Wineries are opting to go it alone — together — on outreach initiatives
By Kathleen Willcox
There are so many costs that go into a bottle of wine. In addition to the expenses associated with growing grapes, making and packaging the wine, vintners face the cost of getting that bottle into the hands of eager consumers.
It’s not just the price of transportation and all of the hands — distributor, retailers, restaurants — it goes through. It’s also the cost of marketing that bottle of wine to folks who might want to visit their estate and buy the wine directly (a boon to their bottom line), and to oenophiles who will buy from stores, order from restaurants or click and add to a cart online.
Many wineries in regions across the world tap marketing dollars from state or government entities that earmark tens of millions of dollars in annual funds for marketing, or bodies such as the Napa Valley Tourism Improvement District (NVTID), which was formed in 2010. The NVTID essentially earmarks 2% of gross short-term (stays of 30 days or less) room rental revenue on lodging businesses to market the region, and its many attractions — most obviously, in Napa’s case, wine country.
There is also statewide funding. A recent California budget earmarked $7 billion for issues directly or indirectly affecting the wine community, from wildfire resilience and drought management to supply chain improvement and tourism recovery.
But these funding efforts, while helpful in a broad sense, can only do so much for wineries with very specific marketing goals. Increasingly, wineries are finding that the most obvious alternative, going it alone, isn’t always economically or logistically effective. Many are embarking on a third path: highly curated and targeted regional marketing efforts.
The Winemakers Wine Club Supports Virginia Vintners
Eastwood Farm and Winery is leading a push to help winemakers in Virginia — a state that’s increasingly seen as one of the best places to find wine, having been named Wine Enthusiast 2023 Wine Region of the Year and having Bordeaux powerhouse Chateau Montrose invest in Virginia terroir via RdV Vineyards — with the support of fellow vintners.
The end goal is supporting a new incubator in Charlottesville (the placeholder name is Barrels and Tanks, but that may change), explains Eastwood’s owner Athena Eastwood, the driving force behind the initiative. The vehicle to help Eastwood and winemakers’ get to that end goal is the Winemakers Wine Club.
“We developed the Winemakers Wine Club as a way to support independent winemakers and small producers in Virginia, and to provide revenue for the operations of our incubator,” Eastwood explains. “The wine incubator will officially open in March 2025, and will serve as Eastwood’s main production facility. It will also include five smaller production suites that serve as incubators where independent winemakers can anchor a license and make their wines.”
The incubator will reduce the costs of independent winemaking, which will let vintners pour that additional investment into R&D and innovations, Eastwood says.
Members of the club will receive quarterly allocations of four bottles from six Virginia winemakers. No two wines will be from the same winemaker and members will not receive the same wine twice in a calendar year. Each winemaker will be paid their wholesale price and the rest of the revenue will go toward the incubator.
For participating wineries such as Jake Busching Wines, this kind of support and collaboration creates opportunities that wouldn’t exist otherwise.
“I have been struggling for nine years to find a stable way forward in the industry,” Busching explains. “This offers so many opportunities, including cross-marketing, joint sales, shared production space and equipment and insight into winemaking from peers.”
Several of the participants, he adds, don’t have the financial ability to buy a vineyard or winery.
“This lets us move the Virginia wine industry forward in new ways,” Busching says.
The Winemakers Co-Op Puts the Fine in New Jersey Wine
You’re not the only one ready with the jokes when you hear the phrase “New Jersey wine.”
Winemakers in the Garden State not only are aware of the stereotypes, they’ve got a whole roster of ripostes ready. Several also decided to do something about it. In 2015, a group of four vintners eager to increase the quality and perception of fine wines in New Jersey came together to form The Winemakers Co-Op.
Focusing exclusively on New Jersey-grown vinifera, founders Beneduce Vineyards, Working Dog Winery, William Heritage Winery, Unionville Vineyards and newer members Hawk Haven Vineyard and Auburn Road Vineyards have stayed consistent in their mission, but over time, have grown its scope.
In 2022, they appointed an outside executive director, Danna Shapiro, a strategic communications consultant who specializes in luxury wines. Since then, Shapiro says, the group formulated a multi-year strategic plan that focuses on holding one trade education event, and pushing media and consumer outreach.
The Winemakers Co-Op’s signature project, Open Source, is the creation of a collaboratively made wine.
“Every harvest each member winery brings 1,000 pounds of designated grapes to a member crush pad to kick off a day of hard work and collaboration,” Shapiro explains. The juice is divided equally, with which each winemaker returns to their own winery. This source material — the shared juice from collectively grown grapes — is an open platform for each winemaker to build their own expression of each Open Source wine.”
This year, Bordeaux critic Jane Anson introduced the wine via virtual press conference with media across the country, who in turn shared their impressions with their audiences in articles and on social media. Since launching their efforts, Shapiro says the media is beginning to take New Jersey wine seriously, garnering enthusiastic coverage in Decanter, with 90-point ratings from the Wine Advocate.
Funding for all of their projects comes from grants and collaborative buy-in from member wineries. The participating winemakers say it has not only raised the benchmark for New Jersey wine, it has raised their game.
“One winery is an island,” says Julianne Donnini, winemaker and owner of Auburn Road Vineyards. “A group is a destination. The articles that are generated about our group provide free advertising promoting our region and our individual wineries. They continue to get the word out about the interesting things we are doing. The hard work and experimentation we are doing. The collective sharing of information on grape growing and winemaking is also incredible. We openly share our successes and experiments to help each other.”
South Coasters Leverage Each Members’ Reach to Benefit All
The South Coasters was created to highlight the terroir of the cooler Cape South Coast region of South Africa. But the members are also bound by a distinct vision.
“First and foremost, we are a group of friends bonded by a shared ethos of low-intervention winemaking, regenerative viticultural practices and a love for cool climate, maritime wines,” says Mark Stephens, a founding winemaker in the collective, and owner and vintner at Deep Rooted Wines. “We are nine producers in total, and no two wines are anywhere near the same, yet all seem to possess a precision, a tension that speaks to the poor soils, the wind and the graft that it takes to cultivate this land at the very tip of Africa.”
The South Coasters came together in 2022 as many great ideas do, Stephens says. “We came up with the idea over a shared bottle of wine at a barbecue,” he explains.
The now-members were frustrated by the high cost of Cape Wine, a leading trade show that none could afford to join. Lamenting the dearth of opportunities for smaller producers, they decided to pool their resources, launch a “Side Show” that capitalized on the main event.
“We found a free venue at the last minute, and created a marketing blitz,” Stephens recalls. “The success of the event solidified our belief in the power of collaboration.”
Since their initial foray into collaborative marketing, they’ve hosted three more events for the trade (including international critics such as Tim Atkin and Neal Martin) and wine lovers in Cape Town and Johannesburg. They have several other events on the horizon, Stephen says, because the results of their efforts speak for themselves.
“We fund everything ourselves, and divide the costs,” Stephens explains. “Each person can play to their strengths. Paul Hoogwerf of Maanschijn takes on marketing, I liaise with service providers. We’ve found that when everyone does what they’re good at, it’s amazing what we can accomplish. By leveraging each producer’s reach, it gives us all access to a much wider audience too.”
California Winemakers Show Unity of Styles in Diversity of Terroirs
The teams behind California sparkling icons Domaine Carneros, Schramsberg Vineyards and Roederer Estate in Carneros, Calistoga and Mendocino, respectively first saw an opportunity to collaborate during the pandemic.
“Our first partnership was a series of three consumer virtual events,” says Domaine Carneros’ CEO, Remi Cohen.
Participants were encouraged to buy a three-pack of the wines, and taste alongside writer Karen MacNeil, who moderated. The events were wildly successful, and while each winery has an estate and winery in different regions, the commonalities and enthusiasm that the trio ignited by working in tandem were difficult to ignore.
In August of 2024, the trio decided to hold an in-person media and trade event in New York City. Schramsberg’s president Hugh Davies explains that the decision to pivot to trade in Manhattan was strategic.
“New York City is home to the highest concentration of media representative in the country, and we felt like it was the right city to take our message,” Davies says, explaining that the trio agreed on a budget, pooled resources and invited several dozen journalists and trade pros to a masterclass and grand tasting at Corkbuzz.
Their goal was to highlight their shared techniques and similar (if regionally distinct) terroirs, and showcase the evolution of the California sparkling wine movement’s evolution, writ large.
“We all produce sparkling wine from marine-influenced, coastal regions using the traditional method and grape varieties found in Champagne,” Cohen says. “All of our wines are elegant with bright acid and minerality, with a core essence of the California sunshine.”
And while they differ in terms of vineyard appellations, the extent of oak aging and malolactic fermentation and the management of their reserve wines, the end result is premium sparkling wines with excellent aging potential, Davis adds.
“Champagne has a trade association that does a lot of promotion,” Roederer’s VP of production and winemaker Arnaud Weyrich adds. “There is not the same type of promotional body for sparkling wine in California, so this is our way of creating buzz and interest in the category of sparkling wine in California versus the rest of the world.”
Next up? L.A. (Probably).
“L.A. seems to be the next place we’d like to present,” Davies says. “It is truly an international city, and the most diverse in the Golden State. There are important trade and media representatives there that have influence well beyond the city limits.”
On its face, marketing your wines without a region or body willing to pick up the tab is pricey. But for these wineries, the payoff makes it well worth the investment.
Kathleen Willcox
Kathleen WillcoxKathleen Willcox writes about wine, food and culture from her home in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. She is keenly interested in sustainability issues, and the business of making ethical drinks and food. Her work appears regularly in Wine Searcher, Wine Enthusiast, Liquor.com and many other publications. Kathleen also co-authored a book called Hudson Valley Wine: A History of Taste & Terroir, which was published in 2017. Follow her wine explorations on Instagram at @kathleenwillcox
