Luxury Gift Baskets

Every year with Uncorked Ventures Matt and I want to make improvements in both the way we handle our business (the processes involved) as well as the offerings we have. On the wine, simply continuing to grow our customer base as well as continuing to build relationships with wineries and vineyard owners will do the [...]

Source: http://winewithmark.info/archives/651

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Napa Cellars: Good Value Reds from Napa Valley

Founded by Rich Frank and Koerner Rombauer in 1996, Napa Cellars was acquired by Trinchero Family Estates ten years later. Trinchero Family Estates have been producing wines for over 60 years. Through the years, the Trinchero family and the company have expanded. Today, Trinchero represents over 27 brands in the United States and Australia. Winemaker [...]

Napa Cellars: Good Value Reds from Napa Valley was originally posted on Wine Peeps. Wine Peeps - Your link to great QPR wines from Washington State and beyond.

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Flash Sale Retailer Lot 18: Now Shipping to Massachusetts

Good news for Massachusetts wine deal hounds - national flash sale retailer Lot 18 is saying they can now ship to Massachusetts. Those of you familiar with Massachusetts wine shipping laws will rightly wonder - how can this be?

Have a look at an example of some of the offers they're currently running that qualify for shipment to Massachusetts and tell me if you see a pattern. Two of the wines are marked "Not available in your state" (Massachusetts):

It looks like most (but not all) of the imported wines are available for shipment to Massachusetts and hardly any of the domestic wines are available. What's going on?

It appears they've established a relationship with a Massachusetts retailer which will fulfill orders in Massachusetts for wines that are distributed here. A few weeks back I took advantage of a Chateauneuf-du-Pape offer which was fulfilled by Corporate Wines in Woburn. Corporate Wines has a reputation for fulfilling straight case orders at aggressively low prices - but with a spotty fulfillment track record. Since they often sell from virtual inventory they can't always get the wine.

Separately from this, we sometimes see a domestic winery claiming to be able to ship to Massachusetts. A few wineries do indeed have the ability to ship to Massachusetts - but they typically need to ship via carriers other than FedEx or UPS if they're doing it on the up and up due to remaining legislation that needs resolution in order to establish reasonable guidelines for domestic winery to consumer deliveries in Massachusetts. Here's a brief history of Massachusetts wine shipping laws if you're interested.

Roll this all together and I can't see how this is bad for Massachusetts wine enthusiasts. Another channel to purchase through. If you can get past the occasionally far-reaching email offers, Lot 18 can be a decent place to purchase wine from. 

Check 'em out if they're not already on your radar screen

Or refer a friend if you're already on to them. 

Question of the Day: What do you think of Lot 18?

PS They're running an offer on the WWP blind tasting favorite Soiree wine aerator with premium travel-friendly packaging for $10 less than Amazon.


Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WellesleyWinePress/~3/n-GrzV7OC3Y/good-news-for-massachusetts-wine-deal.html

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Field Notes from a Wine Life ? Cover Story Edition

Odds and ends from a life lived through the prism of the wine glass…

The Wine Spectator Affect

When I received my November 15th issue of Wine Spectator on October 11th, featuring a cover shot of Tim Mondavi and an feature article on him and his estate winery Continuum, I captured some online research reference points so I could have a baseline to measure the effect that a flattering Wine Spectator cover story might have on a winery in the digital age.

Using Wine-Searcher, CellarTracker and Google Keywords search data to track various data points, the results, while not directly linked to conclusions, do indicate a small bump in interest as a result of the cover piece.

For example, Wine-Searcher data indicates that the average bottle price, an indicator of supply and demand, rose $2 month over month, from $149 a bottle to $151 a bottle.

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In addition, the Wine-Searcher search rank (always a month behind) indicates that Continuum was the 1360th most popular search in September.  By Friday, November 11th the Continuum search rank had increased to 471st for the month of October. (See the top 100 searches for October here).

Likewise, interest at CellarTracker increased, as well.  The number of bottles in inventory from October 11th to November 11th increased by 177 bottles, likely no small coincidence.

Finally, Google searches increased fivefold from an average of 210 monthly searches to approximately 1000 monthly searches.

What does this all mean?  Good question.  The truth is, a Wine Spectator cover appears to have moved the needle a bit, and while the easy route is to take a righteous Eeyore approach to mainstream media and its blunted impact in the Aughts, as contrasted to what a Spectator cover feature or glowing words from Parker meant just a decade ago, I believe a more tangible takeaway is to realize that these sorts of cover stories don’t happen in a vacuum and that Wine Spectator cover and feature was likely a result of weeks, months or even years’ worth of effort from a PR professional.

In an attention-deficit, social media-impacted, offline/online hybrid world of information consumption with mobile and tablets proliferating, in order to break through to (and ultimately assist) the consumer, the value of the PR professional, an oft neglected part of the marketing hierarchy, in reaching out and facilitating the telling of a winery’s story seems to be more important than ever.

It’s not about press releases, it’s about people supporting and telling the winery story, repeatedly, as a professional function – that leads to media notice, and that leads to 14 cases of wine being sold and inventoried at CellarTracker in a 30-day period of time.  It’s perhaps obvious, but not adhered to.

Wine Labels

To me, a wine bottle is a blank canvas that can either inspire in its creativity or repel in its insipidness.  While I have a reasonably conservative approach to the kinds of wine I want to drink relative to technological intervention, I am unabashedly progressive when it comes to the kind of wine labels that appeal to me.  In support of my interest with wine packaging, I keep an eye on The Dieline wine blog to see what’s happening in wine label design (another example from The Coolist here) and I also pay attention to the burgeoning field of wine label design contests. 

What say you about progressive labels?  Like ‘em?  Loathe them?  I placed a poll to the right.

Below is a slide show of winners from the recent International Wine Label Design competition.

Reconciling the Contradiction

I will lobby the nominating committee of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences on behalf of anybody who can help me understand how it is that in the span of a week I can see multiple research reports (here and here) on a revived sense of fiscal austerity by consumers yet other reports (here and here) indicate that wine above $20 is the fastest growing segment this year.

These two clearly don’t jive with each other, yet I’m witless to understand why wine is “trading up.”  Help! 

 

Source: http://goodgrape.com/index.php/site/field_notes_from_a_wine_life_cover_story_edition/

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Last minute holiday gift ideas for wine lovers

From what I am reading, this week will make or break the year for retailers. So I don’t think it’s too late to post some gift ideas for wine lovers. We are a difficult bunch to buy for with the most obvious gift — wine — somewhat intimidating for our friends and family to gift. [...]

Last minute holiday gift ideas for wine lovers originally appeared on Winecast. Licensed under Creative Commons.

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Better Wine Blogging 101 ? Using links effectively

Continuing on with our goal to help improve your wine blogging, we want to tackle an important strategy that is often avoided, typically because many people are under the false pretense that it will hurt them, but it’s quite the contrary. This simple strategy can not only bring more traffic to your site, but will [...]

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Wine Shield: A Simple Idea That Works

Preserving an open bottle of wine is one of those things wine lovers don’t talk a lot about. For many of us a bottle is not open long enough for the exposure to air to spoil the wine. But there are those times when you open a special bottle or, in my case, 4 or [...]

Wine Shield: A Simple Idea That Works originally appeared on Winecast. Licensed under Creative Commons.

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