Mar 25, 2005
The public relations business can be frustrating. You can never be sure if your efforts will yield results. Advertising is different. You choose the medium to advertise in. You know how many eyeballs you are paying for. And if you are good, you have a decent idea of what the response will be. Publicists spend their day, essentially, standing on the roof top and yelling, "hey, look at me!" You are bound to get someone to turn their head and…
Mar 24, 2005
When you think of "public relations" and PR people, most immediately think of "Spin" and "damage control". Public relations is a vast industry with specialist of all types. And, it’s "spin" and "damage control" that is usually bandied about by the press and others when my profession comes up for discussion. So here is an interesting little fact: "damage control" is almost never a part of a wine publicist’s job. Not that we can’t undertake such jobs, it’s just that…
Mar 1, 2005
Appellation or regional-based marketing aimed at both drawing tourists to wine countries or enhancing the reputation of a region’s wines has increased tremendously over the past few years. The interesting thing here is that for any region north of San Francisco that wants to promote its wines and amenities must deal with the 800 Lb gorilla: Napa Valley. How to convince people that there is in fact another wine region north of San Francisco other than Napa…That is the question….
Feb 7, 2005
You’d think that labeling a wine isn’t too difficult a thing. Sure, there is the nice graphic design and all, then you throw on the vintage, varietal, appellation, the legal stuff and you are done. A conversation I had while at a Super Bowl party this weekend reminded me that there are some dilemmas and complexities that need to be taken into account when labeling a wine. A young, brilliant winemaker and his partner were at this party and they…
Jan 11, 2005
Leave it to the growers to come up with the best idea in a while to increase sales of wine. Tim Tesconi of the Santa Rosa Press Democrat reports today on a new study commissioned by the Sonoma County Grape Growers Association. The study finds that by and large wine drinkers are more likely to associate quality with wines that carry the "Sonoma County" designation on the label rather than any of Sonoma County’s sub appellations such as "Russian River…