Great wine brings people to your winery. Great hospitality brings them back. Winery hospitality doesn't stop at the tasting bar anymore, and neither should your point of sale. Whether guests are exploring the vineyard, relaxing on the patio, attending a member event, or discovering your wines at a festival, they expect buying wine to be just as easy as tasting it. But many wineries are still using POS systems designed for a single checkout counter, creating unnecessary friction for both guests and staff. A mobile POS changes that. Instead of asking guests to come to the register, it brings the register to the guest, making every interaction faster, more personal, and more connected. Why Flexibility Matters in Winery Service Hospitality is the heartbeat of any winery. Guests expect warm, personal interactions, whether they’re standing at your tasting bar or sipping on a hilltop vineyard tour. A mobile POS ensures every one of those interactions is seamless, connected, and personalized.

By Jim Trezise, President of WineAmerica The National Association of American Wineries™ Romance vs. Reality It’s not surprising that people dream of getting into the wine business. Just think of it: Sunrise caressing the vines. Perfect weather again. A leisurely coffee while surveying the pristine landscape. A morning stroll through exquisitely manicured vineyards. A smoothly functioning wine cellar. A traffic jam of consumers eager to visit the tasting room. Multiple FedEx trucks waiting for wine club shipments. Ending each day counting the hefty stash. Celebrating with a dinner pairing your world-class wines with world-class food on your terrace overlooking paradise. Sleeping like a baby. Yeah, right! After spending their life savings and taking out a massive loan, new winery owners often discover a very different reality. Clouds mean rain when the grapes need to stay dry. Coffee comes from a drive-thru. License applications and tax forms cover the desk. Labor shortages mean critica

Pest pressure in California wine country shifts with the seasons. Understanding these patterns helps you stay proactive, protecting your facility year-round. Spring: Awakening Activity As temperatures rise, overwintering pests become active. Ants begin foraging, rodents emerge, and birds build nests. Gophers and ground squirrels damage irrigation lines and vine roots. Action: Conduct facility inspections to seal entry points. Address burrowing rodents before populations explode. Install bird deterrents. Summer: Peak Pressure Warm weather brings peak activity for flying insects, ants, spiders, and wasps. Tasting rooms see increased foot traffic that can introduce pests. Action: Maintain rigorous sanitation. Monitor for ant trails. Ensure door sweeps and screens are in good repair. Fall/Crush: The Critical Window Harvest brings the year's highest pest risk. Fruit flies are drawn to fermenting grapes. Rodents seek food and warmth as temperatures drop, infiltrating buildings during your bu

Visitation is down across nearly every US wine region. Wine club retention is softening. Margins are getting squeezed by rising costs on top of it, according to SVB's 2026 State of the U.S. Wine Industry report. Overall DTC revenue is down. If you run a DTC-focused winery, none of this is news. You are living it. This is not a problem you are helpless against. It is not the same as a shrinking pool of visitors that no amount of skill can fix. It is a problem with conversion, and conversion problems are addressable. In fact, wineries have an advantage here that almost no other sales environment on earth has. Most of them just are not using it. Tasting Rooms are the best sales room in the world! This is not a new argument for me. I have made the case before. What you call a tasting room is actually a sales room, whether or not it is run like one. The argument is worth making again here, because the stakes are high. Think about what a salesperson in any other industry has to do before th

It's July 1, which means you're about to start seeing "Christmas in July" everywhere. Retailers are already thinking about the holidays—even if it still feels like the middle of summer. Smart wineries should be doing the same. October, November, and December (OND) are your biggest sales months of the year. Holiday winery marketing doesn’t start in October—it starts now. They’re sprinting through Q3—right now—while everyone else is still daydreaming about hot cocoa and watching Christmas movies… you’ve got rosé in your glass and wine bundles to plan. Here's how to make the next 90 days count. 1. Clean Up Your Data — Because Bad Data Costs You Money This isn’t just about removing bounced emails. Bad data quietly drains OND revenue by blocking you from segmenting, targeting, or even reaching your customers. Your Move: Export your full email list (now, not later). Verify your SMS audience and make sure customer consent records are up to date. Use ChatGPT to help spot typos like gmaii.com

If you came to the 2026 Wine Sales Symposium hoping for an economist to deliver good news about wine consumption, Chris Bitter wasn't your guy. Bitter, a wine economist with Terrain - the economic and market research arm of American AgCredit - opened his session with a prediction attendees didn't want to hear: wine consumption is going to continue declining for the foreseeable future. But he also delivered a more hopeful message. The premium and luxury segments are holding up considerably better than the broader market, and wineries willing to adapt to a changing consumer still have real opportunities to win. A Smaller Share of a Smaller Pie Bitter walked attendees through the two challenges defining the current moment. First, fewer Americans are drinking, and those who do drink are drinking less. Second, wine is losing share to other categories within alcohol itself. The result, in his words, is "a smaller share of a smaller pie." The decline isn't temporary. After decades of growth,

We just released the newest Enolytics Snapshot — our free, monthly look at how the DTC wine industry is actually performing, right now, in real numbers. Here are three smart tips that caught our attention this month. Tip #1: Focus on Value per Visit Don't wait for volume to recover. The wineries holding their ground aren't selling more bottles — they're selling smarter. Look at your Average Order Value and ask where you have room to move it: through bundling, through tiered offerings, through staff training on upselling. Pricing power is a skill. Practice it now, while the market is teaching you to. Tip #2: Treat your Tasting Room Pipeline as the Urgent Priority it is May's data showed signups outpacing attrition for positive net club growth of 0.5% — proof that conversion works when the ask is made consistently. Since you can't always control foot traffic, control what happens when guests do arrive. Audit your club invitation process. Is every guest receiving a warm, genuine invitatio

Why some wineries get recommended by ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity — and how yours can too. Consumers are changing how they search for wineries. Google still matters, but more people are now using AI search tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and voice assistants to ask direct questions like: What winery in Napa has views and doesn’t require reservations? Best dog-friendly winery near Charlottesville open on Mondays Best winery for a girls trip in Paso Robles Which wine club is best for Cabernet lovers? Family-friendly wineries near me with outdoor space AI Visibility Is Already Driving Real Results This shift is not theoretical. Recent website analysis from Duda found that AI-crawled websites generated: 320% more human traffic 270% more form submissions 250% more click-to-call actions For wineries, that could mean more tasting room inquiries, reservation requests, event leads, and online sales opportunities. As consumers increasingly ask AI tools where to visit, what

A couple comes into the tasting room on a sunny Saturday. They have a great visit. They buy a few bottles. They ask a few good questions. Maybe they mention they’ve been there before. Maybe they seem like a perfect club fit. Maybe they say, “We’ll definitely order again.” And then the day keeps moving. Another group walks in. Someone needs help at checkout. A club question comes up. An event is coming next week. By the end of the day, that promising customer moment is already gone. More traffic feels good — and it is good — but only if your system helps you turn that traffic into something lasting. Because the real opportunity is not just the sale in front of you. It’s everything that should happen next:  6 Questions to help you get started Did your team capture the right customer information? Can you easily see what they purchased? Can you follow up later with the right message? Can you identify who should be invited to join the club? Can your tasting room, club, and onli

Why Wineries Are Leaning Into Technology for Growth Wine Has Finally Caught Up to Ecommerce Wine has always operated differently from the rest of ecommerce. Most industries follow similar patterns. They invest in digital acquisition, optimize conversion, and build systems that scale. Wineries never really did. Between compliance, wine clubs, tasting rooms, and long-standing industry habits, wineries built their businesses around in-person relationships, not online performance. Because of that, wine has historically been underserved by modern ecommerce tools. Platforms weren’t designed for how wineries actually operate, so wineries adapted by working around those limitations instead of solving them. That’s starting to change. Shopify has quickly become a leading ecommerce platform for wineries looking to modernize how they sell wine online. Checkout is faster thanks to Shop Pay Building and updating curated customer experiences is easier The platform integrates with tools that handle