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Crop Insurance: The deadline for insuring this year’s crop is approaching!
Posted by: | CommentsWriter: Jim Brumm
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“Would you pay a few hundred bucks an acre for a spray that would guarantee you seventy-five percent of your grape production every year?”
So asks Michael Applegate of St. Helena Insurance Associates, in Napa Valley, California. Unfortunately there is no such spray, but he reminds us that good crop insurance can do the same thing, and that the deadline for purchasing insurance for next year’s crop—January 31, 2012—is fast approaching. Crop insurance is potentially the best investment a grower can make.
Crop insurance offers protection from losses caused by natural events, such as frost, drought, wind, rain, hail—pretty much anything Mother Nature throws our way that can damage grapes on the vine. In addition, damage to irrigation systems can be covered if caused by acts of nature.
Grape growers, like all farmers, face many perils each year, and these perils vary depending on location and climate. “In Napa Valley, for example, there are lots of different micro-climates,” said Chris Maloney, owner of Chris Maloney Crop insurance, LLC, in Petaluma, California. “There are different vineyards at different elevations; they all have different risk exposures.”
Maloney pointed out that there were losses from adverse weather conditions in Read More→
People: A Wine-Drenched Life: Sue Straight, AKA, The Wine Wench®
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There are people in the Wine Industry that don’t own vineyards or make wine, yet their impact on our business is indisputable. They are the people behind our winery associations, our media and our trade and they’re making a difference. “People” was created to acknowledge their role and celebrate their successes.
Writer: Jim Brumm
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A woman sits across from me at a local coffee shop in Santa Rosa, California. She is animated and upbeat. As usual, she is talking about wine, and as usual, her story ends with a laugh and I can’t help laughing along.
“I think people take wine way too seriously,” she is saying. “I think that wine should be fun.” She goes on to tell a story of filling her bathtub with red wine and bathing in it. I form a mental picture of this . . .
Meet Sue Straight, AKA the Wine Wench®. Sue is not your typical wine reviewer/writer/taster. Sue is not your typical person.
Born in Santa Monica, California, Sue grew up in the San Fernando Valley (and she does a mean “valley girl” imitation). Living on a small ranch with her family, she said she was “riding before I was born.” As a girl she wanted to be a horse veterinarian when she grew up, but that was not to be.
“I’m a failed Jewish American Princess,” she said, laughing. “I was always too bohemian to fit into that world.”
After high school she worked for a while at a veterinarian hospital in southern California and met and married a man who was both a farrier and a musician. Sue trained horses during the day and waitressed at night. She would roller skate down Ventura Boulevard to work each day. (At one point she was offered a chance to try out for the Los Angeles Thunderbirds roller derby team, but that’s another story.)
In 1981 Sue moved to Healdsburg, in northern California’s Sonoma County. One evening, while working as a waitress, a regular customer who managed a nearby tasting room offered Sue a job at her winery. “I thought, okay . . . I like wine,” said Sue, with a smile. She accepted the Read More→
Direct-to-Consumer Sales
Posted by: | CommentsWriter Jim Brumm
Are you getting all you can from your tasting room?
The most profitable way to sell wine has always been to sell it directly to the consumer. When you add middlemen such as distributors and retailers, the margins shrink as each takes their share of the profit off the top. For most wineries, especially smaller ones, this means that their primary hub of profitability is the tasting room.
For visitors wandering through wine country, whether in California, Virginia, Oregon of some of the other emerging wine regions across the country, the tasting room is often their first exposure to your winery. They come in because Read More→
Why Choosing the Right Attorney is Critical for Winery Owners
Posted by: | CommentsWriter: Jim Brumm
While few non-lawyers want to deal with the often scary and nearly always confusing world of law, a winery owner may find that a good lawyer who is well versed in winery law may be his or her best friend.
If you are part of a large, well-established winery, it’s likely that you have a good team of lawyers in your corner already. If you are a small, family winery, or just starting out, there are some important legal issues to consider before you make large decisions about your business. The dream of having a vineyard and bottling your very own wine for sale to the public is one many of us can relate to, but making it happen takes more than coming up with a clever name and designing a label. Read More→
It’s Trade Show Time… Are You Ready?
Posted by: | CommentsWriter Jim Brumm
Wine Industry Trade Show season is fast approaching. For exhibitors, trade shows are an opportunity to showcase new products, advances and innovations, and to connect with thousands of potential new clients (and reconnect with old ones). For attendees, it’s a chance to learn what’s new and exciting in the industry, attend seminars or workshops to hone your skills or learn new ones, and to rub elbows with others in the industry.
“Technology is really changing the way customers make buying decisions, that’s no secret and no one knows that better than us in this industry”, says George Christie, President of the Wine Industry Network, “but there’s no substitute for what happens when you put a supplier and a buyer in the same room. We attend every show and while they all offer something different, there is one common denominator….they all work like crazy to put prospective buyers in the room.”
For exhibitors and attendees alike, trade shows save Read More→
5 Things Every Video Marketer Should Know…Before Production Begins!
Posted by: | CommentsWe recently celebrated the completion of our 175th wine industry related promotional video and had several people ask 
us what the “secret” is to creating something that’s actually effective versus “just another marketing spend”.
Well, the secret is… Read More→
Stay Current, Stay Connected…Get Linked!
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The overwhelmingly positive response generated by our weekly news e-mails has led to the evolution of the Wine Industry Network News!
Introducing… LINK
- LINK is category specific so you choose and receive information most important to you!
- LINK connects buyers and suppliers better than ever before by providing current news and updates from the industry’s top suppliers.
- LINK targets supplier product news and updates to the right buyers every time!
- LINK is timeless – news can be archived and continually accessed.
LINK launches August, 24 2010 - Look for it in your email!
If you are not currently a subscriber, don’t miss out!
Sign up today, It’s Free!
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Great Wines From Coast to Coast
Posted by: | CommentsOver the past four months I have had the opportunity to see the wine industry from one side of the country to the other. I have traveled from North Carolina and the Finger Lakes of New York, to Illinois and the wineries of Nebraska and British Columbia, Canada. Everywhere I have been I have tasted excellent wines, have met wonderful people, made new friends and have had a chance to renew ties with old friends. Even the airline travel (bouncing into Denver) and the 95º with 89% humidity weather in the Finger Lakes did not dampen my enthusiasm for the areas and their wines.
I am most happy to report that everywhere I have recently visited consumers were out wine tasting and buying wine. Winery open houses and special events attracted larger numbers of people than expected – Mac’s Creek Winery in Nebraska expected about 250 people for a release party and 750 people showed up! At Heron Hill Winery in the Finger Lakes, a young woman from California was buying wine to be shipped back home. I stopped at Tinhorn Creek in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia and tasted a delicious Cabernet Franc. I also dropped in to a couple of BC VQA stores and was impressed by the selection of wines and expertise of the staff. In the Yadkin Valley of North Carolina I had a red blend from Hanover Park that was yummy. In Illinois I enjoyed the consistently delicious wines of Lynfred Winery and thanks to General Manager/Winemaker Andrés Basso discovered my affinity for Brazilian style steakhouses.
In between the wine tasting I did manage to get some work done, promoting the Wine Industry Network and speaking at wineries and conferences about marketing, sales and increasing wine club sign-ups. All in all this spring and summer have been ones to remember.
It has definitely been heartening to go into wineries all over the country and see people in the tasting rooms (or wine shops as they are known in BC), tasting wine, buying wine, picking up their wine club shipments and more importantly enjoying themselves!
Elizabeth Slater- Founder & Vice President of WIN
Keep up the good work!
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Wine Clubs Make Life Better
Posted by: | CommentsJoining a wine club can enrich people’s lives. Though most wine club brochures and web information concentrate on the concrete things that people get when they join the wine club, without including the emotional rewards that initially make people want to join your club in the first place!
Wine clubs are a community of people that are interested in your wine. Many people do not have the types of traditional communities that we found in the past. We do not all live close to our families and many people do not know their neighbors or go to church regularly. So, we look for communities through hobbies or interests. Wine is a marvelous way of bringing people together and we should do our best to connect people who belong to our wine clubs and make them an extension of the winery family.
When we promote the emotional reasons for joining the wine club we are adding value to our wine clubs and value that makes members feel good about themselves. Discounts, while they are an important sales tool may, when used incorrectly, actually devalue the perceptions consumers create around the wine. Look on winery websites and you will often find that the first four benefits of joining a wine club are varied discounts that the winery is offering wine club members on current releases, older vintages, non-wine items, event ticket prices, etc. Certainly it is good to tell people about discounts you offer, but remember that we buy when our emotions are engaged and discounts, for most people, are an intellectual rather than an emotional reason to buy.
So with a tip of the glass from me to you, here are some emotional reasons that will not only increase membership in your wine club, they will also increase retention and enrich peoples lives:
- Tell prospects that they deserve to be a wine club member
- Remind them that wine makes life better and that they are worth it
- Show visitors how the recipes and pairing information you send them will make their dinner parties much more fun, less work and less stressful.
Elizabeth Slater- Founder & Vice President of WIN
For more information on how wine clubs make life better, visit the Resource Center of the Wine Industry Network (wineindustrynetwork.com).
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Selling Wine…Meet Facebook!
Posted by: | CommentsFor the last two years, like just about everyone I know, I’ve been friending, posting, and indulging in a lot of general voyeurism on Facebook, but mostly trying to figure out how to use this channel to actually help sell. Not indirectly through clever posting…but really sell.
Well….leave it to the brain trust over at Cruvee to come up with a solution….and I love it! 
Not only have they been making it easier to control the accuracy of your winery’s online data, the new Facebook application they’ve developed allows participating wineries to add a “WINES” tab that not only markets their brands in a way never before seen but also links your fans directly back to their shopping cart. Wineries now have the opportunity to finally try to convert their fans into actual consumers. Here’s the best part….it’s FREE!
Check out a few that are already on board:
- Jordan Vineyards & Winery: FACEBOOK LINK
- Hanzell Vineyards: FACEBOOK LINK
- Twisted Oak Winery: FACEBOOK LINK
George Christie - Founder & President of WIN
Now I’m not here to tell you what to do…but this should be an easy one. Just visit www.cruvee.com , register your winery (if you haven’t already) and follow the instructions for the Facebook application.
Good selling!
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