Occasionally something that is said or seen on television or the big screen can start a craze of sorts.
We in "the wine business" see this phenomenon occur fairly often. We had tried to persuade our red wine drinking guests for years to give Pinot Noir a try, but to no avail. Then a movie promoting the wonderful attributes of Pinot Noir called Sideways hit the silver screen and we couldn’t keep any Pinot on the shelves.

Wineries in California began pulling up their Merlot vines and replanting with Pinot Noir, even resorting to purchase Pinot Noir from places outside the United States, just to try and keep up with demand until their new Pinot vineyards could bear fruit. This has also happened when a music video
mentions a particular wine, champagne or spirit. The next thing you know a bunch of people barely old enough to drink are in the stores asking where the Cristal, at $275.00 and up, is kept.

Since the advent of the remote control, DVRs and Netflix, companies see that their advertising
dollars are not getting to the consumer, so they are now using television and movies for product placement to make up for the lost advertising viewers. Whether it’s James Bond ordering a bottle of Chateau Angelus in Casino Royale or the Astin Martin he is driving, these companies know they are reaching just the right demographic for their products. I know a guy who recently bought an Astin Martin because ever since he saw Bond driving one, he had to have one…must be nice!

Well, a couple of weeks ago I went into one of our wine stores and the Wine Consultant asked me if we carry any wines from Sardinia. I told him that one of our wine importers, Nadia Galati, has a couple of white wines from that region, but he was asked by one of his guests for a red Sardinian wine called Cannonau. He went on to tell me about a television show hosted by a Dr. Oz…no really, that’s his name. Dr. Oz had talked about how the people from Sardinia, an island of the west coast of Italy, were prone to live a longer than average life. One of the things the people of Sardinia do is drink wine made from the grape Cannonau. This wine has a particularly high level of the antioxidants called polyphenols, that are said to slow the aging process. Well, that’s all the viewers needed to hear and they were out in force looking for this type of wine from Sardinia. So, I got on the phone with Nadia and she explained to me that we were expecting a small shipment of this wine (Santa Maria La Palma Cannonau, $12.99) to arrive in our warehouse at any moment and that it was supposed to be a larger delivery except that some guy on TV called Dr. Oz mentioned the wine on his show and now everyone was looking for it. Needless to say, we are now sold out also and await a new shipment.

Just goes to show the influence of the great and powerful Oz…

Ken Amendola

Follow me on Twitter @abcwinekena