4.18.2008

Through the Grapevine | Barriers, part 1

I began this experiment with the very real desire to focus on something positive, making personal connections and breaking down distances between suppliers and the consumer, rather than to focus on the negative aspects of a consumption-based society. I was also somewhat naive in thinking that all it would take was some research and some eagerness to bridge those distances. It is still very early in the experiment, and I'm sure a number of tends will begin to emerge from the folks that I meet and the ones I don't. One that's beginning to be very clear is that there are some very real barriers in place, and that they are worth exploring as much as the connections are.

This revelation came while talking with Emmanuel Boyer, a member of a French wine-making family living here in New York. Emmanuel grew up on his family's vineyard in southern France, a vineyard called La Croix-Belle that the family has worked "forever". (The house on the label? That's the house he grew up in. His bedroom is the window on the top left.) As a child he picked grapes with the hired hands and, when the winery went machined, watched as the processes were slowly perfected. He and his brother were the first to leave the village and pursue other degrees - his in engineering, his brother's in veterinary medicine, but he is still deeply involved in every decision from what varieties of grapes to grow and blend to what the labels and packaging of new wines will look like. He is the company's representative to the United States, and will return to run the family business again in just a few years.

What shocked me, however, was that as intrinsically involved in the business as Emmanuel is, he doesn't even have a real sense of where his wines are sold in New York. He explained to me the built-in state-mandated separations between grower and consumer. Wineries are required to go through an importer, who in turn is required to use a local distributer, who then decides what restaurants and wine shops to market to. And only at that level is the consumer able to interact with the product. On the rare occasion, he is able to be involved with tastings set up by the distributor for their marketing teams, but rarely directly to the consumer. And when we called him (he is a close friend of a coworker), he was hard pressed to recommend a restaurant where he knew they would have his wine. We did find some, the Champs Des Lys and it was wonderful, and he did know that Astor wines carried at least one of his reds (which we found and bought several bottles of). But with these sort of frustrating barriers set up in front of the supplier, it is no wonder I'm facing challenges from this side.

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