Winery Websites... get with the times

[Enzo_Ruffalo]

[Jon_Troutman]

Without focusing on websites, Matt Kramer effectively backs up my sentiment in his WS piece today: The Most Important Word in Wine Today | Wine Spectator" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

What Kramer dubs Narrative is what I like to refer to as “storytelling”. In the 21st century, I think good storytelling for wineries / wine regions starts with a website.

[G_D_y_e_r]

@Nick Ryan

Many American wineries aren’t any better. It seems the quality and frequency of updates to a winery website is inversely proportional to the popularity of their wine. So many are still touting their RMP 100 2002 Cabernet vintages on the front page, and waxing poetic about the 2004s…

See highlighted. Very true. If a winery cannot at least post a data/tasting sheet on a wine, there is zero chance I will order it from the web via any means. This eliminates nearly all highly allocated wines, but they do not have trouble selling. Other wineries though might want to consider making info accessible.

[G_D_y_e_r]

@Jon Troutman

I think this is the same attitude that all those producers of Chinon had 100 years ago, when they were among the most collectible wines in the world

Interestingly, Joguet, Baudry, Domaine de la Butte (Bourgueil) and others have pretty respectable web presences. If I want to find out the soil content and elevage of a specific cuvee, I can. Bordeaux has less exciting vineyards–gently undulating gravel-based plains are less exciting than dangerously steep limestone coteaux. But I’m sure they could talk about all the optical sorters (Dom. de la Butte actually has these, too), RO machines, micro-ox manifolds and so on.

[Gary_Schulte]

The only other part of the website information/marketing equation not discussed is the hit frequency exposure by search engines. My frustration with web searching is related to trying to find information only sought on a low frequency basis by others especially if the info has not been marketed by the source or has a commonly searched word which leads to being buried in the results list. Also difficult commonly mispelled names also get buried. Because of this I’m always looking for a better search engine that might pull out the results I want quicker. At the moment I’m trying Blekko to see if it’s quantitatively and qualitatively different from Google et al…Gary

[M_A_T_T_H_A_R_T_L_E_Y]

@Jeff Leve

The truth is, most chateaux do not maintain a strong web presence. Palmer, Brane Cantenac, Valandraud have active sites. But most spend almost no time on the Internet.

Not true…

I saw on thewinecellarinsider.com that almost all the Top estates are on the internet and regularly read http://www.thewinecellarinsider.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

There are pics posted as proof