This has been a great thread! It could be used as an honest to gosh owners manual.
Wes after listening to you last evening, your wine will speak for itself. Plus it appears you really like and are comfortable in speaking with people. Having people persons in the tasting room like Lou Kapscandy, Claude Blankiet, Janet Pagano, to name a few, makes the experience a whole lot better.
You will succeed big time because you have a personality bigger than life (sorta but in a very different manner than Jim Clendenen) and that is going to be your key.
Much like Larry Schaffer who is an amazing human being.
Yes, almost a done deal to take over the Qupe room next to Bien Nacido/Solomon Hills.
Sorry for the late reply, I was down in LA pruning.
Thanks SO much for your input. Very valuable stuff. I owe you a drink!
I love wine as much as I hate drunks. They are annoying and don’t buy a goddamned thing.
I want to reach out and thank each one of you for your time, expertise and passion. I do plan to ‘camp’ at the tasting room as much as i possibly can and make direct contact with tasters.
I took Craig Root’s tasting Room class at UC Davis, so between that and this I have a good running start. I will print all these comments and bring them to my meeting in Monday in Los Olivos. Looking forward to having you all to the TR and hopefully fulfill all expectations.
Two last questions, if anyone is still interested:
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What would you think of a wine.com style shipping policy where you pay $49 a year for unlimited free shipping, wine club, and any extra orders?
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Would a multi-media room that would show a high-end video production of vineyard fly-bys, me talking about the soils and production while you sipped Pinot Blanc be of interest? This would be in the ‘reserve room’ with some theater seating while we aren’t doing VIP events.
Thanks in advance!
Actually I don´t like “tasting rooms” - I prefer to go to the cellar … but IF … the only criteria is the wine …
Sure, if the people are not friendly and welcoming I won´t return … if I cannot taste what I´m interested in I won´t return … but if everything is perfect … but the wine is not interesting enough it doesn´t help at all …
Wes
I’m wary that I may not be representative, but I would probably be turned off by a high-end video of vineyard fly-bys - my reaction would be “if they’re spending that on the ‘visitor experience’ what are they compromising on with the wines”.
regards
Ian
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Sounds interesting, but in most cases it wouldn’t really speak to me because I rarely order > 1 case from one producer/year. Obviously, if I was ordering in quantity I’d jump on this.
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No real interest. I don’t think it’s worth the cost to produce such a video.
Aside from the wine, and EVERYTHING else being equal, the person pouring the wine I think is the most important factor in the experience. Every other winery has a fancy patio overlooking some beautiful view (in Oregon at least), so whether you’re tasting in a dusty barn or fancy patio, the person with whom you’re interacting is key (assuming the wine is good) - unless you’re in Spain and fancy world class architects.
What I find the most disappointing is bad glassware that has not been properly washed. Nothing worse than going to a tasting room and finding the wine tastes like dishwasher soap.
Knowledgeable servers are a must. I can’t say how many times I’ve gone to a tasting room and found complete bozos who don’t know the wines, don’t know the vineyards, wouldn’t have any idea how wine is made, and don’t even seem to care if you’re there.
Not every winery is able to do a private tasting and I don’t expect it everywhere. If you want me to buy your wine, which is why I assume you are opening a tasting room, give me enough to get some idea what it is. Especially, if you are charging for pours, don’t be too stingy. I am tasting and spitting but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to try the wine.
Even a cracker helps me evaluate whether the wine has a food potential.
I don’t need a gorgeous room with a view of the ocean. Just make it a pleasant experience.
“Even a cracker helps me evaluate whether the wine has a food potential.”
Awesome point!
Worthy of its own thread!
What snacks or easily prepared and stored food bits would be best to help a taster make a decision like that and be something that would be convenient for the tasting room to have on hand?
I would be happy with a once yearly shipping fee that would cover all my shipping for my wine club purchases.
Regarding the multimedia experience, going back to my experience at Lynmar last year, we had a big screen TV with projections of maps showing where each vineyard or vineyard block was as we tasted through their selection of wines. The tasting guide described the soil and exposure in each block and production. It was interesting. I would say it’s an experience best done only if people have made reservations and are having a prolonged seated tasting experience. For drop ins, I would not bother with such a thing.
From a business point of view, I am an old guy who is used to hearing production numbers, so it didn’t affect me much, but the people we went tasting with were very taken by the fact that a given bottling may only be 60 to 120 cases of wine, and I think it affected their eagerness to buy from the blocks they had just tasted. For them, knowing about low production numbers seemed to make for a more intimate experience and made for more ‘on the spot’ purchasing.
Always a fan of the bread/cracker sticks.
We just opened a tasting room and started a wine club - interesting thought on the flat rate shipping…
I like the video idea (depending upon your targeted demographic).
Ultimately, you have to have good wine. I will not return otherwise. Next, you need great service which is also a deal breaker. Everything else is gravy. After all of that, if you want me to join your wine club, you better have reasonable shipping fees.
Uh, has anybody mentioned GOOD WINE and FAIR PRICES? Who the heck even cares what the bleeping tasting room looks like?! Are we so caught up on cosmetics that we actually forget the first order of magnitude?
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This would interest me and would get me to order more than if I was trying to put a case together to limit shipping cost per bottle every time I ordered. The shipping cost does significantly limit my purchases of less than a case.
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I think the question is will this work inLos Olivos? I have only been there 4 or 5 times but on my few trips there, I haven’t seen folks hanging out at the tasting rooms. More like taste and walk to the next, repeat over and over.
I know you were looking for comments from the consumer side, but I thought I’d pitch in as well.
We did tasting at our winery 2 summers ago on our patio under an overhang. Very rustic. Then last summer we had a chance to do a tasting room on Avenue of the Giants, a very well travelled tourist site.
We are moving the tasting back to our own site. What we found was that people really want authenticity. The more serious wine people seem to find us either way. They are our better buyers.
If there is no way you can have you tasting site attached to your production, then that makes it harder to to create a connection with guests. The quality and uniqueness of the wine is key. I was surprised that some of our more unusual wines sold better than some of the others for which we are better known. After that, the person pouring and their connection to the place. Then, QPR.
I think all the other stuff is probably a waste of money and might actually get in the way. This all assumes that you are selling wine. If you are selling sizzle, then the more over the top the better, I’d guess. Not my thing.
I hope this helps. If not, let me know and I’ll take it down.
Good luck with it!
My two cents are that you need to think about slightly different things to appeal to the wine geeks vs. the non-wine geeks. For the wine geeks, besides having to have great wines at fair prices, I would think the ability to interact with a very knowledgeable person (like yourself) and the ability to taste wines off the normal pouring menu would be very attractive. For the non-wine geeks you want to attract to the tasting room, I think the ambiance of the tasting room would be almost as important as anything to get people in the door, since many of the casual wine drinkers may or may not have heard of your winery and thus are basing their decision on whether or not to come in and taste on other factors (ambiance of space, price, window callers/sidewalk boards “advertising” the wines available for tasting or purchase, etc.) especially in Los Olivos where you are probably “competing” for traffic with a number of other nearby tasting rooms. By way of example, last summer when I was up in Napa/Sonoma tasting with some friends (some of who are wine nuts and some of whom were just along for the ride), the one more traditional “tasting room” that we visited that everyone was buzzing about after the trip was WindGap’s space in the Barlow. Had a really cool feel to it, and the area was split between the more traditional tasting bar (where the wine geeks went to taste) and some other scattered “cocktail” tables and sofas off the bar (where the non-wine geeks could sit down and socialize while enjoying the wines that they wanted to taste). The feel of the room was great (recycled wood paneling, lots of light - felt more like a bar than a tasting room), and they also had a turntable and small collection of vinyl records that they let the guest pick from to play background music. This setup was perfect for our group - the wine geeks sat at the bar, met with the assistant winemaker who we had contacted in advance so he came down to meet us, talk to us about the wines, and pour us some goodies beyond the regular tasting menu, while the non-wine geek guests sat at one of the tables in the back, picked some vinyl to listen to, and enjoyed their conversation over the wines that they tasted - and many in our group talked about that as being one of their favorite visits during the trip over even some of the private tastings that we did at other wineries since it had a larger appeal to everyone in the group.