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Covid & Response

A collection of 14 issues

Highlights from five years of Instagram Live conversations with some of wine's most interesting people

When Covid hit, we lost most of the avenues that we had used to market our wines. Our tasting room was closed. So were most restaurants. Wine festivals (and other large gatherings) were out of the question. We had our email list, to be sure, which was great for staying

Did tasting room sales ever fall off that cliff? No, but tasting room traffic is still hard to analyze because of pandemic echoes.

Back in April, in response to alarming headlines showing tasting room traffic down 22% statewide, I wrote a blog suggesting people wait to get a little deeper into the year before making sweeping judgments about the health of the tasting room economy. After all, the first quarter of this year

Elevating the virtual experience thanks to Master the World

Why Master the World's wine tasting kits make sense for virtual wine club member parties.

Lessons from a Plague Year: Seven Ways Covid Has Made Us a Better Business

It's a commonly accepted tenet in business that times of change spur innovation. Covid was no exception. Its restrictions on travel and limitations on gatherings forced us to rethink how we share Tablas Creek with our customers and how we work together as a team. Now, eighteen months

California Re-Opening: How COVID Changed our Tasting Room Model Going Forward

[Editor's Note: thanks to Director of Marketing Ian Consoli, who contributed many of the ideas we're implementing, including an early draft of this blog and its photos.] Sometimes, it takes a crisis to spur you to change something fundamental to your business. So it was when

How to reopen tasting rooms indoors (more) safely... and why we won't be, at least at first

Since we reopened our tasting room in June, we've been operating outside only. Why? It's much, much safer. Even though in June we could have chosen to open indoors, we decided outdoors was the only way that we were comfortable. The state of California, a month

Creating a Wine Tasting Show: The Story behind Chelsea and the Shepherd

By Ian Consoli If you follow only our blog and not our other social media channels, it’s possible that you don’t yet know Chelsea and the Shepherd. Or at least, you might know Chelsea, or the Shepherd, but not Chelsea and the Shepherd. If that’s the case,

Wineries -- and visitors -- should expect months of recurring periodic closures to tasting rooms

Yesterday, our tasting room was open all day for the first time since Thursday, August 13th. We're open again today, and conditions are lovely. Tomorrow looks pretty safe. After that, well, we'll have to see. At least the heat wave that forced us to close most

Which of the many Covid-19 changes to the wine industry will prove enduring?

Usually, at this time of year, I'm locking in the plans for the market visits I'll be making for the busy fall selling season. When I travel, I typically spend my days riding around with distributor reps calling on restaurant and retail accounts to show them

When we reopen post-Coronavirus, things will look different. But safe and fun aren't mutually exclusive.

Six weeks ago, I wrote a blog thinking about what reopening might look like post-Coronavirus. At that time it seemed far away. Now, we're getting down to the details of reopening, which I'm anticipating will happen sometime in June. [Editor's Note June 9, 2020: