Martha Stewart's Junk Wine Club

The launch of The Martha Stewart Wine Company was announced this week, and I read about it in a favorable Fortune.com article as reposted on Terroirist. The Martha Stewart Living portfolio is owned by the publicly traded Sequential Brands, a retail licensing company which paid $353 million to acquire Stewart's brands in 2015. I'm telling you all this because it represents so much of what I detest about wine marketing and sales. 

The venture is nothing more than a deceptive operation to make loads of money peddling private label bulk wine.

Per the company website, "The Martha Stewart Wine Co. is a direct-to-consumer wine service, bringing you wines that Martha Stewart loves. The Martha Stewart Wine Co. delivers carefully curated selections of these wines straight to your door."

Five minutes of online digging is all it takes for someone with a little wine knowledge to see through that charade. Unfortunately, many consumers aren't that savvy. 

Martha Stewart's domestic wines are produced by "Saddlehorn Cellars" which is really ASV Wines, a huge private label and bulk wine operation with locations in San Martin (south of San Jose near Gilroy) and Delano (just north of Bakersfield in the cheap-wine-haven Central Valley). 

Online wine retailers frequently sell private label plonk, such as ASV's wines, and trick customers into "deals". I found a telling tale about a novice wine drinker lured by marketing tactics into a Groupon wine sale. The wine happened to be made by ASV, and nearly identical to the domestic selection "carefully curated" by Martha Stewart. This guy eventually connected the dots about the wine's origin and has an informative blog post about it.

Many other wine subscription clubs, such as Winc, The Tasting Room, and Bright Cellars, similarly sell private label wine while using creative marketing to make it appear cool and authentic. 

Why does private label wine bother me so much? Thanks for asking.
​

• It cheapens the perception of California wine. People start to confuse quality, non-industrial California wine with overpriced, crappy private label wine.
• 
  
• Authentic-sounding brand names trick consumers into thinking they're buying from a small-production, family-owned winery. A "Spencer Family Vineyard" brand is featured prominently on the Martha Stewart Wine Co. website. It's just another ASV creation. 
• 
  
• There is no way to trace the wine's provenance or ingredients. Is it really made from "only the finest grapes", as ASV's website contends? Nearly every winery claims they have the finest vineyards and fruit, which is annoying. But without any way to verify the vineyard location, growing practices, and contents of the wine bottle, there is no way to substantiate that statement. 
• 
  
• All of the above adds up to a lack of transparency and honesty, two qualities that are sorely needed in the wine industry.

According to the Fortune piece, "The wine delivery company intends to work with Chris Hoel, the former sommelier of famed chef Thomas Keller's The French Laundry, to consult vintners to develop the collection." For the sake of the suckers who subscribe to Martha's wine club, I sure hope they bring on a qualified somm to ditch the private label garbage and give these folks some honest product. 
​