Can anyone in wine say "national effort"?

The phoenix is emerging from the ashes. Slowly, but poking through nonetheless. It all began with the independent (i.e. non-vintner) California growers in late winter of 1993. They had this idea of joining forces with vintner-growers to capitalize on the post-"60 Minutes" wine and health momentum, a squib that had flamed brightly for a year or two, but which had of late taken on more of a war glow. The growers were uniquely positioned to rekindle the flame, they reasoned because they--with no license to be revoked--were beyond the long reach of the BATF watchdogs and could breach just about any subject.

Imagine: A chorus of yeoman wine-grape growers singing the praises of wine and health in the heathen temple of teetotality and neo-prohibitionism! Well, perhaps dancing wine bottles and grant funding for needed research. No matter, the exercise disintegrated into the customary factionalism of industry distrust lack of perceived democracy, fear of government reprisal, and trade association turf wars. The vintner-growers withdrew from the pact leaving the independent growers free to go their own way. It was deja vu all over again, a page from th 1980s, when the grower and vintner marketing commissions foundered and sank in sea of recriminations and bitterness.

Or was it? Perhaps the growers' proposal of 1994 reflects a sea change in industry thinking, a growing awareness that a jointly funded self-help program can be a solid business decision for an industry in need of help.

Clearly, the fact that table wine consumption in absolute numbers has been falling since 1982 can, like phylloxera, no longer be ignored. 1993 per capita consumption is lower than at any time since 1973, and profit margins have shrun as distribution consolidates and customers demand and get more wine for their money.

The bulk winegrowers understand this phenomenon all too well. Forget viticultural research and political stratagems, they say: when you're on the doorstep of bankruptcy you need sales, not information and friends in high places. We need to sell more wine to more people, and fast.

Confronted with these observations, premium vintners trot out the "drinking les but drinking better" line. Their smugness is ill-placed. More than 70% of all wine sold is to customers over the age of 40, and Americans over 60 years drink as much wine as do all Americans under 40. With Americans between the ages of 2 and 40 comprising half the U.S. adult population, an enormous number of Americans simply have not joined the wine drinking train. As existing wine drinkers die out, who will replace them?

Even individual efforts at telling wine's story are significantly more frugal these days: table wine advertising expenditures are but one-third their 1980 level. Apparently, budgets formerly earmarked for advertising--i.e., investing money to expand the market base, are now being used to fund discounted sales--i.e., giving away profit margins to sell wine to the same customers for cheaper.

In short, what we're doing now--selling less wine to fewer customers at lower margins--affords a straight line to eventual disaster. That's why many wine industry leaders are looking at what might be called the BIG PIE of wine industry needs to maintain and grow the industry, rather than the piecemeal approach to industry concerns we now employ. This big pie is what we currently do through trade associations--political action, some research and publicity, and membership services, as well as what we don't do now--cooperative marketing and promotion, consumer education, and the like.

To fund this big pie would require a lot more money than the approximately $10 million (about one-fifth of 1% of the yearly income of the wine industry) we spend on collective efforts. Virtually all of this $10 million reflects voluntary membership in the plethora of trade associations nationally; in other words, virtually none is allocated towards cooperative marketing. That's gripe number one. Gripe number two is currently more in vogue: not all winegrowers pa their "fair share"--some pay little, and some pay nothing--to fund industry needs.

Thus, on the one hand, existing efforts are funded unequally, and on the other, cooperative marketing is nonexistent. And that's why the topic of a national wine marketing order has been popping up over the past year. In essence, a marketing order enables the producers of a commodity to assess themselves to jointly promote and market their commodity. Dancing raisins and "a can a week i all we ask" are examples; so is milk and all the good it does a body. A successful marketing order can turn a faltering industry around, as the cotton and beef industries can well attest.

It takes a two-thirds vote (there are various way to figure this) of the producers to initiate a marketing order, and once the order is established, every producer pays an equal percentage towards the budget. They have to, because a marketing order is a piece of legislation enacted by Congress and overseen by the Department of Agriculture. This settles the "fair share" issue.

The wine industry has never enacted a national wine marketing order (all effort have been limited to state growers and/or vintners), and the time may now be right to introduce one. A national marketing order has obvious advantages over state-only commission: greater exposure, more money, more democracy, more generic, everyone pays. Furthermore, a national order puts the nation and Congress on notice that the wine industry is a truly national resource, with representation in 44 states, a benefit that could pay some handsome political dividends.

Needless to say, just throwing money at marketing guarantees nothing except spending money. A successful order must be based on strategic principles. In late 1993, the Wine Market Council, an ad hoc and voluntary consortium of some 10 American wineries, began a three-phase program to grow the industry. Phase one is the first analysis of the wine market since the mid-1980s (much of the statistics in this piece were based on their data). Phase two--to be completed in November--is a nation-wide, 1,200 consumer survey to identify the "specific demographic groups which prove to offer the greatest potential for increased wine consumption." Phase three is a strategic marketing plan based on the accumulated data and coordinated by some of the best marketing minds from withi and outside of the wine industry. Their recommendations are unlikely to be ignored.

A national wine marketing order is not easily established. Consensus and trust must be built; democratic principles must pervade; Congress must be convinced o its necessity; money must be raised; the strategy must be nationally relevant, profoundly focused, and brilliantly communicated. Interestingly, opposition may come from the wine industry trade associations, those very entities to whom vintners entrust the well-being of their industry. They may view the big dollar compulsorily funded, independent, and sexy-issue marketing order as a threat to their comparatively low budget, voluntarily funded, and behind-the-scenes political action agendas.

But most importantly, the American wine industry itself may prove to be its own worst enemy: will we spend the money and do we have the resolution to work together? Ironically, the moment of greatest need for a national marketing orde is precisely the moment it can be least afforded. A national wine marketing order may be expensive, but it is a lot less expensive than going broke by attrition. To move ahead, we must demonstrate to ourselves a commitment to the future of our own industry and a determination to put aside private squabbles.

And besides, it would be fun to join the growers' choir in the heathen temple! Just imagine the music we could make together!! [C] 1994.

(Patrick Campbell owns the premium Laurel Glen Vineyard in Sonoma County and is point man for Family Winemakers of California).

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