by Andrew Chalk
I had lost touch with Jennifer Beckmann after her time at Kuhlken Cellars. There, I attended a premium event she organized pairing Kuhlken wines with food. It was so instructive that, on future Hill Country visits, I routinely paid for premium events at the (growing) number of wineries that offered them, figuring that the $50 or so cost was well worth it after a 300-mile drive from Dallas.
Recently, I got to Re:Rooted Urban Winery, her latest venture. It is in booming San Antonio’s Hemisfair district. While the major roads nearby are currently undergoing construction that make the Gaza Strip look like a model of urban planning, the result will be three massive new hotels plonking hundreds of customers right on her doorstep. Smart to choose Hemisfair back in February 2021 when it was just getting started.
Re:Rooted 210 requires some detail to fully understand it. Superficially, it is an urban wine bar, but dig deeper and there is a lot more going on. Foremost, it is a winery selling its own wines. Their sine qua non is 100% Texas grapes. But you won’t find a laser light show advertising the fact outside the front door. This is not coyness or guilt, it’s a purposeful marketing strategy.
Marketing Strategy Number One
Give the punter a tasting and at some point they ask:
“Which part of California/France/Italy does this wine come from?”
“Oh, this is from Texas. It is made in the Hill Country and the grapes come from the High Plains, out near Lubbock.”
The customer has already convinced themself that this was an enjoyable wine, they were just asking for a followup detail. A major marketing battle has been won by the customer themself concluding they had an enjoyable wine from Texas. Now they will try some more, all from Texas, and these will confirm that the first one was not an anomaly.
We have a convert.
This low-key marketing works because the wines at Re:Rooted are very good and the staff are very good at presenting them.
2.Marketing Strategy Number Two.
Jennifer has finally found time to enter them in competitions to compare them with others. They are earning medals. In time, the walls at the facility will be strewn with insignia of medals won at the San Francisco International and San Francisco Chronicle where Re:Rooted won against dozens of wines from California. Or medals won at the New York Wine Competition against European entrants.
3.Marketing Strategy Number Three.
She stocks other producers' wines for sale at Re:Rooted and has observed how sales depend on the label. There has been a lot of research on this issue and labeling clearly matters. What Beckmann has found is that ‘cool’ labels sell to her clientele and traditional labels don’t. She hasn’t gone the full scientific route of serving the same wine in both types of bottles and observing the scores and sales (yet), but she has formed impressions from handling thousands of sales.
Her own wines got the absolute zero coolness treatment in their labeling. She enlisted an artist from her years as a sommelier in Chicago, Tony Fitzpatrick. His designs for a special set of releases centered around the Dia de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead) celebrations of the hispanic calendar, a huge thing in San Antonio, are lively, eye-catching, and place the event centermost on the wine bottle. Winemaking details adorn the back label.
4.Marketing Strategy Number Four.
Sustainability is a key concern of Beckmann’s and she has borrowed an idea from the brewers to turn it from an objective to a program. Growlers. Refillable bottles that Re:Rooted customers, especially the hundreds of club members, return for sanitizing and reuse. They themselves get their next bottle (or monthly pickup, in the case of club members) in a returned and sanitized bottle. Does this reduce bottles going into landfills? Of 6,500 glass growlers introduced, Beckmann is still using 2,000 after 42 months in a tap program that has run the equivalent of 34,000 bottles. By comparison, the typical wine bottle is used…exactly once. Remarkable although it seems. Glass is the ideal recyclable material. Almost infinitely recyclable. But, in practice, the effective reuse rate is zero. It goes straight into landfill.
WINE DETAILS
Re:Rooted wines are made by Beckmann at the Hilmy Cellars winery facility in Fredericksburg in The Texas Hill Country. Re: Rooted has a dedicated space, barrels, etc. Hilmy winemaker Michael Barton is consulting winemaker to Re:Rooted.
On the day after my return from San Antonio I read a report from Re:Rooted that their 2022 Re:Rooted 210 Petit Verdot was honored with Best of Show Texas Red and a Double Gold medal at the San Antonio Rodeo International Wine Competition. Beckmann elaborated “Competing against 1,025 International submissions, the wine scored in the top 14 making it the first time a wine on tap has placed in the champion rounds”. I had tasted the wine four days earlier at the urban winery and it had impressed me then. I thought it would turn heads if tasted blind against California petit verdot.
Re:Rooted 210 is a carefully thought out concept. I wonder if the addition of the San Antonio area code is to allow its substitution with other area codes at future locations? Keep your eyes peeled.
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