Techno-Tasting

Retail / Virtual Wine – Anyone can take part in a tasting. James Booth is bringing live wine tastings to the internet – and he’s already selling 60 cases per session. Patrick Schmitt logs on

Mixing tradition with technology is an increasingly popular concept. You see it in architecture, especially in the post-modern movement; you see it in car design – Ford has even released a mechanically up-to-the-minute replica of its 1960s racer the GT40; and you certainly see it in the likes of kitchen equipment, be it an Ariete retro coffee machine or a Smeg 1950s-style refrigerator. Consumers seek the comfort of the past, the safety of the recognisable, but they also want the convenience and reliability the latest in engineering affords.

And so with wine. While the enthusiast revels in all that’s natural, provincial or historical, he or she also requires the latest in technology to ensure the wine is fresh and consistent. Then, when it comes to buying the product, the keen wine drinker wants a way of choosing his preferred style of wine that combines speed, ease and information. Increasingly, on-line retailing provides the ideal solution.

Even a wine merchant with as venerable  an image as Berry Bros & Rudd has managed to draw many of its most loyal and, arguably, traditional customers onto the web, while attracting a lot of new ones at the same time. The internet has offered a chance for consumers to find out more about the wines they are buying, see a close-up of the labels, sometimes even pictures of the source vineyards, and also allowed the retailers a chance to tailor the information and promotional material to meet the buying pattern of individual users, but it hasn’t offered the seller the ability to communicate orally, as one would on the shop floor – until now.

Ex-merchant banker and wine buff James Booth has launched Virtual Wine – “the UK’s first live and interactive wine tasting website,” as it describes itself. Simply put, it is a website that can broadcast a wine tasting. Oh yes, and the interactive bit refers to the fact you can e-mail the tasters as they sample the wines, allowing those watching to influence the direction of the “event” by questioning the panel.

Booth it seems is certainly mixing the old with the new, using pioneering technology to bring the likes of Bordeaux and Burgundy’s most traditional wines into people’s homes.
The refreshing advantage of this service is that anyone can take part in a tasting from the comfort of their kitchen table, or if a laptop owner, from essentially anywhere they can get an internet connection and cart the wines. Prior to the tasting of course, you do need to have purchased the wines and, because they tend to be a reasonably niche selection, they can be bought only from Virtual Wine.

Virtual Wine can use the tasting to verbally promote its wines, in particular those from Domaine Gayda, a new property near Carcassonne and an investor in Virtual Wine (along with Booth and a production company).

Taste of technology
As for the virtual tasting itself, those signed up for the event can expect a surprisingly in-depth information pack with their case of six different wines. The literature includes cards on each of the wines, listing the likes of the residual sugar content, a brief tasting note and a suggested dish to complement the wine. There is also a brief article on the area where the wines originate (for the French wines event Andrew Jefford was employed to write the introduction), as well as a map and descriptions of the key characteristics of particular terroirs.

On the panel Booth says he tries to include “someone from a wine merchant or a winemaker, a chef and/or a sommelier, and someone with a consumer hat on”. Having watched one of the events, the tasting lasts a little less than 20 minutes and the approach mixes light-hearted discussion with reasonably high-brow analysis.
According to Booth, Virtual Wine is pitched “above the Richard and Judy and The Sunday Times wine clubs, for people who’ve had their appetite whetted and want to learn a bit more”.

As for the wines, “They are meant to be a fair representation of the region they come from and good value.” More recently, Booth has altered the site so anyone can watch the tastings, but obviously to participate you need to have bought the wines.
And to get an idea of the audience, Booth reckons that he is sending out up to 60 cases of wine for the events, with around 300 to 500 people logging onto the live tastings. He also says, “We’ve improved the concept, and we have done our first outside broadcast, which was from The Ebury pub near Sloane Square. That gives us confidence we can do it anywhere there is a secure internet connection.”

Not only does Booth envisage further flexibility when it comes to location, but also timing. The events are now broadcast live on Sunday evenings, as requested by initial customers, but some viewers now want the event to coincide with Saturday evening dinner parties, and Booth certainly wants to vary the night (although you can gain access to an archive of the virtual tastings).

“Although at the moment we are positioning ourselves at the forefront of technology, that won’t always be the case,” he says. “Already some have converged their TV and laptop so the barriers between television and the internet are coming down.” Furthermore, “To do a national TV live broadcast costs at least £100,000, but an internet-based broadcast is a fraction of that, around £10,000-£20,000.”

Bespoke broadcasts
Booth sees enormous potential for his chosen broadcasting platform, suggesting for instance he could put on events for retailers and trade customers, as well as end consumers. He also plans to grow the business in terms of bottles sold.  “We want to be in the thousands of cases,” he says.

All I can say is, having attended many tastings, tutored or not, and now tried Virtual Wine, glass in hand, bowl of crisps within reach, armchair enveloping, CD-player running, I know which I prefer.

Old world meets new technology
James Booth is, like his concept, a mix of old and new, displaying a strong preference for fine wines from established European regions with a forward-looking technology-driven business sense. His taste for all things fine, vinous and French stems from a student exchange with the Remy family, of Domaine Louis Remy in Morey St Denis. Later, during a degree in French and Management, Booth spent time working with Jean-Marc Brocard in Chablis.

At his parents’ insistence he put his vinous interests to one side, albeit briefly, to focus on a career as a merchant banker. That began in 1993, although he still found time to co-found a private wine club called the SS Wine Society.

He then launched grape-juice in 2002, a fine wine buying service for friends and City colleagues. He left the City in 2003, then in August 2005 grape-juice merged with Domaine Gayda and a little later, having met a BBC producer with a web-based seminar business, he came up with the idea of a live web tasting. Virtual Wine was launched in September 2005.

www.virtualwine.co.uk

db  March 2006