So I thought it would be good to talk about the different kinds of bottle shots you might want and when and how you would use them in your marketing (and how you can ask a photographer—like me, hi!—for exactly what you want).

There are three main categories of bottle photography you should know about and each serves a different purpose:

The Knockout Bottle Shot

What it is: A cleanly lit, professional image of your bottle, isolated against a white or transparent background. The name comes from the post-production process of “knocking out” the background. It is, frankly, kind of a pain in the ass to photograph because of minute details like ensuring the label is straight to the camera, there are no smudges or dust on the glass, the light needs to be consistent, the label doesn’t have any tears or bubbles, and foils or wax look good, etc. It’s a lot of me just staring at my monitor and making sure everything looks good before taking the photo.

Where and How You’ll Use It: The knockout is typically what you’ll want on a product page on your ecommerce website, but they are also really useful for shelf-talkers, your wholesale catalog, wine club emails and shipments, email newsletters, etc. It’s less common to see them on social media, unless you’re jazzing them up with a graphic, because these are the most “salesy” looking photos, and let’s never forget that people aren’t on social media to be sold to.

Considerations and Tips:

• For all these photo types, I recommend sending your photographer 2 bottles of each SKU, just in case one gets fucked up in transit.

• Try to make sure the bottle's seams are on the side, rather than in the front, since it’s kind of a pain to edit them out.

• For white wines or wines in clear or lighter green glass, I recommend having your photographer remove the back label from a bottle, as otherwise, you can see it through the glass, and it looks sloppy.

• Your photographer will likely charge extra for screen-printed bottles, particularly on white wines, rosé, or lighter glass bottles, as editing them is more involved than a regular label.

• Specify how “hard” you want the light reflection on the glass. Some wineries prefer a sharper light versus a softer light reflection.

• For knockouts, it’s especially important to have them delivered at high resolution (300 dpi minimum).

The “Beauty” Shot

What it is: These photos are stylized and are often photographed in a studio. Instead of a plain white or transparent backdrop, photographers will use different-colored or textured surfaces and maybe a few props that speak to your brand or help convey how the wine would ideally be served. For a while, “flatlay” photos of the wine surrounded by “tasting notes” were a really popular beauty shot style. I don’t offer these anymore because I find them to be really overdone.

Where and How You’ll Use It: This is your hero content. These can be used on social media, website homepages, print and digital ads, your winery brochure, etc. You might also send these to press and publications alongside a tasting note.

Considerations and Tips:

• If you’re photographing wine in a glass, always make sure the bottle is open. It drives me bonkers when I see a full, unopened bottle next to full glasses of wine in photos. It reads as overly staged. (This is another reason for you to send your photographer two bottles, so they can have a backup bottle for pouring and a bottle for closed bottle shots)

  

• Be clear with your photographer on the type of stemware you want used. For example, if they’re photographing sparkling wine, do you prefer flutes, white wine glasses, or coupes? It can be helpful to even send the proper stemware to your photographer.

• Hiring a stylist can be really helpful for these types of shoots. Often, the photographer is also a stylist, but for really involved beauty shots, I prefer to work with a professional stylist who can help me set things up efficiently and in a way that I might not otherwise think of.

The Lifestyle Shot

What it is: In lifestyle shots, the bottle isn’t necessarily the hero; it's shown in context. I often refer to these as “Bottles in the Wild” because they are usually made outside of the studio and in situ: at a restaurant, in your tasting room, in someone’s home, etc. Lifestyle bottle shots generally feature people or the suggestion of a person (hands, shoulders, etc), and the wine is often more of a side character in the larger story you’re trying to tell. The story you’re telling is maybe “people enjoying wine at dinner” or “enjoying wine at a beach/picnic”, etc. We want to allow the viewer to step into a scene where wine is enjoyed.

Where and How You’ll Use It: These shots tend to do really well on social media, websites, and in email newsletters, but they also look great in publications and in digital ads. This content builds brand affinity and community and gives your audience something to aspire to. I even see these on billboards from time to time.

Considerations and Tips:

• Diversity and representation are really important here. Look critically at your lifestyle imagery and ask yourself, who is in it? Show people of different ethnicities, body types, ages, and orientations enjoying your wine. Wine has a historical image problem with being exclusionary, and we are not about to continue that b.s.

• The best lifestyle shots feel candid (even if they aren’t). I try not to give too many directions in my lifestyle shoots beyond “We’re having so much fun and laughing!!” because I don’t want people to feel stiff in these photos.

• Again, remember to have open bottles when wine is in the glass. The only times I am okay with a closed bottle for lifestyle photos is when it makes sense for the story you’re telling: “the bottle isn’t open yet, but it’s about to be!”

  

Building an Asset Library That Works For You

Ideally, you’ll want all three types in your library for every wine you’re actively marketing. If you’re on a limited budget, though, I might prioritize beauty shots because they are so versatile. They can live on your e-commerce page just as comfortably as a knockout bottle shot, and they can also live on social media or in digital ads.

Additional considerations:

• If you have a wine you make year after year with a label that doesn’t change, ask your photographer to remove the vintage, especially on knockout bottle shots. It may cost a little extra in the moment, but it’s relatively easy for us to do in post-production, and you won’t have to have the wine reshot as often.

• Give you and your photographer ample lead time to capture assets. For example, if you know you have a Thanksgiving or holiday-season promotion you want photographed, get it done no later than October (ideally in August). It’s stressful, and it can be more expensive for you if you wait until the week before Christmas to get your holiday wine photos done. I charge rush fees for exactly this reason. Save yourself some heartache and money and plan ahead!

• Have a pre-production call with your photographer to discuss expectations and go over the shot list. Ideally, two to three weeks in advance of the photoshoot, so if we need to get any props, new backdrops, or tools, we have time.

Need Photos? Hire me!

I’m about to go on maternity leave, but I’ll be back to photographing in May! If you need updated assets, including knockout, beauty, or lifestyle bottle shots, shoot me an email, and we can plan a photoshoot on my return.

Learn more & Hire Me

The central theme we explored was how young consumers have repeatedly demonstrated that they care about where their products come from, and yet the wine industry still struggles to communicate the stories behind sustainable and regenerative farming practices in ways that are both digestible and entertaining.

We’re still stuck showing the ubiquitous vineyard sunset photos, while actual potato farmers are racking up millions of views on social media by using topics like “how many people does one acre of potatoes feed” to discuss deeper issues like how farmland is being paved over.

During the panel, each of us shared two examples of effective agricultural storytelling—one from within the wine industry and one from outside it. If you’d like to hear a recording of our session (or other sessions), you can purchase it from Unified:

Purchase Unified Recordings

Today, though, I want to dig into the non-wine example I used in my portion of the panel because I think it perfectly illustrates what wineries could be doing but (mostly) aren’t: partnering with creators who already love your product to tell your story in their own voice.

My Roman Empire

In 2019, StoK Cold Brew Coffee invited a creator named Jesse Driftwood to join them on a trip to see how their coffee is grown and produced. Jesse was known at the time for making highly produced, cinematic Instagram Stories during an era when literally no one else was putting that level of effort into 15-second vertical videos that disappeared after 24 hours. This was pre-Instagram Reels and a bit before TikTok became widely popular, so I’m not being dramatic when I say that Jesse was ahead of his time.

The resulting Instagram Story Highlight (which you can still watch here) is a masterclass in authentic brand storytelling.

Jesse wasn’t a coffee influencer. He wasn’t even an influencer in the way we understand and define influencers today. He was simply a video creator with a distinct visual style and an engaged audience who happened to really like StoK Coffee. And StoK recognized that his genuine enthusiasm, combined with his storytelling ability, would be far more valuable than a generic “influencer partnership” with someone who’d never thought twice about where coffee comes from. And that, right there, is what I really want you to lodge firmly in your brain tank, brah.

The content Jesse created is stunning! It is beautifully shot, creatively edited, and completely in his own voice. About halfway through the video, he says: “I thought I knew what it took to get a bean from the farm to a cup,” followed by, “It’s hard to describe how much deeper my appreciation is for the beverage but also all the insane amounts of hard work and care and dedication to turn something like this [video of coffee beans on the plant] to something like this [him holding a bottle of StoK Coffee].”

In the final portion, Jesse talks about his appreciation for companies that prioritize sustainability—not just environmentally, but economically and socially. One of the last messages he leaves viewers with: “Don’t buy cheap coffee. Support the farmers. Support the land.”

If that’s not verbiage that can also be applied to great, responsibly farmed wine, I don’t know what is. In fact, I’ve said pretty much everything Jesse says in this video about wine, just, you know, replace “beans” with “grapes,” “coffee” with “wine,” and “cup” with “glass.”

Why This Works (And Why Wineries Should Be Doing It, Too)

There are a few things happening in this example that we as wineries really need to pay attention to:

StoK partnered with someone who already authentically loved their product. Jesse was already a customer. A superfan, if you will! I remember him talking about StoK in other stories just because he loved it. This partnership was therefore a great fit for both parties.

They gave him creative control. StoK didn’t hand Jesse a script or a shot list. They trusted him to tell the story in the way that would resonate with his audience because they understood that’s what his audience valued about him. Jesse is a generally enthusiastic dude, so giving him the creative freedom to learn more about a brand he already loved and to express that love to his followers in his own way conveyed that enthusiasm WAY more than a scripted partnership with someone who only loosely knew about the brand would have.

They invested in the format he was known for. In 2019, Instagram Stories were (and sadly still are) considered throwaway content. But Jesse had built his reputation on making Stories that didn’t feel throwaway, and StoK recognized that. His followers were deeply invested in the Instagram Stories he created already, so they were much more effective at reaching potentially new consumers than if they’d forced Jesse to create in a format he didn’t already do. (Tangent: I still think Instagram Stories are one of the best channels on social media for wineries. Read more about Instagram Stories here—start with “What Kinds of Instagram Stories Should Wine Brands Make”)

The content educates folks without lecturing them. Jesse takes you on the journey from farm to bottle in a way that’s visually engaging and emotionally resonant. You learn about the process, but you never feel like you’re sitting through a presentation. In fact, he doesn’t even really talk about the technicalities of how the beans are harvested, taken off the mountain, dried, roasted, blah blah blah. He just shows it, all while talking about how he didn’t realize just how much work went into making his favorite beverage. It’s way more interesting for the layperson (like me) who has no idea how coffee is made than a presentation would be.

It created genuine appreciation for the product. By the end of the highlight, the viewer is not just convinced to buy StoK Coffee; we are also convinced to think differently about coffee as a category. We start to understand why GOOD coffee costs what it does, and we learn to value the farming and all the people who bring it to our homes. That’s the kind of leap wine desperately wants consumers to make, and Jesse did it for coffee handily.

What Wineries Can Learn From This

The wine industry talks endlessly about “education” and “transparency,” but we often execute those aims in the most boring, gatekeepy ways possible. We publish tech sheets and host vineyard tours where we rattle off Brix levels and pH numbers as if people give any shits about those things—let alone how to translate those numbers to the finished product. Heck, I have a Bachelor’s of Science in Viticulture & Enology, and even I find that shit boring and unnecessary.

Meanwhile, again, a PO-TA-TO farmer is going viral explaining why dirt matters.

Wine has incredible stories that deserve to be told, so the disconnect isn’t in the stories themselves; it’s in how we’re telling them.

Here’s what you should be thinking about:

Find Creators Who Already Love Wine But Aren’t Wine Influencers

The Jesse Driftwood example works because, as I said above, the enthusiasm was already there. StoK didn’t have to convince him their product was worth talking about; they just gave him access and creative freedom.

For wineries, this means looking for creators who:

• Already talk about sustainability in their content (bonus points if they already talk about/ drink your wine without prompting)

• Have an engaged (not necessarily huge) audience

• Create content in a format and style that feels authentic to them

These people exist in droves. They’re the food bloggers who occasionally feature wine in their recipes. The travel creators who are often travelling to your neck of the woods. The sustainable living folks who talk about supporting small farms.

You don’t need a million-follower wine influencer, by the way. You don’t even need a wine influencer, period. You DO need someone whose audience trusts them and who genuinely gives a shit about what you’re up to.

(P.S. I’ll be doing a deep dive into influencer partnerships in a future post because there’s a lot more to unpack here, including how to approach these partnerships, what to pay, and how to structure them for success, etc)

Give Them the Experience, Then Get T.F. Out of the Way

One of the biggest mistakes I see wineries make is trying to control every aspect of creator content, but that defeats the entire purpose.

If you’ve done your homework and partnered with the right person, trust them to tell your story in the way that will resonate with their audience. That’s literally why you’re working with them.

Take them through the vineyard and show them what harvest or pruning looks like. Show them your compost piles and your sheep. Talk about what you’re doing to mitigate pests, frost, smoke impact, etc. And then let them regurgitate those stories in their own words, in a format that fits their creative inclinations.

“But I Don’t Have a Budget for Paid Partnerships”

I hear you. Most small wineries are bootstrapping their marketing, and paid creator partnerships may feel like a luxury you can’t afford.

However, if you’re already paying for print ads, or sponsoring generic wine events where your brand gets lost among 200 other wineries, or throwing money at Meta ads that aren’t converting... You might actually have a budget. You’re just allocating it to things that don’t work as well. Try allocating some of that budget towards hosting a content creator or even a group of creators (you could even partner with your local travel/vintners association and get multiple creators out for a regional visit).

Also note that smaller influencers are often willing to create content for trade or on a smaller budget, especially if they already drink your wine, so you may be able to kickstart a relationship for less and then allocate more money to pay them in the future. Again, we will talk more about this soon.

That said, if you genuinely don’t have paid partnerships in the budget right now, you can still apply these principles internally.

DIY Farmer-as-Influencer

The farmer-as-influencer concept doesn’t require hiring outside help, and in fact, it’s something you should be doing even if you are engaging creators in paid partnerships. This concept simply requires you or someone on your team to show up authentically and consistently on the platforms where your target audience already hangs out.

Think about accounts like @potatotyx (that potato farmer I’ve been gassing on about with massive reach on social media) or @gardenwithjonny (gardening expertise with the goofiest of personalities). These are real people doing real work and inviting you along for the ride.

I expect you’ll tire of me talking about them, but @tablascreek and @bedrockmorgan are excellent examples of people doing this in the wine industry, btw. I’ve even done this as collaborative posts with some of my clients: Foxen Winery & Adelaida Vineyards.

You can do this, too. Here’s how:

Start documenting. You’re already out there doing the work, duderinos! So, pull out your phone and document it. Talk through what you’re doing and why. You don’t need fancy equipment or editing skills either. The best camera you have is the one that’s already in your pocket. This was how I got my start while working for the vineyard management company. I would take my camera on my daily rounds, and while the weather station data was downloading, I’d take photos and videos of what I saw. As Nike likes to say, just do it. (Here’s a post I wrote about Documenting Harvest to give you ideas)

Show the boring stuff. The work that goes into farming is interesting specifically because it’s not Instagram-perfect. Show the reality of what it takes to grow grapes and make wine, even (especially) the things you might find mundane or even controversial. Those are often the things that people on the internet find most endearing.

Use your own words, not wine industry jargon. Explain things the way you’d explain them to a friend at a dinner party, not the way you’d write a tech sheet. Remember, our consumers are intelligent, but most of them don’t spend their time thinking about wine, let alone talking about wine, in hyper-specific industry jargon. Like... they for sure aren’t taking a bottle of wine to a dinner party and being like, “yeah, man, the terroir.” No, they are talking about how cute the sheep were at the vineyard they visited in February for their anniversary, and then promptly moving on to how dope the Bad Bunny Super Bowl Halftime Show was.

Invite people into your decision-making process. If you simply cannot help yourself and need to talk about the nerdy stuff (which is super valid by the way! People like nerdy things too!), talk about the why: Why did you decide to dry-farm? Why did you choose these specific barrels? Why are you harvesting this block today instead of next week? The “why” is often more compelling than the “what.”

Make it a habit. Post one video a week. Go live once a month during harvest. Create a weekly Story series that follows one vineyard block through the season. Consistency builds trust and keeps you top of mind. It can be helpful to choose a specific day of the week to do something. I (do my best) to post here on Substack every Tuesday. You might find it best to make a post about the winery on Thursdays at 11 once you’ve finished your weekly team meetings. Put it on your schedule and stick to it.

Engage with your audience. Respond to ALL of your comments and DMs within 24 hours. Ask for your audience’s input and make it conversational. Remember, social media is meant to be social, and the farmer-as-influencer model works because it’s participatory!

Also, a quick reminder, too, that you don’t have to be on every platform. Pick one for now, whichever one your customers are using most frequently, and commit to showing up there regularly.

When you do this well, you’ll end up building genuine appreciation for farming itself. You’ll also start seeing opportunities everywhere the more you do this.

But Seriously, Budget for Paid Partnerships When You Can

I want to be super clear: while you absolutely can, and should, be doing this internally (because it’ll make everything else you do better and more interesting), investing in the right creator partnerships is worth prioritizing in your budget.

The right creator will bring you access to an audience you don’t already have, and they lend you their credibility and trust.

So start with the DIY approach to build your skills and your content library. But as soon as you can, carve out a budget for strategic creator partnerships. Find one or two people per year who align with your values, let them tell your story, and let them tell it often!

(Again, again, again, much more on this in the upcoming influencer post. I promise we’ll get into the weeds on identifying the right partners, structuring deals, and measuring success.)

Want to help fuel me through the next several posts? Buy me a beverage! Writing is thirsty work after all!

Buy Me a Beverage

I’ll do some deeper dives into individual sessions over the next few weeks (because there’s too much here to cram into one post without overwhelming you), but I wanted to start with an overarching recap.

The long story short here is that the energy this year was VERY different from last year. Where last year the tone felt kind of bleak and unactionable, this year felt… hopeful? Not in a toxically positive kind of way, but more as though we’re acknowledging the realities while also finally talking about how we can begin pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps (okay boomer).

The Big Themes That Kept Showing Up Everywhere

1) Say it with me: COLLABORATION IS NECESSARY

DTC Wine Symposium kicked off with the incomparable Elaine Chukan Brown walking us through a brief history of California wines (do yourself a favor and read Elaine’s book The Wines of California, particularly the first section, which goes over in more detail what they spoke about in their keynote). Their reason for going through California’s history with wine was to point out that we’ve faced headwinds before, and the way we’ve come out of it was through working together.

This sounds very kumbaya, etc, but it’s also a strategy that consistently works. Multiple speakers, not only at DTCWS but also at Unified, basically made the same point in different outfits: if you’re competing in a downturn, it’s just going to be a race to the bottom. Instead, we need to pool resources and share knowledge. As the kids say, “periodtttt.”

2) Look outside the wine industry for inspiration

As Tyler Baillet said in her DTCWS panel The New Digital Terroir: Cultivating Wine Communities through Substack, Reddit, Discord & Podcasts, wine isn’t a niche. And as my friends from Likely Story Strategies said on their podcast episode with me last year, if you want ideas for success, why would you look to an industry that is struggling to succeed?

At Unified Symposium, I spoke on a panel called Rooted in Story: The Need for a New Generation of Agricultural Storytellers, and one of our key points was to show examples of successful work from other farming industries as well as the wine industry. (P.S. this Instagram story highlight from Jesse Driftwood was the example I chose. I will talk a bit more about it in a future post, but for now, please watch it all the way through—it’s about five minutes long—and pay attention to the words Jesse uses. They are almost word-for-word what people say about wine.)

3) Many small influencers > one big influencer

This came up in multiple places, and not just in the influencer panels I assisted and spoke on. People tend to trust smaller voices inside their niche communities (remember, wine isn’t a niche), and smaller influencers tend to have stronger, more engaged communities.

They also tend to give you much more value for a smaller budget, which, as small wineries, is the move, yeah? Again, we will talk more about this in a future post, but the idea here is that putting your eggs in multiple baskets is capital S-SMART.

4) People want to share wine with friends

Yeah, I know. DUH. This feels very much like a Captain Obvious statement, but at the same time… is it? Because the industry has long made wine feel like homework, to be analyzed and picked apart in a vacuum.

But multiple sessions circled around the same desire: people want wine to be a connector. This was particularly called out in what is always my favorite DTCWS session: The Consumer Panel. This year, they got one boomer, two Gen X, two millennials, and one Gen Z to speak to us, and while a lot of their responses to comments were exactly what you’d expect from each generation, one of the common denominators among them was that they like having wine with other people.

5) Decenter wine. Center people.

In the same vein as points two and four above, one of the clearest through-lines in both DTCWS and Unified was that we can’t center wine to succeed anymore. Consumers have a thousand other things competing for their attention, money, and time. So we need to find ways to allow wine to be included as a side-piece in the puzzle of people’s lives. For example, if a person is going to drink something while they knit, why can’t it be wine? People are going to enjoy some kind of beverage while watching baseball, why not wine? You get the idea.

This is the same thing and I got into in our podcast episode last week, Extending the Pleasure of Wine Beyond the Tasting Room: wine is a supplement to the activity, not the main event.

DTC Wine Symposium 2026: Things I’m Still Thinking About

Elaine Chukan Brown: Making Sense of Chaos

A few lines that stuck with me:

• “Homework: over the next three days, thank at least three people who are a part of the [DTCWS] team.” A deceptively small ask that was fulfilling to take action on.

• “A crisis always precedes innovation.” And the problem right now is that we’re facing multiple crises at once: environmental, social, economic, etc.

• Stoicism as honesty: the “right” choice starts with being absolutely honest about the situation you’re in.

• “If we are competing in a downturn, we are sinking each other.”

Also, the distinction between service vs experience was incredibly useful.

• Service = responding to what the person in front of you needs.

• Experience = being part of the whole journey of what they’re doing, that might include wine.

And A final line that keeps reverberating in my head: We can’t underestimate how little people know. People have jobs. Kids. Stress. They are not thinking about wine the way we do in the industry. So the question becomes, how do we make wine easier to get into without making it boring?

New Digital Terroir: Cultivating Wine Communities through Substack, Reddit, Discord & Podcasts.

Once again, a cute little reminder, WINE IS NOT A NICHE COMMUNITY. The internet is fragmented into thousands of niche communities, so, find where wine drinkers already are (board games, golf, vintage Porsche owners, etc.) lurk first, then engage, then tailor product + content + events for that community and partner inside it. This is where the “many small influencers > one big influencer” point was really driven home.

Good places to reach these niche communities are through places like Reddit, Discord, Podcasts, and, my favorite, Substack. I will cover each of these platforms in future posts, but for now, I encourage you to think of one thing you like that has nothing to do with wine and think about where those communities are spending their time. Some examples are: knitters and YouTube; gamers and Discord; romantasy readers and TikTok; junk journalers and Reddit.

Oh, also, make content screenshotable! If your social media post can’t be screenshotted and dropped into a group chat, you’re missing a major distribution path (speaking from experience as a member of multiple group chats, all of which seem to be talking about Heated Rivalry right now).

Real Consumers in Real Time

This panel is always one of the most grounding moments of the conference each year because it puts actual wine consumers at the center of the conversation. Here are some points the consumer panelists made that I loved:

• People fall in love with wine through travel, family, food, and memory rather than the ubiquitous tech sheets (although the Boomer representative still likes technical info)

• Wine’s primary job is still social connection; every generation agrees on this.

• Education is wanted, condescension is not. Especially for Gen Z, who are more likely to ask ChatGPT than a wine shop employee if they feel intimidated (more on THAT in a future post)

• Discovery is visual and social: pretty much all the generations said they choose wine because of the label design in a store but really like word of mouth, and authentic social media.

• None of them really cares about tasting notes.

• Wine clubs still work, but they’ve got to have flexibility, great perks, and good experiences.

• Tasting fees are a real barrier, particularly for younger drinkers, unless the experience clearly delivers value.

• People are still drinking, just more intentionally and with stronger alignment with values. The Gen Z rep reminded us that most people these days have some kind of wearable health tracker (like an Oura ring or Apple Watch), and went on to say how she really likes it when wineries include ingredients on their labels.

• Sustainability matters to them, but they want to understand why we make farming and winemaking decisions, not just be shown what we’re doing.

There were more panels I didn’t get a chance to attend myself, but I’ll see if maybe I can get some folks who attended (or were a part of) those sessions and see if they can guest write articles about them (or maybe we do some podcast episodes about them?? What do we think?) I also spoke on a few panels, so I’ll see if I can get someone else to tell me their takeaways from those, so we aren’t so biased here!

Unified Wine Symposium: The Key Takeaways

Rooted in Story: The Need for a New Generation of Agricultural Storytellers

This session, moderated by (again) my favorite person, Jason Haas, and including Morgan Twain-Peterson of Bedrock Wine Co, Meghan Phillips of Honey, and me (hi!), talked about making the farmer and/or winemaker the influencer and how important that is.

Key takeaways and action items:

• Consumers, particularly younger consumers, care about transparency and one of the ways to do that is to show the behind-the-scenes of what you’re up to.

• Although sustainable/organic/regenerative certifications are increasingly important, you don’t have to already have your certification to show that you are farming and making wine responsibly. I like the “build in public” scenario, as evidenced by this post I did for FOXEN last year.

Pitch Perfectly: Building Better Bridges Between Public Relations and Wine Media

The big points were beautifully unromantic:

• Generic pitches are lame

• Timing matters (hi, editorial calendars *exist*), so think about that before pitching a Valentine’s Day campaign the last week of January.

• Have your assets ready (bottle shots, tech sheets, prices, lifestyle imagery)

• And on that subject, have a good trade/media page on your website that includes updated versions of the above.

• Be responsive! Delays kill stories

Also: PR success goes beyond impressions. It’s whether your messaging shows up accurately in coverage, and whether there’s a measurable halo (mailing list, traffic spikes, etc.). Seeds planted now might bloom later.

The New Rules of Attraction: Using Design to Seduce, Sway, and Snare the Right Wine Customers

This panel at Unified did a great job reinforcing that design is basically the first line of storytelling, and it goes beyond your label or logo. In your tasting room, it’s your interior design. It’s also your digital footprint (your website and social media). And your printed materials.

Every design choice attracts some people and repels others, and you want to make sure you do that intentionally. Your design needs to match the story you want to tell.

Evaluate your brand:

• What are your business goals over the next five years?

• Who is your current customer, and what new customers do you want to attract?

• Are you consistent across all touchpoints (social, tasting room, emails)?

A couple of intentional design ideas I really liked from this session came from Jess Druey of Whiny Baby Wines:

• “Conversation” corks/caps to help spur conversations (going back to overarching theme number four: people want to share wine with other people)

• Peelable labels for folks to use in junk journals (so they don't have to keep the whole bottle for memories).

2026 State of Marketing: Bridging the Gap to Consumers

My friend Erica Walter of Email Mavens moderated this session with Kachet Jackson Bell, Evan Roscoe, and Raquel Royers, and they got into some really amazing points:

• We want to ask ourselves: where does wine intersect with our customers’ worlds?

• Consumers are asking themselves, “Would I feel proud/excited to bring this wine to a dinner party?”

• When serving different customer personas (collectors vs. lifestyle buyers), provide both technical info and lifestyle storytelling, and make content findable for all needs.

• Invest in relationship-based creator partnerships that can continue, not one-off transactions.

• Explore creators from adjacent lifestyle verticals for partnership opportunities.

Wine AND? Niche Festivals & Experiences in Wine – Why They Work and How They Appeal to New Consumers

One of my favorite panels from Unified featured my friend Stacy Buchanan of Blood of Gods, as well as Kate McManus of Far Niente Wine Estates, and Jermaine Stone of Wine & Hip Hop, and was moderated by Juliana Colangelo. Big takeaways here:

• Modern consumers, especially Millennials and Gen Z, value time and experiences over products and possessions.

• The panelists shared how blending personal passions (hip hop, heavy metal, art) with wine has helped them create unique, memorable events.

• Build an ecosystem around your wine events, personalize the experiences, and tap into emotions

• Connect with different cultures through food and make sure people see themselves in your experiences through your visuals (diversity, equity, and inclusion, friends!)

• Great experiences drive monetization and loyalty to your brand: Modern consumers are willing to pay for experiences if they perceive unique value and community, not just product.

What’s Coming Next

Again, I am going to do some deeper dives on the panels I attended and spoke on (and get some notes on the panels I wasn’t able to attend) over the next several weeks. Let me know which sessions you’d like me to focus on first!

If you attended DTCWS and/or Unified, do you agree with my takeaways? Is there anything I missed?

Want to help fuel me through the next several posts? Buy me a beverage! Writing is thirsty work after all!

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In this episode of the Wine Marketing Podcast, I’m joined by Dan Petroski, founder and winemaker of Massican Winery. We talk about how his background in publishing shaped the way he approaches wine marketing.

We dig into the emotional side of wine and how powerful it can be when brands focus less on prestige and more on making people feel something. Dan also shares why platforms like Substack matter, how to make your wine brand more consumer-friendly, and why Massican leans into curiosity over convention.

About Our Guest:

Dan Petroski is the founder and winemaker of Massican Winery in Napa Valley. Known for his thoughtful, Mediterranean-inspired white wines and fresh approach to communication, Dan brings a unique perspective to the wine industry, combining a background in publishing with a deep respect for honest storytelling. He also writes a Substack called The Italian Dinner Party.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/massicanwinery/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danpetroski/

Substack: https://substack.com/@danpetroski

The Italian Dinner Party: https://massican.substack.com/

Now, I know that winemaker dinners and wine club parties have worked in the past, and it’s not insane to want to keep doing something with precedent. But we have entered a time in the evolution of our industry when using the same playbook no longer cuts it. And yet here we are with our white tablecloths and prefixed menus, still trying to keep the ways of yore going, because they feel safe and familiar.

And it’s boring, dude! I’m over it, you are over it, and the consumers are super duper over it. Fewer people are showing up to these events because they’ve already been to ten others like them.

Meanwhile, the Weirdos Are Selling Out

But then there are the small, scrappy mutineers who are thinking outside the box (and getting great results!)

Tank Garage Winery, whose General Manager, Ed Feuchuk, I interviewed on the podcast last year, never makes the same wine twice. They do weird shit, like putting stills from a skin flick on their skin-contact white wine, or creating an over-the-top Black Friday/Cyber Monday digital scavenger-hunt campaign just to give a rare discount. They sell out of their wine quickly and have created a culture of fun around their brand.

Final Girl Wines has built their entire identity around horror flicks, right down to their Solvang tasting room. Step inside and you go from the kitschy, storybook Danish village to an equally kitschy and campy haunted mansion, complete with Ouija boards, zombie pour spouts, and spooky artwork. It’s a bit like walking from the Small World ride at Disneyland into Knott’s Scary Farm, and judging from their 253 five-star reviews on Google (!!!!!!!), people fucking love it.

And then there are my friends Kristin and Nick of Cote of Paint. They make extremely serious wines designed to be enjoyed in extremely unserious ways. Like the time they hosted a pop-up at an arcade two years ago.

None of these wineries is doing anything “traditional,” except for the one thing that actually matters: they’re making great fucking wine. They’ve all figured out how to build unique communities within the wine scene that foster diversity rather than exclusion, which is something most of the industry still struggles with.

About Cote of Paint

It’s Cote of Paint that I really want to focus on today because I believe that they have really illustrated that last point the best.

Kristin is a woman of color in an industry that has historically excluded people who look like her from its “traditional” pathways. Because of this, she has been forced to look outside the box and, as a result, often sees opportunities that others miss. In a time when so many wineries are still copying each other’s homework, that creativity has given her an advantage.

Instead of marketing wine to the usual crowd of pretentious gatekeepers, Kristin and her business partner Nick have looked outside the wine industry entirely. They aren’t trying to convince people who already attend winemaker dinners that they should attend just one more. They are instead building community around people who already know how to gather—gamers, creatives, queer folks, etc.

At that arcade pop-up in 2024, people of different gender identities, sexual orientations, religions, age groups, and racial backgrounds came together as a single community for an afternoon. They played games, drank wine, and talked to strangers. It was the kind of organic, diverse, self-selecting focus group marketers have wet dreams about.

And most importantly, people were having fun! No one was sat in a corner nervously clutching their glass, wondering if they had to know the right words to be there, and they didn’t feel the need to prove anything beyond who was superior at pinball.

The Point

The future of the wine industry doesn’t lie in forcing the round peg of Gen Z into the square hole of their grandparents’ wine culture. We must instead look to this small group of wineries like Cote of Paint, Final Girl, and Tank Garage, who are living a little dangerously by reaching crowds outside the norm.

The wine world they are building from their unique perspectives seems far more fun to me than anything else.

Liked this post? Here are more you might find interesting:

But after talking with several folks about this dilemma (for want of a better word), I think I do want to share this after all, because I believe the topic holds some much-needed perspective for wine brands who might be grappling with how to market their wines this month, and the discourse around Dry January is even more confusing than usual this year.

At the top of the results on Substack, you’ll see contradictory headlines stacked on top of each other, like:

• Five Reasons to Embrace Dry January

• Top 10 Reasons to Swipe Left on Dry January

• Dry January Annoys Me

• For the People Doing Dry January… I See You

• Dry January is a Conspiracy

A search of “Dry January, Gen Z” on Google shows similar contradictions:

• Ahead of Dry January, Gen Z Interest in Monthlong Abstinence Stalls

• Move Over Dry January. Gen Z Is Already Stepping Away From Alcohol

• Dry January Forever: How Gen Z Is Turning Sobriety Into a Lifestyle

As Austin Powers would say, which is it? Spits or swallows???

For me, one of the most interesting takes about Dry January came from this The Press Democrat article by Jason Mastrodonato, For Gen Z, Dry January has become something much bigger, which acknowledged a contradiction in data.

“Taken together, the findings suggest that fewer Americans may be drinking, but those who do may not be cutting back as dramatically as surveys focused solely on participation imply.”

The article also raises a more uncomfortable question. UC Berkeley psychology professor Keanan Joyner expressed concern that reduced drinking among young people may also signal reduced social connection:

“I am trying to get these kids to consider going out more instead of studying all the time,” Joyner said of his students. “They’re 19. They need to get out.”

He pointed to the U.S. Surgeon General’s 2023 report on loneliness and isolation, which found that between 2003 and 2020, social isolation increased by 24 hours per month for the average American, while time spent engaging with friends fell by 20 hours per month.

Meanwhile, in the Substack article, January is a Conspiracy, author Andrew Haupt says,

“Unfortunately, [Dry January] doesn’t work toward actually reducing alcohol consumption. A 2021 study found that increased participation between 2015 and 2018 did not decrease overall consumption nationwide. In many casual drinkers it led to higher binge drinking at other times of year.”

Taken together, this is where the conversation gets interesting and more nuanced, and where it stops being just about alcohol.

If reduced drinking improves some aspects of physical health but potentially erodes social connection, then the question isn’t “Should people drink or not?” It’s “How do people stay socially connected when alcohol is removed or reduced?”

For decades, wine has functioned as a social lubricant. It offers a reason to gather in the evenings and linger. And yet, when people step away from alcohol, either temporarily or otherwise, their desire for ritual and connection doesn’t just disappear; they look for other avenues.

Sometimes they find it in drugs or coffee, and sometimes they find it in non-alcoholic beverages, but sometimes, if they don’t want to replace one vice with another, or non-alcoholic beverages aren’t good or even available in their favorite third places (more on this later), they slowly start slipping away into loneliness.

And that’s where the wine industry’s response to Dry January starts to matter, and why I decided this article needed to exist after all.

We’ve Been Here Before

In 2024, I wrote a post called “Stop Making Fun of Dry January.” It was a direct response to some commentary from within the wine world that framed Dry January as self-righteous, puritanical, and a slippery slope toward the next Prohibition (which I found a little dramatic).

At the time, I felt (and still feel) pretty strongly that mocking people for taking a break from alcohol is both unhelpful and kind of embarrassing for an industry that prides itself on nuance and hospitality.

And before moving on, I should clarify that I really do understand where folks opposed to Dry January are coming from. We should encourage people to have a healthy relationship with alcohol year-round, versus doing these (admittedly, sometimes performative—and apparently trademarked??) abstinence periods.

But the bottom line is that Dry January isn’t always a moral stance for people. It often acts instead as a reset, especially after what may have been some excessive holiday indulgence. And as I mentioned in that article, dry periods, even of just a few days or weeks, can sometimes help us appreciate wine when we are ready to come back to it.

As a pregnant person who has been in an extended abstinence period, I’ve also found that another thing that can help people appreciate wine even more while they are taking a break from alcohol is NA or Dealcoholized Wine.

Which brings me to a profoundly ridiculous debate I’ve been exposed to this year.

Does Non-Alcoholic Wine “Count” as Wine?

A surprising number of folks think that NA wine isn’t really wine and therefore needs to be renamed, reclassified, or exiled to some other beverage category entirely.

The argument is often framed as “respect for the craft of winemaking,” but the timing is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. This debate is cropping up precisely at a moment when people are taking breaks from alcohol and still want to participate in wine culture, which feels significant to me.

Much like the ice-in-wine debate, this is very much a non-issue jazzed up as thought leadership. I mean, really, we have much bigger fish to fry in the industry than whether non-alcoholic wine counts as wine.

But because I needed a distraction from the horrors happening in the world, and I apparently can’t leave well enough alone, I took to LinkedIn to have myself a small, contained, and TOTALLY MATURE, I SWEAR, rant about it.

What followed was a series of… conversations? — Yeah, sure, let’s call them conversations! — In which the central point of my post (that NA wine is INDEED wine, and why the fuck are we questioning this?) somehow hit folks square between the eyeballs and then carried right on past them.

One person commented:

“If those making Low Alcohol / No Alcohol Wine can't come up with a Name that conveys WHAT IT IS, then how can the Public be expected to embrace it.

Yes, there is a benefit for those seeking to control their Alcohol Consumption.

But given the taste of many Low Alcohol / No Alcohol Wines, I can't see adoption.”

My response was, “They’ve already come up with a name for what it is: Dealcoholized Wine. And people are drinking it. Wineries wouldn’t be making it if there wasn’t demand for it.”

Another person eventually escalated the argument to this absolute banger:

“No. I don't care about the production : waht you say is like 99,99999% of wine lovers : NA wine is not wine. Even if it is, strictly spoken.

How does one argue with ironclad logic like “NA wine is not wine. Even if it is…”

*Buries face in pillow and screams*

Listen, if you’re worried about people stepping away from wine culture for a month, but you also insist that the thing many of them use to stay connected to it doesn’t count as wine, you’re ultimately excluding people from the very thing you are trying to protect.

It’s classic NIMBY behavior: Don’t change anything, don’t make room for new people, and then PANIC! when the town starts dying.

Most people choosing NA wine aren’t opting out of wine culture. If they were, they’d just drink soda, sparkling water, or actual grape juice. But these people still want the ritual and the complexity of a traditional wine; they just want to take a break from the alcohol.

And instead of meeting that with the hospitality we should, some corners of the industry are effectively saying, “Come back when you’re ready to drink wine the right way.”

Which is where this whole thing loops back to my earlier, more uncomfortable point about social connection.

If one of the unintended consequences of reduced drinking is increased social isolation, then pushing people further away from shared rituals instead of updating those rituals feels like the wrong move.

An epiphany I came to while writing this is that wine culture isn’t just competing with other beverages. It is also competing with staying home, scrolling, and, ominously, AI relationships (ew). If we continue drawing tighter lines around who belongs and what “counts” as wine, we really shouldn’t be surprised when fewer people care to even try crossing those barriers.

So, What Does Any of This Mean for Wine Marketing?

Whether someone is doing Dry January, taking a break for health reasons, is pregnant, training for a marathon, cutting back financially, or whatever, doesn’t really matter as long as they choose the non-alcoholic wine category in the meantime, and/or choose wine when they are ready to enjoy alcohol again.

So, here are a few ways wineries can engage during Dry January (and beyond):

1. Market the Why

January is a great time to talk about how wine is made and why it’s important to you. Even if they aren’t participating in Dry January, people have purchase fatigue after the holidays. They don’t want to be marketed to, full stop. So, education without a hard sell will help keep folks emotionally invested, even if they’re not purchasing right away.

2. Keep People in the Ritual

We can respect people who have decided they need to take a break while still making them feel welcome at the table. That can look like sharing food pairings they can bookmark for later, or, if you offer NA or low-ABV options, talking about them! The point is to remind folks that wine is part of a broader ritual around food and connection.

3. Always Encourage Moderation

The people most likely to buy premium wine long-term are not (usually) the ones drinking thoughtlessly every night. These people tend to drink less but spend more per bottle and care about where their wine comes from.

So our jobs should be to help people move up the ladder toward becoming premium, long-term wine buyers. Again, respect people who decide to take a break, AND encourage people to engage with your wine and brand in a more thoughtful way.

We can do this by sharing how slow and thoughtful the alchemy of winemaking is and reminding them that this beverage is of the earth. We can share the hands that helped bring that wine to their table. We can give them the language they can use to describe what they’re tasting when they do open a bottle again, and, as I mentioned in point two, we can invite them into the ritual of wine, which itself is a slow and thoughtful process.

And we can do this all year long.

The Bottom Line

My interest lies in encouraging people to continue engaging with wine culture in whatever way they can, because, beyond wanting to help my clients sell more wine, I care that people are socially fulfilled. So if we can do that by encouraging moderation and/or not just embracing the NA Wine subcategory but actively finding ways to improve it, I’ll be happy.

The wineries that will weather this moment best are the ones that ask, “How do we stay relevant, welcoming, and useful no matter where someone is on their wine journey?”

Want to help fuel future rants? Buy me a beverage! Writing is thirsty work after all!

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In this episode of The Wine Marketing Podcast, I talk with Erin Kirschenmann, Managing Editor of Wine Business Monthly and founder of Novel Pairings, about the fine line between a clever wine collab and a cringe-worthy marketing ploy. We dig into a recent example involving a romantasy novella and a wine brand, and why it missed the mark for its intended audience.

We also explore what authentic partnerships should look like, the importance of understanding your community, and what trends Erin is seeing across the industry as both a journalist and a DTC Symposium panel moderator. If you're wondering how to build long-term brand loyalty through meaningful collaborations, this one’s for you.

About Our Guest

Erin Kirschenmann, DipWSET, is the Managing Editor of Wine Business Monthly, where she’s been covering the intersection of business, marketing, tech, and trends in the wine industry since 2012. She also oversees the content and programming for WBM’s symposia and frequently speaks at conferences and universities on wine, media, and public relations.

Erin is an instructor with the Napa Valley Wine Academy. She’s judged wines internationally at the Concours Mondial de Bruxelles and served on panels for several regional wine competitions. In 2025, she was named to Beverage Dynamics’ 40 Under Forty list for her contributions to the industry.

This year, she also launched Novel Pairings, an online membership designed to bring women together to talk books, wine, and life through thoughtful, no-pressure gatherings that center connection and community.

Novel Pairings’ Instagram: Instagram.com/novel_pairings

Erin’s Instagram: Instagram.com/erinakirsch

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erin-kirschenmann-017b2234/

Get your first month of Novel Pairings free when you use code WMP at checkout!

https://www.novel-pairings.com/

Join Novel Pairings

Don’t forget to get your tickets to DTC Wine Symposium! Erin and I will both be speaking in workshops and panels, it’s going to be dope.

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If you loved this episode, please share it with a friend and don’t forget to rate and review it wherever you’re tuning in. If you’re watching on YouTube, please like and subscribe! It really helps us get in front of more people. Want to dive deeper into wine marketing? Subscribe to the Wine Marketing Field Guide on Substack where I post weekly wine marketing tips and we have conversations on the wine industry news that keeps me up at night.

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For me, as a social media manager, this looks like going into my clients’ analytics and seeing what posts performed the best and what posts performed the worst. (By the way, “performed” is subjective to your goals. A post may have had really shitty engagement, for example, but have the highest number of external link clicks of any of your other posts. If your goal for that post was to drive link clicks, then that post was a success.)

So, today’s 5-Minute task is to go through your insights on Instagram (or whatever platform you want to double down on in the new year) and look at what posts have performed well in each category you find valuable. Here are some metrics I personally like to pay attention to for my clients on Instagram:

• Accounts Reached/Reach

• Post Interactions

• External Link Taps

You may also want to look at Follows, Comments, Shares, and Views, but I find the above three the most important to my clients’ goals in general.

How to view your insights/analytics on Instagram

1. From your profile, tap the sandwich in the upper-right corner.

2. Tap “Insights” in the drop-down

   menu.

3. To look at specific content you shared last year, tap “Content You Shared.”

4. From here, you can control the data range, like time and what metric you want to look at. I recommend looking at data from the last year or even the last two years to really get an idea of what’s worked long term.

   1. Note: Some metrics aren’t available for all post types. For regular posts (like carousels and single photos), reels, and stories, you can see Views, Accounts Reached, Follows, and Shares. But, for some reason, you can only view External Link Taps and Profile visits on regular posts. You can see Interactions for Reels and Regular posts, but only if you look at those media types specifically, so you’ll have to do a bit of cross-referencing. It’s the bane of my existence when I do my analytics reports every month.

Highest Reach

Reach is the number of individual accounts that have seen a post. This is an important metric for just about any goal you have, but it’s especially important if your goal is brand awareness, because it shows which posts and post types (carousel, photo, or Reel) got out in front of the most (or least) number of people.

I like to view this one both in isolation and in comparison to the number of interactions a post has had, so I can really understand how well it has performed. Obviously, if a post got way higher reach than other posts, you’ll want to ask yourself why and see if you can replicate that. Was it the media type? The content itself? Did it get a lot of shares? Did you add music?

Most Interactions

Although engagement (likes, comments, saves, and shares) isn’t the most important metric, it is still a helpful indicator for how well a post was recieved by the folks that have seen it. If you want to go a level deeper, you can also look at most comments and most shares as two individual engagements that are most impactful. To me, it matters less how many “likes” a post has because that’s the lowest hanging fruit. I have found that posts that get a lot of shares and comments often have the most reach and overall interactions.

External Link Clicks

A lot of wineries express that online wine sales are an important goal, so it stands to reason that we want to also look at link clicks as a metric. Please note, though, that unfortunately, we can only track link clicks connected to regular posts like carousels and photos, as Reels don’t give us that data at this time. So, if you have a Reels-heavy strategy, then you might not get the data you want. That said, I’d still recommend looking at it because it can be enlightening.

If you’re feeling extra

So now that you have this information, what can you do with it? If you’d like to take an additional five minutes, I’d recommend taking the top performing post across a single category (or, if you’re like Brave & Maiden and find that the top performing post is the same across the categories, use that one), and trying to recreate it.

Your audience has given you valuable information about what they want to see. Listen to them!

Do you know what else takes five minutes or less? Buying me a beverage! Thank you for supporting my work here!

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There are a handful of you who reply to the emails I send you, which is really lovely, as well as folks who comment on the posts and even share my posts on their own substacks (wow!)

It really feels like a community here. A digital third-place, if you will, that harkens back to ye olde days of social media when it was actually social. I enjoy my time here because it feels less like shouting into the void, which was one of the reasons I was so inconsistent when I hosted my blog on my website and used Flodesk for my email marketing.

So today I thought it would be fun for us to recap some of our favorite articles from 2025, especially for those who may have joined us mid-year or even as recently as last week (hi! welcome! Thanks for being here!).

We will break this into posts that you responded to well, or that sparked big discussions, posts that I particularly loved writing and like to revisit, and posts that I think deserve a little more attention (growers, not showers if you will).

Three posts YOU liked best:

This one cracked me up because I genuinely did not expect it to take off the way it did. Apparently, we were all collectively losing our minds about how hard it can be to find new ways to tell the same stories.

I think that this post struck a nerve. So many of you wrote in saying it articulated something you’ve been feeling for a while: that smaller, more niche wine events are really where the value lies in relationship building. I even note that Stacy Buchanan, the founder of the Blood of Gods Merrymaking (the very niche festival that sparked this particular article), is speaking on a panel at the 2026 Unified Wine & Grape Symposium called “Wine AND? Niche Festivals & Experiences in Wine – Why They Work and How They Appeal to New Consumers.” I can’t prove my post inspired that panel, but I’m absolutely choosing to believe it did.

I am extremely vindicated in the response to this post. With the exception of, like, two people, most everyone seems to agree that we really need to stop being so precious about wine if we want more people to drink it.

Three posts I really liked writing

This article was pretty personally significant to me. I was grappling with some big feelings about leaving behind my childhood home, and writing about the quieter, less-celebrated moments where wine shows up in our lives helped me make sense of all of it.

I had so much fun with this one because the question itself is such a loaded, endlessly looping conversation in the wine world. I love to have something to rant about, and I think you like it when I rant(?)

This one started from a vulnerable place, too. I’m still navigating how to talk about pregnancy (and eventually motherhood) without it becoming my entire personality. Writing this felt like a way to honor what’s happening in my personal life while also being honest about how much it’s impacting my professional world.

Three posts I think deserved a bit more attention

I really wish this recieved a bit more love. I think it said something that a lot of people need to be reminded of. I tried to make the case that creators can be incredibly effective partners when wineries treat them as valuable collaborators, not “vapid idiots” (actual words I’ve seen used to describe influencers). I am speaking on an influencer town hall at the Direct to Consumer Wine Symposium in January, all about how digital creators are redefining the value of a wine.

Stories are one of my favorite mediums on Instagram and remain one of the most underutilized tools in wine marketing. This piece kicked off a series that laid out exactly how wineries can use Stories more strategically. If you missed it the first time around, I encourage you to check it out.

This article was my attempt to peel back all the noise and remember why we’re doing any of this in the first place. I think we often get so bogged down in the weeds of selling and marketing wine that we forget why wine is important to us.

Do you have any topics you’d like me to cover in 2026? Reply to this email or leave a comment!

One of the easiest ways to do this is to update the cover photo.

Updating the cover photo is a very low-hanging fruit way of

1. Reinforcing your seasonal story
   Is your vineyard lush and green or dormant? Do you have a crackling fire going right now in the tasting room? Wine is agricultural and seasonal. Your visuals should reflect that and your cover photo can set expectations

2. Signaling that you’re active and paying attention
   An outdated cover photo can communicate neglect, even if your feed is current.

3. Adding a subtle call to action
   You can add a caption and a clickable link to your cover photo. I almost always include a “Book a Tasting” or “Shop Wine” link.

Most of my clients don’t have massive Facebook audiences, but that doesn’t mean there’s no audience at all. And if someone does land on your page from Google or otherwise, this is the first thing they see.

Your 5-minute task

1. Choose a seasonal landscape or hospitality photo
   Vineyard, tasting room, cellar, etc.

2. Upload it as your Facebook cover photo.

3. Add a short caption + link
   Something simple like:
   ”Book a tasting today! [link]”

BONUS: The cover photo will appear as a post in your feed. Tap the three dots in the upper right corner of the post and select “Pin Post.” This will save the post to the top of your page, and if you keep the caption short enough, it will serve as an easy way to drive link clicks.

If you’re feeling really crazy, you can check in on your tasting room hours, address, and update your about section, too!

Do you know what else takes five minutes or less? Buying me a beverage! Thank you for supporting my work here!

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In this episode, I’m joined by Warner Boin of Confidence Uncorked, in which we talk about making wine education more fun and approachable without dumbing it down. We cover what Warner and fellow wine communicators wish wineries knew, including how to communicate complexity without infantilizing the people you’re talking to and why vulnerability and transparency are such powerful tools in wine marketing.

We also dig into what wineries often get wrong when working with influencers and what makes a great collaboration. Warner shares actionable strategies for showing up online, building trust with your audience, and making wine feel more human.

About Our Guest:

Warner Boin is a certified sommelier and the founder of Confidence Uncorked, a wine communication brand dedicated to transforming wine education into a fun and approachable experience. A native Texan who now calls California wine country home, she’s on a mission to help everyone enjoy wine without judgment - regardless of your knowledge or budget. Follow along @ConfidenceUncorked on social media for winery recommendations, fun educational content, and a behind-the-scenes look at the fascinating world of wine!

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/confidenceuncorked

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@confidenceuncorked

Substack: https://confidenceuncorked.substack.com/

Listeners to the Wine Marketing Podcast get 20% off of Warner’s Pocket Confidence guide - 26 pages of tips and secrets she’s learned on how to taste, shop, and pick out wines with confidence!

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If you loved this episode, please share it with a friend and don’t forget to rate and review it wherever you’re tuning in. If you’re watching on YouTube, please like and subscribe! It really helps us get in front of more people. Want to dive deeper into wine marketing? Subscribe to the Wine Marketing Field Guide on Substack where I post weekly wine marketing tips and we have conversations on the wine industry news that keeps me up at night.

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I first started thinking about this “social media as a yearbook” thing a few years ago, when I wanted to look back at one of my clients' posts to see when their harvest started in 2022.

I then started thinking about how I've done this in my own personal life: seeing when my chickens started laying their eggs again after their annual molt (I swear, every year, they wait longer and longer, the freeloaders haven’t laid an egg for three months at this point), when I planted my first seeds of spring, and what my nephew looked like a year ago vs. now.

I wondered how we, as businesses, could be intentional about this.

So I started experimenting, and as it turns out, the posts that are documenting news/showing what we're up to often outperform almost every other post.

Examples of "Yearbook" Posts:

Here are some examples of posts I've seen wineries make (and that I've made for my clients) that help document the year:

• Tablas Creek's documenting a new (to them) farming technique: crimp rolling. And this time, they documented running their sheep across the creek to shelter.

• Foxen Winery sharing the first harvest of their newest vineyard source, Our Lady of Guadalupe. Or, on a more serious note, when they were giving updates on the Lake Fire.

• Brave & Maiden's 99 Point Wine in 2023. Obviously, this was a really big deal for them, so we wanted to share that news with our followers ASAP. And highlighting a new team member.

• Joseph Jewell's wine at a White House lunch. Regardless of your political affiliations, having your wine poured at a state-sponsored gathering is a big deal. Now they can look back on it!

• My own post documenting my first day of harvest in 2024 and my first day of harvest in 2025.

There’s something to be said for documenting things like a journalist. Good journalism is about observation and record-keeping as much as news reporting. It answers the question, objectively, of “what is happening right now?”

When we document our seasons like this, we are essentially creating a public archive of our work, and showing a pattern over time: How harvest shifts every year, how our teams grow and evolve, and how challenges are met or wins are celebrated. It builds trust and authority with our community in a way that we simply cannot achieve when we are posting bottle porn and food pairings all the time (not saying there isn’t a time and a place for those things, but… we can do better).

In short, you may already be keeping these records privately, but why not share them with your fans as well? Years from now, these posts will serve as reference points for both you and your audience. They are things you can point back to during releases and anniversaries, or even difficult seasons.

Wine already asks people to think in years. Your social media can reflect that.

Writing is thirsty work. Buy me a beverage! (Disclaimer: Funds may also go towards purchasing film for my cameras and the occasional breakfast burrito.) Thank you for supporting my work here!

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Turn what you found into content.

And yes, it can be that literal. Here are a few quick ways to do it:

1. Make a shot-for-shot remake of a guest’s post

If someone filmed a moment that clearly resonated (maybe their post got a ton of comments or other engagement), certain scenes from your tasting room, your dog, your barrel room, or a specific staff member. Your guests are telling you which parts of your business are most photogenic and interesting to them. They’re basically storyboarding your content for you!

2. Turn a frequently asked question into a carousel or Reel

If Reddit taught you anything last week, it’s that people are very comfortable asking questions they’d never DM you directly.

Take one of the FAQ you found and make a simple carousel or Reel:

• The question on slide or clip 1

• Straightforward answer on slide 2 (or video clips 2-4)

• A final slide or clip with a call to action

An example could be:

• A video clip panning across your tasting room with the question “Are you dog-friendly?” on top.

• Multiple clips showing dogs in your tasting room with text that says, “obviously”

• A final clip showing a dog high-fiving the camera with text that says “make a reservation for you and your pup today!”

In the caption, you could put more details about any specific rules you have about having dogs in your tasting room.

3. Use guest language in your captions

Did you notice certain words or phrases popping up in posts about you?

“Relaxing,” “friendly,” “romantic,” “laid-back,” “welcoming,” “Instagrammable,” “small but mighty,” whatever it is, borrow it! Mirror it back.

People respond really well to hearing their own language reflected in your content.

4. Highlight a review or user-generated post you loved

Share the post to Stories and add a little commentary! Talk about why you loved it, what it captures about your winery, and what people can expect if they visit, or simply say “thank you for visiting!”

A bonus tip here is to leave a comment on the post and/or send the person a DM to say thanks and ask them questions about their experience (Who was your host? What was your favorite part about the tasting? Did you have a favorite wine from your visit?)

This not only builds a deeper connection to the person who originally visited you, but it also shows future visitors what “a good time” looks like at your place. People tend to prefer seeing how regular people are enjoying their experiences versus taking the word of the business that is literally using social media to market to them.

5. If there is a team member or team members who is/are mentioned in posts, reviews, etc frequently, show them in your posts more frequently

There are certain staff on my clients’ teams who get mentioned significantly more frequently in reviews and posts than others so I know that when I post about those team members or even just include their faces (with their consent, obv) in a social media post, it’s going to perform well.

This tip may take a little longer than five minutes, but it's well worth the extra effort!

Writing is thirsty work. Buy me a beverage! (Disclaimer: Funds may also go towards purchasing film for my cameras and the occasional breakfast burrito.) Thank you for supporting my work here!

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The overwhelming response was some variation of 'no,' with varying levels of condescension.

One person said, “Straight to jail.”
Another said, “No, that’s repulsive. Just chill your wine like a normal person.”

Really? Repulsive? That’s a bit of a strong reaction. The comments weren’t much better. Comments like:

• “You water down the wine with the ice. It doesn’t just make it cold. It dilutes it.”

• “I would NEVER, and if you do, I will judge you HARD, but you do you.”

• “Ice [is] for old ladies sitting outside drinking Chablis.”

• And the one that really put my hackles up: “Ice in wine is an insult to the winemaker.”

There were a few responses in the video that were in favor of ice in wine, but only one really spoke to what I believe the answers “should” have been:

“If you buy the bottle, you drink it however you want. Anything that makes you drink wine instead of beer.”

And that’s the hill I will also die on.

The Judgment Is the Problem

Listen, I’m not mad that people who are clearly on the advanced end of wine aren’t into putting ice into their own wine glass. What I am mad about is the intense judgment coming from these people.

One commenter hit the nail on the head:

“The tone of the responses and some of the comments do not pass the vibe check and are part of the reason why people turn away from wine.”

*Nods head vigorously*

The wine industry looooooves to wring its hands and ask, “Oh nooooo, wine isn’t selling! How do we make it more accessible?” But then in the next breath say something like, “If you enjoy wine the ‘wrong’ way, you are an embarrassment and insulting the winemaker for liking what you like.”

My friends, I’m going to hold your hand while I say this: you CANNOT have it both ways.

As I said in a comment on this post, “Anything that makes you drink wine instead of beer” was the only response that matters in this discussion. We really have to lower the barrier to entry with wine if we want more people to drink it. If someone at the beginning of their wine journey wants to put ice in their wine, then fucking go for it. We can ‘educate’ until we’re blue in the face about dilution and structure and blah blah blah, but someone new to wine gives literally zero shits about that. And I can guarantee that someone who knows wine isn’t putting ice in a ‘nice’ bottle anyway.

If someone is putting ice in wine, it’s because they want something cold and wet and NOW. And I will kiss them on the mouth for choosing wine instead of a cocktail or hard seltzer.

We Can and Must Do Better

I, admittedly, used to be one of those dicks who would judge someone when they requested ice in their wine, but then I gently removed the stick from my ass and realized that if my goal is to encourage more people to drink more wine, then I need to stop being such a douche about it and let people enjoy wine the way they want to enjoy wine.

If someone seems receptive to it, I might kindly explain how to “properly” chill wine and get into how ice can affect its texture and flavor. But if they just want to enjoy their glass and move on with their day, then I will too.

Because what we are doing when we judge people for something like putting ice in their wine is shutting down their experience. And the result isn’t that they will then go and “drink wine correctly,” whatever that means; it’s that they probably won't drink wine at all! And I think you’ll agree that that is super counterproductive to what we are trying to do here.

Let’s Also Remember Who is Likely Putting Ice in Their Wine

I feel like this whole thing should be a non-issue, by the way.

Someone at the beginning of their wine journey is probably not putting ice into a bottle that would be “ruined” by it. They’re more than likely drinking affordable, easily accessible (read: mass-produced, cheap) wine that frankly can probably benefit from a little dilution.

And the folks who are further along in their wine journey already know which wines they “shouldn’t” put ice into. They’ll drink those wines at the right temperature, in the right glass, with the right food, on the right day, nary an ice cube to be seen.

Also worth noting: This outrage and condescension over ice in wine feels especially absurd when you remember that the very cultures we revere for “doing wine right” have been happily chilling and diluting their wine for as long as wine’s been around (probably).

Someone DM’d me saying, “There’s this whole French thing called a ‘piscine’ (literally ‘pool’) where people drink Champagne in a big wine glass with several ice cubes…”

EXACTLY.

This DM made me laugh so hard because, to this person’s (unspoken) point, the French, Italians, Spanish—basically the cultures that wine people love to cite as the pinnacle of wine culture—all have some version of wine-plus-ice or wine-plus-sparkling-water baked into everyday drinking.

Piscines! Spritzes! ¡Tinto de verano! are all normal, casual ways people enjoy wine when it’s hot and they want something refreshing.

Winemakers Are Not Mad, Actually

When I took this whole rant to Instagram Stories, as is my way, I asked my winemaker friends: “Would you be insulted if someone put ice in the wine you made?”

So far, over 90% of responses from over 50 winemakers and wine professionals were:

“Nope. I’m just glad they’re drinking my wine.”

I realize this is a small sample size, and I suspect that the remaining percentage of responders that said “the MOST insulted, how very dare” (including my beer drinking husband) were really just being contrary for contrary sake, but my point here is that it seems clear that we really shouldn’t care what people are doing with wine they’ve purchased with their hard-earned money.

Winemakers aren’t getting mad when people make sangria with their wine, or pair it with Halloween candy, or drink it out of a red Solo cup, so why are the rest of us getting all hot and bothered about it?

Yes, we can, and should, invite people to enjoy wine with good stemware, at the proper temperature, with thoughtful pairings, etc etc., but it’s also wildly unrealistic that every person who buys our wine is going to enjoy it in the “optimal” conditions, and we shouldn’t judge them when they can’t (or won’t).

The TL;DR

If the wine industry actually wants to be more welcoming, accessible, and relevant, we really need to stop policing enjoyment.

And for the record, lowering the barrier to entry doesn’t mean dumbing things down and infantilizing the newbs. I had a whole conversation with Warner Boin of Confidence Uncorked on my podcast (to be released this week!) about how we need to meet people where they are and not shame them for how they get there.

If ice in wine is what it takes for someone to choose wine, I’m calling that a win. And as we’ve seen, so are the winemakers.

Liked this post? Here are more you might find interesting:

Go on Instagram, TikTok, and/or Reddit and search your winery name and then search your region.

I say this because there are a lot of folks who use social media but either forget to tag us or don’t know we have an account (or, maybe we really don’t have an account), but people are still talking about us!

During a recent website overhaul with one of my clients, I learned that when asked “how did you hear about us” new guests overwhelmingly said they learned about that client on TikTok. This was surprising news to me, because at that point, that client did not have a TikTok account at all. So that evening, I went on TikTok, searched that client’s name, and found over fifty posts mentioning them going all the way back to 2019.

I immediately made a TikTok account for them, pulled some old videos we’d made for Instagram, and posted them to the TikTok, and then started engaging with everyone who had mentioned them in their posts. By the end of the week, we had 29 followers, which I know doesn’t sound huge, but it was a start, and if nothing else, we were at least now part of the conversation.

Here are some things you want to look out for when you’re doing your search:

1. Look for consistency
Are there particular photos or scenes that customers really like? Are there team members who are mentioned frequently? Are there certain words that are often used to describe your experience or your wines? Any frequently asked questions? All of this is really valuable information for future marketing. It can literally give you the language and content your target audience wants to see from you.

2. What conversations are happening about your region?
Reddit, in particular, is a gold mine for hearing what real customers think about you (or if you’re even being mentioned). I did this recently for a couple of clients and found that people were recommending one of my clients for luxury experiences, whereas the other client was being recommended for casual, laid-back experiences. This isn’t news to us, as those are the experiences those respective clients aim to offer, but it was still good to know that our messaging and actual experiences are aligned.

Note: Reddit may also offer you some insight into how you can improve your experience. The conversations that are happening over there are far more unfiltered and candid than those that are happening on social media. Most people posting to TikTok and Instagram do so only if they had a good experience, but folks posting to Reddit are ready to share the exact experience they had, good or bad.

3. Are you showing up on lists?
If someone is talking about “best wineries in [your region]” and you’re not showing up in that conversation or showing up infrequently, then that is a signal that maybe there are some improvements to be made. If you aren’t showing up (often or at all) on those lists, pay attention to which wineries are being mentioned frequently and figure out if there is some aspect of their wine or experience you can emulate in your own way.

Again, I really like Reddit for this versus looking to publications because there is much more honesty/candor on Reddit than in a publication that may be a pay-to-play situation going on.

Try it today, and then let me know what you find!

P.S. Writing is thirsty work. Buy me a beverage! (Disclaimer: Funds may also go towards purchasing film for my cameras and the occasional breakfast burrito.) Thank you for supporting my work here!

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Being a French tire company, they are obviously beginning with Burgundy and Bordeaux (insert “shocked” expression here), but they will eventually expand these ratings globally. I am surprised it took them this long to insert their fingers into the wine pie, but before we get into that, we should do a quick summary of how one acquires this distinction.

What Even Are Michelin Grapes?

The new distinctions will rank producers based on five criteria:

Agronomy
Is the soil thriving, the vineyard balanced, the farming thoughtful? Basically, is the vineyard alive and well? (I think we can expect to see a lot of Regeneratively Farmed vineyards on this list in the future).

Technical Mastery
Are the winemaking choices intentional and rigorous? Do they reflect terroir and cultivars without flaws?

Identity
Does the wine know who it is and where it came from? Does the wine “express the personality, the sense of place, and the culture behind [it]?”

Balance
Are acidity, tannins, alcohol, oak, and sweetness playing nicely together?

Consistency
Is there consistency in quality across vintages, even accounting for vintage-to-vintage variations driven by weather and events? (I think this is where some producers, particularly in California, where wildfires are the new norm, will face the most challenges.)

Producers can earn 1, 2, or 3 “Grapes”, or they can be listed as “Michelin Selected”, similar to the 1, 2, and 3 Star system with non-starred distinctions like “Michelin Recommended” and “Bib Gourmand.” From the press release: ‘Selected’ listed wineries are "Dependable producers who have been chosen for regular review, producing well-made wines that deliver a quality experience.”

Like the Michelin Star system, the whole thing will be conducted by a team of trained inspectors, including former sommeliers, critics, winemakers, and production experts, who use a standardized global rubric.

I wonder whether they will add a distinction for wineries with hospitality programs at some point?

I Called This Last Year… Kinda.

Last year, I wrote about the idea of the Michelin Star Winery: a winery so exceptional in wine quality, hospitality, and experience that people talk about visiting it the way they talk about visiting bucket-list restaurants.

Now that Michelin Grapes exists, I’m really curious how it will be recieved by the general public.

On one hand, I think this is exactly the kind of bizarre evolution the wine world needs. Especially because the current rating systems mostly reach people who are already deep enough into wine to recognize all the names. We have lots of publications and wine reviewers out there (Jeb Dunnuck, Robert Parker, Vinous, etc) who have been grading wine on a 100 point scale for decades, but consumers really only know about them if they are at least part way through their wine journey, AND it’s only the individual wines and vintages that are being reviewed, not the producer itself.

Michelin is well known enough by folks who are maybe at the beginning of their wine journey that a Michelin Grape might hold more meaning for them. Michelin, which acquired the Wine Advocate—the publication founded by Robert Parker, who introduced the whole 100-point system in the first place—in 2019, openly admitted that “the Michelin brand is much more powerful” than the Wine Advocate.

On the other hand, though, I fear that newer consumers will view Michelin Grapes in the same way they view Michelin Stars: that the wine or restaurant is only for “special occasions.” An article topic I’ve had in my notes for a long time is how I feel like there’s this misconception that all Michelin Star restaurants are pretentious or intimidating when, in order to even get a Michelin Star, the restaurant needs to have impeccable hospitality and be welcoming.

I think there needs to be some work around this misconception lest people become further entrenched in the belief that wine is only for the “elite” (a misconception, sadly, that has long been perpetuated by the wine industry).

But I digress.

What People Are Saying

Before we go any further, we have to talk about the elephant in the room. Within about 24 hours of the announcement, the interwebs were all aflutter with concerns that Michelin Grapes could turn into a pay-to-play situation.

Shitty Wine Memes even posted a meme that pretty handily summed up the discourse:

Esther Mobley did an excellent job laying out why this skepticism exists in her SF Chronicle article, The Michelin Guide is coming for wine. Here’s what it means, which (as always) is worth a read. She points out something important: Michelin doesn’t make real money from its restaurant guide. The revenue comes from hotel commissions and government partnerships. These are the same kinds of partnerships regional wine associations have been known to fund. So naturally, people are wondering:
If regions want Michelin to show up and validate them and their top performers, who is really writing the check?

Mobley also notes that Michelin has been aggressively expanding into new territories, such as the U.S. and Vietnam, often with governmental support. That doesn’t necessarily mean the Grapes system is or will be pay-to-play… but I can certainly see why people are looking at it askance.

That said, Mobley makes another point I fully agree with: the criteria themselves aren’t ridiculous. In fact, they’re probably the most holistic set I’ve seen applied to winery evaluation, and maybe this makes me naive, but I actually think it could be a good thing.

What *I* Believe the Michelin Grapes Mean for Wineries

Whether we like it or not, consumers love simple frameworks. Bitches love a Top 10 List. It’s also why the aforementioned 100-point system has persisted for so long, much to the dismay of many wine professionals.

Wineries often resist this kind of clarity because nuance is part of “the craft.” But most consumers aren’t really shopping with nuance in mind, especially the newbs. They want something super easy to understand, hence why shelf-talkers that show wine scores and, again, those “10 Best [Insert Wine Variety Here]” lists get such traction. And this is why I think the Michelin Grapes might actually work.

As Esther Mobley pointed out in her SF Chronicle article, the three-grape scale is much easier for an average drinker to parse than the difference between a 93-point and 94-point wine. (Can anyone even pretend that difference is meaningful anymore?)

She also points out that this new guide evaluates producers, not individual wines:

“It’s trying to give a holistic sense of wineries… rather than a myopic view of a single wine from a particular vintage.”

That aligns far more closely with how “normal” non-wine industry folks experience wine. Most consumers just want to know if the winery they are buying from is dependable.

My point here is that Michelin Grapes are, at their core, a hopefully easy-to-understand shortcut for consumers to feel confident in what they are buying.

And if you zoom out a little, you can see exactly why Michelin is rolling this out the way they are. They are starting in Burgundy and Bordeaux because the guide needs success stories before it can expand globally, and those regions have the dual benefit of already having their shit dialed in and having global recognition. It’s the logical place to start.

This system will take years to reach the U.S., so it’s not something small producers need to panic about right away. If anything, it’s a great invitation to all of us to think about our long-term winemaking strategy, so when it does reach our neck of the woods, we can hopefully take advantage of it.

What the Wine World Can Learn From Michelin in the Short Term

My favorite thing about Michelin is that the whole thing started because two French dudes wanted to sell more tires. Helping people travel better was the means to an end for them.

That lesson still holds water: Solve real customer problems, and sales will follow.

The Michelin Grapes system may become the next universal wine benchmark, or it may not. Time will tell, and the wine world will absolutely argue about it regardless.

But the bigger opportunity here is for wineries to step back and ask some key questions:

• Are we making it easy for people to understand who we are and what we make?

• Are we building trust through consistency?

• Are we crafting meaningful, intentional hospitality experiences?

• Are we telling a clear story, not just about the product, but also the people behind it?

• Are we making a product we are proud to share?

If Michelin can build a global hospitality empire off a tire catalog, wineries can certainly rethink how clearly and confidently they communicate their values.

Liked this post? Here are more you might find interesting:

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Love, Peace, and Chicken Grease.

The shop was packed. It was so cool to see an entire community of people connecting over a joint passion: yarn.

My sister was very popular. She wore one of the sweaters she’d made, and no less than six people stopped her to compliment and ask her about it. While we were waiting in line, we asked the other patrons what projects they were working on, traded Ravelry patterns, and generally nerded out about all things yarn.

Afterwards, we wandered around Morro Bay, popping into vintage shops and thrift stores (agreeing that with vintage, you pay more for a curated selection and with thrift, you pay less but have to commit to the hunt).

The rest of the weekend, Sara and I spent talking about how great it was to be in community with like-minded people, with part of that discussion taking us into the territory of how cool it is to see “grandma hobbies” like knitting, sewing, and baking becoming the norm.

To me, it speaks to a general desire to step away from the digital world and reconnect with the things we make by hand. And after seeing the drop in engagement and reach across my clients’ social media this month, I’m starting to believe that this renewed interest in analog is directly tied to people's disillusionment with social media and AI.

People are spending less time online, and some studies have indicated that our mental health improves when we take breaks from social media. I think that a lot of people, in general, are shifting their time toward things that feel slower, quieter, and more grounded.

This trend is showing up everywhere: film photography was brought back from near extinction thanks to some of the younger generations wanting to slow down in their photography (myself included). Vinyl and cassette tapes, and even CDs, are becoming more popular again. Handwritten journals, pour-over coffee setups and matcha rituals, sourdough starters, physical recipe cards and books... Everything feels like it’s trending toward folks wanting to do things with more intention.

This connects to a conversation I had a few months ago about mindfulness in wine consumption, which also feels like part of this movement. Robert Joseph of the Substack, Wine Thinking, had argued that not everyone wants to think deeply about their wine, which I totally get. As I mentioned in my comment on his post, there are plenty of nights when I just want something cold and wet, not a whole philosophical experience with my wine. But even then, I still pause, because the wine I keep around even for the more “mindless” moments is still really fucking good.

Which brings me back to my point: You don’t have to be consciously mindful to notice when something was made with care. People are choosing slower and more intentional options in other parts of their lives. They’re buying 35mm cameras and learning to knit. They’re building whole ass rituals around their morning hot beverage. Even Taylor Swift is out here making sourdough.

So why do we assume then that people aren’t bringing that same energy to wine?

Folks want texture again. They want community and slower moments where their brains aren’t yanked around by five apps at once. For the love of god, they want to order their food from a physical menu, not a fucking QR code (but that’s a rant for another day)!!

Substack as a bridge between the analog and the digital

And I think this is why Substack feels like such a relief for me compared to social media. Yes, there’s totally a social media/algorithmically driven component to Substack, but I’ve found the vast majority of my new subscribers these days are coming from people sharing my posts with other folks.

Substack can be an incredible tool for wineries for exactly this reason.

Not to replace social media, but to create a slower, more thoughtful place to tell your story. There are people (including myself) who have created rituals around reading their Substack subscriptions once a week (or even daily). I even saw one person who prints out her favorite Substacks to read when she gets a chance!

Folks are literally treating Substack like they used to treat their newspaper: brewing up a hot beverage, sitting down at an actual table, and reading.

People are craving a more profound connection with the brands they care about, and I believe that Substack lends itself really well to that. It’s essentially a digital version of all these analog trends.

But what does a more offline, slower, and community-based version of wine marketing look like?

I have a few ideas:

• Crafty Events

  • Sip and Stitch evenings (my local yarn shop hosts these once a month, where we get together, drink wine or beer at a local spot, and work on our knitting/crocheting/cross-stitch projects together)

  • Baking or Cooking Classes (Buttonwood Winery has done this a handful of times with different chefs, and it’s always a hit)

  • Clay Working Afternoons (I took my dad to a Clay & Chardonnay event at Laetitia Winery a few years ago for Father’s Day, and he still talks about how much fun it was)

• Snail Mail

  • Postcards

  • Handwritten letters to wine club members

  • Holiday cards (like those silly ones you get from families)

• In short… Experiences

  • Seasonal maker markets

  • Photo walks through the vineyard with film cameras (or even just showing people how to take dope photos with their smartphones)

  • Book clubs or journaling nights (this could be a neat opportunity to partner with my friend Erin of Novel Pairings)

None of these ideas are meant to replace digital marketing; obviously, we’re still living very online. But they might help balance things a little. Plus, they tap into something that is very clearly resonating right now: the desire to do something with our hands, in a room with other people, without screens.

Liked this post? Here are more you might find interesting:

Support this publication:

The Wine Marketing Field Guide is brought to you by me, Heather Daenitz of Craft & Cluster! If you’d like to support the work I do here and help me continue bringing you weekly marketing tips, consider becoming a paid subscriber! Paid members get access to awesome perks like exclusive content as well as a free Instagram Profile Audit!

Become a Paid Subscriber

If you feel like you have enough subscriptions to be getting on with but you still want to support this little corner of the internet, you can always buy me a beverage—writing is thirsty work, after all!

Buy Me a Beverage

And, finally, if you’re allocating your funds towards other pursuits (respect), you can also support this publication by sharing it with someone you think would love it. We love word of mouth around here.

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Love, Peace, and Chicken Grease.

So much so that a lot of little things that can help whatever promotion you have going be successful can get missed. So today’s tips are a check-in to: 1. see how you’re hanging in there, and 2. go through a checklist to make sure you’re getting the most out of this big marketing push.

Also, I want to remind you that even if you are doing all of these things and your sales still aren’t where you hoped they would be, don’t beat yourself up too much.

There is *a lot* of noise around this time of year, and a lot of people are choosing to opt out of consumerism this year, for financial, personal, or political reasons. As a small winery, it’s hard to compete with the louder voices in every other industry but that doesn’t mean you can’t wiggle your way into people’s brains with repetition.

Hence today’s 5-minute tip:

Your 5-Minute Task: Make Your Sale Impossible to Miss

Pick one of these (or, if you’re feeling really wild, you can do all of them!):

1. Update your bio link on your profile to your Black Friday offer.

I recommend skipping the LinkTree if you can and instead linking directly to the sale. The fewer distractions and clicks your customer has to make, the better. You can go back to using the multiple links once the promotion is over.

If you DO choose to use a LinkTree or Instagram’s multiple-link feature, make sure it is the very first link on the list.

Bonus: If you pay for Meta Verification on Instagram (or have a paid LinkTree account), you can add photos to the links and make your primary link stand out:

2. Pin a post about your sale to the top of your Instagram grid.

Pin whatever post you’ve already made about your promotion so it’s easy to find. This is the easiest thing on this list to do, assuming you’ve already made the post! Just tap the three dots in the upper right-hand of the post (or long-press on the post from your Instagram grid) and select “Pin to main grid” from the menu.

3. Add your sale to your Instagram Story Highlights.

This helps people who don’t check stories in real time or even folks who are binging your content or searching for you. If you don’t already have a highlight created for your wine specials, just go to the plus sign on the upper right of your profile and select “Highlights” from the menu. Or if the Story is live, just tap the “… More” in the bottom right of your story and select “highlight” from the menu.

4. Make your homepage banner painfully clear.

If someone lands on your website today, they should immediately know:
—what the sale is
—how long it lasts
—what to click
—how to get the discount (if it’s not already applied at checkout)

5. Put your promotion on your homepage above the fold.

People don’t scroll as much as we wish they did. If there’s something you want them to buy today, put it at the top of your homepage (yes, literally replace your “Committed to Excellence” “Learn More” b.s.—which, by the way, is not a compelling headline, but that’s a topic for another day—with your primary call to action.)

Why this works

On Black Friday, people are overwhelmed and getting hit left and right with Black Friday deals. They want the path of least resistance, so your job today is to remove at least one friction point for them!

In this episode of the Wine Marketing Podcast, I sit down with Ed Feuchuk, who I believe is one of the boldest voices in modern wine marketing. With nearly 20 years of experience and a portfolio that includes the wildly creative Tank Garage Winery, Ed shares success through taking risks, being authentic (in a non-douchey way), and building a brand that actually connects with people.

We talk about how Tank built an engaged audience through TikTok during the pandemic and why they’ve committed to never making the same wine twice.

We also dig into what it’s like opening a new tasting room in Paso Robles, what most wineries get wrong when it comes to authenticity, and how the Direct to Consumer Wine Symposium is evolving to meet the real needs of today’s marketers.

This was such a fun episode to record with a lot of really interesting and inspiring takeaways.

About Our Guest: Ed Feuchuk of Farm Collective Napa Valley

Ed is a marketer and self-proclaimed mistake maker with nearly 20 years of experience building innovative DTC wine brands.

As the General Manager for Farm Collective Napa Valley, Ed has led creative, strategic, and technical initiatives for brands like Tank Garage Winery, James Cole Winery, Regusci Winery, and T-Vine Winery.

With a passion for authentic experiences and renegade marketing, Ed and his work have been featured in the San Francisco Chronicle, the New York Times, Wine Spectator, and Playboy!

Website: https://www.tankgaragewinery.com/

Instagram: @TankWinery

TikTok: @TankWinery

Connect with Ed on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edfeuchuk/

Don’t forget to get your tickets to the 2026 DTC Wine Symposium! Ed and I will both be there on various panels and would love to meet you!

Get Tickets

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And while the slow trickle of holiday promos has begun to take over our inboxes (seriously, why are we starting Black Friday in October now?), it has been rather quiet around these here parts. A little too quiet.

Now, as someone with ADHD, I can tell you: the worst thing you can do right now is sit down (metaphorically… or fuck it, literally, too). Because once you start doing The Sits™, you often lose all motivation to do The Moves™, so here are some ways I am taking my pent-up energy from this weird harvest, and putting it into something that Future Me (and my marketing strategy) will be very grateful for:

Recap the vintage (while it’s still fresh in your head)

Your brain might be ready to repress it already, but now is the perfect time to gather up all of your notes, photos, videos, and voice memos and do a cute little recap. Especially if you found that your followers enjoyed seeing the behind-the-scenes of how the vintage came together, a harvest or even entire vintage (from pruning to harvest) recap should land really well. Bitches love an end to the story. Explain why this vintage was special, unusual, or weird. Talk about any projects you are excited about from this vintage or about any challenges you faced. Even better if you can get your winemaker or someone else to be in a video, or provide some quotes for the caption.

Here’s a couple of examples:

Build out your content calendar for 2026.

I like to do this every December. I find that planning even a loose year-at-a-glance now while I still have the energy from harvest helps give me the clarity I need when things slow down. Here is an article I wrote last year that can help guide you on how to start making your plans for the coming year:

I’m also thinking about doing a live mini course/webinar where I can walk you through how I help my clients plan their marketing strategy for the year. Is this something you’d be interested in?

Map out offers for the slow season.

This goes hand-in-hand with the previous tip but, if you aren’t quite ready to deep dive into what your entire 2026 looks like, then at least start with Q1, which tends to be a lot slower than most of the rest of the year. What do you want people to do in January when wine sales naturally dip? Sign up for your email list? Join the club? Make “try new wines” their New Year's Resolution? Think about how to keep people connected and engaged with you in the off-season and plan your offers accordingly.

Batch your emails, blogs, or other long-form content.

You know all those ideas you had during harvest but you were too sticky and busy to do anything with? Now’s your window! Set aside an afternoon to knock out a few blog posts or emails. Bonus points if you plug them right into your calendar and schedule them out. I find that it’s easier to write a bunch of posts/emails in an hour than it is to write a single post/email in an hour. IDK, it has something to do with Newton’s First Law of Motion: Objects in motion, stay in motion (hence the danger of The Sits™).

Organize your photo library.

If you have a camera roll or a hard drive full of the photos and videos you captured over harvest, now’s the time to sort through them. Pick out the best shots, tag them by theme (people, cellar work, vineyard, grape variety, wine style, bottle shots, etc.), and create a little internal library you can pull from all year. You’ll thank yourself when it’s time to make your next post, and you don’t have to scroll back 4,000 photos to find the good one.

If you do one of these things a week before the end the year, you’ll be sitting pretty come January. Stay in motion. Don’t let The Sits™ win.

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Love, Peace, and Chicken Grease.