HarveyFamilyWineBlog

Blogging Inspiration from ZAP

Scott and I attended the general meeting for ZAP (Zinfandel Advocates & Producers) hosted at V. Sattui in Napa Valley yesterday.  It's a terrific organization and really works hard at promoting Zinfandel.  Scott was one of the founding members 16 years ago.  Today we make five Zinfandels (Vineyard 1869, Scott Harvey Amador Old Vine, Scott Harvey Amador Mountain Selection, Jana Napa Old Vine, and InZinerator) so it's a variety that's very important to us.

After a delicious lunch, the meeting portion began.  A scholarship fund at Sonoma State is being set up in honor of Don Reison, formerly of Ridge Vineyards.  In addition, they announced a raffle fundraiser for an amazing trip to Hawaii--roundtrip airfare for 4 and a 7 night stay at the Marriott Wialea.  Raffle tickets are only $20 apiece for this wonderful opportunity.  Contact us if you're interested.

Featured speakers were the following bloggers:  Andy Gamitian who created Flights Wine Blog, Christian Oggenfuss of www.vintuba.com, a wine centered video and podcasting blog, Thea Dwelle, Luscious Lushes blog, Ray Johnson author of The Good Life and Enjoying Wine, and Russ Beebe, Winehiker Witiculture.  The Twitter and social media specialist was Lisa Adams Walter of Adams Walter Communications.  Most of the speakers were early pioneers of blogging and it's been beneficial to their careers.  I'm glad Scott was there because now that harvest is over, I hope you will see many more posts from him.  He has a lot of knowledge to share. 

Blogging and the Opportunities it Creates

This blog is the first of what will hopefully be a daily blog.  A new discipline that I'm told I need to do for the ever changing way that wine is sold.  Actually, I think it is a good idea and a great opportunity to better communicate with our enjoyable and wonderful customers.

 

A high percentage of winemakers enjoy staying in the winery and the wine lab and are not fond of meeting the actual people that enjoy their art.  When you have a winemaker that is a people person, you have a real asset.  What better person to explain the art behind each wine than the person who put it together.  The winemaker is the most credible person for this job.  If they enjoy people and are good at public speaking, they are the best person to convey the wine's story.

 

For the last thirty seven years I have been doing just this selling wine through the three tier distribution system by visiting each market area.  While there I’ll ride around with sales people visiting wine shops and restaurants, do tastings for the distributor sales staff,  tastings for restaurant staffs and winemaker dinners all to get the story out. 

 

Along comes the internet.  A new opportunity to tell the wine's story directly to anyone interested in reading the blog.  How wonderful!  Now I can do it from my office, while looking out the window over the beautiful Napa Valley Vineyards.  Only problem, my prose seem to flow in an understandable fashion, but my spelling is horrific.  Thank goodness for spell check.

How to Subscribe to Blogs

Blogs contain an amazing amount of free information.  In my past lives in the wine industry, I dealt mainly with managing the distributor channel.  Since Scott and I formed our company five years, it's a whole new world out there.  Everyday I learn more about effective websites, social networking, blogging, etc.  The information can be overwhelming but extremely useful.  Some of the best tips I get come from Mike Duffy's Winery Website Report.  One of his latest is how to Subscribe to an RSS feed.  I found this video very useful--especially in managing many different blogs.  I hope you will, too and assist you in subscribing to our blog.