking in the regions where you operate. And then how can it have actual value for individual brands if it is collective? Right? Most importantly, what you wanna try to avoid is kind of, you know, being different, but all in the same way. I mean, if you walk into a champagne store, this is essentially what you see. Right? Champains that all kinda look the same or made the same way, but are slightly different. And differentiation is a big, big issue when it comes to territorial I love this picture, by the way, not just because I like cats. Okay? So let's define what a Tellaubrin. So this is, a really brand new paper that's just been published. If any of you want a copy of it, you can email me. But my co authors and I defined what a terroir brand is. And essentially, it must have two components. You have to have the host brand, so I put here a chemist, and you have the location brand. And one of them is proprietary, and the other one is shared. And you know that you have a Tabwa brand, because that is the question we were talking about, right? Is when you have resources in a place that are verifiable and authentic. Okay? So it can't just be like I've invented something. No. Something tangible needs to exist in that place that can have value that can be created into something that has value for the firms. But it needs to be perceived not just as a singular brand, but as a two tiered brand. Okay. So the location which is shared and the host brand, which is a proprietary brand. And what it is and what it's not, this is important. A terroir brand is at a regional level. Okay. It's not at a country level. It's not, you know, air italia. It's not, because that would be country of origin and marketing. It's not at a city level either. I've put here the logo for that's a place branding. It's different from Telwa branding. Telwa branding is about a product and or a service. Okay. You can have a service in terms of craftsmanship as a form of a service. And it has to have value outside of the place where it's made. Whereas, a place brand typically only has value in the place where you are. So when you go to New York City, that's a place brand, and it only has value when you're in New York City, when you can really experience it. Okay? So how do you know if you have a Teoa brand? Well, the first thing is figure out if you've got some sort of placial distinctiveness is what we called it. So do you have specific geological or geographical conditions that are somewhat unique? And I mean, we could argue they are wherever they are in the world, unique because there's never the same climate. I mean, in Champagne, across, you know, the channel, we have English sparkling. It's, I mean, it's legitimately the same soil. It's not that far away, but it is absolutely not the same climate. So there is a uniqueness to be found there, obviously. Do you have what we call craftsmanship specificity? So the ability and the knowledge of how to best extract that value. Yesterday, we had a master class about Valpolicella. And so making Amaroni was under standing that you had something unique in a place, but making the best of that climate to maximize the conditions to create a new style. That is craftsmanship specificity. And then processing traditionalism. So usually when you have a terroir brand, you're making something by hand. At one point, there's some sort of communication and communion between the product and a person. A person needs to reveal that product and its value. Which makes it distinct from something that would be manufactured, and therefore, excuse me, have less value for consumers. Because that's your end goal, right, is to have value for consumers. Two considerations, and I had this conversation right before, You have to have multiple owners. This doesn't work if you have a monopoly. And, obviously, somebody's gonna ask me, give me an example. There's only one brand that owns Evillon, sparkling, what's not even sparkling, but spring water, and that's denim. So there's no point for them to tell Wabrun, which is why they don't, by the way. If you needed another example, you I don't know if you've ever heard of the ugly fruit. It's a citrus fruit that comes from Jamaica. There's only one producer. There's no reason for them even to talk about where they come from because they're just marketing the ugliness of their citrus fruit. Okay. So for Tewa branding, you must have multiple owners, and specifically, the resource cannot be transferred somewhere else. It's because it happens and it's sourced in that place. It's not the same thing as if you only have a form of craftsmanship. So, for example, French fashion design. You can take the designer and take them out of Paris and put them in Montreal, and he will make the same sort of fashions. You would argue maybe maybe not in terms of supply, but, you know, his talent can be moved from one place to the other. It's not place dependent. So Certain nuances. K. And this is yesterday, if you were at the dinner, you saw coopetition. I was one of the three people to raise my hand. Yes. I know what that concept is. K. You have to have some form of ownership rights. Okay? And the location brand must be in the public domain. So that means that there has to be the act of cooperating with your competitors, which is a hard thing to sort of wrap our heads around because a lot of people see it as collusion. Well, if you're working with your competitors to make something happen in the marketplace, are you sort of, you know, doing something that's not very ethical? It would be if you were setting prices, that would be compromising a free market. But when you're doing it from a marketing perspective, which is to build a brand or to establish value for your resources, it's called coopetition. And we can do it, you know, horizontally, which is between a whole bunch of actors, We can also do it vertically, which is across different industries that benefit each other in order, for example, Verantena, to talk about wine, and then to talk about olive oil because it comes from the same place. And together, we have an overview of a quality appalachian and equality, terroir. Okay? So by default to terroir is necessarily collective. It's embedded in a place, and it requires co competitive stances. This is what makes successful Debwa brands. If you think of any brand that you know from around the world, they have most certainly cooperated together, and the message is coherent. It's not just omnichannel between social media, and their website, and their billboards, and their advertising, it's coherent between all of the producers in that specific region. So, obviously, You have to have some nuances of protection here. Okay. There has to be a sense that the resources are finite. So, Jess and I were talking about this on the bus on the way. How many bottles of champagne are produced every year? How many do you think? I mean, just don't answer because you know. How much? Three hundred and twenty five million bottles of champagne are produced every year. Nonetheless, we all believe that it is a rare product. Okay? And we do that because, yes, there is a finite space in which champagne can be made. And there is a lot of time that's required to make champagne, and it gives that impression that it's rare, but it's actually a finite product. Okay? If we could make, and I will get back to this, Kava had this problem, which led to the creation of Copinat. But when you start being able to make products everywhere, it loses that finite aspect. Then it also needs to be protected. So protected not just legally, but also protected from a sustainability perspective. Because you're sourcing something that is geological and geographical. If you overmine it, for example, because we can talk about carrara marble. That would be a non wine and food example. Tenzanite would be another example. It's rarer than diamonds sourced only at the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro. There's a point where there's not gonna be any of that left. And so protecting it, sourcing it appropriately is very, very much, important. And then this is, for me, the most critical aspect, is that moralities need to emerge. So coopetition is a great concept, but then it actually has to be put into place. And what makes people want to compete is that sense that together, we are stronger, but this sense of obligation towards others. So that's where, you know, in consumer psychology, we talk about moralities that emerge. And that the sort of group norms become more important than the individual desires. And so the idea of wanting to make sure that you're doing the right thing for everybody else in the industry is critical. And I'm gonna give you an example where a few people forgot about that, and it had catastrophic consequences for the industry. Austria nineteen eighty three, I don't know if any of you were around then, or, you know, cognizant of it. But here's where the moralities were not respected. Couple produce I mean, we're talking about three, four producers who put a bit of diethylene glycol, which is, you know, the stuff when you wanna clean your windshield in the car because their wines just weren't sweet enough. Three, four producers tanked the entire white and general Austrian wine industry for fifteen years. I gave you the numbers here. It went from forty five million liters to four point four million liters. And, I don't know if you were around for this, but the Austrian wine industry rebranded itself in consequence more towards red wines and then towards their white wines. So it actually didn't take them fifteen years. It took them much, much longer to be able to come back to the market with riesling and Grooner, and especially sweeter styles of their white wines, and in order to gain that consumer confidence. So how do we make this work? In terms of key success factors, There has to be this sense. This is a sense of collective efficacy. You have to feel that your own initiatives as a brand are just as beneficial as the group initiative. So let me give you the example of Champagne again. We have this CIVC, which is the consortium, the equivalent. And what's really interesting is that there's a representative from the houses, from the cooperatives, and from the growers. And together, they make all the decisions. So they might not like each other all the time, and you have some growers who don't like the CIVC because it's very restrictive. And it means they can't do this and they can't do that. But the CIVC launches seven hundred court cases per year. To protect the appalachian. If you find some random bug in your vines and you have no idea what to do about it, you can call the CIBC and they will be there within the day. So there's this sense of, you know what? Like a love sort of sometimes hate relationship, but the love aspect is much more important. And the returns of being part of that collective actually end up outweighing those individual sort of needs or those wishes that might actually in the long term not be beneficial overall for the appalachian. So this is where we talk about optimal trade offs. There has to be the sense of collective efficacy, and that leads to a sense of moral obligation, and it tends to, without having to enforce anything more formal, it keeps the group cohesive, and it maintains the brand value. So here's a classic example of how the Napa Vintners are doing this. They, together, decided after the wildfires to collect two point one million dollars to help each other out. And this is direct from their website. We want to continue to make the Napa Valley name mean something, so we are both on the offense and the defense, and we have a stellar group of colleagues and Vitner leaders. So there's nothing in this discourse that says, you know, it's me versus my competitors. It's, you know, what? If he's doing well and he's doing well, then we're all gonna be doing well, and there's benefits to that that outweigh the individualistic, you know, desires. Here's another example from my home country. How many of you know that Nova Scotia makes wine? Yeah. Okay. So I'm sure you're like, I don't even know where Nova Scotia is. Let me show you. Nova Scotia, if you can't see it, is right here. Okay? This is Quebec. This is Ontario. So this is the Niagara region. So it took them a year and a half to get together and create a new appolation, which is called Title Bay. Twenty two producers said, you know what? We have hybrids that have been planted here. Let's do something with that while we may our sparkling wines, our traditional method sparkling wines that need ten years of aging in order to temper the acidity. It took them a year and a half, and now it's one of the top selling wines in Canada in the summer, and they've completely marketed themselves as the sort of alternative to, you know, sweeter styles of reason like and cabinet, and capitalized also on the title. They have the biggest tides in the world and some of the best lobster in the world. And so they've positioned themselves as the ultimate seafood wine, which is genius. Okay. And in a year and a half, because collectively, those twenty two winemakers in a teeny tiny province that nobody knows about, had so many gains together and very, you know, almost nothing to lose from working together, but everything to lose from being individual. So are there challenges? Are there things that you should look out for if you decide to, you know, formalize some form of a, taro sorry, Tahua or territorial brand? Yes. The first thing is make sure that you have some sense of evenness between your host brands. So remember, the host brands are the proprietary brands, and I will give you an example of where that didn't happen. There has to be a sense that everybody is contributing approximately in the same way with the resources that they have. Give you another example. Clearly, the big houses in Champagne have a lot more marketing power. Also because a lot of them are driven by much bigger groups like LVMH, but the growers own the land. And so there's this balance where everybody needs each other and, you know, everybody gives in the capacity that they have. Also watch out for an unstable rival set. After a while when you work with your competitors, you know what space they occupy in the market, and there's a mutual respect that takes place where you know that this person they operate more, and I'll say, you know, more in the Blonde de Blonde. We do more Blonde de noir, and we're okay with that. You know, we're gonna operate more and like, cote de Blonde. We're gonna do more mountain de France and like, hey, how's it going? You know, we nobody steps on each other's toes. When you don't have a stable rival set, this is where people start sort of thinking, maybe I should be making, you know, more of these individualistic initiatives. If you have differences in locational ownership, If you have brands that show up and just buy the resource or rent the resource, that's completely different. When you buy the resource, you, like, actually operate in the land, which is different when you buy, sorry, when you rent, which is, you know, if I have contracts with growers for example, I can stop those contracts and decide to take a contract to somebody else, and that doesn't really create a sense of collectiveness. And finally, if there's too many competitors, other, I mean, You would say, well, there's too many brands in Champagne. Maybe, but that's the sort of critical level where everybody seems to have their own space. So it's working. I'll give you an example where there are too many brands. So, uneven host brand strength just recently came out a couple months ago, Chateau Saint Michel, right, in the state of Washington. They represent fifty percent of the state's production, and this year decided to cut forty percent of their contracts. Not only does this have huge implications for the industry as a whole, but this is a classic example where one brand has far too much strength in the marketplace. So this is the fragility of a towel brand if you have almost too few main players. And no balancing sort of compromise where, you know, those let's say growers would have been able to negotiate with Chateau Saint Michel. My other example is obviously Kava. So too many brands, too many regions, too many variations in the process. So an undefined sort of sense of terroir. Led to an exiting of pinnitus only organic producers who wanted to hand harvest and also age their wines much longer. And they created another appalachian Corpina, which is gonna lead us, I think, to our question after. But this is a classic example of, you know, too many competitors and a lack of definition. K? So my final takeaways in this sort of, I mean, I know it's an intense session at ten in the morning, you know, this sort of, master's level marketing class. But essentially Tewall branding for me is a very, very valuable differentiating strategy. And it is differentiating from a collective perspective rather than a proprietary one. But there are gains, obviously. And there's two parallel branding strategies that together if you can master both of those lead to higher returns for your overall brand. And for me, the most obvious resource to protect. So, you know, obviously sustainability of your your geology of your geography of making sure that, you know, your resource can be renewed over time is important, but the aspect of having moral engagement and protecting that aspect of the collaborative between brands is almost the most important and valuable resource. You never hear of champagne producers that go awry. It doesn't matter in what's if you've ever been to Champagne or if you ever speak to Champagne producer, they all have exactly the same discourse, and they have always collectively protected the brand. And that is the strength of champagne, which people try to replicate, but they can't because that moral aspect, that moral understanding of the value is so strong in the region. That's my email. If you wanna send me an email, be with pleasure. I have to put that slide up, but it's not just, you know, look at me. And then obviously I'm open for questions. Thank you very much, Natalie. That was some really interesting information and a good overview. I wanted to mention a couple of things if we can bring it to Italy, in some ways. And first of all, I wanted to say, the, in nineteen eighty five, of course, Italy had the terrible methanol crisis that basically destroyed the image of the Italian wine industry, but did foster what we now consider the Italian wine Renaissance. Italy, I think has Italy has more appalachians, more docks than any other country in the world. So there have been efforts at this appalachian, but I think that Italy would fall into when you talked about the problems, more into the problem category, in the sense that maybe most people would say that Italy, Italian docs need a good marriage counselor and maybe the army, to come in. But a couple of examples that you might address would be, I think, that in some ways, some of these, Italian appalachians that were very popular, some thirty, forty years ago, Chianti Swave followed a beaujolais model, in which they had an incredible success fed by large producers, cooperatives, etcetera, etcetera, that diminish the brand, leaving people today to decide, well, what do I invest in me or the group, and my brand is associated with quality. The group might be associated with two dollar wines on the bottom shelf of the supermarket. So How do you climb out of that hole, so to speak? Well, to climb out of it, all the examples that you cited tend to have one, and I'm, here's the teacher in me, right? Let's go back to these challenges. These are all appalachians that have had this sort of unevenness of one main host brand. You spoke about who decided to take and then export it. And it I mean, he created technically a new ritual but then overtook the entire market. And by the way, is now trying to launch a new one, which is called, so it's like a darker rose, and he's trying to, you know, take that to market as well. And the issue here is that there's been too much of a focus on the individual brand and not enough on the collective, which is what we saw yesterday at Valentena, is that all the discourse, if you still have your little booklet from yesterday, Read carefully clearly says we work together and every time we make a decision, we work together. So there's there has to be this willingness and this understanding that there are bigger gains, but that takes the sort of mental gymnastics because it's contrary to all the sort of business lessons that we've been taught. It's required, and, you know, to get to your point also of, like, you know, at what point Do you have too many docs? We have the same problem in France. We have, you know, in the long doc, Corbier, in Fiteau that have stepped out of the appylation of the long doc because they feel like the collective isn't doing enough for them individually. So as soon as that starts to happen, there needs to be this sort of, let's slow down, let's have a talk, and let's try to fix those issues, knowing that everybody has to be able to give a little bit of themselves. To that overarching brand because it does feed the brands below it at one point. You know, every producer that gets to make champagne and champagne puts champagne on their bottle. So they're technically benefiting from the work that everybody else is doing. And that that power, overall, if everybody starts to wrap their head around that, it it actually means less work if everybody's doing it correctly. And I think that's a good point because if you take it down, I was thinking of this this morning, if you take it down to the consumer level, you know, the holidays are coming up, and, you know, the average consumer, not wine nerds, is thinking, well, what wine should I have for, you know, this holiday or that holiday? And I don't think they think in terms of the individual brands. It's like, okay, well, I'm serving meat should I go with the Bordeaux, or Bruno, or and so I think the mind starts with the collective brand, then they go into the store, and that's an opening for their further education on who are the producers and what are the different styles within them. And so I wanted to ask you following up on that. Another problem I see in Italy is you have areas that might be able to use different labels on their wine. So you you have, for example, well, am I going to make this a Kianti, or am I going to use the Tuscan label? In Sicily, am I going to make this a doc Alamo or Monreale? Or am I going to use the Cecilia Brown with the that might be more recognizable in the ultimate consumer's mind? Okay. So Two things. The first is it depends on your consumers. You're right. So the average consumer, I tell my students this all the time, in French supermarkets, nine hundred references in the supermarket, and they make their decision in less than ninety seconds. So I agree that there has to be this sort of, okay, first, champagne. Okay. I know champagne champagne is good quality. And then I'll pick whatever brand I might recognize or my parents had or, you know, I've been told about. And then as consumers become more knowledgeable, they start to focus on the smaller details. Now, to get to your question about should you do, you know, the sicily brand or the individual, you know, micro docs, I think, again, it depends on your customer, and it depends on where you're selling your product, and it depends on your price point. And the territorial brand and the terroir brand has to be one aspect of your marketing mix, your promotional aspect. But then deciding, you know, how micro you're gonna go will depend on if your customer will actually value that or not. And here's a perfect example. Champagne is very, very rarely sold based on the subappellation. Despite the fact we know that La Cud de Blonde might be able to get more value because it's, you know, Blonde de Blonde. It's very rarely it will be written champagne and then, you know, as the style will be Blonde de Blonde, but it won't say Cud de blanc. It's very rare. And so it's actually a choice that collectively needs to be made. That doesn't necessarily mean that the producer can't put extra details on their wine bottle, but it might just be that the power is bigger on a more mezzo appellation than it is on a micro appalachian. Yeah. Well, like, for, for example, you have Grower Champagne and the whole movement started by Jacques Salos, where people who are really into that seek out different specific terroir. But he doesn't he okay. So that's the parcel aspect, which is very new. But, you know, the grower champagne is not necessarily it's not a category on a bottle. So a customer doesn't go to supermarket and say, like, house champagnes and grower champagnes, they still know the brands. And most importantly is because we're talking about terroir, they're not even onsen doesn't put on his bottles like He just puts champagne. Yeah. And they're oh, I just wanted to ask one more can you relate that to Perseco? Because, there we're talking about the most sold sparkling wine the appalachian starts about, a twenty minute drive from here, covers four enormous areas. And you have Prosecco doc, and then you have the Prosecco DOJ g, which in some ways is more associated with hills, with quality, and blah, blah, blah. So you've got this kind of double strategy, confusion going on. And do you see pitfalls ahead for it? And Well, I see I see it as a positive that we're starting to get in this more nuanced expression of prossecco. So we're moving away from, you know, I'm I'm gonna say it. The there was a period where prossecco was, you know, the less expensive alternative to Champagne, the sort of weekday sparkler. And now people are understanding that there's much more to that product. And that comes from, okay, I'm gonna say if I just wanna have a regular weekday one, I might say prosecco. And then, hey, I want something a little bit more elaborate, a bit more complex. I'm gonna take a DOCG. And then on a really special occasion, I'm gonna understand that Cortites is really, you know, like the wine of the occasion, and it's a connoisseur wine. So in my opinion, I think they're going towards the road of the tawao brand. That makes sense for me. They just need to make sure that there's a large educational aspect for consumers to understand and to follow them. And the biggest mistake is also the more micro you get, don't expect to have the same size of market. So, you know, the more micro you get, you probably have more finite resources, so you have smaller supply. And so you don't wanna be marketing yourself as if you are available on every supermarket when you're not. So it's, again, part of your marketing mix. Yeah. I mean, personally, I think, prossecco's strength is that it's cheap and restaurants in New York can sell it for fifteen or twenty a glass and pay for the whole case with one glass. But, anyway, I I think some producers would disagree because the amount of work that they're putting in should be valued as such. And that's where Persecco for me is moving. They're trying to make sure that people understand how it's made, the difficulty, the slopes, you know, the the nuances of the glarea and how that's like a specific grape variety. I think all of that is a space in which you're, or, you know, when we get back to how do you have those, how do you identify it? There's a notion of craftsmanship and processing traditionalism that's starting to be evoked in prossecco, which for me is is the right way to go. And do you think it's good the way that they've protected the brand that's been an area of controversy? Like with Australian prossecco? And Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, yes. It should be Australian and Clara, and it should be prossecco and prossecco. And I can give you examples, you know, there's in France, you have Emontal cheese, but that's a Swiss cheese, and they shouldn't be using that name because it comes from Emontal in Swiss one. So, yeah, and and that is something I didn't bring up and all. I think we should open up the floor after, but if you do have a Delwa brand, I highly, highly encourage you to protect it right away. And protection means just having a collective saying, you know, we put a stamp on this because That is protected by the Trips agreement, and it's a trademark, even if it's not registered somewhere specific as soon as you start using it, it is protected. And a classic example is you don't wanna become a commodity so that anything I mean, champagne has to be careful where you say, oh, it's sparkling. It's champagne. No. No. No. It must come from champagne to be called champagne. Kind of like, you know, rather than saying, can I have a tissue, you say, can I have a kleenex? That's commodification of your brand. The second issue is making sure that you have identified it before it becomes two mainstream. So when you say in North America Cheddar, people think Wisconsin, and they think this sort of big orange block. Right? That you can slice and put into scent. Well, no. Cheddar actually comes from the UK, but they were too slow to actually register it as a PTO. It was only in nineteen ninety six. And then they had to do it as West County Farmhouse Cheddar. I mean, nobody's gonna go in a store and ask specifically for that. So it's almost they've lost fifty percent of their value potential by not protecting it soon enough. Yeah. Like pizza. I mean, parmachana. Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. Any more dire question? That's good. Okay. So it's ten forty five. We're gonna I'm here all day. Close it up. Let's give it up for a Robert Camuto moderator and Natula Spellman. Listen to the Italian wine podcast wherever you get your podcasts. 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