A Winery Tour: Cupcake Wine - California

On a recent trip to California, I had the opportunity to tour a winery. The winery was owned by The Wine Group. If you are a wine drinker you wouldn't recognize that name, however, you might recognize the names of their wines: Cupcake, Underdog, Franzia, Concannon, Canyon, Fish Eye, Mogen David, and Corbit Canyon to name a few. Franzia was one of the first, "wines in a box". The motivation for the box was to lower shipping costs. On our visit to the winery, we learned about how The Wine Company attempts to remain current and competitive in a highly competitive wine industry. Presently The Wine Group is the fourth largest winery in the world. Part of the presentation focused upon how the various generations (the Boomers, The X-Gen, and the I-Gen) have different preference for wine. The Boomers are very traditional wine drinkers who prefer their wine in bottles with corks. The I-Gen have come to wine drinking earlier than the Boomers and X-ers. They don't mine their wine in boxes or with screw caps. We learned about how the company purchased a number of vineyards around the world and often make their wine and truck it to the bottling plant in bags to save the cost of shipping the wine. Once at the bottling plant the wine is removed from the large bag and bottled for sale. After the presentation we had the opportunity to tour the winery. The winery includes a vineyard, manufacturing area, bottling area and tasting area. After the tour we had the opportunity to engage in a wine tasting. One of my favorites was the Cupcake brand of wine. Of all the reds and whites I tried, my ultimate favorite was the Cupcake Riesling. What a great tour and opportunity to learn a bit about a business and how they are constantly reinventing themselves to remain competitive in a global economy.