His Niche is Jug Wines
He's been called a maverick and an anachronism but that doesn't bother James Arthur Field '45, T'46. For more than a decade he has successfully concentrated on one profitable corner of California's wine market, jug wines, while just about everybody else has focused on premium labels and vintages. Since the mid-seventies Field has made only two wines one white and one red now available at $4.49 for 1.5 liters in some of the best shops in California.
They are made by blending California varietals and are "light, fruity, and relatively dry compared with other jug wines," according to beverage writer Gerald Boyd. In a recent feature article on Field in the San Francisco Chronicle, Boyd described how in 1970 the Dartmouth and Tuck graduate started in the wine business on a part-time basis while working in advertising. Today he sells 45,000 cases of jug wines a year mostly in the Bay Area, plus a few other selected West Coast markets.
Field's strategy is to maintain uniformity even though he modifies the blends every few months, depending on what wines are available at good prices.
"I get astonishingly good wine to the public for very little money," says Field without any false modesty. "Consistency occurs in people's minds since they don't taste my blends side by side, but one at a time, and each tastes good." Although the blends change, Field's buff-colored label with his signature running vertically up the center has remained the same since he designed it early on.
Field, who was Phi Beta Kappa at the College, learned his marketing during the years he spent in advertising in New York. In 1960 his career took him to San Francisco, where he started his love affair with wine, first as a hobby, then a passion, finally an obsession—and a business. The Chronicle article quotes an industry expert as saying that Field "was ahead of his time back in 1976, making palatable jug wines when other jug wines were too sweet. Jim Field's wines are very consistent, and that's his secret." Jim Field has another secret: "What I would really like to do is make a really good English muffin. You can't buy a good one in the Bay Area."
