Joe Fattorini: The Ramble

A rambling conversation with the most recognizable member of the wine trade

When you consider the success of The Wine Show, Joe Fattorini, one of its hosts, may be among the most recognizable people working in wine, if not the most recognizable. Though I worked with Joe briefly, watched him and read him, I really didn’t know him very well before this Ramble. However, I’ve known he is among the most clever, engaging, and deeply knowledgeable folks in the wine business. A Brit, Joe has written wine education texts, written for consumer publications, worked in retail, consulted for brands and wine companies, and, recently, held a key management position at PIX. He has even performed stand-up comedy. He possesses a Renaissance quality. He also has his vocal detractors. But the most vocal among them are easily laughed off as buffoons who are unqualified to sit next to him. I wanted to have a Ramble with Joe because I know my readers would profit from his thoughts and experience and because I knew he’d be entertaining. I was not wrong. You can learn more about Joe HERE and you can follow him via his Substack newsletter HERE.

This interview approach, “The Ramble”, begins with one question emailed to the subject. They respond in any way they choose, which in turn prompts my next question, and so on. It is a less formal way of conducting an interview, results in something a bit messier and rambling, but also produces something more interesting and authentic I think.

TOM: First, thanks for taking this ramble. You’re a busy guy and I appreciate it tremendously. 

I was reviewing The Wine Show, You were a natural. But it occurred to me that you were among a very tiny group of “wine people” who had ever headlined a successful wine-related TV show. There’s you, Jancis… Well, part of this may be that there just haven’t been many successful series about wine. My theory on this is that it’s more difficult than people think to convince non-wine folks (viewers) that watching grapes grow is all that different than watching paint dry. But all that said, The Wine Show was a success and that makes you one of the few real wine people to help carry a successful wine tv series. So, a couple of things…First, am I anywhere near the ballpark on the wine-might-be-like-paint-drying thing and, second, what are the odds that your success with The Wine Show will always be the first thing mentioned about your career in wine?

JOE: Tom, forget being in the right ballpark. If you were at Wrigley Field you'd have hit the ball all the way to North Sheffield Avenue. Being told to make "an entertaining TV show about wine" is like being told to "fight judo in a straitjacket". One glass of wine looks like every other glass of wine. The Douro excepted, walking through most vineyards is like walking through most high streets. They all look the same, not a lot happens, and what does happen is quite complicated to explain. Maybe our secret was coming from a country that successfully televises cricket.

There have always been a few principles when planning stories in the show - and to be honest they're applicable to most wine businesses. We're all in the business of communicating now. At its heart, every Wine Show story can be told without mentioning wine. Smuggling spies in World War II France. Chilean villages recovering from an earthquake. Different concepts of texture in the global East and West. These themes give each story a universal hook, to which you can then apply wine. Wine isn't universally captivating, so you have to do a bit of bait-and-switch. Wine needs to be a character in the story, not the plot. 

It's also been critical that the show isn't made by "wine people". Melanie Jappy - the brilliant series producer - made a plethora of successful factual TV shows in her career. About things like bomb disposal, genealogy, and food. She came to wine as a professionally-fascinated outsider. Her incredible team of producers and researchers were the same. I was the only person who'd ever sold a bottle of wine. That was my career, although I suspect that helped too. I spoke to the cast - and by proxy the audience - like a wine merchant. Not a wine writer. Most viewers have a wine merchant they feel they know. Someone who is part of their world. It's a much smaller world of people like us who know a wine writer.

Which takes us to your second question. Will the show always be the first thing mentioned about my career in wine? My father texted me last week to say that's what ChatGPT told him about. I'm not sure what it says about Artificial Intelligence that it believes I have an "engaging and humorous style" and the "ability to make wine accessible to a wide audience". I'll be honest, there are worse things to be known for. As a team we made wine fun for more than 100 million people in a 110 countries. And we picked up all sorts of awards and gongs on the way. Although the nicest is always when someone comes up to you in the street and says how much the show welcomed them to joy of wine.

It sounds churlish to suggest this silver lining has a cloud. But it's not been without its challenges for my "real" career. I was a busy, successful sales director before the show. But I would describe myself as "underemployed" these days. It is in the nature of the wine business to be small-c conservative. You just wrote about that. It was a fascinating analysis. The wine business thinks in known-tens-and-hundreds. Not potential-tens-of-millions. And we like to ascribe a rule of one-person-one-role. Before the show, my pitch to an employer would be "I'm a sales director and I will bring across three restaurant groups and a team to look after them." And people would offer a six-figure salary. Now I apply for a "real job" and people think "he's a TV presenter." Well, who needs a TV presenter? So the challenge is to get them to put that to one side and be "a globally-networked sales director-turned-CMO, who helped build the industry's first Digital Shelf platform in record time, after coordinating the biggest corporate integration in the UK wine business, while being at the heart of the debate on sustainability in wine… who's also presented some TV shows." If there's anyone reading who could do with one of those, let me know.

TOM: Joe, you’re gonna need a bigger business card. 

I kinda feel your pain. I’ve got thirty years of successfully doing media and public relations in the wine industry and most people will say, “Ah, yeah, you mean the blogger guy?”

But you make a point: your background and experience in the wine world are varied and vast, presenting you as someone with the ability to successfully engage in a wide variety of positions or appear just a bit underqualified for a wide variety of positions while perfect for just a few. But…I’ve always been a big fan of speculation. “What would I do if I won an insane amount of money in the lottery” or “What would I do if I could start over, but knowing what I know now about the way the world works.” For me, these kinds of questions tend to be clarifying. So, let’s clarify it a little bit: given your experience, your talents, your skills, your place in the arc of life, and knowing the wine industry the way you do, what is your realistic dream position today?

JOE: Tom, I can't remember who it was who said some people's career paths read like they wanted an interesting obituary. I suspect I fall in that camp. I imagine you might be someone similar.

Our business faces problems like falling sales, narrowing margins, greater competition for younger wine fans, and regulatory threats. You do extraordinary work pushing back against those challenges. It's an environment where applying tried-and-tested formulas won't cut it. And companies can't simply tack on a "digital strategy" either. For a start, there's no such thing as a digital "strategy". Digital is tactical. It's how we get there, not where we decide where we're going. Growing sales and margins, facing up to competition and regulations… these are strategic issues understood through the disciplines of marketing's Segmentation-Targeting-Positioning, or things like Kenichi Ohmae's 3C model.

It's a rare thing to have been immersed in that context through my career teaching at a business school, then leading teams in the wine trade, then broadcasting, and then part of the team building Pix. But the real value comes in being able to execute change - especially using the "pointy end" of the Digital Shelf using social commerce and digital media.. Working with Paul Mabray and the team at Pix was the icing on the cake. 

Earlier this year I was set to be a 50% fractional executive at a new online retail platform, working between the UK and Spain. And that meant I could add value for the client by adding relationships and context from smaller consultancies at Systembolaget in Sweden, and several startups. I have also written an online Marketing MBA-level course specifically for the wine business. It'll be available later this year. I'd love to be able to support the school who are hosting it.

In an absolutely ideal world I'd be creating those future-oriented strategies for wine businesses, and executing them, either as a fractional or full-time executive. Someone said recently "but wouldn't you be off filming all the time?" The truth is I think it's probably time for a new cohort of wine communicators to take on the job. If anyone ever wants advice or insight into how to do it, I'll tell them everything I know. (I'm often asked). 

TOM: Let’s chat a bit about Pix, which you mentioned was “icing on the cake” for your career to this point. I worked with Paul when he was building Inertia Beverage Group. He always and still does strike me as that unique person that combines both vision and a rational business sense. These two things combined at Pix to result in a very impressive team both on the business and editorial side. You were more on the biz dev side than the editorial. Yet the editorial side got more attention than the business model deployed by Pix. On the one hand, this made sense. On the other, the business model was a bit audacious and I thought should have gotten more attention out of the gate. What happened at Pix?

JOE: I've never learned so much, so fast, as I did at Pix. It was like doing a seven day a week Mar-Tech MBA for two years. Part of that was the extraordinary group of people I worked with.

The hires on the editorial side were really high profile within the wine industry. Erica Duecy and Felicity Carter were both people I'd read and followed for years. And Meg Maker who came in to consult too. And Erica and Felicity brought great writer names with them too. But on the tech and business side we had Matt Franklin who's the cleverest person I've ever met. Full stop. He led the tech team with Lesley Yake who's the best leader in wine platform management. And David Round MW who gave us serious wine expertise. Then Alder Yarrow straddling the whole thing both - he had this phenomenal overview across the whole business from his long experience as a blogger, writer, and consultant.

It's worth remembering, Pix is still running. There's a small team who are working all hours to release new features, and add in more customers. And I'd love people to go and see how it works and what we pioneered. I'm in touch with the team most days.

What Paul did was to give us all the freedom to rethink how you help people find and buy wine online. It coordinated independent editorial and commercial arms with a clear "Church and State" division. We saw that typical online e-commerce models are based around people who are really into wine.  It's a funnel. You give them a logical journey. Red or white? France or USA or somewhere else? California or Oregon… Sonoma or Mendocino…  now let's rank them from cheapest to most expensive.

We figured that most people don't choose wine that way. And there's a mass of evidence from research by Google and others that they don't. Most people have problems that need answers. "I need a bottle of decent red for an Italian meal in 20 minutes". "I'm a collector and I want more 2011 Bordeaux". "I like to support female winemakers". And perhaps the most important which was "I don't know a whole lot about wine, but can you guarantee me that this one won't be shit." That's the mindset of a lot of wine drinkers. Probably most wine drinkers. Existing platforms weren't great at answering that because they are aimed at people who are really into wine. People like you and me. But in the grand scheme of things we're weirdos. I hope you don't take that personally, but statistically we are. My experience from talking to viewers of The Wine Show was that there are millions of people who love wine, but are mostly terrified they'll choose "the wrong one".

So we worked hard to make sure wine enthusiasts could find depth and detail. But also occasional drinkers could find answers to their questions. My role was to try and help the tech team understand how "real" people buy wine and be the voice of the wine producer or retailer within the business. So we made something they were proud to partner with. And thousands have.

Of course in the US Pix also provides a unique service. Brands and producers can't send customers direct to retailers. Not effectively and always legally. Pix is a trusted partner who will merchandise their wines, and takes customers direct to retailers who have the product on the shelf right now, in real time. And all for free and without being part of the transaction. That's a powerful and I hope the industry realises what an extraordinary resource we built under Paul's leadership.

I can even point you to an extraordinary use case of what this lets us do. I made two special episodes of The Wine Show with Dominic West (The Wire, The Affair, The Crown) in Bolgheri. Those appear on YouTube and social channels and in airport business lounges. And they come with click buttons and QR codes that take you straight to a special page on Pix where you can find where to buy the wine. When it comes to marrying storytelling, brand, engagement, digital media, and sales that's hard to beat.

TOM: This “fear they’ll choose the wrong one” is real. And it bugs the shit out of me mainly because I can’t relate to it. It’s never been a problem for me, but then, as you say, I’m a weirdo. I remember going to Napa to taste when I was 18 years old. My friends thought that was a little weird, so I stopped telling them I was going or that I went. This was around 1981 and there were far fewer wineries to choose from and there was rarely a tasting fee. And no one asked for my ID. It was pretty grand. 

But I realize the fear of picking the wrong wine is real. I suspect it has its greatest impact on folks who don’t drink wine much or are just starting to drink wine and who have aspirations of competence. But after you’ve been drinking wine, even shitty wine, for five or ten years I suspect it’s easy enough to pick a wine…just pick the one you’ve been drinking. 

What I know however is that wine IS complex. And I’ve always thought this is one of its selling points as a category of alcohol. Maybe the key is getting folks to believe, whether it’s true or not, that they have a grasp on the complexity of wine? Maybe we find ways to lie to people and make them think they are competent. Surely there is a wine discovery engine for that task.

JOE: Ah, now, you're really onto something here. For me this is the crux of a central challenge for wine. The big question is when we say "complex" or "competent", in what way?

Here's an example. Red wine carries a sense of richness, sophistication, and sensuality. While milk is associated with purity, innocence, and simplicity. Students of French literary analysis from the late 1950's will recognise this from Roland Barthes' essay Red Wine and Milk. "Sensuality" and "innocence" aren't things inherent in the wine or the milk. Humans put them there. But they're part of what make wine "complex" and milk "simple". And being "competent" means being able to understand these implicit codes. Easy with milk. There's full-fat, half-fat, and skimmed. But harder with wine, where there are two hundred red wines on a shelf.

This isn't something unique to wine. Myth-making like this is something we do to all sorts of objects and ideas. We subconsciously transform them into signifiers that represent larger cultural ideas and values. Even milk. Half-fat from the supermarket means something very different from unpasteurized milk from a farmers' market. Or oat milk. I bet you've already generated a picture in your head of the archetype who buys each one.

Now scale that up to the cultural ideas and values applied to Champagne, red Bordeaux, Napa Cabernet, Malbec. At the risk of being yet ANOTHER person quoting the TV show Succession to make some vapid point about society, there was a quote in the last season where Tom Wambsgans says “It's the kind of wine that separates the connoisseurs from the weekend Malbec morons".

What most people fear isn't that the wine they choose won't go with fish. Or won't be matched to their palate. They fear being viewed as a "Malbec moron" by someone who's a "connoisseur". Even more so now it's been on some zeitgeisty TV show. And far more so than when you and I started drinking. If you made the "wrong" choice back then, who knew? But today everyone knows. I saw someone being sniffy on Instagram about people who take Whispering Angel to barbecues the other day. The power of that message isn't "drink something better". It's "clueless noobs drink Whispering Angel". I'm now worried I've put a picture on Instagram drinking Whispering Angel at a barbecue. Remember, our fear of loss is more than twice that of our anticipation of equivalent gain. That insight into Loss Aversion won Daniel Kahneman a Nobel Prize. This is what truly drives most peoples' wine choice. And we need to recognise the loss is symbolic and social more than "organoleptic".

Any search engine or wine platform that seeks to appeal to the 80-85% of "normal" wine drinkers has to be based on building trust. It needs to reassure people about what the wines say about you. How to use them to project a message. This is true of retailer websites too. So what is Somlói Juhfark? Is it an aromatic white with complex smoky and savoury notes alongside hints of flower blossom and ripe pears? Or is it a bit of a "wine trade secret" and "future classic"? The last two let me justify the wine to someone who I fear might be a "connoisseur" and prove I'm not a "Juhfark yokel".

TOM: I’m not sure we are in danger of 80-85% of wine drinkers reaching for that Somlói Juhfark. However, your point is taken. It sounds like what you are advocating is that every wine offered at a retail site or returned from a search engine or offered at a producer site ought to have a note attached that explains why the buyer will come off looking good or smart or in the know for buying and serving the wine—No Matter What The Wine Is! For example: "Mateus Rose: A wine for those that like to kick it old school…REALLY Old School!” Do I have this right?

JOE: This is right. Although it needn't be as direct or up-front as that. At Pix there's a top navigation menu. It has four categories: Featured, Discover, Collect, and Surprise. There's some serious customer insight behind these categories.

For instance, we know that lots of "regular" wine drinkers are more fearful of making the wrong choice than they are motivated to make a "better choice". That's who the "featured" selection is for. Someone has featured it in The Drop - the editorially independent publication. Or it's been a selection from the site's experts. Therefore it's unlikely to be a poor choice if an expert has skin in the game like that. It's a reassurance more than a recommendation.

Wine websites tilt towards people with expertise. So then we have "Discover". I sometimes use the term "The Adventure Gradient". It's the idea of stretching your comfort zone but in a manageable way. Making small shifts towards novelty while still maintaining a sense of security. Here we merchandised wines that were a "bit" adventurous. Essentially the "if you like Malbec, try Cahors" line. 

"Collect" leans into the fact that wine is - for some people - an act of conspicuous consumption. It's about display. But rather than saying "buy this if you want to show off" you suggest these are wines for the collector.

But we also recognised that there are people like you and me. And probably people reading this too. People who are comfortable with wine, who have little fear of "loss" in purchases, and for whom the unexpected, and pure discovery is part of what makes wine special. "Surprise" lets us indulge that.

Real value is found at the intersection of fields. Pure wine expertise worries that you'd need to explicitly "tell" people what the wine "means". And pure tech expertise struggles to understand the subtleties of wine consumer behaviour. But if you know something about both, you can create more meaningful customer journeys in more creative ways.

For instance. People who install their own web browser tend to be more adventurous consumers than people who use the browser that came pre-installed with their computer. Carlsberg used this so that their system would look at the browser you visited your site with, and serve different home pages depending. To great effect too. I'd love to test if Firefox users really were more interested in Gruner Veltliner and Pet Nat, and if Microsoft Edge users tended towards New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc.

TOM: I want to know what “Ask Jeeves” users like to drink.

OK, you and I are probably more verbose than your average person. So, let’s give readers some quick hits. I”m going to ask you some questions and you get two sentences to respond. 

What’s the winemaking region you’d want to retire to (assuming you ever retire from work)?

JOE: Kent in England. I like bubbles, a challenge and somewhere I can get a proper cup of tea.

TOM: What about Social Media in general? Bane or boon?

JOE: In general… bane. Substack is a model for a better social media

TOM: Who is the most fascinating person in wine…the person you can’t not watch, listen to or read?

JOE: Britain's Oz Clark. He was the first famous person in wine I met. His writing has taught me and brought me to tears.

TOM: He’s a legend. In fact, you folks in Great Britain seem to breed wine media legends. I think of Jancis Robinson, Hugh Johnson, Clive Coates, Michael Broadbent. And there are a number of others moving toward legendary status. Can you talk candidly about your experience with the wine media both on your side and my side of the Atlantic? How have they treated you, particularly since your visibility increased with The Wine Show? In general, do you think the wine media is doing a good job? Do you know what their job is? Is there a difference between American and English wine writing? 

JOE: Oh boy this is such a fascinating question. The very first wine book I bought was by Serena Sutcliffe MW. I met her once in the street and delighted in telling her. Here's my very cobbled "grand theory" of wine writing. And it crosses the Atlantic - because the inflection point is Jancis Robinson and Robert Parker. 

Before-Jancis/Bob - what we'll call BJRRP - wine writing largely fell in two camps. People like Serena and Michael Broadbent were wine sellers of some description. While people like Hugh Johnson or P Morton Shand (Queen Camilla's grandfather) were polymaths for whom wine was one of several areas of expertise. Hugh is a global authority on trees. Phillip Morton Shand was a leading writer on modern architecture. Even Oz comes in this bracket. He was a leading actor and singer, who also happened to be a phenomenal expert and communicator on wine.

Jancis and Robert were the leaders in an inflection point towards independent, dedicated, wine writing. Determinedly disassociated from the business of selling it. And known for their focus on wine alone. That gave them their authority.

And that rewrote the model. In many positive ways. Many of today's wine writers follow in that tradition. But I do fear in one negative way. They write - understandably - to their audience. That is, people who are really into wine. Wine merchants form their relationship with their audience by selling to them. And that's a different dynamic.

Oz once said to me - I think we were in a jacuzzi at the time - that writing about expensive wine was easy. Of course it's good. People spent a lot of time and money making it. The hard job is picking out the gems from the array of wines that most people drink. Making something distinctive at $12 takes serious skill. I have huge admiration for people who work reviewing classed growth Bordeaux, or the refined edges of Germany. But people like Oz who bring wine to life for someone on an average income. That's something else.

When we made The Wine Show we said we'd know we'd succeeded if we had bad reviews from established wine writers. Largely because we weren't making it for them, or their audience. We were making it to appeal to everyone who didn't read a wine writer, but still loved drinking wine. I remember being slightly crestfallen when everyone loved it. But rather grateful to Jamie Goode who was very complimentary about Amelia Singer and me, but critical of the format. In a bizarre way that was exactly what we were going for.

I don't for a minute put myself in a box with Serena Sutcliffe or Michael Broadbent. But I do like to feel I follow in their tradition by being a wine merchant (of 25 years standing) who also happened to write and broadcast about wine.

TOM: The knock on the merchant/writers was that they were likely to flog the stuff they wanted to sell, at least this seemed to be the knock from the independent writers. I always took that criticism to heart. I’ve always been a wine publicist and consultant and over nearly 20 years of writing commentary I can count on two hands the number of times I’ve dragged my clients into my missives.

But you aren’t talking about merchants writing to sell. You are talking about writers really knowing the people they sell to. And I agree that’s different. 

Meanwhile, the rise of the independent voice in wine has accelerated due to the ease of publishing: blogging platforms, Substack, the ease of podcasting. This in turn has lured more wine professionals from various sectors of the industry (retail, PR, producers) into the communications field. Just yesterday I recorded a podcast with a person whose day job is retail store owner.

By the way, I’ve purposely stayed away from asking you about that species of communicator known as the “Instagram Influencer”. I’ve not asked because I can’t bear to talk about it. It depresses me. 

So, let me bring us to one more topic. I’ve become somewhat militant about the destructive and anti-competitive nature of America’s three-tier system. I know the power wielded by our duopoly of wholesalers who are supported by a three-tier system that requires wine to be sold through them retards the growth of the industry and is built on a culture of rent-seeking. 

Talk to me about the structure of the British and European wine regulatory systems. It is often described by supporters of our three-tier system as “unregulated”. They decry the “tied houses” in England. And they warn that America really must avoid the fate of the English example. Are they full of shit?

JOE: Isn't funny how the same thing looked at two ways means totally different things. It's true the British system is "unregulated". Anyone can sell to anyone. In the UK there are wine importers and distributors who are also winemakers, and are also retailers. 

Laithwaites is the UK's largest mail order/online retailer and has its own estates. Freixenet Copestick is part of a group that goes back to vineyards in multiple countries. They also supply restaurants and independent retailers through Jascots. And they have their own retailer in Slurp. But they're not "tied houses". If they were "tied houses" they'd fail. They work because the enjoy the benefits of centralised business services and expertise, but the commercial freedom to satisfy the consumer. The market does the hard work of regulating them.

It isn't a perfect system. But I worked at a retailer in the 1990's where we were obliged to carry big stacks of the parent group's beers. But eventually the business failed. I then joined a wholesaler that was bought by Constellation. We struggled to sell "our" wines. Owning the route to market doesn't mean you own the preferences of the consumer. That's why I hate the word "consumer". It means people think they just "consume" like drones. I always tell businesses to call them the "audience". You have to perform. You have to listen to the cheers and jeers. If you just serve up what you have they'll walk out.

I'm sure people don't like a foreigner interfering in the way the US does things. But Bruce Yandle's "bootleggers and baptists" model has long been applied to wine regulation. I'm sure there are some Three Tier supporters who fall into the camp of “Baptists”. The true believers. People who feel deeply and sincerely that the Three Tier system prevents societal disaster. And I'm not questioning their sincerity. I live mostly in Sweden where we have a total monopoly.

But in truth the Baptists are a fig leaf for the Bootleggers. And they're not people like Jack "Legs" Diamond any more. They're self-interested CEOs, financially profiting from regulations and laws that insulate them from competition. Making more money because of regulatory barriers that form a systemic cartel. The whole thing kept in place by regulatory capture and insulation from competition, 

In some way I feel for the Baptists. They must look at millions of people drinking no less, but largely drinking what distributors want, in ways that largely enrich the distributors, and wonder where their drive for social improvement went so wrong.

TOM: Joe, you’ve been very generous with your time and expertise. Thank you. This seems like an appropriate place to end our ramble. But before we end, I want to merge your love of wine, business and technology into a final question: Can you provide a prompt that every wine industry professional ought to be typing into ChatGPT?

JOE: What a phenomenal question.

Take whatever you are working on, and explain it to ChatGPT. Then ask "What perspectives am I missing in this idea?" I suspect I use a variation of that question in ChatGPT at least once a day.