power to the people

new initiative, folks, hot of the wine-press. For an instant translation of Wine Marito’s post today, blog this way….

when I was a teeny-tiny marketeer I was spoon-fed Kotler, the staple diet of any 1980′s Marketing baby. I liked it, and even today am just as partial to the Main Man of Marketing as I am to a Farley’s rusk. And as he says today, ”marketing changes“.  Here at Podge Arge, we make wine. We make it for a variety of reasons, not least because we like to , but mostly, let’s be honest, we make wine to sell it so we can pay the mortgage and buy Farley’s rusks to feed the baby with.

And continuing to be honest, we think honesty pays, that honesty, in this ever increasingly transparent world, is something that people want, and that marketing was, is, and will always be , the creation and the selling of a want, for a profit. Before, people made wine because other people liked drinking it and were happy to pay for it. It wasn’t hard to set a price that the drinker was happy to pay, and which created enough profit for the winemaker to live on. Now, the number of producers, wines, prices, qualities, points of sale, blah , blah, are VAST, and the drinker is overwhelmed. Somewhere in his DNA, his wine gene is crying freedom and wanting to get back to the days when he could get a drop of vino from this chap he knew.

So what we are moving towards is selling honesty: kind of , ‘buy a bottle of honesty and get the wine for free’. This is our philosophy. And this, is where we start….if you’re a blogger, or a wine-siter, (or even if you’re not, ’cause we’re not that pedantic), we want you to to help to make an Honest Wine Guide for Poggio Argentiera. We’re asking you to accept delivery (no catch, we pay) of cellar samples, give them a good glug, and tell us what you think, good or bad.  (Actually, you don;’t even have to tell us what you think, but given that getting your opinion is The Point, we’d really like it if you did). Whatever you think, good or bad, will be published in a review section of the site…because we want your honesty to help other people choose what to buy.

At the mo, this is an Italy only thing, but we have Plans, and anyway, if you are beggingly desperate we might be able to sort something out, even if it’s at a later date. Chin chin.