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Wine Marketing

A collection of 167 issues

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

Game Theory, the Prisoner's Dilemma and... Winery Membership Organizations, Part 2: Measuring the Value of Membership

Last month, I wrote a blog piece about how game theory, and specifically the classic example of the prisoner's dilemma, relates to participation in winery membership organizations. If you haven't read part 1, this post will make more sense if you do so now. OK, welcome

Why we haven't offered red-only and white-only options for wine club members... and why we're doing it now

We're not big on change. OK, maybe that's me. I'm not big on change. So the fact that we're making what amounts to our first major change to our VINsider Wine Club since we introduced it in 2002 is significant. After several

Our crazy state alcohol laws: a farce in nine acts

You probably don't need me to tell you our alcohol laws are often crazy. But, well, our alcohol laws are crazy, particularly if you look at the state and local level. The national level, for what little it has to do with alcohol, tends to be positive, like

Game Theory, the Prisoner's Dilemma and... Winery Membership Organizations, Part 1

Game theory describes a branch of science at the intersection of economics, psychology and mathematics which explores models of interaction between rational actors, seeking to explain why and when these actors (be they individuals, companies or even nations) will choose to cooperate or to betray each other. Many of these

The future of the proprietary blend

This week, I joined much of the rest of the California wine community in Sacramento for the Unified Grape and Wine Symposium. Unified, as it's called, is part trade show, part educational conference, and part social hall, with nightly reunions of all the significant viticultural universities and lots

Vintage Hollywood

I have recently been finding myself contrasting two recent vintages primarily in terms of their personalities, rather than (or at least, in addition to) their flavors. Our 2011 vintage produced wines that are tense, wound-up, powerful and brooding, that make you make an effort to get to know them. The

Malolactic, Misunderstood

There is a recurring item on the Wine Spectator Web site called "Ask Dr. Vinny". In it, the Spectator writers take on commonly asked questions about winemaking and wine consumption. Last month there was a question from a reader in the United Arab Emirates: "Is there any

What Facebook's News Feed Changes Mean for the Wine Community

There was a bit of a flap in social media circles a couple of weeks ago when Ad Age broke the story that Facebook would be reducing the organic reach of pages and requiring those pages that wanted to reach a significant percentage of their fans to advertise to do

Wine on tap: an idea whose time has (finally) come

In 2010, I wrote a blog post with the title "the appeal of wine in keg, and an appeal to the restaurants who want it". In it, I lamented that despite keg wine's appeal in terms of freshness, cost savings and environmental responsibility, there hadn'