Expert Editorial

Amphoras have been used to ferment and age wine for thousands of years. And for thousands of years they served the wine community well. But as winemaking techniques and wine quality have evolved since, say, 6000 BC or so, the technology that goes into making amphoras has failed to keep up.

Ecommerce is booming in most consumer retail industries, with nearly 80% of US consumers now shopping online, according to Pew Research. This has caused the world of digital marketing to explode as major retailers rush to find ways to engage with consumers online. The wine industry is no different, with many US wineries enhancing their websites and adopting digital marketing tactics to attract consumers. So how much progress has been made?

Winery marketing can be tough. As well as competing against other wineries, you also need to stand out against wine retailers; both on and offline. As a result, wineries need to develop strong brand awareness, customer engagement and a loyal customer base.

Little more than 50 years ago, a handful of families planted the roots of what would become a billion-dollar pinot noir industry in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. The farmland where they harvested the first pinot noir grapes would come to serve as the epicenter of a region with a world-class reputation for high quality, pastoral landscapes and intimate, small-scale production

Today’s customers expect personalization, especially when it comes to subscription services. Buyers are savvy. They know that they are sharing their data, they know why you and other companies want their data, and they expect that in return for the information they provide, their lives and experiences with retailers are going to be simpler and more predictive.

Harvest season is the time of year when every winegrower’s attention turns primarily to the grapes themselves. For modern winegrowers doing business in California, attention must also be paid to your workforce and compliance with California’s changing and complex overtime laws.

Like most businesses today, wineries are grappling with making their websites accessible to users with disabilities. Plaintiffs and their attorneys continue to target the...

“Turning the Tables – Interviewing the Interviewers” is a Q&A series profiling Wine Writers. We hope you’ll discover more about the wine writers you know, and learn about many others.

An extreme, unseasonal weather pattern ripped through the West Coast, just as many vines had begun to bloom, entering some of the most sensitive weeks of their annual growing cycle.

We all have an inert desire to connect. Nowadays, those needs are being met less frequently in an instant gratification and expendable consumer market. Luckily, wine is one of the industries that still allows consumers to intimately connect with the product.

Wine businesses are well aware of the value in event hosting and festival participation for marketing their wine. While tasting rooms provide a direct-to-consumer avenue of distribution, strategic event planning can be an additional fun and profitable distribution approach.

“Turning the Tables – Interviewing the Interviewers” is a Q&A series profiling Wine Writers. We hope you’ll discover more about the wine writers you know, and learn about many others.

By Chris Sawyer When the annual International Sauvignon Blanc Day (aka #sauvblancday via social media) takes place on Friday, May 3, there so many so...

Smoke, drought, rain, and other flavor-altering events are what separate the winemakers from the wine masters.A single harvest impacted by mold, smoke, or other faults can take down a vineyard or a farm winery—if those grapes are rejected as impossibly tainted.

A title of an article appearing in the March 28, 2019 issue of The Spectator by Christopher Snowden, “The Campaign to Make Alcohol ‘The...