When Mohammed won’t come down from the mountain
So I called up this winery the other day. It’s not too far away from Oakland. I’m putting together another tasting and asked if I could buy a bottle of their Cabernet Sauvignon and have it shipped to me. The guy—the owner-proprietor, I think—said no. He said it’s not worth his while to “drive […]
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Thoughts on those sommelier lunches
Today I am speaker, or host, at a buyer’s lunch for Jackson Family Wines. The venue is Farmshop, a restaurant in the tony Marin County town of Larkspur. I’ve never eaten there, but if you’re a wine-and-food geek in the Bay Area, you’ve certainly heard of it. Farmshop earned a coveted spot on the […]
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What wineries need for the market
A recent article in Wines & Vines about the Master of Wine Bob Paulinski, who now works for BevMo, was on the topic of “Making Your Wine Brand Stand Out.” It caught my eye because, like most articles on the same topic, it asks a pertinent question—one that all wineries are asking—without providing any […]
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How to get publicity for your winery. Or not.
Old friend Alan Goldfarb asks some pertinent questions in this piece that was published the other day in an online trade publication. The quandary he poses for wineries: “With wine writers dropping off the face of the earth…to whom does a winery publicist turn to get PR/accolades/reviews when the writer pool is evaporating?” As […]
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Winemaker’s choice: When marketing and the perception of exclusivity collide
I had coffee yesterday with a winemaker from Napa Valley who works for a high-end winery: triple-digit Cabernet and all that. We were taking about marketing, when she said something about Napa wineries that intrigued me enough to write it down: “Do you want to sell wine,” she asked, “or do you want to […]
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Connectedness: the Holy Grail of winery marketing
Last week, while Americans were watching developments concerning the Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger, which eventually (and thankfully) collapsed, another more successful merger went almost unnoticed. That was the marriage between Blue Bottle Coffee and Tartine Bakery, a far happier union that consumers could celebrate, instead of worrying about. Blue Bottle was founded in my […]
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Capitaltruism: Merging idealism with making money
There’s a movement afoot in corporate America that doesn’t get enough attention but is gaining traction and could be a game changer. This movement is about inculcating social, environmental and health concerns into the sale of goods and services: call it Capitaltruism, where traditional capitalism meets idealistic altruism. And nowhere is it being embraced […]
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Wine needs a message for the iGeneration
The wine industry is always worried about something, especially here in California. (Maybe it’s because we live in earthquake country!) The theme is almost always some version of “The sky is falling.” Back in the 1990s it was phylloxera: it was going to wipe out everything. Didn’t happen; the wine industry not only survived […]
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“Social media” is an oxymoron that’s here to stay
Three articles in yesterday’s S.F. Chronicle caught my attention for the suggestions they make about how social media is, and is not, changing our lives. (I was finally able to read after days of not being able to, due to the intense flu I had. It was an effort just to focus my eyeballs.) […]
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Renewed U.S.-Cuba ties good news for CA wine
The first thing I thought, when I heard that the U.S. is about to normalize diplomatic relations with Cuba, was, “Oh, man, that’s really good news for California wine.” Before the brouhahas of the early 1960s, Cuba was a favorite tropical destination for American vacationers, especially those along the East Coast. Today, people go […]
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