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COMMENT
At Cyprus Gourmet, we try to provide a service to the public of information and opinion, which, when I talk to people seems welcome. Too many businesses fail because the owners are providing what they think the public should have, rather than what they want. Now a wine consuming nation, Cyprus lags behind others in several respects. In public relations – “communication” if you will – it is woeful. Marketing skills are little better and the prerogative of a few. Product development is largely “finger in the wind”, done on a whim. Awareness that wine producers are there to serve their public is lacking.
Consider wine bottle closure. Screw-caps are everywhere abroad – and on quite a number of imported wines here. They are simple and they guarantee 12 good bottles per dozen, unlike corks. Yet only one local producer uses any and those are on their cheapest line.
Talking to a respected wine industry personality the other day, he informed me that research had shown the public here is opposed to screw-caps. They needed educating he said. But he added something else: “The bottling equipment has to be changed and it is expensive. And screw-caps themselves only cost a little less than the cheapest corks – and, the bottles are more expensive”.
These are not reasons to ignore a world trend. Screw-capped (and plastic-corked) bottled wines are flooding in here from all over, but notably from Chile and Argentina at prices lower than many local wines. The public is buying them by the tens of thousand bottles because the wine is very good and exceptional value. So, in a pretty short time, regardless of “education” the Cyprus consumer is going to be aware that screw-capped wine is not just good sometimes, but all the time. And that local wines stoppered with cheap cork, or composite cork (bits of cork bound together by a glue) don’t always taste good bottle to bottle. So, in a year or two when sales are dented and the public is researched to show they accept screw-caps, the rush will be on to install the process here.
Come on chaps! Heads out of the sand, please!
