Archive for the ‘Wine Business’ Category

Jun 4, 2013

Marketing Confusion: AVAs and the Question of Terroir

Winemaker Matt Dees and his colleagues at Goodland Wines in Santa Barbara, California have chosen to take a remarkable step: They have decided to purposely confuse the wine consumer in order to try to enlighten them. It’s a peculiar approach to education of which I am not completely familiar. Here’s what’s happening: At Goodland Wines, individual bottlings don’t carry the name of the varietal. They only carry the name of the AVA or “appellation” from which the grapes were grown…

Jun 3, 2013

Sta. Rita Hills Wines: A Question of Integrity or Cynicism

There is a proposal sitting on the desk of the Feds that, if approved, would expand the Santa Barbara County-based American Viticultural Area called the Sta. Rita Hills. The expansion proposal has been submitted by a grape grower whose vineyards now lie just outside the Sta. Rita Hills AVA. The upshot of that unfortunate placement is that the grower does not get as much money for his grapes than if they were inside the boundary of the Sta. Rita Hills…

May 31, 2013

God and the Nature of the Wine Club

Were a god of the Abrahamic variety to engage in a conversation with me, they would likely want to know, “What gives? Why no submission?” It turns out any of these Gods hey would indeed have good reason to ask of me this kind of question. My best defense would be, “well, sorry about that, I just have question. But, rest assured, I’ve read your books and do find a great deal in them to recommend. So there’s that.” When…

May 24, 2013

WINE IDEAS—What if, Imagine, If Only

• What if restaurants provided their customers with $0.10, one-ounce pours of wine immediately upon seating and changed up the wine every evening? • Imagine if there were an annual, televised, celebrated national wine competition. • If only the states put consumers first before satisfying the interests of the largest campaign competitors when it came to alcohol laws and regulations. • What if winery tasting rooms took photos of all their patrons in a “CHEERS!” pose and provided them with…

May 22, 2013

Wine Marketing Education With the Masters

Though I can’t say for sure, I’d bet that wine tasting room workers constitute the greatest number of “marketers” in any wine region in the country. I’d further hazard to guess that a good number of wine tasting room personnel have a desire to rise from the tasting room to a position that allows them to work in a more hard-core marketing environment in the wine industry. What is absolutely necessary to make this climb up the latter is education….