Ep. 457 wine2wine Session Recordings | Benefits of a Diverse Wine Industry

Italian wine podcast. Chinchin with Italian wine people. Italian wine podcast as wine to wine twenty twenty media partner is proud to present a series of sessions chosen to highlight key themes and ideas and recorded during the two day event held on November twenty third and twenty fourth twenty twenty. One to wine twenty twenty represented the first ever fully digital edition of the business to business forum. Visit wine to wine dot net, and make sure to attend future editions of wine to wine business forum. Welcome, everybody. Thank you for, tuning in to this important and complex discussion, titled the benefits of a more diverse wine industry. I'm joined today by Max Janzhou, a Semilia and wine importer and wine educator based in the UK. And we're gonna be talking through, some of the, some of the issues, I think, and some of the perspectives that might characterize this discussion. Max, welcome. Hello? Good morning or afternoon. As the case might be, how I I'm very good. Thank you. Are you well? Very well. Thank you. Really, I've reported it. Excellent. Okay. Well, let's dive in as as we as we know, it's it's entitled diversity. But we we we take on this conversation at an interesting time. Don't we? Obviously, we know the we know the issues of of COVID and and we know that this is a an extremely challenging time for the wine industry. But this is also an opportunity for us to perhaps, take stock of things and look at the kind of industry we we've got, and we we we may well end up with shortly Yeah. And soon. Because after all things things were creaking, weren't they? Things things are not rosy. The way, I mean, twenty twenty, every every industry, not just the wine industry will will agree that it has been unprecedented the challenges we have faced. You know, the e economies have been stretch to their limits, but you're absolutely right, Paul. In that, before this, before twenty twenty, the signs that would the writings were on the wall, you know, historically, the producing regions of using countries like France, Spain, and certainly Italy had suffered sales domestically. You know, the per capita consumption was what's going down in this country. However, we could take solace in the fact that export sales looked relatively strong. You know, the US with its four hundred million population tend to absorb a lot of the wines that we had. The UK also sixty to seventy million pop population. Again, another strong export market So although producing countries were struggling domestically, they could always take comfort in the fact that exporting wines were strong. But twenty twenty is one of those I say one of those years. It was the first time it's certainly in my la in the last ten years of being in the industry where we've seen declining sales figures almost across the board, both import bought on a domestic scale and on the export scale. So it presents us a unique set of challenge. And like you said, it's it's an opportunity to sit down and take stock of, right, how did we get to this position and how can we ensure that we never because with the the pandemic came, challenges were traveling, and the wine industry is one of those industries, which, as you know, relies quite heavily on traveling, either that might be buyers going to countries of origin to source products, or producers going into new markets for trade shows. So how many trade shows do we know we're we're cancelled this year? You know, Vin Italy and and Bordeaux, London wine fair. These are huge events which the industry heavily relies on to stimulate business, and we just couldn't do any of that. And the companies which survived or dare I say thrived in in in twenty twenty, are those companies which have diverse route to markets. So in the past, for example, the holy grail for wineries would have been selling your wine direct to consumers or selling them to restaurants where you could make a higher margin, and you could have you could decide where who bought your wine in essence. Now those who if you had that kind of business module and your business would say eighty percent to restaurants, you would have felt the full brunt of the pandemic of the lockdowns. On the flip side, the guys who have got more diverse, portfolioing to restaurants, but also selling to retail, also selling on the fine wine exchange, they would have done slightly better. So the the argument which you are or the point I'm trying to make is there is a real sterling value to having a more diverse portfolio to have of of having different routes to market. Now if that this year has taught us that, then we can now apply that to different parts of our business. And hopefully that's what we're gonna be chatting about. It's gonna half an hour or so. Yeah. Absolutely. So we're really coming at this from the position that one is losing market share. It's losing out to the spirits industry, to the beer industry. And the general feeling is that perhaps a younger generation of wine drinkers and, lots of other, you know, groups and demographics who we wouldn't say are traditionally big wine drinkers, or if They are big drinkers. They certainly don't get, spoken to, in terms of the traditional marketing by the wine industry. We're really saying that the the business is is is missing out, isn't it? And and actually that, we've we've gotta really think about what the old image of the wine industry has been like and ask, do we do we want that going forward? You know? I I mean, the fig the figures don't lie, do they? I mean, Oh, wonderful. Yeah. I think I think. Thank you. I think, going forward, what the wine industry has done in the past, quite sadly, is Chase trends, is Chase the next hot thing you know, you go back to twenty eleven, twenty twelve. There was the muscato boom in the States, and everyone kind of jumped on that bandwagon. We were producing grafting, you know, chopping off chardonnay and chopping off other group writers and grafting on most muscato grip writers to deal with that trend. And how long did that last was a year, two years tops, and then post that came the premium rosé trend. And everyone, we all flocked to the markets with, you know, the our biggest richest and heaviest, roses, and those la that lasted another kind of year, two years. And if you think about us as an industry, we're not built to be reactive. If you follow the supply chain backwards, it takes from playing a vineyard to harvesting. It takes four to seven years. So we don't have that reactivity built into our so into our supply chain. And so we therefore can't afford to use temporary solutions for permanent problems. Mhmm. And that's what I see trend chasing as. You're trying to, you know, latch on to the next big thing. Uh-huh. And so So we must and we make no mistake, Paul. I think the wine are the least. No. Go on. Yeah. I I think rather than chasing trends, actually, you know, trying to extract sales, in in, you know, from from those kind of, you know, temporary movements, the wine industry would be a lot better off, actually analyzing the different demographics, that are potentially available as as as customers, which it feels like it traditionally doesn't. And perhaps that is the point at which we could ask ourselves what diversity means. You know, it's it's it's a it's a a loaded term and it's complex. It's a complex term. It is. It is. And I think sometimes when the term diversity is thrown about, quite sadly, we feel threatened somewhat or we feel uncomfortable with that conversation. And I think you you you hit the hammer on the nail by saying we really need to look at our customer data. The wine industry has struggled to do that historically. You know, and this is something the internet has been around for thirty plus years, and companies like Amazon have been doing this for twenty plus years, you know, looking at their customer data, who's buying our wine, what is their age demographic, whether they come from What's the average bottle price? Where am I selling my wine to who? And sometimes, and you probably know this better than anyone else. We are inundated with or we are, you know, kind of covered with request for people, you know, they send us samples, you know, send us price lists, and we're great. Prices is great. And the first thing which you do, being not being able to travel is to jump on their website, right, to look at who they are and what they do. And some of these websites looked like they were designed, you know, in the nineties. And so we've actually we've struggled to make our websites kind of SEO optimized to make them look slick and smart because that's what the young people are looking for. They want to be able to identify, you know, the wine industry is only just jumping on to social media interaction and so on. So it's a little bit of a shame. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Just two seconds. We've got, is it perhaps a delivery of samples? Okay. So we will Okay. So let's welcome back. Let us Sorry. Let let us chat about perhaps the discrimination that a company's diversity. I mean, the the wine industry has long been talking about increasing diversity, the benefits of diversity. And, yeah, it seems like here, you know, here we are still having this conversation because at the end of the day, nothing's changed, really. And so, what, you know, why do you think that is? Do you think this is an industry loaded with discrimination. I think for a long time, we were comfortable with the way things wear. You know, we were producing wine and we could thought we could sell them and things were rosy. So when when you aren't kind of pushed against the wall, there is no incentive to change anything. But twenty twenty has been sentenced us as much as we can be to take a long hard look at ourselves. The question which I'll ask you or the point which I'll make is, reals and industry can no longer literally ignore that things carry. We are losing market share to beers, to spirits, take, for example, heart seltzer. Ten years ago, that category did not exist. The first bottle of heart seltzer was made in twenty thirteen. Ten years ago, nobody knew what that was. It just didn't exist. However, looking at the data in the US alone, they sold one point five billion just in the retail sector. And so if they're drinking hard seltzers, they're not drinking wine. And literally, what is hard seltzer It's sparkling wine, low alcohol, and flavor. It's easy to make, short turnaround, it's ingredient labeled. So these are what we're up against. It can be produced in a matter of weeks as opposed to the wine industry where the great grower has to battle through the elements and wait six to nine months. Sometimes if you're making a wine that needs oak, you are looking at the wine sitting in Barrow for two, three years. These are the challenges. These are people who will be up against. We're up against the spirits category who can you can have spirits on their own. You can have them as cocktail mixes. They've got so many different USPs, and they seem so much more switched on than we are. If you, anyone jumps out to YouTube and you you Google book cardi Advert or Jamson advert. Don't look at it from a from a point of view of an advert. Look at it from a marketing point of view. The advert has y'all has will have young people in it. It will have female representation. And will have other ethnic minority representation. And so it is easier for someone to see themselves in that product. Compare that to the classic wine advert. You'll have a a shot of the vineyards and possibly the winemaker's, you know, swirling the glass and tasting the glass and a few words about the wine. That's been a kind of go to advert. Now, more often than not, this winemaker is a middle class or middle age white gentleman, which there's absolutely nothing wrong with. But then how does how does seventeen or an eighteen nineteen twenty one year old black or ethnic or Asian person identify with that product? That's the challenge. So we really need to look at it from a top grip top down approach. Mhmm. We can't afford to let things lie anymore because we are quite frankly bleeding market share. Yeah. I I agree with you completely. I think that, as you as you've pointed out, the the traditional delivery of of wine marketing of wine education, of of wine culture is one that is based around, privilege, you know, of course, wine is an aspirational product once you start to say that that vineyard is better than than this vineyard, and therefore the price is higher. You know, you you are into that world of of pri privilege. And, you know, you almost have this licious circle of of elite of of elitism. But you're absolutely right. Young people are not looking at that and aspiring to be involved with that product category. The the point which I'll make as well is we we we do tend to I feel like when we say wine is an a luxury good, my kind of comeback to that is so is spirits You know, spirits are they're they're they're generally more expensive, and you've got entry level mid tier and super premium spirits. So what are they doing that we are not doing? Mhmm. So I think it's we we for a very long time, Listen, if if you create this idea of elitism and exclusivity, that only works when demand out stream supply. Yep. Okay. That that that module would only work if you've got more drinkers than you have wine to sell. But for a long time, the industry has not been in that position, and I don't think the industry will ever be in that position. So we can't afford to, you know, exclude the huge untapped markets out there that we've I don't know if it's consciously or subconsciously alienated ourselves from. But then, you know, every time we have meetings, you know, board meetings, we sit down and we talk about sales and suffering and You know, we we are losing numbers and we're still not quite where they need to be. Yes. That's a problem, but we've got these rich markets that we haven't tapped into. So what we should be challenging ourselves is about saying how can we make our product appeal to these other markets? And it's important. It isn't it's it isn't a conversation about we just create opportunities for the sake of creating opportunities. I think the industry needs to look at the entire supply chain and working backwards. And I'll I'll tell you what I mean by that. If you go back into, you you start from a from a vineyard point of view. Many wineries offer internships or or when wineries offer opportunity to go work a harvest, And he look at the demographic of what that harvest looks like, more often than not, it's a white man going to do that harvest. Now if you if you included someone who's who didn't look like that, You have bought yourself or you have got yourself a brand ambassador for life because it's such a unique opportunity for someone who looks like me, sounds like me, to work a vintage. What what happens after that vintage is they go back to their country of origin, and all they talk about for the next god knows how long, is how amazing that that that experience was. Mhmm. That's free marketing. And do you think that those people are not having the opportunities, or do you feel that they are I mean, do you feel that they are being not chosen, or do you think they're not even interested to apply for these opportunities in the first place. I don't even think they are they are aware that the opportunities are out there because here's here's an opportunity. Here's a here's a a kind of a endorsed box. The wine industry, we've turned to do things traditionally. In fact, we we love the word traditional so much that we stick it into a category of wine. Right? We've we've we've been so obsessed with this idea of things have done in a traditional and a historic way. Great. I think from a production point of view, that works, and it should stay there because once you start thinking about marketing and selling, you must be modern to evolve. You can't continue to sell the same product the same way to the same people and expect different change to and expect different results. So we need to think about how we advertise these positions. For example, in the UK, in the UK, if you've got a wine job, you're gonna see them in two places. Either you see them in drinks business or you'll see them on the WSD jobs board. Now, the average person of origin doesn't label that these two websites exist. So you must think of how how do I reach that new audience? How do I make them aware? So working with, you know, there are several but there's several charities out there or several bodies out there who are targeting kind of bame or black another ethnic man. Those are the people which Wyner is need to be working with and saying I've got an opportunity for X I want to make sure that out of the ten people that I have working my vin my vintage, I wanna include one person of color. Mhmm. Okay. Let's let's play for a bit. There's a there's a marketer called in many people. Probably a narrative. He he kind of summarizes all of his work, by by essentially saying that people buy from people like, myself, you know, like, I buy from people I can relate to, and other people buy from people that they can relate to. Right? And so the the kind of crocs of his message is that you should identify the the the customer that you that you are really trying to appeal to, and you should talk to them. Trying to talk to everybody, you know, often is a is a recipe for disaster. You end up not really appealing to anybody. And so are we saying that it's not just about increasing diversity across sales forces, which is obviously important, but it's also about increasing diversity at the production end of the trade. You know, we need more people, creating brands that speak to, to to different audiences, if you like. Completely agree with you, Paul. I think wine from I I go back. My my approach to this, you can probably, agree pick it up from now. It's looking at the entire supply chain. There are several factors of winemaking, which have nothing to do with wine. Like packaging and labeling and branding and the the material that you use, you could use those as selling tools. You know, if we put the same liquid in the same bottle with the same packaging, we're gonna be appealing to the same parts So the the point which he made is, you know, we can do market tests, you know, create different versions of a label and say, okay, amongst this demographic, which of these labels appeal the best to you, amongst this demographic, which of the labels best appeal to you. So, absolutely, we need to go back to drawing board. And the point that you made about people buying from people that look like them. Listen, you know, if if I can't see myself in a product, am less likely to buy that product no matter how good it might be. So it's about finding, clever, and smart ways of being able to, and people to various markets. And like I said, it's it goes beyond you know, Salesforce, go back to the to the to the winery, to the vineyard, you know, what are the the kind of do you have when you have your vintages, do you have rep different representation in there, you know, in your marketing team in your sales team in your promotions, in your adverts. I mean, I really encourage everyone listening to jump on YouTube and just have a look at the bacardi advert and have a look at the James and advert, and you'll get exactly what I mean. Mhmm. I think we have, a few minutes left. So I will just open up the floor to see if there's any questions. But while we while we see a fee, come in. Do you wanna do you wanna tell us about your experience, starting out in the in the UK trade? You know, have have you felt a pressure to conform, in order to navigate your way, through your career or or Yeah. I mean, I mean, Yeah. I think I would be, I'd be kind of short sighted if I said it's been rosy. And that's one of the the reasons why I'm very passionate about work and diversity. It's to make it easier because listen, Sometimes when you make when you mention the word diversity, people think about creating opportunities for the sake of opportunities, or people think about charity. Diversity is not charity. It's more about empathy. It's about saying for so long the industry has been has looked like this. So how do we make, how do we make it easier for someone who doesn't look like this to integrate into the industry? So everything from opening up doors, which might previously not have been there. Or considering other things which you might not have thought of. And yes, you know, I've had where I I was working at working as a specialist, a qualified wine specialist for a retailer, and I'll have people come in and want to talk to my colleagues instead of myself, even though most of my colleagues were working under my guidance because, you know, the wine industry or the wine department was not really seen as. It's not something which you link a black person to. And is this these subconscious biases and this boundaries which we are trying to break down by getting more people involved and getting more opportunities out there. And that's what they are. It's about creating opportunities. It's not about, you know, giving away stuff for the sake of giving away stuff. Mhmm. Absolutely. I think, one of the one of the things that you mentioned in our previous discussions, which which really, kind of hit home the the the gulf, if you like, in reality versus what the the wine industry generally seems to communicate, was that if you go into any city, you have a a walk around any city on the planet, you go into the bars, you go into the restaurants, You have a look who's out drinking, you know, wine or not. But the scene that you will see does not look like anything portrayed, and delivered in in in wine communications. And so, you know, the the industry, may not feel it is a a pressing need today. You know, amongst the the crisis that we've we've got. But at the end of the day, it's losing market share, and it is it is, completely separate from reality. I think the word is it's out of touch. The wine industry is out of touch with reality. You know, I before the pandemic, I did a lot of traveling, and like you said, you know, we visit places like Milan, like the verona, I know, we we go to to to lose. We go to France. We go to Spain in Italy, and you see the the guys and girls who are out there drinking. It's a mix. It's a cosmopolitan kind of feel. And then looking at that, compared to, you know, London, for example, you know, compared to what the industry looks like. The wine industry is miles away from the reality in which we live. And so this talk about diversity is about saying, how can I pull the wine industry back into sync? Because if you're out of sync with your market, you're gonna struggle to sell to that market. You know, you're only selling to a part of that market. The more your the industry looks like the world we live in, the better it will be for us financially because we will be tapping into vast or previously on captive markets? Mhmm. Kenneth Hayden has made a point in the chat, which I think, we we we may be touched on right at the beginning, but haven't emphasized enough, you know, diversity is not about is not solely about race and about minorities. It's about all sorts of things, you know, and and the probably the complexity of this conversation, rests on the on the the fact that what what is very important to to sub to one person is maybe not that important to somebody else, you know, and diversity comes in many shapes, many forms. And, as you say, that that empathy, that we need in order to bring all this together, profitably is is maybe missing, isn't it? I think it starts from having conversations such as this. You know, it starts from having difficult and uncomfortable conversations because, I mean, like we said at the start, the easy way out, right, Paul, is to just not have that conversation. Because it's it's kind of bringing you face to face with a reality which you which we would much rather not admit to. But until we have those difficult conversations, everything, things will remain the same as they are. And as we've established, we literally can't afford that things remain the same as they are. And I absolutely agree with Kenneth. That diversity goes beyond black and white. It's a male and female, and it's including including people with disabilities. And these are all tough conversations to have. And there are all conversations which are gonna be financially challenging because if you're gonna employ someone who's on a wheelchair, you need to make your entire building wheelchair accessible. Right? So there's gonna be a cost to it. But we are saying that the more we engage in these conversations, the better the long time we're gonna be financially. It's about investing today or a better tomorrow rather than chasing trends and chasing the next hot thing because none of us could have predicted the pandemic and low and behold hit. So we wanna be in a significantly better position, more insulated. If anything resembling this god forbid, whichever happen again. Okay. Let let's finish maybe on on two points. Are there any Are there any projects or initiatives that you feel? Look at, to find inspiration, to find, ideas, to find advice on, how they could, you know, potentially do more to to, create opportunities or just create a more encouraging open environment? So I can kind of give two pieces for advice, and there's there will be UK centered a little bit out in the states, but UK is centered because I live in the UK. We've got Baming Hospitality. So Black and other, I think, minorities in hospitality. They're I work very closely with Lorraine, and it's about kind of looking at hospitality from a top down approach. That's a great body to get in touch with. Because you would get hold of chefs, sommeliers, bartenders, bar staff, front of house, back office, everything to do with restaurants, and you will get a rich, diverse culture. If you're looking to employ, There you go. That's a rich kind of database we've been working on building. We've also got bane wine professionals, which is more centered on why. And again, it's on that in the end of everything from production to sales. So we are actively trying to build a community which, companies can reach out and say, listen, I'm trying I've got x, y, and z, opportunity available. And I need a few, you know, non white faces to apply. Who do you think? Who could you recommend? So we those bodies do exist. It's about, you know, winemakers or companies reaching out to us and working hand in hand to make the world a better place. Okay. Absolutely. I agree. Let's let's finally just look at maybe what producers, particularly in Italy, can do. You know, they're in a difficult position at the moment, you know, they they often work, on a very local scale initially, but then try to reach out to the world. What what can they do? I think, again, it's about thinking about things differently in a look at what the young people are doing today because more often than not, there's a huge disparity between what the young people think are cool and what the, you know, the kind of all boys think are cool. And so if you're trying to sell more wine too, I mean, and the other point making it so more often than not, the young are more in tune with what's going around going on in the world in terms of diversity. So it's worth talking to the young people in and around the cities engaging them with them on the level that they engage with, you know, long gone are the days of long, you know, four or five paragraph emails. People are more into things like WhatsApp and Instagram and so on and so forth. So that's that's the level at which producers should start engaging with them or start engaging with us, I should say. So drop down from your your classic in your classic emails and and and, you know, I'm sending out my my wine list and engage in the social media level. Mhmm. Mag, it's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you. This is obviously a a massive subject, and we can go in all sorts of directions with it. Hopefully, we've we've kept to some sort of thread. It's been it's it's been, as you say, an important conversation to have. Hopefully, it contributes to the to the dialogue in some way. And, yeah, look forward to, to having a drink with you somewhere along the line. Wonderful. Me too, Paul. Take care. My pleasure. Great. Take care. Cheers. Listen to the Italian wine podcast wherever you get your podcasts. We're on sunk loud, Apple podcasts, Himalaya FM, and more. Don't forget to subscribe and rate the show. 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