Register Here.

Ecommerce leaders from Domaine Chandon and Newton Vineyard will expand on the discussion started in this Spotlight Article about their recent digital transformation projects and how their online ecommerce and subscription programs, delivered by Salesforce and OSF Digital, helped them to not just survive the first half of 2020 but to thrive. 

Join this online roundtable discussion to learn and discuss:

• Recent industry and retail trends. What is the new normal?
• Opening new revenue channels online. 
• Real ecommerce and online subscription use cases. 

Join our hosts OSF Digital and Salesforce for this highly interactive online event where you will participate in a lively discussion about the latest retail statistics and selling online in 2020 and beyond.

Panel

Damien Caroli, Senior Information Technology Manager, Domaine ChandonAlex Evans, DTC Digital Experience Manager, Domaine ChandonMario Dussurget, Senior Manager Customer Experience, Newton VineyardDan Shim, Senior Director, Industries at Salesforce

+ GOOGLE CALENDAR+ ICAL EXPORT

Pix is changing the way e-commerce works for wineries by helping shoppers find the right wine, not just the cheapest.

Join Joe Fattorini, Trade Managing Director, Media Personality, and Wine Expert as he explains how the Pix team draws on decades of wine trade experience to provide free analytics and the latest insights so you can find better ways to market and sell your wines online.

Join us and register for this free webinar today.

Webinar Host:

Joe Fattorini
Trade Managing Director / Pix

Register Now!

The Oregon Wine Symposium is the Northwest wine industry’s premier educational event and trade show. The 2022 Oregon Wine Symposium educational content will be held on the event platform Swapcard. As an attendee, you will be able to network with other attendees, access all session content, and learn about our sponsors and exhibitors. 

Click Here to Register

Journey from trellis to table as you reunite with your Texas winery and grape growing community in Denton, February 17–19.

Experience stellar educational sessions, unique food and wine events, plus the chance to reconnect with your wine and grape family and grow your business at the 2022 TWGGA Annual Conference & Trade Show with this year’s brand-new, inclusive registration packages.

Click Here to Register

The Oregon Wine Symposium LIVE is the Northwest wine industry’s premier event.

Get real insights on how to apply new tech and solutions in your business. How to adopt and transform and grow for tomorrow.

15 Speakers, 12 Keynotes, 4 Panels Sessions will challenge you the future and what you are doing right now.

Anyone curious about the future of the drinks industry, or looking for new and better solutions for their business from all 3 tiers of the drinks industry is invited to attend the show.

If you have a solution that will help your customer grow revenue, save money, be more efficient or a solution that the drinks industry needs to know, then you should exhibit.

Click Here to Register

2022 East Meets West 

Judging:
February 8 - 9th
*early bird savings ends Jan. 25th!

Entry Deadline – Jan. 31st
Wine Shipments due – Jan. 31st

Two Competitions in One!

We have combined two of our oldest and most established brands into the International East Meets West Wine Challenge: to see exactly where East Meets West.

Wines will simultaneously be judged in two divisions: International Eastern Wine Competition and the West Coast Wine Competition. Traditional awards will be given in each division.

Best of Show winners will move on to compete in the East Meets West Taste Off to see which wine reigns overall. This affords your wine two chances to win!

And the Riesling Championship continues. Rieslings will be judged in both competitions to award a best Eastern Riesling and a best Western Riesling.

The challenge is on!  It’s time to see where East Meets West.

*Click here for more details! 

This challenge rates wines exclusively produced and bottled in select California North Coast AVAs including Lake, Mendocino, Napa, Sonoma, and Marin and Solano County. Any bottled wine labeled with the above AVAs as their main source of grapes and whose winery is in California, is eligible for entry.

Judging: April 5th & 6th, 2022

Entry Deadline: March 28th, 2022

Click here for more info! 

Judging:

May 3-4th,  2022

Deadline for Entries and Delivery:

 April 25th, 2022

*Click here for more info! 

Judging:

May 10 – 11, 2022
*Early bird ends April 27th

Deadline to enter:

May 2nd, 2022

So, who does the nightly wine shopping in your home…him or her?

You may find it interesting that most of the wine consumed at home is primarily purchased by women.  But as a winemaker, how do you know which wine she will prefer?

One way is to enter your wine in the International Women’s Wine Competition, judged entirely by wine industry professional women.  Its mission?  To uniquely identify specific wines that women will enjoy and ultimately purchase.

Why produce a women’s wine competition?  Event founder and president, Debra Del Fiorentino says, “This competition’s niche appeal certainly gives women their own ‘voice’, when selecting a wine.  The judges recognize not only the best wines submitted, but also the wines they feel would appeal most to women wine buyers and consumers. And even though a special nod goes to the best woman winemaker, it’s important to know that this competition is open to all winemakers, male and female alike.”

Click here for more details! 

Formerly Vintage Paso: Zinfandel Weekend, Spring Release Weekend is a three-day celebration of the next vintage when wineries release their new wines. Taste the new releases at an outdoor walk-around tasting in the historic Downtown City Park and enjoy wineries’ individual events like barbecues, vineyard tours, winemaker dinners, and more. There are two ticketed events in Spring Release Weekend – The New Release Seminar, which is a seated tasting showcasing six brands’ newly released wines. A winemaker panel discusses the vintage and how it’s reflected in the bottle. Following the seated tasting is a walk-around tasting featuring 40 wineries all sharing tastes of their spring release wines. Both events take place on Friday, March 18. The seminar is 2 – 3:30 p.m. and the walk-around tasting is 7 – 9 p.m. Paso Wine Spring Release Weekend tickets are now on sale at pasowine.com 

The only Paso Wine event dedicated to blends, BlendFest on the Coast celebrates wines of nuance and character derived from the sum of their parts. Experience a taste of Paso Robles Wine Country adjacent to the Pacific Ocean. BlendFest on the Coast will take place February 24 – 27 in San Simeon and Cambria with a selection of exciting events including various excursions that pair wineries with coastal experiences, a blending seminar, as well as winemaker dinners. The marquee event takes place on the Sundance Lawn at the Oceanpoint Ranch in Cambria with more than 40 wineries pouring on Saturday, February 26 from 12 – 4 p.m. Partners include Highway One Discovery Route, Visit Cambria, and Visit San Simeon. Go to pasowine.com for more information and to purchase tickets.

Early announcements about B.E.V.NY for 2022 stated that the conference would be live on March 29 and virtual for March 30 and 31. However, organizers of the conference recently announced that, based on participant feedback, the annual conference will be fully virtual. 

Each day will have sessions on business, enology and viticulture topics. While details on speakers and their topics are currently not available, the conference will include speakers from Cornell’s Extension Enology Lab, the Finger Lakes Grape Program, the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, and the New York Wine & Grape Foundation. Last year’s program included virtual speakers from Germany, England, California, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Texas, and this year’s program will most likely include talks from a number of places outside of New York.

Save the dates!

Click here for more info

This virtual auction will feature up to 25 lots of specially curated items from Paso Robles Wine Country. All lots will be one-of-a-kind that will not be available for retail purchase, which will include special verticals from winery libraries, dinners with multiple brands, overnight stays in exclusive accommodations, and exceptional tours created just for this auction. Visit pasowine.com in April 2022 ahead of the auction start to view the lots as they become listed and to register to bid.

Winemaking & Production Focused Event May 11, 2022 in Sonoma County, CA

(WIN) and Vinidea are pleased to announce that Enoforum USA will be held May 11, 2022 in Santa Rosa, CA at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds.

ENOFORUM, the largest winemaking & production focused technical wine industry event in Europe, takes place every other year, and is the only event that gathers together producers, technicians, oenologists, agronomists, researchers, and technology suppliers, to stimulate the creation and development of innovation in the wine sector.

Each event attracts over 1,200 attendees in Italy, 500 in Spain, and 450 in Portugal—from all sectors of the wine industry. The 2021 virtual Enorforum USA, launched with partnership between VINIDEA and WIN broadcasted to more than 1,000 attendees. And since that time, sessions have been re-broadcasted to thousands more.

For companies interested in participating, please visit https://enoforumusa.com/pages/exhibitors/ or contact info@enoforumusa.com.

Registration is now open. Register here: https://enoforumusa.com/

About Wine Industry Network (WIN):

Wine Industry Network is THE business resource for the North American Wine Industry sharing news and information, supplying products and service resources, and providing education & industry networking opportunities.

About Vinidea: 

Vinidea specializes in the transfer of innovation to the wine sector. We facilitate the exchange of information between the worlds of research and production, and encourage interaction across the global wine-producing regions, through an ever-expanding network of international contacts.

Harvest doesn’t take place over one weekend, so why should a celebration of harvest? The entire month of October is now Harvest Wine Month. Wineries will create individual events throughout the tenth month and the Paso Robles Wine Country Alliance will have every event listed on pasowine.com. Look for specialty tours, winemaker dinners, grape stomps, music events, and more. This expanded promotion gives wineries the flexibility to host events when its easiest on them during a time when production is at its height. It also takes advantage of October’s exceptional weather when days are warm and nights are cool, a staple for Paso Robles Wine Country.

For all ticket information, please visit pasowine.com.

Click here for more info

Dr. Laura Catena, a fourth-generation Argentine vintner, medical doctor and graduate of Stanford Medical School, will navigate the complex relationship between wine consumption and health in our next Pro Virtual Event, Monday, September 30, at Noon Central on Zoom.

Dr. Catena is the Managing Director of Bodega Catena Zapata and Luca Winery. During the past
25 years, she has been a practicing part-time physician of Emergency Medicine in San Francisco.

Her discussion will cover the pending update of the US dietary guidelines for alcohol against the backdrop of a recent WHO statement that 'no amount of alcohol is safe.’ 

Drawing on her extensive background in both medicine and winemaking, Dr. Catena will critically examine the WHO's claim, emphasizing the importance of moderation and the cultural aspects of wine drinking. 

Join us for this nuanced, research-based exploration of alcohol's effects on health which advocates for informed individual decision-making and responsible drinking practices, including wine in moderation within the context of a healthy diet and lifestyle.

Register here.

WAVE is the Washington wine industry’s signature research seminar/webinar and stands for Washington Advancements in Viticulture and Enology. WAVEx seminars/webinars feature research in a condensed format. 

This webinar highlights the latest findings of a smoke exposure research project supported by the Washington wine industry and led by Dr. Tom Collins, assistant professor at Washington State University’s Viticulture and Enology Department.

Register here.

In the weeks leading up to the Unified Wine & Grape Symposium, friends asked me if I were going. For my business, I wanted to go for up-to-date industry information. As a newly minted wine grape grower, having just sold my first commercial harvest in the fall of 2015, and as a seasoned home winemaker, I also wanted to go as a learning expedition, but I was concerned about what Unified could offer me personally. I decided that I would go to acquire knowledge for my main business, and hope that for my own grower interests, some vendors would speak with me if I said I only had 1000 vines.

As a micro-grower, I have different challenges than the big guys. I have no big orders to place (and no economies of scale, I fear!), so I don’t constitute a goodly chunk of revenue for whomever will do business with me. Sometimes I take leftovers if a large vineyard has ordered too much of something. Sometimes I split the expense of a pricey item with another small grower neighbor. Often I need to borrow something from grower-friends with bigger operations. Who knew a 5-foot weed-shearing implement (curtesy of Pourroy Vineyards) that cuts off weeds an inch below the surface, pulled by my 32-hp John Deere, could make such a difference in weed mitigation? Wow!

Setting out I felt uncertain of what I might find in the vendor section. My self-imposed task was simple; find out who was there of interest to a small grower, and if those vendors would give me the time of day.

Near the door I entered was the Gripple vendor, who seemed very friendly. He took the time to explain his product to me with a product demonstration (I like that you can back off the gripple down the wire with the little tool…handy if you mess up a bit on placement!), and told me where I could get them. Gripples are indispensable little devices which link one trellising wire around the other side of the post and to the other trellis wire. They can be tightened yearly if wires sag. Developed in the 80’s, this little beauty replaced the tedious, oft-poor job of binding to ends of a wire together tightly enough that the tension of a whole row of grapes wouldn’t pull it out.

After gripples I had to hunt a bit, but then I found a French product company who makes decomposing ties for the vineyard. They are a pleasant, unobtrusive tan color (also in green). How awesome. The company is called Exbanor from Lisieux, France, with a sales rep out of Pennsylvania. Since I hate looking at green plastic tape in the winter when all the leaves are gone, and then there is the cutting it off and picking it up at various stages of the vine’s growth and stability, I jumped on this stuff. Their representative, Michael Schmidt, was pleasant, demonstrating the plier tool for me with the tape. I don’t need the tool for my little plot, but fortunately they were selling the tape right there, so I bought a roll for $17.

Then I talked to the people at Irrometer, who make soil moisture indicators. They explained how to set the stand-alone indicators at the correct depth for either vines, or my fruit trees, which was useful information. Even my small vineyard has a few soil differences between the low and high areas and clay patch, so that could be very useful.

Also in that same arena were Spectrum Technologies, Inc, who make complete sensor station systems measuring moisture, temperature, solar light, wind speed, pressure, etc. that hook into the web via satellite. They are geared towards mildew & pest reduction, and seemed mostly for larger vineyards. However, they did show me a stand-alone unit for small vineyards, which was intriguing, and Bridget, whom I spoke with, even followed up with me by email, which I considered highly professional.

Probably other small vineyard owners are also home winemakers, and my winemaker and consultant side interest was piqued by the friendly ReCoop Barrels people, out of Sebastopol, CA. Not only do they re-coop (shaved and re-toasted as well, of course) used barrels for large wineries, they sell re-cooped barrels at a reasonable price. With the price of a new (full-sized) French oak barrel approaching $1000, many large wineries essentially “rent” barrels from the cooperages. Small family wineries (or home winemakers!) that can’t afford new French oak may find this a reasonable alternative.

Nearby was Oak Infusion Spiral, offering oak spirals in a great size for the five-gallon glass carboys that we homebrew folks (and professionals alike) often need but seem hard to find. Out of Minnesota, they had great choices and gave tips on length of use, which Len Napolitano, sales manager, discussed with me. One of the only vendors giving away something useful (no more candy bars, please!), I appreciated their willingness to chat with me, offering up a sample and catalogue.

I skipped any financial services booths, and probably missed some vendors even though I felt I was being methodical. But all in all, I was pleased to find that after all, there was something for the small farmer at Unified.

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