I have had a few special ones - Tasting with Lou - and at the end of the tasting he pulls out a tokaji - even though you are in Napa! Good stuff…
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Jim,
As somebody who has always entered wineries through the back door in order to help winemakers realize they need more barrels…from me…I don’t have much experience going to tasting rooms. But I do have some ideas:
1/I belong to a credit union. A credit union is different from a bank in that you are a member, not a customer. The abnk thinks, how can we suck more money out of these people…the credit union thinks, what can we do for our members
2/repeat customers are the best. It is much easier to get somebody to come back than it is to get somebody who comes once. You know better than I how to do this.
3/so much of this is easier said than done and I wish you the best…sometimes you work hard at something and ten years later you are an overnight success.
I’ll echo some others in tasting library wines/wines that I can’t have anywhere else. Meeting the people who make it and talking about what makes the wine unique/what it is e.g. vineyard, vinification.
I’ll add, being able to at least have a glass of wine while being in the vineyard or barrel room. Or some other part of the tour. For me, I’ll hear about the process, ask questions thought out the tour, then taste the wine and we’ll be onto a different part of the discussion.
I think it adds to at least be tasting a glass while we’re talking about the process during the meat of the tour.
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Find a niche and unique value proposition. Easier said than done but if you are selling the same varietals at the same price range as your neighbors, it will be tough…
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I don’t go enough to tastings rooms myself to have a very informed opinion, but quite often I find them having a live band etc which, to me, diminishes the wine tasting experience. I’m there for the wines. Another completely irrational thing that cheapens it to me is when they print the huge winery name on the glasses. Not sure why, just feels theme-y and low end to me - a hangup I have that makes no sense, admittedly.
I mentioned in a thread a few years ago how much I enjoyed visiting an Uruguayan winery where the tasting/flight was part of a multi course meal. High quality, very nice, but still casual and not too chef-y. I get that not all want to run a restaurant of course, but the connection between wine and food was amazing.
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Nearly all of my visits have been of Bordeaux châteaux. For the last few years, since my daughters started getting interested in wine, I have visited three or four a year. Some visits have been wonderful, others fine, only one has been dire.
I suppose my experiences would lead me to say this:
Firstly, make sure your website is as good as it can be. This is most people’s way of discovering you for the first time. Yours is good, but not as good as this one: Welcome to Giscours - Château Giscours Grand Cru Classé in 1885
I find yours to be a little over-complicated.
Secondly, a few extra visit options would be an idea. Organising lunches or picnics could interest people who are visiting two or three wineries in the day, a visit by bike, that sort of thing. Adding food to the library visit would be a good idea, showing how your wines can match types of cheese or cold cuts, for example.
Make sure the tour guides know their stuff. There’s nothing worse than actually knowing more than the person hosting the visit - who realises it, but carries on the spiel anyway. In the same way, whoever is the host needs to know how to adapt to the clients’ needs. Some will know nothing, some will think they know it all - no visitor is the same. Some need technical details, others’ eyes will glaze over after five minutes.
Start the visits with a short video telling the winery’s history.
Make sure the vineyard visits are informative - why you grow this grape here and not there. The tram is a good idea but all visits need to include walks through the vineyards.
Whoever does the visit, the tasting should be done with one of the winemaking team, who can make the whole experience personal, giving details about the vintage tasted, the conditions compared to other wines and years, etc. The winemaker can also explain the different terroirs - not by telling them what each plot tastes like - but by telling them why. We don’t need someone explaining that this tastes of that, etc, but why one is different from the other.
For the library visit, be more specific - how many wines, and which ones - not necessarily vintages, but at least give a better idea. Eg: you have several Chardonnays - so what are you offering? A random vertical, a double horizontal to show the differences the terroir makes to the taste over time? Likewise for the Pinots Noirs. What exactly do they get? Make it more enticing on the website - it’s far too vague.
I agree with others about the wine buying. Is there an incentive, like waiving the cost of the visit? If there is, say so. Are the prices guaranteed to be at least the same as those of distributors? There has to be a point in buying direct. Offer the possibility of discounted prices for visits with post-visit shipping. Make it all worthwhile.
Good luck!
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Im on biard with the casual meal idea, just tired of the super expensive ones. Hard to do it cheap ahen you dont have volume though.
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Given the caveat that we on this forum are at the end of the wine geek bell curve…
Try to make it authentic, and look for a way to make a personal connection with someone who took the trouble to seek you out. Especially for anyone elects a special tasting that suggests real wine knowledge/enthusiasm, get the winemaker or at least the assistant winemaker out to say hello, much as a chef would do in a good restaurant. Look to Oregon or the Lompoc Wine ghetto for ideas, not Napa, los Olivos, much of Paso or downtown Santa Barbara…
My memorably bad experiences were impersonal, commercial and kind of canned. If all I am doing is standing at a bar tasting through a routine flight with a half-attentive barista, I’ll pass. The worst was a visit to Domaine Serene, with its resort-type tiered sipping options and a tasting hosted by a docent-level enthusiast with no real wine experience. I haven’t had a good, memorable tasting experience yet in Los Olivos, but the Lompoc wine ghetto? Awesome. Sign me up.
My memorably good wine tasting experiences usually include some food and some low key time talking with the winemaker, often surrounded by the industrial bric-a-brac of the winery. Bonus points if there is a dog wandering the premises. Tasting from barrel is usually very interesting and to me, special.
Antica Terra’s seated tasting with charcuterie, cheeses and a mix of tasting their own wines and French, mostly Burgundies and bubblies. My palate has moved on from Antica’s wines, but the experience was among my favorites ever.
Tasting at Big Table Farm with Clare in her home over charcuterie, meeting the animals.
Tasting with Ken Pahlow and Erica Landon at Walter Scott pre-pandemic in the barrel barn, with cattle dog (extra credit).
Hanging around with Gavin Chanin in his cold winery, sampling some of everything…
Like BTF and Walter Scott, Chanin has really taken off, so this sort of thing is probably harder to accomplish for every visitor, but look for ways to get real, and to connect. I’d suggest less polish, more authenticity.
My 2 cents.
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The tastings that stand out most in my mind either included a tour so I can see/learn how they do things at the winery or in the vineyards, some kind of cheese or charcuterie offered, a scenic setting, some kind of extra bottle opened/poured (particularly an older/library selection)…usually some combo of the above.
The ones I’ll never go back to are those that make me feel like just a number going through an assembly line, or ones that are pushy/clearly only in it for sales. Of course the business wants to make money off of me, but I’ll spend the money if the wine and experience are noteworthy without needing to be pressured.
Know your product and know your audience’s first of all. Is the target audience berserkers or more casual wine tourists?
If Berserker the focus is far more on the wine vs the “experience”. Good, interesting wines that are truly differentiated in quality from the mean. Access to winemakers and/or staff that can go deep in the winemaking process and philosophy. Small enough group for some quality time, not fighting a crowd, etc
Without those basics, the rest is all fluff and bs to me. If the audience is wine tourists to the tasting room, this could be the wrong forum after all?
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Wine beserkers are such a small slice of the winery visitor population. You’re not gonna get good answers from most here to grow business and make it memorable. Here’s an easy one. Build the price of a bottle into the tasting fee for your base level tasting which is what newbies mostly do. Then let them pick their favorite to take home with them. They will remember that
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