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Advice to Wineries

A collection of 68 posts

Rethinking the Role of Wine Festivals in the Age of Yelp and Instagram

Last month, we participated in the Paso Robles Wine Festival, as we do every year. This year was particularly nice, with gorgeous weather and a great vibe at both Friday evening's Reserve Event and Saturday afternoon's Grand Tasting in the downtown park. If you came to

Facebook's new algorithm isn't the end of the world for wineries.

About a month ago, Mark Zuckerberg announced (in a Facebook post, of course) that Facebook would be revising the algorithm that decides what its users see in their news feeds. In an effort to make users' experience on the platform more positive, they decided that they would show more

You can't evaluate what you don't measure

Once we get into December, things really slow down for us. The cellar, which has been on a three-month sprint, has put most of the year's wines to bed. In the vineyard, the vines are going dormant, we've seeded the cover crop, and there'

On being a kid-friendly winery

I was pleased to see us mentioned in Mother Magazine's Paso Robles Guide, published online today. I was even more pleased to see Paso Robles recognized: We moved out to Paso Robles in part because we were ready to start a family, and we haven't been

Customer service lessons from an overcrowded restaurant

On the Monday between Christmas and New Year's, I called into a favorite local restaurant from my 8-year-old's soccer practice to get takeout. I had volunteered to provide dinner that night for the large group of extended family who were in town for the

Customer Disservice: Nine Lessons from a Terrible Hertz Experience

No one, as far as I can tell, likes the customer experience much when they rent cars. Between the waiting around at the end of a travel day when you're already tired and the relentless upselling, I have to figure that renting a car must be among the

Dry Farming in California's Drought, Part 3: How We Got Here (and Where We Go Next)

I was struck by a quote from Tegan Passalaqua, the winemaker at Turley, in a recent article on JancisRobinson.com. In an interview with Alder Yarrow, Tegan said "In a Mediterranean climate like we have, vertical shoot positioning and 3 by 6 vineyard spacing is basically farming hydroponically"

Dry-Farming in California's Drought, Part 2: Looking Forward to the Past

In the first part of this 3-part series on farming in California's drought, I looked at how our climate here in California differs in crucial ways from that in the Mediterranean, and what lessons we took from these differences in how we would choose to farm. In

Is Facebook Even Worth It Anymore?

In late 2013, I wrote a blog piece titled What Facebook's News Feed Changes Mean for the Wine Community. In it, I shared Facebook's warning to the owners of their pages that they were going to be reducing posts' organic reach, in order to prioritize

Are direct-to-consumer sales really failing to lift the wine industry?

Last month I was surprised to read a headline on the industry portal Wine Industry Network titled Direct to Consumer Sales Fails to Lift the Wine Industry. As a winery whose business model works only because of direct sales, I was curious to learn more about what the author Brian