This was the first year that World of Pinot Noir did not host their weekend-long grand tasting, and while I don’t lament the loss of the grand tasting itself (see my thoughts on this in my article “Why Niche Wine Festivals Are the Future of the Wine Industry”), the one thing I did miss was the very unofficial after-party at the Ritz-Carlton Bacara’s ‘O’ Bar.
WOPN was an excellent way for me to network, find new potential clients, and remind previous clients that I exist; but I always found way more opportunities to connect with people at the hotel bar after the event officially wrapped. The winemakers and staff who had been pouring all day gathered for cocktails and Modelos to decompress, and the customers who were staying at the hotel or were in the know enough could find themselves in cahoots with some very interesting people.
I’ve been told by more than one winemaker that they ended up getting more VIP-type customers just by getting a beverage at the end of the night in the ‘O’ Bar than during the event itself. I’ve thought a lot about why this keeps happening, and I have a theory.
During the official event, everyone is “on”; the winemaker performs “enthusiasm!” and guests do the furrowed-brow nodding along, pretending they can actually hear what the winemaker is saying through the din of the ballroom. By the time everyone ends up at the ‘O’ Bar, people let their masks drop and their hair down (literally and figuratively). All they really care about is relaxing their face muscles and getting something cold, wet, and alcoholic into their hands. And I think that exhaustion does a lot of the work for us. It helps us strip away the pretense, which, try as we might, we in the wine industry have a hard time getting away from when customers are around.
Everyone at these types of events is trying SO hard to get guests to remember their winery (a tough ask when there’re 100+ wineries vying for guests’ attention), but at the bar, nobody’s selling anything, and that’s when your winery becomes so much more memorable. If I wasn’t the type of person who takes notes at events so I can write about them later, I couldn’t tell you shit about the wines I drink at grand tastings. After a while, they all start melding into an indistinct blob. BUT I can tell you about the wineries I followed up with afterward because I was sharing chips and guac with their winemaker, talking about nothing in particular.
In short, the ‘O’ Bar during event weekends like WOPN and the Santa Barbara Wine Auction becomes a more effective “third place” than usual.
So what does this mean if you’re planning or attending an event?
Now, at the risk of being accused of manufacturing authentic moments (god, marketers really do ruin everything), if you’re a winery pouring at an event like this in the future, don’t disappear the second the official hours end. I know you’ve been on your feet all day, and you’re tired, blah blah blah, but if there’s an informal gathering afterward, even for 30 minutes, please show up to it. That’s very possibly where a really good opportunity that will make the whole weekend worth it is waiting for you.
Also, if you’re organizing an event at your winery, don’t rush to kick people out when your event is over. One of my clients took a couple of the stragglers into the barrel room at the end of one of their dinners and gave them a sneak preview of a new wine they were making, and wouldn’t you know it, when that wine was eventually released, those guests were among the first to purchase. I’ve also seen guests seated near each other at events make plans to grab drinks afterward, then show up together at a tasting years later. Connections are forged during unscripted moments like that.
And if I can digress ever so slightly, if you are capturing content for your winery to use for a social media recap, stick around a bit later, too. As a photographer, I love hanging around and documenting the aftermath of an event just as much as the event itself. I think the lipstick on the rim of glasses and wine dripping down a bottle label can communicate what happened in a room far more effectively than super-polished photos of people at the beginning of the evening. “These wine glasses are empty; fun must have been had.”
The TL;DR
WOPN moving away from the big, grand tasting format acknowledges that the official programming was never where the real community-building happened anyway. If the wine industry wants to get more intentional about building community (and I think we’re getting there), maybe the move isn’t to plan more events. Maybe it’s to leave space for unplanned gatherings to happen during the events we are already throwing. Food for thought.
