Science Has Turned the Wine World Topsy-Turvy (Part 1)

From preparing the soil to planting and growing and even breeding the grapes to making the wine to bottling the wine to selling the wine, science has affected every part of the wine world. We've looked at a number of these discoveries and innovations over the last 15 months or so, but we've usually done it from the standpoint of a single variety of grape. Let's consider a few frankly widely disparate applications of science and what they have done to the world of wine.

We're in 2021. While what we think is making news are things like COVID, politics, influencers, and racial tensions, the one real constant is data. Big data. Really big data. And, it has infiltrated the wine world. 

Different people have different ideas of what big data means. Frankly, it depends on its usage and its applications. To some, big data is just lots of data that perhaps we never had before. To others, it is the continuous processing of trillions of pieces of data making observations to change behaviors and outcomes. In the wine world, both apply, but if we look at the distribution phase of the wine industry, it's closer to the former.

Let's start with appearance. Did you know that the appearance -- the packaging -- of a wine product might do more for the profitability of that product than anything else. It certainly has a greater effect than the flavors, the complexity, and the ageworthiness. At least it does for most wines.

Let's start with a simple example. As you have probably noticed, wines are presented at wine competitions. And, at those competitions, wines are awarded medals; you know, gold, silver, and bronze, and some wines even get double gold or best in class.

Let's pretend I am responsible for the marketing of a particular wine. Knowing that my cost of goods sold for this bottle is about $1.50, I decide that this wine should have a Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) of $6.99. At that price point, I create two bottlings of the same exact wine. On the first bottling of my Twiggy Pudding Chardonnay (TPC), I have a simple picture of a stick inserted in some pudding and the words Twiggy Pudding across the top and Chardonnay across the bottom. On the back label, I have all the governmentally-required nonsense.

The second bottling looks the same as the first bottling, except that on the second bottling, I have placed a few stickers near the neck of the bottle shwoing that TPC received 91 points from esteemed wine critic Jonas Grumby (for the unknowing, the name of the Skipper on Gilligan's Island was Jonas Grumby (now you know)) and that it won a double gold medal at the Wee Wee Wine Festival.

Which bottling sells more wine?

The surprising, at least to me, answer is that the plainer bottle sells far more at $6.99.

Interesting, huh?

Well, it gets more interesting. Let's change the pricing on Twiggy Pudding Chardonnay. Let's increase the MSRP to $11.99. And, let's keep bottling #1 and bottling #2 with the labels they had in our first experiment. Now, they sell equally well or poorly. And, if we increase the price to $15.99, the second bottling (the one with the awards) sells more. Finally, when we increase the MSRP to $25, nobody buys either bottling because people who spend $25 on a bottle of Chardonnay don't buy wines called Twiggy Pudding.

This all sounds incredible, right? Well, there is just a mass of market research to back it up. People who are buying very inexpensive wine like plain packaging, perhaps ornate, but not confusing with facts. Stepping up the price just a bit demands some reason to justify it. 

So, that's our first application of modern science to wine, assuming we can call market research science (it's not a classic science, but in 2021, we can call it science). In future episodes, we'll talk about cloud shooting, soilmaster robots, and bottle science just to name a few.