Wine Business

Charles Gill is the CEO of Winemetrics LLC , a company providing on-premise market intelligence to the wine and restaurant industries. Winemetrics recently released The 2007 On-Premise Wine Distribution Report , which summarizes varietal, brand and product distribution from of over 10,000 U.S. restaurant wine lists. This report is the source for the content referenced in the article below. Before revealing our brand ranking, it is important to realize how different the wine market is from other alcoholic beverages or consumer goods.

With the popularity of new laws that allow restaurant patrons to take home unfinished bottles of wine, the question among wine enthusiasts now is whether the wine will be drinkable the next day or even several days later. For many, the choice has always been: finish the bottle or pour it down the drain. For others, it means saving the bottle for cooking, but not drinking. There are others, however, who have found ways to save wine from opened bottles.

Wine enthusiasts and serious collectors have valuable allies in their wine appraisers. These experts help wine lovers protect their wine collections by inventorying them and giving them value. Obviously, a good wine appraisal and inventory are essential when wine collections are insured. An appraisal is often necessary for divorce settlements, estate planning, charity donations, tax purposes, and personal investment.

When you have put valuable time and financial investment into a wine collection, you need to make provisions to have it protected. The best way is through adequate wine insurance. Unfortunately, collectors often overlook even basic protection of their valued wines.

Anyone who has tried to buy wine over the internet may be well aware of the obstacle course of wine shipping laws tripping up oenophiles all over the U.S. today. Unless you are fortunate enough to live in what is referred to as a “reciprocal” state, it may quite literally take an act of congress for you to buy a bottle of that great boutique wine you tried during your wine country vacation last year.

IntoWine recently sat down with Charles Gill, CEO of WineMetrics, to discuss what is an impressive feat to anyone who loves wine, analytics, or both. WineMetrics has assembled an enormous and comprehensive database aggregating the wine lists ofrom restaurants across the US. The resulting data is useful to restaurants and of course wine distributors and producers looking for outlets to sell their wines. To the pedestrian wine drinker, the findings are simply fascinating. WineMetrics has compiled extensive data detailing the wines that occupy wine lists in restaurants across the nation, from the Olive Garden in Dayton, Ohio to the local French bistro in Lower Manhattan. Acquiring this data must have been a laborious process. How did you go about it? Much of it is acquired by our distributor clients but a great many restaurants feature their wine lists on their websites, which we utilize. Often we just contact the account and ask for it. What surprised you as you started assessing the data?