How do you make your wines stand out in today’s crowded and competitive marketplace if you are a small quality producer?
You’ve got your web site and have probably used it to populate your mailing list. Your wines feature well wherever they are reviewed. You believe you have a good reputation “out there”. You’ve played with a blog but find it time consuming and you’ve heard about Twitter and Facebook but you are not sure how to make them work for you.
Solution? Speed tasting of your wines. Put a proactive trade association and a progressive PR agency together and invite a group of wine bloggers and “tweeters” to speed taste a representative number of wines from your region.
This happened recently when Sonoma County Vintners and Limm Communications got together. A number of wine enthusiasts were welcomed with a glass of Gloria Ferrer brut and then introduced, one by one, to the four wineries present Buena Vista, Flowers Vineyard & Winery, Pedroncelli and Joseph Swan Vineyards). We had eight minutes to swirl, sniff, slurp and spit the wine whilst being told by the winery principal what makes each wine unique. Eight minutes may not sound like long enough to appreciate the wine and to hear about what make the particular winery tick but it is just right.
Did it work? Absolutely!
It increased the name awareness of the wineries and the appreciation of their quality products. It got those winery names out there on blogs and tasting notes and Twitter was used extensively on the day. It was a productive and efficient way for the wineries to promote themselves in a way that was different from their peers and made them stand out from the crowd.
You should give it a try.
Photo courtesy of Flowers Vineyard and Winery.
1 comments:
It was great fun, wasn't it? I think all wine tastings should have a wine speed dating format in there somewhere! AND we got to try some (finally) quality California vino.
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