Asian Correspondent Asia News

Happs & Three Hills winemaker Mark Warren visited Japan to promote Happs and Three Hills. Here’s what he had to say about it…

My wife, Danielle and I went to Japan over the week August 5th – 13th to do some promotional work with our Japanese wine importer Vinos Yamazaki . The week was well organized with a hectic schedule of promotional activities.  More important than the promotional activities was the opportunity to make a personal connection with the staff and management of Vinos Yamazaki and see firsthand where we might be able to improve what we do to support their marketing and sales efforts. My overwhelming impression of Vinos Yamazaki is they are a very well run professional business. There is not one aspect that I thought could be improved or I would change. In fact I would go as far as to say they are everything I wish the liquor trade was in Australia. The Australian off premise trade could learn a lot from this organization. They work tirelessly to promote wine to consumers that are relatively uneducated about wine and they do it very well.

The staff and management are amazing. The principal Yuko and her sister Atko obviously have a very good relationship with all the staff. Yuko has also written and published a book on new world wine for Japanese consumers. All of their staff are sent to English speaking classes and a sommeliers school. The sommeliers school is run by Mr Satou who is a well-known Japanese wine journalist and he has high expectations of those completing his course. The all staff are very enthusiastic and keen to absorb and impart knowledge about wine.  In store service is excellent.  Especially interested in Australian wine the staff ask a lot of questions. Several have been on student exchange in Australia so it’s a country of which they are fond.

Vinos Yamazaki is an expanding company with new stores planned; several stores have only opened in the last few years, and the older stores have all been beautifully retrofitted. Their history is in sake’ but it takes up a very small amount of space in the stores as it is a very competitive market and margins are low, which allows them to be much more focused on wine. In addition to the stores they have a wine club and they wholesale to many restaurants. Collectively they have the capacity to sell a lot of wine.

They are very consumer focused (something they learnt from selling sake’) and if their consumers like a wine then they stock it. Typically new wines will be trialed through their wine club, and the feedback from members determines whether it becomes a permanent stock line in stores. They plan to trial Happs White Fuchsia in this way.

They always have two wines open in the stores for customers to try. The staff are proactive at getting customers to try the wines they have open, and they enthusiastically describe the wine and convey its story.

The stores are typically small, therefore they can only carry a limited number of stock lines. Their literature states 500 different wines and this is not much when they are looking at wines from every wine producing country and wine region in the world.. Our wines were all very prominently displayed, at least for our visit anyway. Although there are some cheaper Vin de Pays our price point for Happs is quite competitive compared to others in the store. Thus we are in an excellent position to satisfy whatever demand there is for Australian wine.

It appears that wine is very much a special occasion drink in Japan and most of the consumers we met had not drunk Australian wine. Approximately 1/3 of the market is sake, 1/3 is beer and 1/3 is spirits. So wine really is a very small part of the market. Having said that Japan is becoming a very westernised culture and its plain to see the wine market expanding. The Vinos Yamazaki stores do not sell beer (beer is sold in convenience stores) nor do they sell spirits. They focus on wine and high end sake’.

The Japanese consumers seem very serious about wine and Vinos Yamazaki work tirelessly to educate. Apart from the in store tastings they hold seminars to educate interested consumers. Their stores are generally too small to accommodate this so it is usually done off site. Depending on the store and the customers, this can be done quite differently. Some are very formal, quite technical and very much like a university lecture. Others are presented as a wine and food matching at a restaurant and on occasions more of a sit down formal approach to tasting is used.

They also conducted two embassy functions while we were in Japan. The Australian embassy is very supportive and this is not something they are able to do with producers from other countries. Store customers and wine club members were invited and the first event sold out in four days. It was a very formal function and we had the pleasure of entering down a flight of stairs waving Australian flags. Japanese media and the ambassador were in attendance. The events appeared to go well. Lee, our distribution representative reported back that the Embassy functions were very successful and they got lots of orders the following day.

We also did lots of in-store tasting presentations. We did one or two at each of the Vinos Yamazaki stores and they made me wear an Akubra. The Happs and Three Hills wines appeared to be very well received at all functions. Both staff and customers were very complimentary about the wines.. The Three Hills Shiraz was the stand out with Mr Satou (wine journalist) regularly in attendance to give it his endorsement. The normal price of the Three Hills Shiraz is 6000 Yen (approximately $70). Like in Australia, this is an expensive wine, however at least the staff are enthusiastic about the wine and prepared to hand sell. Everyone loved the wine but of course not everyone was prepared to part with 6000 Yen. The other interesting wine was Fuchsia – as it does here, it polarizes people with respect to the level of sweetness. However the feedback from Vinos Yamazaki is that it is a great product for consumers new to wine and we certainly encountered many of them.

Packaging and presentation in Japan is VERY important. You can see this across many Japanese retail industries. As such they really like wine bottles signed by the winemaker. Every customer who purchased Happs or Three Hills whilst we were there I wrote a message on the bottle and signed. Every other bottle in store I wrote ‘Enjoy’ and signed my name. Next time I’ll learn to write enjoy in Japanese. Customers seem to really like the personalized touch of bottles being signed. Interestingly there are very few signed bottles in store perhaps indicating these wines do indeed get sold.

Vinos Yamazaki have lots of photos around the stores with Yuko and her staff meeting the producers at the wineries and vineyards. It illustrates how they have searched the world for the brands they import. They also have a Perspex holder in front of every wine, which contains an information card. The card has a photo of the producer and a flag from the country of origin and information about the wine and producer translated into Japanese. It was very common to see customers take this card when purchasing wine.

Interestingly there are no gold medals displayed on bottles in store BUT third party endorsements are critical! There presentations about Happs and Three Hills always involved the Robert Parker review of the 1999 Three Hills Shiraz. It also involved the review by Mr Satou of the 2004 Three Hills Shiraz and that Nicole Kidman once came to the winery (which was to my surprise!) Whilst no medals are on the bottles, wine show results are very important to the story the staff tell. Of particular significance is success in Asian based wine shows.  An example is one of the wines they import from NSW won the trophy for Best Australian Wine at the Japanese Wine Challenge. This wine was the best of 350 Australian wines entered, which hardly rates it as the ‘Best Australian Wine’. However it is a big selling point!

Additionally the Japanese are very aware of reviews by Australian wine journalists. I was asked if I personally knew James Halliday, Huon Hooke and company, and was even asked if I knew Ray Jordan! I think it is fair to say they are very aware and actually seek out third party endorsements to support their sales and marketing efforts. It was also interesting that the Japanese cuisine and summer time climate very much suit crisp dry white wines but sake’ is culturally ingrained for drinking in this environment. Thus crisp dry whites must compete directly with sake’ where as red wine is finding its own niche. The combination of red wine having a unique niche and the perceived health benefits of red wine means Japan, like the rest of Asia, favour red wine.