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The Crew Knew: New Wines + Badges + Results

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Last week the Red White Tasting Crew gathered at Whole Foods on River Street in Cambridge, one of our most supportive partner stores. The goal, as usual, was to taste and tweet and network but this time the Crew had a very specific agenda.

To "vote" on the wines using a new system of badges we've been developing. (Click here for the full story on the badges.) The feedback from the Crew would help Whole Foods decide whether, and which, wines to carry. We'd be tasting six wines from Panther Distributing, a company newly in operation in Massachusetts that focuses largely on Australian wines.

Every store, naturally, has staff who taste wines continually and select the bottles they feel are right for their store. At the Crew event, however, the store was also getting feedback from actual consumers who may or may not select the wines the store's wine buyer would select. David Remillard, Marketing Director at this Whole Foods location, said it's an important perspective they don't normally have the chance to consider.

So we had an opinionated Crew, who were tasting new wines, for an audience eager for their feedback.

We were off and running.

Dan Paquette of Panther and I poured seven wines, one at a time, and the Crew "voted" using individual cut-aways of these badges (see them here). We tasted, we heard about the wines, we talked, and we voted.

Here's how it shook out:

2008 Brookman Wines Chenin Blanc (Australia)

• Most votes for Easy Drinking badge
• Others of note: Food Friendly and Red White Value

2009 Vista Hills Pinot Gris (Oregon)

• Most votes for Subtle & Nuanced badge
• Other of note: Easy Drinking

2009 Conte Estate, Primrose Lane Chardonnay (Australia)

• Most votes for Smells Amazing badge
• Others of note: Subtle & Nuanced

2008 Linda Domas, Shotbull Shiraz Rosé (Australia)

• Most votes for Off the Beaten Vine (almost no one in the room had ever tried a sparkling shiraz rosé before)
• Others of note: Robust and Food Friendly

2009 La Bete, Selection du Cave Pinot Noir (Oregon)

• This one was all over the map but with clusters of votes for Red White Value and Easy Drinking

2009 Brookman Wines “Cool Sands” Cab/Merlot

• Most votes for Red White Anywhere (meaning it has universal appeal)
• Others of note: Smells Amazing and Food Friendly

2006 Conte Estate, The Gondola Grenache/Shiraz (Australia)

• Overall winner of the night!
• Most votes for Robust
• Others of note: Food Friendly, Old School, and Red White Value

And here are some lessons learned:

• Some of the badges are factual and others are subjective, but every badge should be definitive. What does Glass Half Full mean? I meant it as an on-the-bright-side way to indicate a mediocre wine though I realize – and the Crew told me so – that that isn’t exactly a leap of direct logic. So we’ll delete that badge and replace it with something else.
• Not every single person in the room used Twitter or Facebook, but everyone was definitely social and a networker. Check out Jason Phelps' blog post to see how we connected the dots between wine-people-place.
• Photographer Justin Ide offers insight into tasting wine at 140 characters a clip.

Any other thoughts from you? Please let us know!