Plenty to share when you kick off that thread 
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Time for me to bring up the Santa Cruz Mountains again. The association even has the ‘tasting collective’ others suggested upthread, at least for a couple of days a year: SCM Wine Passport Winery Events in the Santa Cruz Mountains
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Perfect time to start a winery and open a tasting room…
Everyone I talk to in the region says tasting visits are down 20-30%. Sales as well. The worst hit right now seems to be wine club signups. People are dropping like flies and new signups are hard to come by.
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True - but again many tasting rooms are trying to make sure they cover all kinds of costs by elevated tasting fees as opposed to using this concept as a way of introducing their wines to folks. They are choosing to do ‘more elevated’ tastings with more personnel and charging higher costs - and I’m pretty sure we can agree that they are not losing money on these tastings . . .
Cheers
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Once people figure-out that wine club memberships almost invariably lead to an unbalanced cellar, they’re out. And I assume it’s exceedingly rare to get them back. I’ve dropped-then-rejoined only one list ever: Tablas Creek. And, already, I’m seeing that I need to make some adjustments to my type of membership to avoid having way too much Tablas on my hands in a couple years (I need to switch from all reds to reds & whites). American wine consumers are only getting smarter, which is going to make Wine Club memberships increasingly difficult to sell moving forward; wineries are going to need to be more flexible if they want to retain the all-important Repeat Customer.
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That’s one of the reasons my wine club is as flexible as it is - and why I offer as many reds and whites that I do (that and my ever- growing curiosity!) . . .
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Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyard (@JeffEmery) does a great job of this as well. Flexible club sizes, shipping, and a ton of available add-ons from both their SCMV and Quinta Cruz labels.
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I have two former clients, one south of Tucson AZ and one in the Bay area. Both are small producers. They have turned their tasting rooms into wine bars. Every weekend they have a new food vendor and often live music to build customer loyalty. It keeps regulars coming back and bringing friends.
The AZ guy bought a pizza oven on a trailer and has created some amazing food options for people. He’s about 70 minutes south of Tucson and his area is becoming the Napa of AZ. Short drive for a day trip and many wineries in the area.
Both guys have a huge Instagram presence and from the events come wine club membership.
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I don’t even consider going to Napa, and I live and hour away, but Paso I would visit once a year. This year, I passed. No joy in planning every single minute of how Iam going to get to the next appointment, and then have to spend 2 hours at that place. I liked the when I could walk in and taste through a lineup in 30 minutes. Have times changed, yes and Iam ok with it.
I absolutely buy less wine due to shipping costs. That topic has been endlessly debated. I go to wine shops now and try to buy a bottle if I can find what I may have bought a 3 pack of. Otherwise I move on.
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Same here. We have ~300 wines from all over that we do by the bottle and we have a curated Coravin selection. The regulars come in to try something cool and visitors often want to take a break from Pinots
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You have a reputation to maintain. That poem to kickoff the thread had better be damned good.
Mexico is way cheaper
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Anecdote time: My sister and bil were down in Carmel tasting at one of two wine clubs that they belong to (use to belong to six to eight clubs) and started a conversation with tasting room host about business. The host said they were close to back to normal but many of their fellow wineries and local hotels were way down. The host put partial blame on the wineries and hotels sharply raising their prices/fees to try to catch-up for the lean pandemic years. No idea if this is true but interesting food for thought.
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True. Lines up with my thesis
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We all know the CPI and official numbers are nowhere near the real inflationary numbers. We see it in our wallets that almost hover mid-air due to their lightness. To me, it feels like 30% more than things cost in 2019, across the board.
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Core CPI shows 20% over that full period. I agree with you, for the categories I’m regularly buying it seems closer to 25-30% for those categories, which may well be right.
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You’re assuming members have cellars.
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Both things can be true….
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They most definitely are too!
You only need to look at Antica Terra’s site to see wine price inflation at its worst.
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