A reasonably thoughtful peace on the myriad reasons behind the sharp escalations in tasting room fees, at least in Napa.
Labor, insurance, other overhead costs play in to a significant degree.
However, there’s also this: “Other wineries saw that by restricting appointments, and charging a higher fee, they could filter out the casual partyer who just wants to sling back a few drinks. A higher tasting fee self-selects for customers who are likely to buy more bottles of wine at the end of their session — which is, after all, any winery’s main objective.”
So, it’s a profit deal?
Absolutely, crowd control is the best reason to charge a higher tasting fee, and the revenue can be used to provide a better experience. Not really new. Many years ago (early to mid 1980s) very few Napa wineries charged a fee. Sterling Vineyards, which was more high end back then, charged $10 to take the tram up to the tasting room which was the only way to get there, and it was refundable if you bought a bottle. It was one of the places I used to take visitors because it was much more civilized (sit down at tables with a little food) and I always bought bottles. Other wineries quickly started following suit with fees, and sometimes higher fees to get into a separate area with higher end wines. Only makes sense.
-Al
Are the tasting fees typically refundable against purchases? I believe that’s been a common approach when there are charges in Australia.
It is behind a paywall, but can figure from the above the gist of it.
All in favor; there is a cost involved running a tasting room. Resources have been allocated; no reason not to make a profit on them, so long as the price is reasonable enough not to deter customers and potential customers.
+1
As I recall, Napa County began requiring tasting fees (in the 90s?) to curb excess drinking, but grandfathered in some wineries.
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Usually, yes.
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Where staff are employed, it absolutely makes sense.
As for profit, there’s certainly a balance equation of tasting room profit vs. ‘curating’ a loyal customer base, but where that equation may well involve a minimal fee for the benefit of loyal customers (to avoid the experience of a tour bus crowd ruining the experience for others).
It can be a very different equation where it’s just family members involved and so their ‘costs’ are already somewhat sunk into the business. For them, they can treat it more as an opportunity to meet and engage with current and future customers, helping to create a stronger bond through that engagement. That’s where many Italian wineries are and the experience on the whole remains a very good one. I’ve never encountered anyone there solely to ‘get some free booze’, but then Italians’ attitude to alcohol is on the whole more respectful / restrained, perhaps as they are often exposed to it in moderation from a young age (“un po’ con acqua”), plus there remains a social stigma about getting wasted by alcohol, whereas in the UK, it’s strangely seen as a funny thing to do ![[head-bang.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/b/b1cd199e4b2b2988b5107c3c9598fd28dc92a776.gif "[head-bang.gif]"){kind=small}
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I would even say into the 1990’s. I remember very, very few charging in 1993.
So…charge more money to keep customers OUT? Honestly, this makes little sense to me. In the short term, I’m sure it works for that purpose. However, in the long term, you are excluding people who may want to “get in on the ground level“ and just try some wines and learn.
I began learning about wine in college. As some have mentioned, you could go up to Napa and visit and taste, and the fees were very modest.
Today, how would that even work? That college student or young professional, who one day may be an affluent person with the disposable income to buy quantities of wine? He or she may not end up as a customer, since they were not able to explore wine earlier in life. Beer and spirits might be their preference, and those palatial Napa wineries, with their sky-high operating costs, will wonder where everyone went. Just a thought.
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If you’ve ever visited Napa tasting rooms on a summer weekend, and seen the gangs of tipsy tasters elbowing their way to the counter, it’s easy to see why the wineries see little value in freebies. Better to force people to make some decisions about how many wineries to visit and which they are actually interested in.
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With some exceptions, I am typically visiting wineries I already purchase from and get the tasting comped because of that. I like being able to taste what I am buying without opening my own bottles and maybe I find something else they make that I want to buy as well. On the flip side of that, if you want to get to know a winery a tour and tasting is a great opportunity to see what they have to offer.
Maybe these wineries are trying to maximize profits before the bubble bursts.
Seriously, I have no problems with fees increasing as long as the fee, or at least a large portion of it, can be applied to a purchase.
One of my most frustrating winery visits occurred when the winery waived the fee with purchase, but then only offered lesser wines since the wines I liked were “allocated.” So I paid our fees and told the employee that I would just spend all of my budget at a different winery.
And I did.
^this. Plus, something that I haven’t seen noted yet is the disastrous effect a drunk driver could possibly have on a winery’s license. In Oregon, a winery or bar can be held liable if a drunk driver causes damage. I don’t know how often that exactly happens, but it is enough of a possibility that it is strongly considered. I don’t have a server’s license for California, but I wouldn’t be all too surprised if there is/are similar law(s) on the books and that alone is more than enough of a deterrent to go to a model of taking appointments and charging more for them.
Napa hasn’t been like your college years for a long time now. It’s a tourist valley and well heeled resort area now. The sorts of tasting room experiences you remember have not really been a part of the area for quite some time. For this sort of thing one needs to go to less expensive regions.
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If that college student or young professional can afford a hotel room in today’s Valley, they can afford tasting fees.
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Who decides what a ‘reasonable’ fee is? Nate’s point is a good one - can’t there be something ‘reasonable’ in between ‘free’ and ‘exorbitant’??
Cheers.
I think you have not run a business before. Can you really call yourself a customer if you just take free samples and leave? Is that the type of “customer” the business wants to attract?
You have limited number of seats in your establishment, the goal is to maximize revenue from each seat. Naturally with something like a winery, revenue is not as simple as a one time transaction. Certainly goodwill that translates into sales later is of value. But there’s ways to evaluate lifetime value of different types of customers and curate your offerings to bring more of those customers and fewer of the less desirable customers.
Exactly. I was told years ago that some wineries in Napa were pouring a very significant percentage of their overall production in the tasting room and not generating an amount of sales that made sense. When that becomes the reality, something has to change. SO many people visit Napa for the experience, with no intention of buying wine. I’ve even seen a bit of that in Oregon. And those are the loud, obnoxious parties making the experience much worse for the people who are there to buy wine. Evaluating wine with a ton of loud noise in the background (or right next to you) is just about impossible.
As far as going to a wine region to learn, it works in places that haven’t become popular tourist destinations.
I like that the tasting room fees can result in a better experience for those of us that are there to make buying decisions and not just to get drunk. However, as mentioned above, Napa is now a “well-heeled resort area” and the tasting fees reflect that. Not sure what the “minimal fee” is for each winery to keep the buses away, but $75, $100, and even $150 tasting fees per person are not uncommon anymore.
I’ve been going to Napa for over 20 years now, and the sky rocketing (rocketed?) tasting fees have kept me away in recent years, and they have kept me from recommending Napa to newbies. To Nate’s point above, it was the busy — but cheap — tasting rooms that helped me explore wine when I lived in Northern California as a college student in the late ‘90s. There is no way I would have been able to explore so much great wine at that time with the fees the way they are now.
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