Wine Lessons for Beer

Filed in archive Wine Making on June 19, 2006

Beer making has really matured over the past few years with in increase in small breweries and specialty labels. Of course, wine makers have known about the idea of making unique batch of wine for years, and there are a number of other lessons beer makers are now picking up from wineries.

From Craft Beer Steps into Wine Country:

Methods long synonymous with high-end wine marketing, such as reserve bottlings, vintage dating, future-allocation programs and even vertical tastings (in which drinkers compare multiple vintages of the same beverage) are becoming increasingly commonplace among craft brewers.

And, by all accounts, they're succeeding: Craft-brew sales grew 9% to 7.1 million barrels during 2005, following a 7% increase from the prior year, making craft beer the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. alcoholic-beverage industry.

"There's no question the people in this segment have looked to wine for lessons on how to market better," said Ray Daniels, director-craft beer marketing for the Brewers Association.

Mr. Daniels said the growth in winelike offerings recently prompted the Brewers Association to enter a partnership with Information Resources Inc. to measure sales of reserve and seasonal bottlings, but statistics aren't yet available.

Still, anecdotal evidence from individual brewers scattered all over the country suggests demand for reserve crafts is growing. The Wyoming-based Grand Teton Brewing Co., for instance, introduced a "Cellar Reserve" line in 2002, primarily as a means of letting its brewmaster experiment with longer-brewing beer. The "Cellar Reserve" name was meant to invoke the careful handling practices associated with fine wine. (Grand Teton doesn't actually have a cellar.)