Wine Business Editorial

Ray Johnson has been the Executive Director of the Wine Business Institute (WIB) at Sonoma State University since 2010.  In that position, he has successfully worked to raise the visibility and viability of the department and helped to generate millions of dollars in support of its students, faculty and programs.

The time is now! The time is now! This is not a Gary V rally cry, although perhaps it should be as he is...

By Elizabeth Hans McCrone Frank Morgan thinks the way he got into wine isn’t much of a story, but he’s wrong. It began more than a...

Since purchasing his vineyard at the top of Spring Mountain in 1970, Stuart Smith has become the leading voice of the hillside grower. While Smith believed that the best grapes come from the mountains, a hypothesis had been written that vineyards on hillsides are detrimental to the land. In response, Smith began arguing in favor of hillside vineyards and land-use issues. Being the leading voice was “thrust upon me,” Smith shared. “It was not my intent. When I first got a permit to log the property from Department of Forestry, I was warned that there would be protesters once I brought out a chainsaw.”

Manage people in a profession for 25 years, as Chris Upchurch has done as the head winemaker for esteemed DeLille Cellars, and you will see some of your best apprentices find better jobs.

By Paul Vigna Wine’s Most Inspiring People 2018 Chris Upchurch is at a point in his life where the temptation is to look back, at more...

As of January 1, 2018, legislation for legal recreational use of marijuana has been passed in eight states including Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, Maine, Massachusetts, and California. Some of these states are also the nation’s biggest wine producers. This begs the question on whether the introduction of legal marijuana use will disrupt the traditional wine industry in a big way. It may be too young to tell just yet but there are many arguments for and against welcoming this new industry.

Tim Hanni, one of two resident Americans to receive the title Master of Wine and well-known industry myth-buster, would like the wine industry to stop foisting untruths upon an unsuspecting public. “The whole business of wine education is sadly wrong and does no service to consumers,” he says. “It’s group think. We really don’t know anything about consumers. The industry has its head up its anatomy.”

Instagram has been around since October 2010 and in only seven years it has increased it users to 700 million, which is more than...

Those around him will say that David Parrish is not one to brag about his accomplishments, but they are the first to call David Parrish an innovator in the wine industry. “David lives to work. The industry is his passion. He is always trying to perfect something or get that one thing a little bit better,” explained long-time friend and business colleague Charlie Castro. “David always stays ahead of the curve.”

Anyone who knows Wayne Bailey knows how important farming is to him. It is where his life began, the son of an Iowa sharecropper. And it is where his life has lead him. Through years of business success as an engineer and a consultant to high profile companies like McDonald’s, Bailey’s work eventually lead him to the vineyards of Burgundy. This was a turning point for Bailey and what began as a three month consultancy expanded into two years in the vineyards of Beaune. “The vignerons there consider themselves farmers,” he remembers, “and so do I. I gravitated toward that. I spent time in the vineyards there and my mind was imagining growing grapes and making wine.” Bailey returned to farming life making Youngberg Hill in Willamette Valley home and livelihood to the Bailey family.

Wayne Bailey, a vintner known for sustainable farming practices advises, “The best fertilizer is the farmer’s footprint.” Bailey’s footprint has far exceeded the 50 acres of his Youngberg Hill estate in Willamette Valley to play a vital role in the Oregon wine industry. But Bailey’s feet took a long circuitous career path to Youngberg Hill. Along the way Bailey left his mark and gained experiences and business acumen that prepared him to design a business model that is unique among his wine industry neighbors.

It is impossible to begin to talk about the current winemaking scene in the Finger Lakes without covering its immensely important influence on the national winemaking scene. The Finger Lakes is not the oldest winegrowing region in the state, that distinction belongs to the Hudson Valley, but it is the largest, and arguably the best-known region in New York state. There are more than 100 wineries between the five major lakes. The Finger Lakes are five large lakes carved out by the withdrawal of the Wisconsin ice sheet.  They formed deep gouges creating Scandinavian fjord-like lakes, with deep bottoms. This kind of depth offers an important temperature moderating influence that acts as a buffer from the cold northern winds and weather flowing down from Canada. This is commonly called Lake Effect.

The North American wine industry is fortunate to have many passionate and inspiring luminaries, some that grew up among the vines, and others that...

I have been doing research lately on how to genuinely charm and engage customers. For those of us who serve the public, being charming...