Fullsteam

…the World.

RESULT: when we open our tavern, we will serve a small selection of excellent wines from around the world, including North Carolina’s best offerings. But our 30-person blind tasting clearly showed that North Carolina wines are, at best, the middle of the pack.

PROCESS: for those inclined to find holes in processes, there’s a fair amount of Swiss on the ol’ cheese plate. The 18 samples included eight North Carolina wines from just two NC wineries. With the exception of our facilitator, Dean Michaels (Director of Education at Empire Distributors), we’re not professional wine tasters — just 30 people who “know what we like.” And scores magically tended to improve through the night, due a strange chemical reaction.

FINDINGS: let’s put aside statistical theory for just a bit and look at the numbers. Key discoveries:

• Only two of the eight North Carolina wines ranked above the overall average of 2.54 on a five-point scale (RayLen Merlot and RayLen Meritage).
• California’s Beringer Founders Estate, a value-minded and widely-available winery,  won top place among the three traditional wine styles (Chardonnay, Merlot, and Cabernet Sauvingnon).
• North Carolina’s Chatham Hill winery had the widest range of opinions (highest standard deviation among the population), with some people enjoying the wine and others not receiving it well. Participants tended to agree on the Chilean Chardonnay, the German Riesling, and the Beringer Chardonnay and Cabernet.
• When it came to assessing value, three of the eight North Carolina wines ranked above the weighted value average. All three Chilean wines ranked below the average. When ranking value, three of the bottom five were North Carolina wines.

see more pictures here!

There’s more I could say here, because I’m kind of a statistics goon. But we’re a brewery first and foremost, and there’s a ton to pull together in the next month…heck, in the next couple of days. In a way, that’s why it was fun to think of taking a stand and serving only North Carolina wines — as a brewery, we could afford to take that risk, because we’re all about the beer. However, the  voice of the consumer matters, and initial feedback on our Facebook fan page was skeptical about serving only NC wines. Perhaps more importantly, the result of last night’s tastings confirmed that we should really give what customers want: a broad selection of wines — including (but not exclusive to) North Carolina offerings.

Of course, all this “work” relates to that small percentage of customers that actually *want* wine at a brewery. (This is as much as I expect we’ll talk about wine ever.)

Perhaps in time we can revisit this topic, and reassess the World’s winning ways. After all, a great time was had by all! It was fun to see Christina of Yelp, several of Wall of Awesome supporters, a bunch of friends, and many new faces. Thanks once again to Dean Michaels for scheming up a great event — his creative mind and quick thinking was most appreciated. Thanks also to Dean’s friend Jeff for printing up the scorecards, Rue Cler for making tasty fresh bread, and Compare Foods for the NC watermelon!

Are you also a stats goon? Download the results (XLS), which includes rankings, standard deviations, and our best effort at a value ranking.