Virtual wine tasting: does it work?

I was out with my family one recent Saturday evening to watch the day’s last screening of Top Gun: Maverick, a rare occasion in the last few years that saw us out late at night. What we all observed were the sheer number of people outside, the high volume of cars, the heavy traffic, and the bustling commerce in bars and restaurants — all indications showing that Metro Manila’s nightlife is back to a pre-pandemic level. Restaurants are busy again even if take-out and delivery are readily available because there are also premiums consumers put on ambiance, presentation, service, and, of course, food served hot and fresh. This could be said in fact more so with wines.

Winery.ph, Boozeshop.ph, Manila-wine.com, Flasked.ph are just some of the most popular online liquor websites that sell a lot of wine, especially during the quarantine and movement-restriction periods. Yet there is a sense that some things are really best experienced in situ. I just feel that wine consumers want to see, and even touch, their wines when they go to their favorite supermarkets or liquor shops.

THE BORDEAUX EN-PRIMEUR EXPERIMENT: POSSIBLY THE BIRTH OF VIRTUAL TASTING
The En-Primeur is the most important business event in the city of Bordeaux. It lasts between eight to 10 weeks. En-primeur, which literally means “in first,” is the practice of purchasing wines in advance of its commercial release. It is also known as “wine futures” and is the same in principle as investing in commodity futures and hedging on price movements of assets.

In this annual event, the Chateaux get advance payments for their wines (18 months minimum in advance), while the buyers, mostly traders, get their wines from this vintage at pre-release prices which are supposedly lower than when the same wines are commercially released.

Other than the wine industry, the whole city is also bustling and directly benefits from the thousands of wine professionals visiting from all over the world and spending euros on hospitality enterprises including hotels, restaurants, and transportation. So, when this COVID-19 curse came upon Bordeaux and France in general, the Bordelais had to do something to salvage this financially critical En-Primeur tradition. Virtual wine tasting, while totally unheard of before, was now a reality.

With a lockdown in place, the only way for the chateaux to get interested buyers to purchase en-primeur wines was to send samples and do what is now commonly known as virtual tastings. Even the Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux, a powerful group composed of over 130 top-tiered member chateaux from Bordeaux’s top appellations, had members that sent barrel samples to wine traders and critics. Instead of face-to-face barrel tasting and talking with winemakers and chateaux owners, it was replaced by real-time virtual Zoom meetings and distant tastings of samples sent.

The experiment may have worked as the 2020 and 2021 En-Primeur did its job for both the 2019 vintage (primarily because of a price reprieve from growing prices in the past few years) and 2020, another well-priced vintage. But there were also gripes and concerns about the virtual tastings experiment. Aside from suspicions that barrel samples were not the same as the blend of the final wine, which means the tastings done remotely were actually different from the finished product, there were also issues on volatility and noticeable flaws from the samples.

As of this writing, the 2022 En-Primeur for the 2021 Bordeaux vintage had returned to its successful face-to-face pre-pandemic setting and is winding down — and, as I learned from my good friend and resource person Yann Schyler, there is no official start and end to En-Primeur.

I can already sense that the return to a real En-Primeur will be beneficial to the chateaux, with a rather underwhelming 2021 vintage expected to do much better than expected. The mere revival of real and live interactions and tastings between buyers, critics, and the chateaux owners, after two “virtual tasting years” may have a huge influence on the positive reception of the wine trade to this 2021 vintage.

IS VIRTUAL WINE TASTINGS HERE TO STAY?
During the lockdown years of 2020 and 2021, virtual wine tastings were the buzzword among wine companies. In wine-producing countries, from Australia to the US, wine tastings in the cellar doors or winery stores were replaced with virtual wine tastings where customers were sent select bottles of wines in advance of the tasting schedule and were then guided through each bottle by a winery representative through Zoom or Google Meet as scheduled.

For us here in Metro Manila, in lieu of wine dinners, courageous wine companies have offered wine and food sets for scheduled virtual tastings. I believed there were not a lot of successful virtual wine dinners that happened in both 2020 and 2021. Virtual wine tastings are just temporary solutions, but their novelty may end sooner than we think. And let me explain why.

1. No Personal Touch — Virtual tastings are a bit impersonal. You are looking at a screen while you taste wine along with the person on the opposite side of the screen. Wine is and will always be a social drink. Wine needs company, and wine events need people rubbing elbows with each other to be successful. Laughter, smart comments, the sound of clinking glass, and even simple gestures can be missed on virtual platforms when these small things add to the magic of a wine event.

2. Pacing Issue — With scheduled virtual tastings, the pacing is important, and getting every participant in different households, or even from one household, on the same page or pace will always be a challenge. In real-live tastings, there are no distractions as everyone is properly seated and waiting for the host to guide them through each of the wines in the line-up. In a virtual set-up, people can be tinkering with their phones, watching TV, or doing other things since those activities are just second nature when you are in the comfort of your home.

3. Less Selection — With virtual tastings, only select wines are featured and delivered because you cannot overprice a virtual wine tasting event by sending more than three bottles. With more than three wines, the price for a wine package for virtual tasting events may become out-of-reach. Whereas in real live wine events, several wines can be featured, from cocktails prior to the formal dinner, to each wine served with the four or five courses in the meal. With a virtual tasting, it could be just one white, one red, and one sparkling or dessert-type wine.

4. Wastage or Forced Consumption — Since the majority of these virtual wine tastings will deliver full-size bottles, wastage or forced consumption (especially for households of three people or less) is the natural aftermath. In real live wine events, wines are portioned, and it is even hard to get seconds as no extra bottles are normally opened. Unlike spirits which, with their higher ABVs, can be left unconsumed for days, weeks, or months, sadly for opened wines, they need to be consumed in their entirety within the next few hours. Unless, of course, you have some wine preservation gadgets like the expensive Coravin or some inert gas canister to preserve the wine properly. Contrary to popular belief, a screwcap cannot preserve the wine once it has been opened as air would have gotten in already after the opening.

Virtual wine tastings for eager learners are indeed much better than drinking cluelessly. However, this phase should be over once the country opens up and normalcy returns. There is simply no substitute for real live wine events. I want to see up close the rosy cheeks of my fellow wine drinkers and hear the clinking sounds of wine glasses — that is how it should be.

The author is the only Filipino member of the UK-based Circle of Wine Writers (CWW). For comments, inquiries, wine event coverage, wine consultancy, and other wine-related concerns, e-mail the author at wineprotege@gmail.com , or check his wine training website https://thewinetrainingcamp.wordpress.com/services/.