As far as your question, I think points of reference is what they are good for. Does winning a medal change your bottom line? Not really, but when people go through our winery and they can see multiple points of reference throughout the years, I think it helps to reinforce the quality we are trying to achieve.
we got a Best of Class for our 2009 “Tina Marie” RRV Pinot Noir, and two golds for an 08 Diener Ranch Petite Sirah and 10 Bedrock Vineyard Zinfandel. they sent us a nice plaque with the wines listed, and we have it displayed in our tasting room.
as far as sales go in the Tasting Room, we do note the awards for the wines on our tasting menu, and i would say about 50% of the guests make a comment like, “Oh. This wine got an award!” or “Wow! Best of class? Cool” though i can’t say there’s any direct correlation between the awards and which bottles they end up purchasing. we also identify these wines in eblasts to our club members, though again it’s hard to quantify an increase in sales due to the awards alone.
i think it does help with our distributors and brokers when they are able to provide a potential buyer with a press release showing how our wines have been judged and fared in competitions. just another positive selling point in addition to tasting the wines themselves.