This Daily Source for Wine Biz Info Is a Must Read

The trade publication is and always has been a vital tool for the wine and alcohol industries. They have been with us since there was an alcohol industry in the United States. The most venerable of these kinds of media is, of course, Wines & Vines, which has been publishing since 1919 and is still a remarkable and important resource for every sector of the wine industry.

In this article, however, I want to focus on another trade publication that is relatively new and that has quickly made a name for itself as an insightful roadmap to the alcohol industry: SevenFiftyDaily.

SevenFiftyDaily is associated with SevenFifty, a company that connects retailers and wholesalers via an online platform. It has been around awhile. It launched SevenFiftyDaily in June 2017 with Erica Duecy at the helm as Editor-in-Chief. Tapping Duecy to direct SevenFiftyDaily was a brilliant move. One look at the diversity of stories, opinions and authors that populate the year-old online site will tell you that there is real thought and direction behind the scenes. Duecy is pedigreed at Architectural Digest, Saveur, Fodors and Nation’s Restaurant News.

While aimed squarely at the beverage alcohol trade, SevenFiftyDaily is producing a broad range of stories, many of which lean into the consumer realm. Most recently story topics have ranged from how to score an appointment with a new account, Oregon Chardonnay’s rise, selling dessert wine and how museums use beverage programs to profiles of retailers D&M and Wine House, a guide to brettanomyces and how to create diverse and inclusive workspaces in the beverage alcohol industry. And this is just recently and only a very small selection of the articles that appear on a, well, daily basis.

Another indication of the seriousness with which Editor Duecy is approaching the project is the quality of writers SevenFiftyDaily is employing. Anyone who has spent any time reading about wine will recognize many of the names behind the articles including Deborah Brenner, Patrick Comiskey, Courtney Schiessl, Katherine Cole, Fred Swan and Jon Bonné, just to name a few of the impressive writers who have gravitated toward or been lured to SevenFiftyDaily in its first year.

As I mentioned above, SevenFiftyDaily is an offshoot of and is owned by SevenFifty, a commercial platform for wholesalers and retailers to interact with one another. It’s notable that in reading SevenFiftyDaily’s content for a year now, I’ve never once seen any mention of the parent company in any articles. In fact, the only access to the parent company on the entire site is a small, generic icon at the top of the page that isn’t labeled. The disconnect is appreciated and only increases the credibility of SevenFiftyDaily.

My only complaint with SevenFiftyDaily is that it is short on news. One can find links to outside articles on personnel changes in the industry. And that’s fine. But little or nothing is regularly published on the news that drives the alcohol beverage industry. It’s true that one can find this sort of things at a myriad of other sources, including Wines & Vines and WineBusiness.com. The publishers and Editor Duecy likely know this and have chosen to leave the day-to-day news coverage to others. It’s not a bad idea, but I found myself wondering how SevenFiftyDaily would approach coverage of the industry news.

SevenFiftyDaily is by far the best new editorial source to cover the alcohol industry in a number of years. My hope is that it continues, under the same editorial leadership, for a long time to come. And I can say this about it also: reading it regularly has made me better at what I do in this industry.

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One Response

  1. George Ronay - May 22, 2018

    Tom: Nice commentary, and I just today forwarded the link to the article about opening up new accounts. I like the “behind-the-scenes” aspect of several of the articles I’ve seen and might even be tempted to submit some proposals for articles – but not sure I can compete with the roster of writers that you listed!!


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