It was great having Christine Wente come into our class. As I listened to her, I wondered what are the effective/efficient ways to build a U.S. based wine brand? We talked about the experience aspect of visiting her winery to create the brand. However, that can only reach so many customers. So I was wondering if having those experiences, some of which are cost centers, at the winery are just considered necessities to build rapport with top critics and/or customers? I liked her wine but am not sure how I would have heard about it if I hadn’t tasted it in our class.
My SO (in the picture attached) and I went to find the wine down in SoCal for a family party. Unfortunately, Wente’s website said Riva Ranch wasn’t available at the stores near us. So, being a relatively uniformed wine consumer (though that is changing with each class!), I googled “best wines at Trader Joe's” because I was making a grocery run there anyways. I was going to pick one from the list I found based on the description that sounded most intriguing. As it turned out, Trader Joe’s had the Riva Ranch, I bought it, and my SO’s family loved it!
From this experience I wonder, how do wineries track where there wine is across multiple retailers who all have their own inventory systems? Clearly there are issues as I was led astray by the Wente Vineyards’ own website. The second thing I was wondering was, are there a few blogs that drive a lot of purchases? Or is influence disbursed? And how do you get in front of top bloggers/reviewers? To me, being in some of the first google result searches has got to be a high priority but I’m not sure how wineries are addressing the challenge outside of just having high quality wine and reaching out to reviewers they know. These are questions that I will ask other wineries that visit our class.
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