Wine Marketing Blog

Texas Breweries Hoping for On-Site Sales

2009-02-17T07:16:00.000-08:00

The Texas Brewers Parity Amendment, HB1062, aims to give Texas breweries the right to "sell ale...manufactured or bottled on the permitted premises to ultimate consumers... in unbroken packages for off-premise consumption in an amount that does not exceed 35,000 gallons annually."

To-date, breweries have been unable to sell product directly to consumers - Texas wineries won the same battle several years ago. The bill was filed on Feb., 10, 2009 by Representative Lon Burnam of Tarrant County, while Senator Wendy Davis filed the same bill, SB754, in the Senate.

Distributors and retailers have opposed previous legislative attempts, suggesting a loss of sales from consumers migrating directly to the breweries. With 9 microbreweries across the state, the bill's supporters suggest those losses would be negligible.

Woodrose Winery Increasing Capacity

2009-01-21T09:40:00.000-08:00

With the recent completion of its new winery, Woodrose Winery is poised to aggressively expand production capabilities. The new building is three times the size of the original winery and has increased tank capacity three-fold.

The goal is to increase annual production from the current 3,700 cases to approximately 20,000 cases, according to Jared Longoria, Director of Operations/ Sommelier at the winery. "Quality is always our emphasis, and with our new winery we will continue making quality Texas wine with quality Texas fruit", Jared told Mercury Direct.

Woodrose Winery is located in Stonewall TX, on the south side of Hwy 290, between Stonewall and Fredericksburg.

Wine Lovers Join Online Community

2009-01-12T15:14:00.000-08:00

Bottlenotes.com "is a place where commerce meets community around a passion for wine", states Alyssa Rapp, Founder and CEO of the company. The company's new website brings Web 3.0 to the wine community.

If you are familiar with MySpace or Facebook, you understand the community concept behind Bottlenotes. Wine enthusiasts register, create a personal profile and share their wine experiences within the community. They invite their friends to join and the community grows.

To wine producers, Bottlenotes.com may not be so friendly. The site captures its members' wine preferences, recommends wines based on those preferences and sells wines online. It also has 5 different wine clubs, corporate gift offerings and a wedding & gift registry.

The company has assembled a heavyweight Board of Directors and Advisory Group to guide the development of the company, including Netflix c0-founder Jim Cook, Cakebread Cellars founder Jack Cakebread and former Encyclopedia Britannica Online CEO Don Yannias.

Gingerbread Battles at Sonoma Wineries

2009-01-05T08:00:00.000-08:00

Holiday Cheer got competitive between Sonoma Valley Wineries this December.

The Gingerbread Winery Contest is an annual event organized by the Sonoma Valley Vintners & Growers Alliance (SVVGA). Established three years ago, the contest has become the signature event of the region's Holiday in the Vines seasonal celebration and allows professional and amateur chefs to create gingerbread likenesses of Sonoma's most acclaimed wineries.

Pictured above is this year's creation from Little Vineyards. The winery partnered with the Santa Rosa Junior College Culinary School to recreate an edible version of their winery.

While many entries recreate gingerbread versions of their winery, Nicholson Ranch created a life-sized fireplace with over 400 gingerbread bricks. Gingerbread stockings hung from a chocolate fireplace mantle and the nearby tree was trimmed with edible ornaments.

Throughout December, visitors pick up a map and a ballot at participating wineries and cast a vote for their favorite creation. To encourage voting, each ballot gets the visitor entered into a raffle to win a case of Sonoma Valley wines.

The contest winner will be announced shortly.

The Wine Spectator Goes Mobile

2008-10-16T20:33:00.000-07:00

Stumped by the selection of wines at the local wine store? Not sure which wine to order with the restaurant's special-of-the-day?

Now your mobile phone has the answer.

The Wine Spectator has released Wine Spectator Mobile, a mobile version of its website, optimized for Internet-enabled smart phones, PDAs and other mobile devices.

Available with their subscription to winespectator.com, members can now access the popular website features like Wine Ratings Search, Vintage Charts and Personal Wine Lists on their mobile phone.

"For everyone who has wanted specific wine-buying information on the go, Wine Spectator Mobile is designed for you," said Marvin R. Shanken, editor and publisher of Wine Spectator. "It brings together our website's most popular wine-buying information and repackages it in a simple, easy-to-read format for mobile."

Dry Comal Creek Website Launch

2008-10-09T18:38:00.000-07:00

This summer, Mercury Direct relaunched the Dry Comal Creek Vineyards website. The relaunch was timed to support the winery's busiest season, offering online event registration and fully functional e-commerce capabilities, including a user-friendly shopping cart. As part of this project, Mercury Direct also developed a new e-messaging platform, including email and e-newsletter capabilities, to assist Dry Comal Creek Vineyards with its online marketing campaigns.

The website redesign incorporated:

new branding
simplified navigation
additional content to differentiate the winery
a shopping cart to develop new online revenue streams.

In order to accomplish the clients' objectives, Mercury Direct had to achieve integration between the web site, the e-commerce engine, the client's retail and bookkeeping software, and integration with shippers and their merchant bank.

These critical integration steps provided Dry Comal Creek with an end-to-end system for the winery, allowing them to manage event and product inventories online, coordinate with their retail activities and integrate with their accounting, shipping and banking platforms.

Sabrina Houser, General Manager of Dry Comal Creek Vineyards, said, "In the wine business not only does your product have to taste good but it has to be marketed well in order to keep an edge on the competition. Since the launch of the new website, e-marketing strategies, and e-commerce capabilities, the benefits promised by Mercury Direct have been met and then some. Our first month of online sales netted more event and wine sales than we have ever had, thus contributing significantly to the bottom line with maximized efficiency. Anyone looking to decrease costs and generate more revenue must have a user-friendly, professional website and e-commerce capabilities and Mercury Direct delivered just that!" regarding the relaunch.

Nino Tarantino, CEO of Mercury Direct added, "Sabrina knew what she needed to manage her business the way SHE wanted it managed. After talking to several vendors and getting significantly higher prices, Sabrina reached out to Mercury Direct and trusted us to deliver the solution she needed. Because Sabrina knew what she wanted, it made our job easier to build a solution around her requirements. I am both happy and proud to say we delivered, and Sabrina is delighted with the outcome."

To the view the Dry Comal Creek Vineyards case study, click here.

About Dry Comal Creek Vineyards
Dry Comal Creek Vineyards is situated in a small protected valley nestled in the Texas Hill Country, close to New Braunfels, TX. It is recognized as one of the premier Texas Hill Country wineries, producing award-winning Cabernet Sauvignon, Black Spanish and French Colombard wines, along with their famous 1096 Port.

Celebrity-Branded Wines Thriving

2008-10-02T16:33:00.000-07:00

A famous face makes for a famous wine.

At least that's what recent statistics from The Nielsen Company indicate. Celebrity-branded alcohol products are growing in popularity and wine is leading the way.

2007 grocery sales of celebrity-branded wines are up 19% over 2006
celebrity wine pricing is on average $2.75 higher than other table wines
West Coast consumers purchase relatively more celebrity wines

To see more details of the study, CLICK HERE.