Nobody ever apologises for not knowing enough about cheese

So why do they apologise for not knowing enough about wine? Could val­ues, be­liefs, emo­tions, per­son­al­it­ies, in­terests and life­styles explain why?

I’m currently in Logroño in the heart of Rioja at the 7th UNWTO Global Conference on Wine Tourism. You can see the session where I was interviewed by Sandra Carvão - Chief, Market Intelligence and Competitiveness at UNWTO at the start(ish) of the linked video. If you follow this Substack, it’s probably the sort of thing you’d find interesting. If you organise wine conferences I’d love to come and speak at yours. I’m sure the team here will give you a reference.

By coincidence it was near Logroño where in the year 975 a monk made a note in the margin of an inventory of cheese . The note was in is his local language, not the vulgar Latin of the cheese list. It remains the first known example of what we call Spanish. A language now spoken by 7.5% of the world’s population.

I’ve not idea what the note said. But I’ll bet it didn’t say “I’m afraid I don’t know a lot about cheese…”. Nobody EVER apologises for not knowing enough about cheese. Yet there are tens of thousands of different cheese. And they all reflect where they’re made, who made them, and the heritage of their origins. Something you might even call “terroir”. At least the “fine” cheeses. Not the “commercial” cheeses that make connoisseurs turn up their noses.

So why do so many people apologise for not knowing enough about wine? When they don’t for cheese?

Could the answer lie in our hidden - and not so hidden - beliefs, attitudes, and values?

The tl;dr is “yes”.

The longer answer will make you more effective in marketing and selling wine. Whether you’re a retailer, importer, wine maker, or communicator.

Psy­cho­graph­ic Seg­ment­a­tion

Psy­cho­graph­ic seg­ment­a­tion groups people (like you, yes you, we’re judging you) by their/your shared val­ues, be­liefs, emo­tions, per­son­al­it­ies, in­terests and life­styles. But it is largely about the things you DON'T say about yourself. It's about your subconscious at­trib­utes.

The VALS meth­od­o­logy is per­haps the most fam­ous ex­ample of psy­cho­graph­ic seg­ment­a­tion – stand­ing for Val­ues, At­ti­tudes, and Life­style.

It puts you (and your audience) into seg­ments that share val­ues about life. And from the seg­ments you can see how these largely un­spoken val­ues, at­ti­tudes and life­styles can help us as mar­keters with our mes­saging, po­s­i­tion­ing and whatnot. These things speak to power­ful parts of people’s iden­tity. Psy­cho­graph­ics is in­ter­ested in giv­ing mar­keters the tools to appeal to sub­con­scious feel­ings among a tar­get mar­ket.

One of the biggest sub­con­scious di­vides in wine is between op­tim­isers and sat­isficers.

Let’s say 10% of wine drink­ers are op­tim­isers. They're look­ing to make the optim­al decision. “The best wine”. You’re probably an optimiser. You’re reading this Substack about wine. You spend a lot of time under­stand­ing the cat­egory. You look to the advice of ex­perts. You may cluster with other people who share your interest. If you’ve ever stepped foot in 67 Pall Mall or a WSET class, you’re an optimiser.

Around 90% of wine drink­ers are sat­is­ficers. They’re less concerned that the wine will be good, than that it WON’T be shit. “The most assuredly un-shit wine”. They're looking to be reas­sured they're not making a bad de­cision. And it's true that the wine sector in gen­er­al over­looks this much lar­ger, psy­cho­graph­ic seg­ment.

You might think that means that the op­tim­isers are all happy, con­ten­ted wine buy­ers who de­light in what they're do­ing. And sat­is­ficers are all wor­ried about the choices they face.

That may some­times be true. But the op­pos­ite can be the case.

Max­im­izers spend time and en­ergy to reach a de­cision. They can be anxious about wheth­er they are mak­ing the best choice. The writer Barry Schwartz in his fam­ous book The Para­dox of Choice, ar­gued that over time, sat­is­ficers tend to be hap­pi­er custom­ers. As soon as they find some­thing "good enough" they're content. Seriously… while you’re sniggering at that bottle of Barefoot in their basket, they’re actually happier than you. The idea that non-ex­pert wine drink­ers are all des­per­ate for informa­tion to make bet­ter in­formed choices, could well be a myth. In­deed I'd go so far as to say it IS a myth.

But psy­cho­graph­ic seg­ment­a­tion in wine is about more than sat­is­ficers and optimisers.

Yadda, yadda… how do I use this in practice?

This is Pix, the on­line wine dis­cov­ery plat­form.

Pix uses vari­ous forms of seg­ment­a­tion in the way it presents wines to users. Let’s look at one or two their list­ings to see how.

This is an ex­ample of Be­ha­vi­our­al Seg­ment­a­tion. The list­ing sug­gests this is a wine to have over din­ner with friends.

Or here... a wine to cel­eb­rate with.

But the plat­form also uses psy­cho­graph­ic cues to ap­peal subsconciously to seg­ments of its audi­ence.

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