Nurse the Hate: The New Sparkling Wine Scheme

I have gone in deep on sparkling wine.  Too deep.  There are dozens of bottles of sparkling wine everywhere.  Champagnes.  Cremant de Bourgogne.  Sekt.  Sparkling gruner veltliner.  Cava.  Lambrusco.  It’s out of control.  Yet, I don’t have a Tasmanian sparkling wine.  I haven’t come across one.  Here I was so transfixed by Tasmanian sparkling wine.  Maybe it’s just not that big of a deal.  The dollars available for Tasmanian sparkling wine might be less than I had bargained.  Perhaps my plan to travel back in time to corner that market might have been flawed.  I will admit relying on Leo to build a time machine out of construction scraps might have been a tad optimistic.  Now with him on a Colonel Kurtz type yoga quest in India, I won’t see him for at least two weeks if ever again.  There’s a decent chance I might be summoned to fly to India and search the entire nation with a grainy photograph of Leo asking all 755 billion people if they have seen him when he fails to turn up at the airport for his departing flight.  I can’t bank on Leo to bail me out.  He’s probably already dead of dysentery.  

While immersed in this sparkling wine subject, I have found all types of obscure sparkling wines I hadn’t considered taking over with a swift decisive swoop into the market.  I became interested in Cremant de Limoux as I could see myself walking around Southern France in rubber sandals making second rate $15 fizzy wine.  However, there are a considerable number of large corporations already well entrenched.  An American bungling things up down there won’t play well in the French press.  In that I don’t speak any French, I wouldn’t even have any idea at how badly they were speaking about me in the press.  They have pretty quick tempers down there.  Someone might come at me with a pitchfork.  No, Limoux might not be for me.

I need something with a relatively low profile that I can get in rather cheaply and use my marketing know-how to create a profitable empire in a short time.  That was when I discovered my future in Clairette de Die Methode Dioise Ancestrale.  It just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?  Who can’t see every American man, woman, and child walking into their favorite restaurant and saying, “You know… Let’s skip the Bud Light.  Do you have a Miller’s Clairette de Die Methode Dioise Ancestrale?  That would really hit the spot!”.   It’s sweet, grapey and just fizzy enough that every high school and college girl would start chugging it like Gatorade if I can get it on the shelves.  Maybe I can put my face on the label making the “OK” sign with my hand like one of those Italian pizza boxes.  That would imply the trust the consumer is looking for in a sweet fizzy wine.  I will likely have to have some sort of corporate mascot too, like a slightly buzzed pony on the label.  I know two things about young women.  1. They like to text and 2. They like ponies.  I think we can all agree that I completely understand my target market.

I still don’t know anything about farming.  I know almost nothing about winemaking.  What I know is how to move product baby!  The question remains at to how could I get access to the product at a reasonable rate and package it as my own brand?  This is when I did a real deep dive and discovered that there is something called “Confrérie des compagnons de la Clairette de Die”, which translates to Brotherhood of the companions of the Clairette de Die.  I learned the following from the Brotherhood’s website:  “If you are a loyal fan of Clairette and Crémant de Die and you want to spread the word about these wines, you will perhaps one day be called to join the community and to become a "capé".  Unlike the compagnons, the capé possess the privilege of wearing the cape bearing the effigy of the Brotherhood.  Investitures take place on the occasion of the chapter meetings, generally on the third weekend in April, in the towns of Crest, Die or Châtillon-en-Diois. Uncompromising with regard to traditions, the compagnons will nevertheless sometimes bend the rules.  During processions, for example, they will sometimes borrow a fellow member’s cape – but only with the permission of the "grand master".

Clearly I need to go to Chatillon-en-Diois in April to see if I can borrow someone’s cape and get myself wedged in the inner circle.  I just need to win the friendship of The Grand Master!  If you had told me three years ago when I started this wine madness that I would find myself in a cape in a village at the foot of the French Alps trying to translate “buzzed up pony on the label” into French, I would have said you were crazy.  Yet, it seems to be my destiny to utilize my newfound knowledge of sparkling wine and fold myself into this brotherhood to create a massive new market for these wines.  I think we can all agree is one thing that Southern French farmers love are wiseass Americans with little understanding of their centuries old traditions.  I see myself with my cape on at The Brotherhood’s dinner, clinking a fork on a glass, saying something like “Excuse me!  Excuse me!  If I can have your attention!  I don’t speak French, but I do speak a language I think you all know…  That language is money!  Now let me tell you what you’re doing wrong and how I am going to help YOU!”.  Then I’d make a little speech and then peel off cash in a “make it rain” gesture to let them know I was serious.  My guess is that it will go very well.  

My plan is to now research Clairette De Die Methode Dioise Ancestrale to the point where I am America’s preeminent authority on these wines and the region.  I will allow others in my WSET class to spin their wheels in saturating themselves with Champagne, Prosecco, and Cava.  I have found my niche.  I have found my Brotherhood.  I will fly to Chatillon-en-Diois this April and win the hearts and minds of the Brotherhood.  It’s a very exciting time.