Combating declining consumption and tasting room visits is the current pressing priority for small and medium-sized wineries whose primary source of revenue has been direct-to-consumer (DtC) sales. Waiting for the situation to change is no longer an option. Instead, wineries are turning to their existing customers to maximize short-term revenue and draw in new customers to rebuild their base.  This task can seem daunting, but wineries with the vinSUITE integrated DtC software platform have a powerful new tool at hand. The recently released vinSIGHT transforms the sales data automatically collected by vinSUITE into actionable insights. This new predictive analytical platform analyzes the winery’s historical customer behavior patterns and predicts wine club churn with up to 94% confidence, enabling wineries to prevent revenue loss before members cancel. Jimmy Wu, vinSUITE’s President, explains: “By the time wine club churn shows up in standard reports, that revenue is already l

Two years ago, I wrote an article on AI in the vineyard for WBM. Feel free to read that article here…if you want. Otherwise, my basic argument was that although AI will eventually play a role in how we farm grapes, it’s a long way off compared to other industries and even other crops. We who grow grapes are the last ones to see such innovation. And since then, AI has grown exponentially. If two years ago you were playing around with Chat GPT to create bizarrely distorted images and learn about tax loopholes, you can now go onto the likes of Claude and have it just create a website for you from a single prompt. Chatbots like this have essentially eliminated the need for entry-level coders. However Claude is a computer, so it makes sense that it’s gotten very good at writing code for other computers. Similarly Chat GPT has digested the entire internet, and curates any answer for you by plucking it from its vast network of information. Sometimes its correct, and other t

A few years ago at the DTC Wine Symposium, a panelist joked about the modern winery website formula: the guy, the dog, the truck, and the vineyard. Beautiful backdrop, strong lifestyle photography, a thoughtful founder story. Polished, absolutely. Strategically distinct, rarely. The critique wasn’t about branding. It was about structure. Most winery websites aren’t broken, but they aren’t built as decision environments either. Calls to action are unclear, revenue pathways are buried, shipping surprises appear late, and wine club often lives in isolation instead of throughout the buying journey. After auditing winery sites across regions and production sizes, the pattern is consistent: performance is constrained by friction, not effort. Most wineries don’t have a traffic problem. They have a conversion architecture problem. Before increasing ad spend or launching another promotion, run a winery website audit — on your phone. Start at the homepage and move t

Since its launch in 2022, ChatGPT has swept into our lives like a whirlwind romance. It’s the new Google for our age. Don’t know what to cook for dinner? ChatGPT it. Need to finally draft that pesky email? ChatGPT it. In fact, some people are literally dating the chatbot. CBS Saturday Morning recently reported on Chris Smith, a man who claims to have fallen in love with ChatGPT. He’s even proposed. She said yes. It’s a heartwarming tale that forebodes the end of human civilization as we know it. Of course, the insatiable demand to have all our questions answered and our heart’s deepest desire fulfilled at the push of a button comes with ripple effects—not only for our souls, but our wallets. The AI boom has unleashed a construction spree of energy-hungry data centers to support the tech’s exploding use, requiring utility companies to upgrade their infrastructure, which is then passed on to the average consumer in the form of electricity bills

Design Your Own Custom AI Concierge for FREE Affordable pricing starts @ $69/mo Websites, not tasting rooms, are the first point of contact for most consumer journeys.  Still, too many merchants greet website visitors with pretty pictures and pushy pleas to share personal contact info before they’re welcomed with any semblance of hospitality. That’s why VinterActive created an AI Winery Concierge -- a multi-channel chatbot -- trained in the art and science of delivering attentive, personalized customer service 24/7. Why Add an Affordable AI Concierge to Your Team? KEY BUSINESS BENEFITS KEY MARKETING FEATURES Helps guests 24/7  Boosts wine sales Saves time & money Drives engagement Improves customer service Frees up small marketing teams to accomplish more Fully customized personas Detailed brand training Self-learning mode Compliance aware Asks for feedback Multichannel/multilingual: chatbot, standalone, mobile app, Shopify, SMS, email, In

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

Winery marketing teams are in overdrive these days—accelerating efforts to attract younger consumers, growing wine club membership and elevating tasting room and online interactions for prospective visitors and buyers. In the end, effective communication to meet these goals is a must.  Many small and mid-sized wineries have staffing limitations that make providing quality tasting room experiences and handling call-ins while also attending to texts, emails and online orders a daunting challenge.  Evgeny Bazhutov founded WineSpot AI to help wineries fill this gap. “Before launching our automated support app, we spent eight months researching the U.S. winery market to assess automation levels in business processes, customer support structures and the key pain points wineries face. Through over 100 interviews with winery employees and business owners, we found that wineries producing up to 5,000 cases annually rarely have a dedicated support team—or even a singl

Today’s customers expect fast, convenient support — and they don’t care how small your team is. If they can’t get an answer quickly (and on their terms), they’ll move on. That’s a real challenge for small and mid-size wineries, especially those juggling tasting room traffic, fulfillment, events, and direct-to-consumer (DTC) sales — often with no dedicated customer support team. So what’s the solution? In our latest blog post, we break down the pros and cons of four common customer communication tools — live chat, chatbots, SMS, and AI agents — to help wineries choose the best fit for their business model, resources, and customer expectations. Here’s a preview: ✅ Live chat works great if someone’s there to respond — but for most small wineries, that’s not realistic. Often, customers are asked to “leave a number,” which turns a helpful tool into a dead end. ✅ Basic chatbots (rule-based

With the hype surrounding AI, it’s hard to know what news matters to today’s DTC wine marketers. I suspect most of us tried using AI for content creation a couple of years ago.   But what has AI done for wine marketers lately, besides confusing us with too many models and few pragmatic uses? The good news is that, amid the usual noise about AI condemning us to a life of misery, the last few months have provided wine merchants with a new generation of valuable survival tools in the form of powerful AI Agents. What the Heck is an “AI Agent?” Leading business productivity tools – including Salesforce, OpenAI, JotForm, and Zapier – now offer their unique interpretations of “AI Agents” that can amplify the results of any sales or marketing team. Intriguing use cases in the wine industry include AI-powered sommeliers, social media assistants, DTC marketing management, and public-facing chatbots, all of which are empowered to represent your

License to Win: 5 Key Benefits of Automated Customer Service in Wineries As technology advances and labor costs rise, businesses across industries are turning to automation—and the wine industry is no exception. While wineries focus on crafting exceptional wines, customer service often becomes a bottleneck, especially during peak seasons like holiday sales or wine club shipments. Our research—based on over 100 interviews with U.S. winery owners and employees—revealed that many small wineries lack dedicated customer support, while larger ones still struggle to handle high volumes of inquiries efficiently. The result? Delayed responses, overwhelmed staff, and frustrated customers. In many cases, winery employees spend up to four hours a day just prioritizing voicemails and emails, unable to keep up with customer requests in real time. During peak wine club seasons, the volume of inquiries skyrockets, making it nearly impossible to respond within 24 hours. Accordi