Let's start with the good news, because there is some in Enolytics’ fresh SNAPSHOT for the month of August:
Wine Net Sales came in at -1.8% in August — better than the quarter's -3.0% pace.
Club signups and attrition landed in a rare tie, 1.5% to 1.5%, pushing net club growth to +0.1% for the month.
And Wine Club Conversion jumped +23.7% month-over-month. Tasting room teams are clearly doing something right with the guests who walk through the door.
Here's the catch: fewer guests are walking through the door.
Tasters were down -8.4% in August — during what's normally the industry's busiest visitor month. Weekend counts matched last year exactly, so this isn't a calendar quirk.
It's a real traffic problem, and it's the headline that matters more than the sales number.
Why it matters: today's tasting room visitor is tomorrow's club member — usually six to twelve months out. An August traffic slump this size will likely echo into winter and spring club signups, right as the industry heads into Q4, the make-or-break stretch of the DTC calendar.
You can see the full SNAPSHOT here.
Here are three top takeaways from Enolytics and our friends at WISE:
Conversion is up, but the pipeline feeding it is shrinking.
Tasting room teams are converting visitors to club members at a much better clip — but a -8.4% drop in August visitors, peak season, means fewer people are arriving to convert in the first place.
Pricing is propping up revenue, not growing it.
AOV gains (+1.6% monthly, +2.8% YTD) are masking real volume erosion — Cases Sold is still down -3.3% for the month.
The next lever isn’t more traffic — it’s your existing customers.
With purchasers down -3.5% and club attrition still outpacing signups on a rolling basis (24.4% vs. 21.2%), reactivation and retention outreach to your first-party data is the highest-leverage move heading into Q4.
Try it for yourself
We’ll remember August 2026 as the comeback that isn’t… yet.
But we have ideas and real-world examples of winning who are winning anyway. We’d love to show you.
Data may not be the reason you got into the wine industry.
Yes, for sure, the people of wine are incredible, it’s an inevitably beautiful landscape, and the lifestyle is hard to beat.
There’s more to it, though, as you’ve no doubt seen.
Our industry is changing, more and more each day. And maybe you’ve changed, too.
We’re looking for the people who are looking for more.
More opportunity to make a difference.
More responsibility for their winery’s business.
More willingness to drive change, and a different perspective on that business.
Here’s how that looks.
Working with data will be new, and you’ll learn new things.
You also won’t be on your own. There’s top-notch customer service available at your fingertips, and with real people who sincerely want you and your winery to succeed.
You’ll see how AI works, from the people who build AI for wine.
You’ll get hands-on with the most powerful change agent that the wine industry has ever seen. AI is pretty awesome, and the computing power behind it is world-changing. We also make it friendly, and specific to wine. So you’ll get to try, and create, and maybe even get playful. You’ll ask questions, and you’ll find answers that are meaningful for your business.
You want to DO something to boost wine business.
Yes, the industry overall is in a rut right now. But there ARE wineries who are still winning. The throughline of those businesses? They’re leaning into data to customize offers, to anticipate demand, and to get a real handle on how their business is doing.
Try it for yourself
Do any of these reasons resonate with you?
You’re probably ready for the next phase of your career in wine. Are you ready to bring Enolytics into your winery? Could you give it a try, for free, for 45 days? It – and YOU – could be the game-changer you’ve been waiting for.
Our friends at InnoVint recently published their 2026 State of Winery Health Report, and here’s the data point we can’t stop thinking about:
Eighty percent (!!) of respondents named “maintaining or growing sales” as a top concern.
I get that.
I also get this: Enolytics is BUILT to help you sell more wine.
Take it from your peers who are doing exactly that.
Join us tomorrow at 11 am PST for our next FREE webinar, about exploding your ecommerce sales in October, November and December.
Here’s a preview of three moves our guest panelists will discuss, to sell more wine.
Getting the Data Right.
It’s harder than it sounds. It is not “sexy.” It’s also one of the most critical things you can do to ensure you’re working with the right sales strategy for your business.
Tracy Chastain has been there. She’s the Wine Club Manager at Testarossa Winery, and she’s been rebuilding, rethinking, and restructuring data in ways that are both diligent and creative.
Whittle Down Your Audience.
Ever had to whittle down your audience to a bare sliver of its full size? What if that sliver was 0.25% of your entire database? That’s some of the math that Susan Zavatto does on the regular. She’s the Manager of DTC Experience for JUSTIN, Landmark and Lewis Cellars, and she’ll be talking about how she’s now “spoiled” when it comes to hyper-segmentation.
Expand Beyond OND.
Yes, the timing focus of tomorrow’s webinar is October-November-December. And an underlying message is how wineries take what’s working well in OND and expand those strategies into the year-round sales process. Corporate gifting, anyone? It’s becoming a bigger and bigger deal.
Tracy and Susan are ready to pull back the curtain into their own best practices, and share them with you. Sign up for tomorrow’s webinar, and get yourself geared up to sell more wine this holiday season.
ICYMI
Article: From Wine Writer to Tech Founder: Cathy Huyghe Is Helping Wineries Turn Data Into Revenue.
Hypepotamus · August 6, 2026
Article: Encouraging Growth in a Dry Market
Wine-Searcher.com · August 10, 2026
Event Type: Webinar
Location: PST
Date: 8/19/2026 — 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM
You're invited! Please join us on Wednesday, August 19 at 11 am PST / 2 pm EST for our next "Data into Dollars" webinar, where we'll show you how to turn your e-commerce data into real dollars — just in time for your biggest sales season of the year.
The Panelists!
Meet the Pros! Our special guest panelists speak from their own boots-on-the-ground perspective, directly to you.
Susan Zavatto, Manager, DTC Experience at Justin Vineyards, Landmark Vineyards & Lewis Cellars
Tracy Chastain, Wine Club Manager at Testarossa Winery
What You’ll Take Away…
How club and e-commerce data work together to drive incremental sales, not cannibalize each other.
“Segment smarter, sequence better.” Know who to target and when, across both club and e-commerce, so every campaign this OND adds incremental revenue instead of just reshuffling the same sales.
Wednesday, August 19 - 11 am PST / 2 pm EST
FREE to attend! You do not need to be an Enolytics customer.
WineTech Startup To Know In Atlanta
Cathy Huyghe has spent decades writing about wine. Through The Atlantic, the Washington Post, the Harvard Business Review, and her column in Forbes, she’s introduced readers to the world found within a wine glass, and to the people, places, and businesses behind every bottle. Now, her love of wine has evolved into a startup to watch — not in Napa or Sonoma…but Atlanta...
The latest release of SNAPSHOT, Enolytics’ industry-wide report on winery performance, went live over the weekend. We release it on the first day or two of every month, for an up-to-the-minute reading of how our industry is weathering the current storms.
It’s FREE to access — you can find it here — and it’s our way of contributing important information about DTC wine data across the country.
How is YOUR winery doing, compared to your peers?
There’s a quick and easy way to find out.
While the industry-wide report is FREE for all to access, we are now offering a customized benchmarking report where you can compare your winery’s performance against an anonymized cohort of your peers.
1 Define Your Own Cohort.
Tell us the parameters of the wineries you want to measure against, namely the Region or AVAs, and your Average Bottle Price. Just click over to this form and fill in the information.
2 Select Your Cadence.
Tell us how often you’d like to receive your report. We release them at the beginning of every month. One report costs $250, or you could receive the next six months of reports for $1000.
3 See Your Winery’s Performance Against Your Peers.
Here are the metrics you will see within your cohort’s parameters: Net Sales Growth. Volume Growth. Average Order Value (AOV) for POS, Club and Website. Wine Club Signups, Attrition and Growth.
Information is knowledge. Personalized information — based on your own winery’s parameters — is powerful information you can work with.
Let’s start today.
Get Started with Your Benchmarking Report →
Thank you!
Cathy and Chris. (And Robin too.)
Co-founders, Enolytics
Imagine if your salespeople could look into a crystal ball before every guest visit to the Tasting Room, before every outbound sales call, and before every email or text they send.
Imagine if the crystal ball could tell them answers to questions like this:
1 - The customer’s last sale, and the cadence of their purchases.
What was their most recent purchase, and in which channel? Who was the last sales associate they interacted with, and when? Are there any flags or signals to their purchasing patterns you should know?
2 - The arc of their Club membership.
When did they join? Has their membership been consistent? Did they upgrade? Downgrade? Customize shipments? Do they ever buy outside the Club?
3 - The bottom line of sales outreach to this customer.
Which wine exactly should I pitch to this customer, and why? How many bottles should I suggest they buy? How much money will this make? What “hooks” does the customer respond to?
Imagine if your sales team had access to this kind of information, about every single customer, before every single outreach.
Imagine the sales and revenue that your winery would generate, when your salespeople are empowered with this kind of information about every single customer.
It’s possible. It’s already happening.
There’s no crystal ball required. Just Enolytics.
Ready to give it a try for yourself? Our ROI Guarantee means that there is literally no cost or risk to you to trying it out.
Drop us a line to get started, or ask me any questions. My email is cathy@enolytics.com
Thank you!
Cathy and Chris. (And Robin too.)
Co-founders, Enolytics
Dutton-Goldfield did it. Why can’t you?
No reason at all!
Ed Thralls, the General Manager at Dutton-Goldfield Winery in Sebastopol, led his team to significant improvements in their Wine Club performance.
Here’s how they did it, in three key steps.
1. Stop attrition before it happens.
Anticipate churn by leaning into member data, and counteract changing consumer behavior, declining traffic, and higher attrition trends.
The result? 16.5% decrease in Club attrition!
2. Prioritize relationships through a Membership Success program.
Shift to a metric based on lifetime value and long-term relationships.
The result? Membership tenure and Club member lifetime value are both up by 7.8%!
3. Check out Ed’s unique “Retention Ladder” that visualizes Dutton-Goldfield’s Relationship Management program inside our newly-released case study, available now!
Check out our new Club Retention Case Study here!
We’re ready, whenever you are, to give Enolytics a try for your winery too. You can see the same kind of results, and we’ll be right there beside you all along.
The best part? It’s at no cost to you to try it out. More info about our ROI Guarantee is below.
See for yourself!
Register for our ROI Guarantee, and see your data within Enolytics.
Warm regards,
Cathy Huyghe
Co-founder & CEO, Enolytics
What To Do Next: Actionable Takeaways from Our Fall Club Webinar
In last week’s Enolytics webinar, three industry DTC pros dropped best tips on making the most of your Fall wine club shipment. Here’s a summary—short and sweet!—with thanks to April Enos from Joseph Phelps, Nadia Kinkade from PEJU, and Ed Thralls from Dutton-Goldfield.
Audit data quality before club processing. Identify missing phone, email, address, or name data, and clean records up front rather than discovering gaps mid-processing. Thank you, April!
Check default shipment acceptance rates by club tier. Do this at budget time and again right before the Fall shipment. If acceptance is slipping, revisit whether the wine offerings still match what each tier’s customers actually want. Thank you, Nadia!
Adopt a structured retention workflow, not ad hoc outreach. Predict → Prepare → Reach Out → Take Action → Record Disposition → Follow Up → Learn → Predict Again, with special attention to new members in their first 90 days, the highest-risk window. Thank you, Ed!
These are best practices… but do they sound hard to do? They ARE hard to do, honestly, if you’re working with your data manually. The power of Enolytics, however, makes these tasks manageable and well within reach.
See for yourself!
Register for our ROI Guarantee, and see your data within Enolytics.
There’s no cost to try. There’s no risk to you. It’s an easy lift to get started. Let’s get you onboard so that your Fall club shipment (and all of OND) runs smoothly and more profitably.
We’re here to help.
Warm regards,
Cathy Huyghe
Co-founder & CEO, Enolytics
Event Type: Webinar
Location: Pacific Time
Date: 7/9/2026 — 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Fall wine club season is closer than you think.
Fall is coming. And with it, one of the biggest revenue opportunities of the year: Wine Club season.
You've been thinking about it. Maybe you're already planning. And somewhere in the back of your mind, there's a question that keeps coming up.
Am I making every shipment count?
That's exactly what we're going to talk about.
Join us for this FREE webinar: Turn Your Data Into Dollars: Use Data to Maximize Your Fall Club Season
Here's what you'll walk away with:
How to identify your best club opportunities before the season starts
Practical ways to reduce churn and keep your best members
How to personalize your outreach so it actually lands
Strategies to maximize sales before, during, and after your fall release
These aren't theoretical. They're things you can put to work immediately.
Fall club season rewards the wineries who are prepared. We'd love to help you be one of them.