Over the past few years, wineries have seen tasting room visits decline as consumer habits shift. With more options than ever, visitors are looking for something special—experiences that go beyond just sampling wine. For many wineries, this means rethinking how they engage guests and creating a place people want to come back to. This guide explores how wineries across the country are turning their tasting rooms into destinations—balancing local charm, modern convenience, and genuine hospitality. Create Unique, Social Experiences In today’s market, wineries that stand out provide more than just a tasting—they create memorable, shareable experiences that make guests want to stay longer and come back. Enhancing the Atmosphere with Music: Music adds energy and can make an ordinary tasting feel like an event. Hosting live music, whether it’s a local band or acoustic performer, brings people together and keeps them engaged. Many wineries schedule music on weeke

Introduction: From Search to Suggestion Wine consumers aren’t just Googling anymore — they’re asking AI assistants like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, and Grok where to go, what to drink, and who to trust. If your winery’s online presence isn’t optimized for these new tools, you’re already behind. That’s where AIO (Artificial Intelligence Optimization) comes in. This guide is a step-by-step roadmap to get your winery ready to be recommended in AI-driven results, and how Corksy Insights can help. What is AIO, and Why Should Wineries Care? AIO (Artificial Intelligence Optimization) is about making your winery's online presence easy for AI agents to understand, trust, and recommend. Unlike traditional SEO, AIO focuses on the signals that AI tools use to generate answers, not just search results. Local SEO vs Local AIO at a Glance: Local SEO Local AIO Goal Rank on Google/Search engines Be recommended by AI assistants Tools Google Busi

Summer winery marketing strategies are essential for staying competitive during travel season and warmer weather. As customer habits shift and traditional foot traffic slows, wineries must find new ways to stand out. The good news? With the right mix of creativity, personalization, and tech-driven tools, summer can be one of your most profitable seasons yet. Here are five innovative, customer-centric strategies to help your winery sell more and build deeper relationships this summer. 1. Rethink Summer Shipping: Flexibility Is the New Fast Wine and heat don’t mix. But neither do frustrated customers nor surprise shipping delays. In 2025, the most successful wineries are leaning into flexibility, clear communication, and smarter logistics to keep orders flowing and customers happy. 🔄 Give Customers Control Let your customers decide when and how they receive their wine. Integrate tools that allow post-purchase adjustments, like scheduling a fall delivery or choosing a local picku

The wine industry is made stronger with collaboration, and we love seeing how winery associations – both formal and informal - support each other to create wins for everyone. From a collection of Oregon's Yamhill-Carlton AVA members referring business to each other to Sonoma Valley’s family-owned Little Vineyards sending tasters deeper into their community, we're designing custom HipMaps that showcase how winery partnerships can elevate the entire visitor experience. A True Community Effort When groups of wineries use HipMaps to refer business to each other, each participating winery displays their custom branded and styled HipMap prominently in their tasting room, making it very easy for guests to discover other wineries to visit. Visitors simply scan the QR code on the map, download our user-friendly app, and enter an access code specific to that map. Then… Our Interactive App Makes This Map Experience Special When guests open the HipMaps app they see their

If this was easy, everyone would do it. Setting expectations is difficult. After all, we all want perfection and success, so isn’t it just positive thinking to predict that your campaigns will be victorious? That’s what “The Secret” tells us, anyway. But while it can’t hurt to take a stab at manifesting abundance and contemplating gratitude, you are likely using more concrete values, such as benchmarks and previous performance, to project the results of your marketing campaigns to your management. We submit additional data points to anticipate reasonable responses to your marketing campaigns. These data points are: What environment exists around this campaign? What workload can I reasonably handle successfully? What does my management consider, including the cost of goods sold? Let’s break each of these down and include some real-life winery examples.* CONTEXT – WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR ME LATELY? Many marketing decisions are best made with

It’s the same conversation in boardrooms, discussion boards, symposiums, and industry reports: “Younger consumers just aren’t drinking wine like previous generations.” Sure, the concern is valid. But the narrative misses key nuances. The reality is that younger consumers are still just that—young. Their drinking habits, lifestyle priorities, and financial realities don’t yet match those of past generations at the same life stage. But instead of writing off Gen Z or younger Millennials, the wine industry needs to adjust its approach. The traditional playbook doesn’t account for how younger consumers live, what they value, or how they engage with brands. If wineries want to stay relevant, it’s time to rewrite the script. 1. Younger Consumers Will Age Into Wine—Just Like Boomers Did A common misstep in the industry’s current panic is comparing a 23-year-old Gen Zer to a 45-year-old Gen Xer. The latter has had decades to develop

Over the past few years, wineries have seen tasting room visits decline as consumer habits shift. With more options than ever, visitors are looking for something special—experiences that go beyond just sampling wine. For many wineries, this means rethinking how they engage guests and creating a place people want to come back to. This guide dives into fresh ideas to help your winery stand out, turning it into a destination where visitors feel welcome, excited, and connected to what you offer. Create Unique, Social Experiences In today’s market, wineries that stand out provide more than just a tasting—they create memorable, shareable experiences that make guests want to stay longer and come back. Enhancing the Atmosphere with Music: Music adds energy and can make an ordinary tasting feel like an event. Hosting live music, whether it’s a local band or acoustic performer, brings people together and keeps them engaged. Many wineries schedule music on weekends to attr

The 2024 Sustainable Ag Expo is set to take place from November 11-13, 2024. This year’s event promises an unparalleled educational experience, offering over 20 continuing education hours through both online and in-person programs. Attendees will have the opportunity to delve into the latest innovations and research in pest management strategies, automation and mechanization, soil health, and more. The Expo boasts an impressive lineup of speakers from prestigious institutions such as UC Davis, Oregon State University, Cal Poly, and UC Berkeley. These experts will present cutting-edge findings and practices that are shaping the future of sustainable agriculture.   Take a Sneak Peak: Monday, November 11, 5:00-6:00 pm Speaker: Fritz Westover, Westover Viticulture Dormant Grapevine Pruning & Vine Training: Are we Slowly Killing our Vines?: Hear from our Expo Headliner about the impact of pruning and training on vine health, the extent of problems caused by diseases versus w

Can you believe it’s March? Soon rain will abate, buds will break, and Q2 will be here before we know it along with, hopefully, tourists. This blog starts by summarizing a recent Forbes study about travel plans this year, and then we wrap up with a summary of some trends we think you can build upon this year. Will the political climate once again hijack all of America’s attention and make people wary of venturing out? Or will it be more likely to scare us to other countries for a respite abroad? If tasting room traffic is down this year as it was last year, it is even more important to know what consumers are looking for in the hopes of developing programs consumers want. The smart winery will be continually testing different experiences this year to try and attract the right customer to their brand. This blog starts summarizing a recent Forbes study about travel plans this year, and then we wrap up with a summary of some of the trends we think you can build upon this year

FAMILY FRENZY IN WINE COUNTRY: THE CASE FOR KIDS AND CANINES Let’s kick things off with a dose of reality. We’ve all been there: it’s a bustling Saturday morning in July, you’re bracing for a packed day at the Tasting Room, and Murphy’s Law is in full effect. Two of your staff are out sick; another is off serving the crowd at an art and wine festival downtown. You unlock the door at 10:01 AM, only to be greeted by a frazzled family of five: mom, dad, and three rambunctious kiddos. The younger two are reenacting a wild-west shootout with gravel as ammo, while the third is glued to an iPad, deep in the latest YouTube Kids saga. Mom and Dad look like they’ve just survived a hurricane, and you have a “high-roller” group arriving in fifteen minutes. And then comes the kicker: “Can we bring in our German Shepherd?” You contemplate if it’s too late to call in sick. INCLUSIVE IS THE NEW BLACK If you have yet to hear, exclusive