Lieb Behind the Scenes – September 2015

HARVEST!! Harvest officially began last Tuesday. Despite the slow start to the growing season, high temps in August quickly caught us up and propelled sugar levels (brix) in several of our grapes to optimal ripeness a full week earlier than last year. We’ve harvested Pinot Noir and Chardonnay thus far which will both be used to make our 2015 Sparkling Rosé. Next will be Pinot Blanc for 2015 Reserve Pinot Blanc and Bridge Lane White Blend. In approximately 2 weeks, we’ll pick Chardonnay for Bridge Lane Chard, and a week later, Cabernet Franc and Merlot for Bridge Lane Rosé and White Blend. The grapes for sparkling wines, light white wines and rosés are picked earlier than the grapes for fuller whites and reds because the high acidity levels in younger grapes create brighter, leaner wines. To achieve weightier whites and reds, we let the grapes hang longer for less acid and more sugar and flavor development. We’ll be harvesting on and off now through the end of October. While exciting and a bit hectic, harvest is more of a carefully scrutinized and well-timed marathon than a sprint. Timing of picking has tremendous influence on the resulting wine’s aromas, flavor profile, and structure – and it takes years and years of working with a vineyard to get the timing just right. To quote our winemaker Russell, “wine is made in the vineyard, not at the winery.” Russell has been working with our vineyards for 16 years. It’s no wonder our wines are the best they’ve ever been.

At the winery, tanks and presses have all be sanitized and are accepting fruit loads coming in from our vineyards as well as 20+ other vineyards in New York who make wine at our facility through a co-op program. The truck scale was initialized to weigh out the arriving grapes (in tons) and the destemmer-crusher machine is back up and running. Our winery has a 2,000 ton (or 120,000 case) capacity. Lieb will be producing 14,000 cases with the fruit from this harvest, so approximately 11% of our winery’s full production.

Our tasting room team is breathing a sigh of relief this week after surviving the crazy summer season. Post Labor Day, tasting room traffic during the week typically slows down (as kids go back to school and people take less vacation) but believe it or not, crowds actually increase on the weekends. Many tourists spend time at the beach in the summer. In the fall, they’re ALL at the wineries…or pumpkin picking. The revenues we generate now need to sustain us during the slower winter season, so bring on the business. We’re happy to take a few breaths during the week and serve the masses on the weekends. And, there’s absolutely no better time than early fall to grab a seat on our patio and watch the sun go down.

As mentioned in the previous post, fall is also a crucial time for wholesale sales, especially in NYC. From Sept-Nov, wine shops are stocking their shelves for the holidays and restaurants are putting together their fall wine lists. To close the year strong, we have strategized and just kicked off 3 key efforts. 1) An incentive plan for the sales reps who work for our distributor in NY. We’ve vowed to double their commission during the next 3 months on any Lieb and Bridge Lane wines they sell. This will obviously keep us top of mind and give them a little extra motivation to go out and sell our wines vs. the other wines in their portfolio. 2) An internal sales effort led by our director of sales, Mike, and our brand ambassador, Madison. Rather than just support our distributor reps, Madison and Mike have developed a targeted account list for themselves and set a goal of securing 30 new accounts in the next 3 months. They’ll be spending 5 days/week “hitting the pavement” and meeting with buyers to supplement our distributor’s efforts. 3) A support plan to generate loyalty and sell-through at all of our existing accounts. We currently have about 250 active accounts in the Long Island and NYC market and plan to pull staff members from the tasting rooms and office to visit every single one of them. While there, we’ll say hi to the buyers, see if they need more wine, ask if we can put up some signage and potentially schedule tastings for their customers. In such a competitive marketplace it’s equally as important to retain existing accounts as it is to secure new ones. We’ll hopefully have success at both this fall.

Now some words on our topic of the month: dry goods! Sounds fun right? Well actually, “dry goods” is just the wine industry term for packaging. And with a background in marketing and branding, it’s actually one of the parts of the job that I enjoy the most. When I started at Lieb in 2013, the packaging was a bit dated. It was developed in 1999 and not updated since. Last year, we completed a rebrand of both our Lieb and Bridge Lane wines, to freshen up their look, give them strong (separate) identities and increase their stopping power. Led by Jeff, our graphic designer, we developed new logos and new labels for each wine. The reception from customers, buyers and media over the past year has been extremely positive but the work doesn’t end there. Each October, we enter what I call “ordering season.” Because most of the wines are vintage dated and because cash flow only allows for single season ordering, we typically order and stock enough dry goods to get us through a single year. Lead times on some of the items, like screw caps, can be up to 3 months, so ordering starts in October for bottling that starts in January.

How does a winery decide, then, what type of packaging they’re going to use for a certain wine? The simple answer is that the decision is a stylistic one. There are no rules in the industry that says Chardonnay HAS to go in a certain shape bottle or with a certain type of closure (cork or screw cap). A winery makes that decision based on how they’d like the wine to be perceived. A heavy grade, darker glass bottle, for example, might be used on their more exclusive wines, while a light, affordable white might be more appropriately bottled in a lighter grade, lighter color glass. With some wines, you can follow tradition when deciding on the shape of the glass (reds made with Bordeaux grapes, for example, would go in a traditional Bordeaux bottle, with high shoulders and a short neck). Or, you can throw tradition out the window and choose a shape that is unique and unexpected.

With closures, the decision to go screwcap vs. cork continues to be a heated debate. Traditionalists argue that cork is the ONLY sensible choice because it’s been that way for hundreds of years and cork’s natural flaws add to the romance and excitement of wine. Conversely, more progressive-minded producers (like us) are Team Screwcap all the way because we value quality control over tradition. Call us crazy but we’d rather a customer taste our wine the way intended than risk them tasting a flawed wine because of a bad cork and thinking that we made the wine that way. As with bottle shape, using screwcap also sends a message about our winery’s style. We don’t want to be viewed as stodgy and traditional. We embrace our region’s infancy and the new-world style of our wines. So if screw caps are the “new” cork, count us in!

And finally, labels. Labels are the most important medium for expressing a unique identity and style. It’s what a customer sees when they’re making a buying decision and what they see again while they’re drinking your wine. Labels directly affect sales and customer experience, so I scratch my head over and over again when I see bottles after bottles of wine with photos (or worse, clip art!) of non-descript vineyards on their labels. You have this awesome platform to say something UNIQUE about who you are and to appeal to the type of wine drinker who would appreciate your style, yet you choose to waste it with a label design that is bland and personality-less!? It’d be like every box of cereal putting a photo of a wheat field on their cover. Makes no sense. Say what you will about our Lieb and Bridge Lane labels, but one thing they aren’t lacking is a unique voice and well-defined target audience.

Of course, I’ve over-simplified things a bit, and there are some regulatory guidelines that also need to be followed when choosing dry goods – like standard wine bottle sizes and government warning language on wine labels. But in general, wineries do have the freedom to choose their packaging. And in my opinion, the smarter wineries will also choose to make a statement.

Bottles, closures and labels, oh my. We’ve made our stylistic choices, now onto working with Russell to determine quantities and place orders!

Next month I’ll keep with the theme and talk about alternative packaging, which we’ll also be ordering for January. We introduced boxes and kegs last year. Palmer Vineyards just launched a bagged wine. Are we seeing the start of a trend? Do alternative packages make sense for wineries? For customers? Let’s discuss.

Til then, cheers! (me with a glass of 2013 Cab Franc in honor of fall coming)

Ami Opisso
General Manager & Certified Sommelier, Lieb Cellars