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This week I was contacted by an individual in the Ground Shipping Department at USPS regarding a Bill that recently passed the Department of Justice and is awaiting sponsorship by a state representative.  This Bill would allow the USPS, a quasi-governmental corporation similar to Amtrak and the Federal Reserve, to ship wine like any of the other 250 million packages they ship each year.

In theory, a winery could take some wine to the post office or arrange for pickup and the receiving customer could have the wine delivered to their door to sign and present ID. This even means that someone could have wine shipped to their……wait for it…..P.O. BOX.  For someone like myself that would be awesome.  Although I may regularly accept packages at work, I would much prefer to roll into the Post Office and pick up my weekly stash of wine at my convenience.

Another proposed advantage is that if the recipient was not home or there was not an adult to sign for it, the customer could just go to the local post office to pick it up later that day or week.  No more send-backs, and unlike the FedEx or UPS Distribution centers, most people know exactly where their local Post Office is.

Having the USPS enter the wine shipping biz would create more competition and perhaps greater conveniences.  This is especially true as DHL has recently decided to ban wine shipments altogether starting November 3.

Are there any reasons why USPS should not enter the wine shipping business? Could this potentially be bad for wineries or their customers?

Update (11/3/08): Louis DeRienzo just e-mailed me to say that he had received over 150 responses from an e-mail we sent out asking wineries to add their support for the bill, much more than he had anticipated!

If you haven’t already done so, please e-mail Louis at louis.p.derienzo [@] usps.gov with the following message.

Dear Post Master General John E. Potter,

Our winery supports the United States Postal Service’s proposal to begin shipping wine. USPS could provide value and convenience to my winery in the growing direct-to-consumer wine shipping channel.  Please continue to move this Bill forward.  Thank you.

Keep up the e-mails everybody!

Chances are that if you’re reading this you are aware that there are quite a few laws in the U.S. that make shipping wine across state borders difficult. This is just one of the regulations that wineries face in almost all aspects of making and selling their wine.

However, one recent regulation, and more specifically, one winery’s indirect answer loop-holing around this law caught my attention.

The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) recently changed the regulations for the Certificate of Label Approval (COLA) that were aimed at protecting Portugal’s geographic indication. This prohibits any winery that was not “grandfathered-in” before the law was passed from using the term “Port” on their packaging.

Similar to the protection given to the “Champagne” designation, this label regulation aims to protect the unique winemaking and fortification techniques which originated in Portugal. That’s where Peltier Station Winery sought a way around this law.

The winery hired 6 West Design to indicate the word “Port” without actually using the word itself. Their way around this regulation was to name their 100% Zinfandel Port: “USB.” Anyone using a computer can connect those dots. A USB is to a port like a plug is to an outlet. They go together so inseparably that when you mention one you’ll innately think of its other component. To top it off, the back label further prods at the regulation: ”Be the Ultimate Savvy Buyer by including our USB __ in your __folio of wines”

6 West commented further on the design:

“The imagery screen printed on the front label shows an old vine built out of binary code that translates as “Peltier Station,” and has roots that form the recognized USB computer symbol. The back label leaves it to the viewer to fill in the letters “port” in underlined slots (i.e. im____ant for “important”). The back label took three months of TTB/Cola deliberation before they finally approved it – not without telling our Client they had never encountered someone going so far out of their way to prove a point.”

What do you think? Was this a cheap-shot or a clever move? Should we shun wineries which navigate their way around certain laws (even though this particular label is quite creative), despite the fact that their design does not technically break any regulations?

One of my favorite blogs, Overcoming Bias, is a forum for people who seek to ask the right questions so as to “obtain beliefs closer to reality.” We all know how easy it is to be manipulated by the various facets of life in our society: media, politicians, and advertising being three vague and obvious examples.

Today, Robin Hanson, a tenured professor of economics at George Mason University, asked the following question.

In the art world something is “edgy” if it might well shock ordinary folks, but of course not in-the-know folks.  The idea seems to be that ordinary folks are shocked too easily by things that should not really be shocking.

The opposite concept, which I’ll call “anti-edgy”, is of something that does not shock ordinary folks, but should.  In-the-know folks are shocked, but most others are not.  Why does the world of art and fashion emphasize the edgy so much more than the anti-edgy?

I am interested in applying this question and the potential answers to a world closer to me, wine. And so I open this to you, dear readers. What wines, wine labels, or even wine industry behaviours do you think are anti-edgy? I’ll try to think of an example as I sip my morning coffee.

I am the Harpy of Customer Service – I nitpick and critique every single aspect, from the attire of the server to the upkeep of the location to the music volume – because all of these elements are integral to the customer experience!

This weekend I had the opportunity to visit several Walla Walla tasting rooms and have to say – I was TRES impressed. The wine being poured was delicious, but more impressive was the fact that each tasting room had gone above and beyond to create character and ambiance, and the wine was poured by knowledgeable, friendly staff. Though I didn’t get the privilege of tasting with The Winemaker in any of the locations I visited, I was able to taste with the winemaker’s wife at Trust Cellars, and the assistant winemaker at Chateau Rollat, among others.

Here is a list of Dos and Don’ts when it comes to the Tasting Room Experience.

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Photo via rubendomfer

It seems like an irony within an irony to post a blog about blogging, but Tom Wark’s recent words on frequency hold merit.

With any and everyone blogging these days, each blogger wants the most readers. Is it simple frequency that drives wine enthusiasts to blogs while quality takes a backseat? Quality is certainly subjective to the audience, but Wark makes an interesting point:

“The fact is, the more posts one publishes, the more opportunity for links back to these posts and the higher likelihood that search engines will rank the blog higher in searches—two factors that lead to higher readership.”

Wark states that according to alaWine.com, the top 10 wine blogs post an average of 14 posts in a month, while the bottom 10 wine blogs publish 8 posts a month. Since the AmericanWinery.com blog started, we’ve averaged 16 posts a month, no small feat. But what of the law of diminishing returns? When you tread the same ground as others or repeat past material, there’s the potential to lose readers.

I’ve often compared blogs in the wine industry to the college radio market within the music biz (my background). In each scenario, you want as many people as possible to enjoy or purchase your product and both are free formats for everyone to use. However, both are hard to correlate readers/listeners with sales.

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