A rainy, cold night in Brugge, Belgium, just after Christmas. A few hours on my own. And a wine – a gamay called Hey Gamin! from François Saint-Lô in the Loire – that utterly captivated me, that I savored at Cuvee Natural Wine Bar, just off the main market square.

Is this the future of French wine for US consumers? A beguiling yet obscure wine that we need to go to Europe to taste…?

That’s how the narrative started this week, during a session on Tuesday morning at Wine Paris, where I was invited to speak to the data around the consumer perspective of France’s market potential in the US. It was a fantastic lineup that featured Thorsten Hartmann from IWSR as co-presenter followed by commentary from Adrian Chalk with Adrian Chalk Selections, Pascaline Lepeltier MS with Racine’s, Jeanne Marie de Champs with Domaines et Saveurs Collection and Manilay Saito with Business France. Michael Green, wine and spirits consultant, moderated the session.

I’m happy to share the slides from the presentation – my contact information is at the bottom of this page, just let me know – but here’s the most relevant point I made, when it comes to wine + data:

Digital “fluency.”

It’s one area that France lags significantly behind their counterparts as they compete for consumer attention in the US. I used data from Enolytics’ colleagues and partners – including Vivino, Quini and Wine Australia – to illustrate the point, alongside snapshots of projects we’ve done for France’s competitors, particularly in Spain, Italy, Chile and California, that give them a clear commercial advantage over French producers and regions.

It was discomfiting to the French audience and that was, in the context of that particular session, a good part of the point.

The other part of the point was what they could do about it to improve their situation.

That’s where the digital fluency comes in.

The lion’s share of attention in this regard went to the Global Wine Database. Listing themselves in that resource, I said, is the single most valuable, efficient action that a French producer or region can take if they want to be “found,” and if they want information about their wines to be accurate, on digital platforms around the world.

I even spelled out the email address of the specific person to contact to make this happen: David Gluzman, at david@winefolly.com, who I hoped would have his Inbox positively flooded with requests from France.

It’s one step. A fundamental one. And it would help, particularly in a commercial environment where the headwinds blowing against France are strong.

Digital fluency is also a takeaway that applies to wineries and wine business everywhere. If you’d like more information about the data I referenced in the session or the projects we’ve done, by all means please let me know.

I look forward to hearing from you and thank you, as always, for reading –

Cathy