Wine + Data, and a Letter from Mexico: How to See What’s Possible, and Run With it

This week I’ve been enjoying my first-ever trip to Mexico (not sure how it’s “first-ever” but that’s probably a story for another time) and I’ve picked up a few things about the wine industry here.

• There are a heck of a lot of sommeliers in Mexico City. Their popularity and enthusiasm reflect the spiking consumer interest here in wine, and in Mexican wine in particular.
• A state called Querétaro, in central Mexico and about a two-hour drive from Mexico City, is fostering a rapidly-expanding wine and food tourism sector. Hand-in-hand with that is an influx of significant foreign investment, which helps to build technologically sophisticated wineries and tasting rooms and adjacent restaurants and cafés.
• 96% of the 2.1 million cases of wine produced here are consumed here.
• Mexican wine accounts for 40 to 45% of all wine consumed in Mexico, and the market is seeing an annual growth rate of 10 to 11%.

Right.

Tomorrow, as part of the México Selection program organized by Concours Mondial de Bruxelles, I’ve been asked to introduce Enolytics and what data analysis can mean in the context of those bullet points, above.

I honestly cannot wait, partly to share some of the insights that have already risen to the surface about wine consumers in Mexico (indirectly even, in the course of other projects) and partly to hear how the audience here receives these insights.

Once we show what’s possible, how do they take the ball and run with it?

If we can locate digital consumer sentiment within the neighborhood of specific restaurants (and we can), how does that help that young, savvy cadre of sommeliers, in Mexico City and elsewhere?

If we can segment consumer sentiment around Spanish wine, relative to French wine, relative to Mexican wine, and then track the trends of that sentiment over time (which is all possible), how does this empower the emerging Mexican wine industry?

If we can take data that’s specific to wine consumers, and then overlay that with data from the tourism sector, how does that help direct valuable resources and communications so that eno- and gastro-tourism continues to thrive?

We dunno. Yet.

But boy are they – are we – hungry to find out.

Let me toss the question to you.

Once you see what’s possible, how will you take the ball and run with it?

I’d love to hear.

Thank you for reading and thank you, as always, for sharing this journey with me.

Cathy