Pairing Politics
Is wine the party of conservatives or liberals? Or can it go beyond partisanship?
Posted: Sep 20, 2012 11:00am ET
I remember, four years ago, seeing the headline
"Obama Clinches 'Joe Cabernet Sauvignon' Vote" in a humor magazine.
It's a send-up of both the "Champagne liberal" stereotype and that of
coveted, mythical voter Joe Six-Pack.
But
is wine really a Democrat's game? I decided to ask Greg Martellotto, owner and
winemaker at California-based Wine Dreamer. In 2010, the company launched a
wine called Let The People Decide, a Tempranillo-based red blend from Santa
Ynez bottled under two labels, Progressive and Conservative. One label is blue,
with a donkey silhouette; the other red, with an elephant. Martellotto said, "We
had high aspirations. Could this be a straw poll for divining upcoming
elections?"
Half
a country away, in Michigan, Chris Trebilcock makes wine at the Political
Winery; using Lodi, Calif., grapes, he blends "Jack Blue," "Ron
Red," "Jackie O'Rouge" and "Elie Blanc." All four are
off-dry blends priced at $10, the reds Cabernet, Merlot and Carignane and the
whites Chenin Blanc and French Colombard.
Trebilcock
and Martellotto are liberals themselves, but each founded his company with a
conservative friend and business partner. Trebilcock, a labor lawyer when he's
not in the cellar, and his friend John Helmholdt, a school district spokesman,
attended political shoulder-rubbing sessions frequently and noticed that, no
matter the ideology, there was always one reliably shared special interest:
wine. So in 2004, they created a product the events circuit didn't know it
needed until it was born: an easy-drinking, inexpensive, politically themed
wine that could sate convention-goers and fill goodie bags.
Martellotto
met Pedro Aguilar back in their Catholic school days; one grew up to be a
cigar-chomping neuroscientist and Fox Newshound and the other, well, a
California winemaker. "Nevertheless, we're brothers," said
Martellotto.
Naturally, I polled both Martellotto and Trebilcock on
the same question: If people really vote with their wallets, which side sells
better?
Political
Wine, "much like the country, is pretty evenly split," said
Trebilcock. (However, the "female" bottles, Jackie and Elie,
consistently win the popular vote over their male counterparts.) But on
Martellotto's website, you can only purchase the Conservative now. The
invisible hand of the free market swept the Progressive off shelves.
It
wasn't a fair race, Martellotto conceded, since he does most of his business in
California, with New York and Massachusetts following. "We had a couple
wine bars in San Francisco pouring the blue label, and when I told them it sold
out, I said, 'But it's the same wine under the red label.' And they were like,
'Nah.'"
Much
of Trebilcock's market remains the one where he first saw an opening: lobbyist,
campaign and trade group shindigs. Political Wine was given out to VIPs at some
of the 2008 inaugural balls in Washington and poured at a fund-raiser with
Michelle Obama. Trebilcock delivered the future First Lady's bottle to her
personally.
But
Political Winery works both sides of the aisle, and not just in election
season. ("The beauty of our business plan is that fund-raising events
happen year-round.") No matter which party requests his wine, Trebilcock said, it's politics as usual: "In politics, you get a whole lot of people
who want you to just give in kind"—as a little donation. Ironically, the
500-case operation is pretty apolitical in the ways that count, lacking the
dollar muscle of big industry players that can pony up campaign money and
freebies.
As
for Let the People Decide, part of its mission all along has been to donate 10
percent of proceeds to "political organizations that promote change,
dialogue and prosperity in America," as stated on the Wine Dreamer
website. The progressive beneficiary is nationally syndicated lefty radio
program the Leslie Marshall Show, though Martellotto and Aguilar are still
casting for a conservative recipient.
Given
the backgrounds of the two companies, could wine be our best hope for
bipartisanship? Martellotto said of his business and sparring partner, "When
we end up hashing out issues, and we talk about health care, national security
and wars and stuff, I think we end up finding a lot more similarities and a lot
more middle ground. And wine brings us together to do that."
On
the other hand, said Trebilcock: "We get a lot of people who say, 'Oh my
brother's a big Republican. I want to send him your Democratic bottles.'"
You can follow Ben O'Donnell on Twitter at twitter.com/BenODonn.
