Archive for August, 2016

Marketing Partnerships for Fun and Prof

August 31st, 2016

Aligning yourself with like-minded businesses can be a great way to improve your marketing and your wine shop’s bottom line. [level-members] As you’ve probably heard – and not just because we’ve written about it – Whispering Angel has seen a spike in sales that seems attributable to gummy bears infused with the wine. We’re not advocating that […]

Do You Really Want Your Shop to be Bigge

August 30th, 2016

It’s tempting to think that scale solves all problems – even with low margins, the scale of profits is large enough to support you. But it may not be all it’s cracked up to be. [level-members] Strange concept coming from a firm that’s sole purpose is helping wine shops succeed, but bigger is not always better. […]

Wine Industry News for August 29, 20

August 29th, 2016

Wine in cans, hail in Languedoc, English fizz pretty much everywhere, and new AVAs in California – but they’re not what you think. [level-members] Wine Doing the Can-Can What do wine and beer have in common, other than the obvious? Cans are cool. (Cool again, in the case of beer …) Hail damage in Languedoc […]

Food & Wine Pairing: Sangiovese and Cacio e Pe

August 26th, 2016

A classic, but one we haven’t had in ages. We had it last night and, despite it being “National Pinot Noir Day” according to my lovely wife, we opted for a more traditional pairing. [level-members] That traditional pairing would be Sangiovese. Tough to beat that combination. Not that other pairings wouldn’t work well, either, but this […]

Worth Sharing: A Handful of Wine Stories for Your Custome

August 25th, 2016

And you just might find them interesting and amusing, too, since we travel from Italy to South Africa to France and fittingly after all that, an exploration of which wines give you the worst hangovers. [level-members] All Women, All the Time From The Guardian in the UK we get this story about an all-female winemaking […]

Wine Shop Marketing – Email Marketi

August 24th, 2016

An encore posting of a popular marketing column from the past. All the way in 2013, this case, but still relevant today and worth remembering, especially as social and mobile and other hot, new things, make email look old and fusty. It’s anything but! This week’s Marketing Tip O’ the Week is about as simple […]

Label-Scanning Apps and Your Wine Sh

August 23rd, 2016

Are your customers using label-scanning apps? If so, how are they using them? [level-members] Jancis Robinson’s recent article on label-scanning apps is worth a read, even though she focuses mostly on trends from country to country. It’s the comments of other wine pros that are most illuminating. It seems that in some corners of the […]

Wine Industry News for August 22, 20

August 22nd, 2016

Direct-to-consumer controversy in Illinois, a brief history of rosé, California’s wine industry by the numbers, and that fraud … [level-members] Grand Cru Fraud First the fraud. As you can read here and here, the story is pretty sordid and the media is all too happy to relate the details. Then again, former staffers aren’t above […]

Food & Wine Pairing: Sus

August 19th, 2016

Since I managed to have sushi twice in the past three days, I thought it might be time to revisit a pairing that isn’t often considered when creative food and wine pairings are being discussed. [level-members] And that’s a shame, because there’s a lot more variety to sushi than fish wrapped in rish and doused […]

The Wine Show, Slovokia, and Poor Etiquet

August 18th, 2016

A find on Hulu, a find on the continent, and stories of bad behavior – definitely material worth sharing. [level-members] Bad Behavior of the Restaurant Wine List Variety First, from the Wall Street Journal, we get a story to be filed under “no good deed goes unpunished.” As in, you generously offer to take a […]