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Wine Marketing

A collection of 173 posts

The Remarkable Rise of Paso Robles

In the course of my work with Tablas Creek, I work closely with winery associations like Rhone Rangers and Family Winemakers of California that bring me into contact with winemakers and winery principals from other American wine producing regions. One refrain I've been hearing for the last few

Chronicling a Year in the Southern Rhone

In January I had the pleasure of sitting in on Marc Perrin's presentation of the wines of Beaucastel, Domaines Perrin, and La Vieille Ferme to the Vineyard Brands sales team at their annual sales meeting. (I followed with a presentation of Tablas Creek). The wines were beautiful, and

Telling the Tablas Creek story... without words

As regular readers of the blog (or anyone who's visited Tablas Creek in the last six months) will know, we're in the final stages of expanding our winery and building a new tasting room. The building is done, and we're working on landscaping the

Rhone Rangers and the value of communal marketing

On Tuesday, I handed off the presidency of the board of the Rhone Rangers to Josh Bendick of Holly's Hill Vineyards in the Sierra Foothills after a two-year term. I've served on the organization's board for seven years now, a long time in the

Creating a new wine: Patelin de Tablas

A difficult economy brings problems, but it also brings opportunities. Over the last few years, we have been fortunate to see our sales continue to grow, thanks to the wonderful loyalty of our customers, an unprecedented run of great press, and lots of hard work by the wholesalers, restaurants, and

A great idea by the Rhone Rangers: Pneumonia's Last Syrah

Most of you are probably aware that Syrah faces a challenging marketplace. Even articles complimentary about Syrahs (as nearly all of them are) feel compelled to begin with a story about how hard they are to sell. A recent article by Eric Asimov in the New York Times began "

How to make the most of trade and consumer tastings

Last Sunday, I was standing behind the Tablas Creek table at the Family Winemakers of California tasting in San Francisco. We were one of 340 wineries pouring wines for more than 1700 trade and 700 consumers (an additional 1700+ trade came on Monday). Family Winemakers (as it's known

Introducing a Greener Wine Bottle

Early this year, I wrote the blog post In Search of a Green(er) Wine Bottle, which details our quest for a wine bottle that both appealed to our aesthetics and didn't weigh more than the wine inside it. We had, before our 2008 bottling (which included the

The appeal of wine in keg... and an appeal to the restaurants who want it

A few years ago, we received a request from Chef Todd Rushing of the Concentrics Restaurant Group in Atlanta asking if we'd consider bottling... er kegging... one of our wines for him. It didn't make sense at the time since we were ten months away from

Whither inexpensive, artisanal California wine?

In early March I was interviewed by Jordan Mackay for an article in the New York Times called "Local Versions of Europe's Everyday Wines". In it, Jordan explored why so few California winemakers were attempting to make inexpensive but artisanal wines that can compete with the