Get Ready For More Cold Calls . . .

Well, maybe or maybe not - but when I read a PR piece like this, that’s what I envision happening . . .

Maybe not a bad thing, if done respectfully, and the sales people know the product. Wine is a business after all.

And feedback on why people are/aren’t buying their wines.

I agree that the concept itself is not bad - for the reasons both of you have pointed out.

But I’ve seen numerous posts on here recently about other wineries trying to ‘data mine’ - and IIRC, this winery has done so in the past as well.

Cheers.

This is Joe Donelan, guys and gals. He was calling buyers direct 10+ years ago when he was part of Pax 1.0. He certainly called me a few times. Unless he is substantially changing his current production and price point, this is not going to be mass marketed cold calls because his current price is beyond what 95%+ of all wine drinkers would ever consider paying.

Correct - but with so many folks on here buying more expensive wines than what they are currently making, the call possibilities are nearly endless . . .

DTC is SO compelling, especially for small wineries, that it deserves allocation of resources.

Consider that in 2016, wineries producing less than 2500 cases a year got 74% of their revenue from DTC. 74%! That is a life or death number. (see link)

I did some business consulting for a wine retailer here in Los Angeles last year and the VERY first thing I INSISTED we focus on was DTC – since he also happened to be a wine-maker with his own vineyard and label, so it made sense to immediately investigate re-branding his wine label as the house label (same name as retail store brand) and establish a club so his tasting bar could be used to drive DTC membership. Massive profitability impact.

They are in the ultra-premium range of ultra premium wine pricing. Wines are good, customer service is good (I’ve had some Joe thank you calls before) but the prices are exceptionally high. $78 Pinot, $110-150 Syrah. Their target customers are not people in my income bracket.

Brian,

The pinot price is spot on, but the current offering for Syrah is $60 and $90. Still not low, or maybe even reasonable, but not $110-$150.

Yeah, I stand corrected. The $60 and $90 are the Kobler and Keltie. They didn’t offer the Richards this round and it tips the scale at $125 for the 2014.

I was cold called the other day from a former board darling wanting to know if I wanted their most expensive wines as I hadn’t taken my allocation yet…

Then I got cold emailed by three other wineries wondering about my ‘club’ that I had cxl’d years ago, seems wineries are hurting to sell anything about $50, not to say $150

I’ve noticed an influx of emails from some wineries I’ve not been buying from in years. If they were to call me I’d be happy to tell them my story…and my reasons for not buying their wine.