Meta Ads, Miracle Results If your holiday Meta ads felt like lighting money on fire in a festive candle, that’s not because social is dead. It’s because your targeting and flighting were built for wishful thinking, not gifting intent. The fix isn’t magic. It’s method. You can absolutely turn Meta into a gift-selling machine between Thanksgiving and New Year—if you understand what actually drives intent and how to spend wisely when every other brand on earth is screaming for attention. What follows is a ruthless, winery-specific playbook for the six-week window between Thanksgiving and New Year that prioritizes intent, protects margin, and leans on real benchmarks instead of folklore. First, reality: volume is there, but it clusters Holiday ecommerce keeps breaking records, with online spend hitting roughly $241.4B from Nov 1 to Dec 31 and mobile responsible for the majority of transactions. (Adobe Newsroom) Translation: your customers are buying on their

San Jose, CA — October 29, 2025 — Liberation Distribution (LibDib), the leading web-based wholesale alcohol distributor, today announced the availability of Alana-Tokaj’s acclaimed portfolio of Tokaji wines in California, Washington, D.C., Florida, and Pennsylvania, with New York coming online soon. Among the releases is the 2013 Essencia, recently awarded 99 points by Wine Enthusiast—the highest-scoring Tokaji of 2025. Only 60 bottles were imported to the United States, making this a rare opportunity for fine-wine Buyers and collectors. “Akin to drinking silk, this is next-level Tokaji,” wrote Wine Enthusiast’s Emily Saladino. “Ripe pineapple, caramel, clementine, and juicy mango flavors marry delicate bergamot on the palate. The seemingly endless finish manages to be simultaneously sweet, tart, and intoxicatingly rich.”  Library vintages from 2006 and 2007 are also available now on LibDib,

Choosing Wine is an Emotional Decision Red, white, or sparkling – when reaching for a bottle on the wine shelf, it’s not just about the grape, origin or vintage. The chosen wine stands out from the crowd and makes an impression visually and to the touch. Labels make all the difference. They highlight the quality of the fine drop, tell stories, and reflect character. On just a few square centimetres, they give a brand a distinctive face in a world of standard bottles. Whether and how this is perceived can significantly influence the product’s success. If the packaging doesn’t appeal, even the best wine inside won’t help. First Impressions Count Let’s be honest. First: the initial impression – the “moment of truth” – is crucial. Second: even well-known brands need to prove themselves on the shelf. Third: the traditional wet-glue label is no longer the benchmark. Pressure Sensitive Labels (PSL) demonstrate that an attractive app

A new standard for boutique luxury is emerging in Napa Valley with The Elene, an extraordinary retreat concept by Mosaic Hotel Collection, known for its distinctive, inspired local experiences. Nordby Construction is honored to lead the endeavor of bringing this remarkable vision to life with uncompromising craftsmanship and detail. Situated on 3.5 acres within the Napa Valley Agricultural Preserve, this 50-room resort, including four expansive suites. The resort layout seamlessly blends indoor and outdoor spaces to embrace the region’s natural beauty, balancing contemporary elegance with relaxed charm. Guests will enjoy a fine-dining restaurant, an all-day café, a heated pool, and a cycling program with a bike barn. From the start, The Elene was conceived as a bespoke retreat, reflecting the sophistication of Napa’s wine country while integrating advanced sustainability practices. With this in mind, the project required a construction partner well-versed in comple

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

The wine industry is in uncharted territory, but analysts' opinions of its current state vary. If the analyst views were music, they would range from Bob Marley's, 'Every Little Thing's gonna be Alright,' to Led Zeppelin's, 'When the Levee Breaks, I'll Have no Place to Stay.' Who are you going to believe? While instinct has a place, facts matter, and there are too many supporting facts to think everything is just fine. Finding the good news in the information has become challenging. It's not all bad. Some wineries continue to perform well, even though they are experiencing the same headwinds as your winery. Why is that? How will you respond to the headwinds? Where are there opportunities? SVB has been dissecting the wine business and offering the industry and regions fact-based guidance for nearly 30 years. The NY Times calls the SVB report "probably the most influential analysis of its kind." What do we owe that to?

Afternoon Brief, September 5th

Georgian Wine Producers Lose Up to 100% of Their Vines in Storms Affecting 4,600HA: On the evening of September 2, hailstorms of unprecedented ferocity tore through the Georgia’s largest wine region, Kakheti, where around 80% of the country’s wines are produced...

WISE attends a lot of trade shows and conferences. Not only is it a way for us to connect with WISE wineries, it offers us a chance to hear trends and themes across multiple regions. This gives us a 30,000 foot view of the wine industry in the US. Here are a few of our top take aways from this year’s events. 1. Demographics are shifting, so let’s have a plan for each segment. Boomers (born 1946-1964) are not completely written off yet, they have a long off ramp. How can we keep them engaged as they progress into the next phase? Retirement, health changes, and lifestyle changes are impacting behaviors, such as purchasing and even consumption patterns, but they are still big spenders. Can we offer customized clubs based on their changing needs? Don’t forget about Gen X (born 1965-1980). They may be new empty nesters, and finally they can spend time doing what they want to do – let it be at your winery! Millennials (born 1981-1996), as a plethora of research show

There is a perfect storm brewing. It is time to batten down the hatches! A recurring theme is coming up in recent WISE conversations all over the country. From our friends in the New York Finger Lakes to wineries in Texas Hill Country, from Woodinville, WA to Temecula, CA we are hearing that traffic is down. We can also back up the data with Community Benchmark. Traffic is down EVERYWHERE. And it is no wonder. Looking at Facebook feeds and Instagram stories, friends and family are traveling out of the country. With the dollar now on par with the Euro, continental travel is finally a decent price, if not an outright bargain. Couple that with pent up demand, airlines cancelling domestic flights, and high gas prices, it is no wonder domestic guest counts are down coast to coast.  These issues are all mostly macro issues and beyond our control. While we can’t help inflation and the associated costs, we should be thinking about what we can control. First, concentrate on our