Wine Business Monthly

Transcription

1 Wine Business Monthly July 2012 $5.95 The Industry s Leading Publication for Wineries and Growers The ipad Winery From the vineyards to sales, Jordan transforms how it does business. Quality Control Managing Oxygen in a Small Winery Tank size may be the key to excessive oxidation UC Davis: Microbial Analyses Seminar Tools to help detect, identify and monitor wine microorganisms What Large and Small Wineries Need to Know About Testing Wines Organic Farming Recent Research: Alternatives to Synthetic Fungicides for Bunch Rot Control Macronutrient Fertilization Basics with Organic Options

2 contents July 2012 The Industry s Leading Publication for Wineries and Growers winemaking sales & marketing The Mystery of Bottle Shock What causes it? What can you do about it? Though it s alarming, experts say the phenomenon is temporary and seems to resolve itself. Lance Cutler. cerevisiae + Bacillus megaterium Research Notes: Managing Oxygen in a Small Winery Why tank size may be the key to excessive oxidation in small wineries Curtis Phillips The Off-Shore Wine Advantage...50 Insight on how cruise ships source and market wines Liza B. Zimmerman Retail Sales Analysis: Off-premise Wine Sales Increase 3 Percent Through April...54 grape growing UC Davis: Microbial Analyses Seminar...30 Tools and techniques to help you detect, identify and monitor wine microorganisms Roger Lansing Q & A : Texas Winemaker Bénédicte Rhyne...34 What large and small wineries need to know about testing wines Macronutrient Fertilization Basics with Organic Options...42 Maintaining adequate vine nutrition can easily be done conventionally or organically. Mark Greenspan Alternatives to Synthetic Fungicides for Bunch Rot Control...46 The author reviews research on biological control, microbial induction, oils, plant extracts, abiotic stimulants and habitat manipulation. Bibiana Guerra business & technology CHART 1 The majority of wineries said they ve had an audit from their an insurance company or outside consulting firm. Many insurance companies and consulting firms will visit a winery and conduct a free safety audit. Have you ever had a free safety audit? winery size small med large 0% winery size %Yes 25% 50% 75% 100% CHART 2 Most small wineries didn't know they could request an insurance audit while all large wineries have taken advantage of the service. Does your insurance carrier provide such a service? small med %Yes departments SOURCE: WBM 2012 Facilities Survey large 0% 25% 50% 75% 100% The ipad Winery...56 From the vineyards to sales, Jordan transforms how it does business. Michael S. Lasky 1000X Survey Report: Facilities, Part 2 Risk Management...60 What wineries need to know about insurance, OSHA, compliance and audits Bill Pregler what s cool: Stacked Wine Glasses...16 Business school grads create innovative alternative packaging Bill Pregler month in review news people classifieds...71 advertiser index industry events jake lorenzo [Connections] Cover Illustration & Design: Scott Summers Wine Business Monthly (ISSN ) is published monthly by Wine Communications Group, Inc., 110 W Napa St., Sonoma, CA Subscription rates are $39 for domestic; US$49 for Canadian and US$89 for foreign subscribers. Periodicals Postage Paid at Sonoma, CA, and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: Wine Business Monthly, P.O. Box 3629, San Rafael, CA

3 who s talking in this issue WBM July 2012 Dick Arrowood, The Mystery of Bottle Shock, page 18 In regard to bottle shock: Put 10 winemakers in a room, and you ll come up with 15 different theories. Bo Barrett, Chateau Montelena, The Mystery of Bottle Shock, page 18 Wine sitting in a barrel receives oxygen that passes through the pores in the wood. The H 2 O and alcohol molecules interact with this back and forth passing of oxygen, happily. When you put that wine into a bottle, you change the equilibrium that it had in the barrel. The only oxygen it gets has to pass through the cork. Linda Bisson, V&E Deptartment, UC Davis, UC Davis: Microbial Analyses Seminar, page 30 Managing microorganisms requires: knowing what s present; knowing which are beneficial, benign or detrimental; knowing how to stimulate or inhibit specific organisms or classes; knowing what to monitor and when; and knowing what you re trying to accomplish. Ed Kempkey, Kempkey Risk Management, Survey Report: Facilities, Risk Management, page 60 Studies show insurance premiums may only cover approximately one-half the cost of risk. Unfortunately, most wineries stop managing risk with the mere purchase of insurance. In many cases, this does not accurately reflect their needs. Brent Young, Jordan Vineyard & Winery, The ipad Winery, page 56 Streamlining information and communication between the ranch manager, the winemaker and crew gives us immediacy that we never had before the ipad. 8 July 2012 WBM

4 business & technology The ipad Winery From the vineyards to sales, Jordan transforms how it does business. Michael S. Lasky A couple of years ago John Jordan, the owner and CEO of Jordan Vineyard & Winery, wanted to give a special Christmas gift of appreciation to his employees. He had always been comfortable with technology and a strong believer in how technology can improve work efficiency. So with that in mind, he gave each of the nearly 100 employees of the winery an ipad2. Not just any ipad but the top-of-the-line 64GB model with WiFi and 3G cellular service. As Jordan explained it, I wanted the staff to become comfortable with new technology and achieve a cultural change in the firm. The ipad was a gift, given with no demands that the staff put it to use in their jobs. But the very design of the ipad and its zillion apps made the transition to new technology as smooth as, well, a Jordan Cabernet. Before too long, Jordan employees from the vineyards to the tank rooms to the salespeople on the road were all but ditching their laptops and relying on their ipads to get their work done faster and more efficiently than ever before. Jordan Winery had become the ipad winery. As assistant winemaker Ronald Du Preez noted, Everything I can do on the laptop I pretty much can do on the tablet and easier. So I often leave the laptop PC behind when travelling and, certainly, when I am in the vineyard. Like other Jordan staff, Du Preez uses a combination of commercial apps available at the Apple App Store and custom apps on his ipad and companysupplied iphone. The ipad and iphone have made me incredibly efficient because I can connect to the winery via the Internet any time or any place where there is a cell or WiFi connection, DuPreez said. For example, I use the SoilWeb app, which connects to a national soil database. It shows me the soils I am dealing with in areas I am previously not familiar with. The ipad has consolidated just about all the functionality of the office into a lightweight device we can take everywhere. Chris Avery, Jordan Winery s national sales director SoilWeb offers GPS-based, real-time access to USDA-NRCS soil survey data, formatted for the iphone and ipad. The UC Davis application retrieves graphical summaries of soil types associated with the iphone s current geographic location, based on user-defined horizontal precision. Du Preez finds Acrolon Technologies TankNet an invaluable application to monitor tank temperatures and conditions. He accesses it via Citrix, a secure app that provides desktop virtualization and collaboration tools. 56 July 2012 WBM

5 The ipad Winery Streamlining information and communication between the ranch manager, the winemaker and crew gives us immediacy that we never had before the ipad. Brent Young, Jordan Vineyard & Winery viticulturist Harvest production became more efficient with ipad apps, saving me a lot of time. Previously, I would have to go back and forth from the vineyards to the office to check on the tanks, for example. Now, thanks to the 3G cell service on the ipad or iphone, I can log in and make adjustments. If there is an issue with, say, a tank s temperature, I can monitor that from the field and have someone at the winery handle the problem, Du Preez said. Equally enthusiastic about how the ipad has successfully improved the way he gets things done is Jordan Winery s viticulturist, Brent Young. The ipad app Young relies on most frequently is AgCode. Customized specifically for Jordan, its versatile functionality is what appeals to Young. With AgCode, I can see what we have harvested, where we are on the block, create work orders for spraying, handle crew assignments and time cards, manage work and equipment, and on and on. What s great is I can get all this done without having to go back to the office. Previously, I would have a clipboard for the various tasks and have to go back to my desk and transfer everything to a spreadsheet, Young explained. Now, as soon as I enter the data on the ipad, it is automatically integrated into a spreadsheet that everyone can see. For example, I can send out a 58 July 2012 WBM

6 spraying alert, to all concerned, not to go into a particular vineyard for 24 hours. So streamlining information and communication between the ranch manager, the winemaker and crew gives us immediacy that we never had before the ipad, Young said. For the Jordan Winery sales team, who are always moving around their sales territories, the ipad has proven to be a godsend. The ipad has consolidated just about all the functionality of the office into a lightweight device we can take everywhere, said Chris Avery, Jordan Winery s national sales director. Avery relies on the ipad for its range of presentation tools to suit specific accounts. Here s an example of how the ipad lets me master a visit to one customer. I was preparing for a sales meeting with Chicago restaurant, Hub 51. I booked a reservation with the OpenTable app, sent an to coordinate with our distributor so they could alert their salesperson and customized a presentation to demonstrate how Jordan wines fit with the restaurant s particular menu. With the ipad, I was able to show a custom video to show examples of food and wine pairings specific to Hub 51, Avery explained. When our winemaker, Rob Davis, can t meet directly with a client, we use the FaceTime ipad app so Rob can conduct a wine tasting remotely at the restaurant, he added. FaceTime is Apple s video calling service that utilizes the ipad and iphone s built-in camera. The ipad has made us more nimble as a sales team, allowing us to be a quick responding educational sales force. We can adapt on the fly, Avery said. And we use the Concur app for expense reporting when we are on the road. Now instead of having to create a paper-based report with photocopies of receipts sent via FedEx, we can take a photo of the receipt and virtually attach it to the ipad-prepared report we send via the Internet. No more FedEx expenses, no paper trails back and forth. The ipad actually saves us time and money, Avery concluded. The moral of the story: What was originally a well-intended holiday gift has become a gift that keeps on giving. Armed with the ipad and sundry apps, the employees in all departments have comfortably, indeed enthusiastically, embraced new technology and transformed Jordan Winery into the ipad winery. WBM WBM July