These wineries and leaders are setting the standard for innovation, engagement, and operational excellence across our community. Active Participant 🔹 Galen Becker Drace — Arkenstone Estate Winery Continuous Learner 🔹 Angela Walker — Corison Winery Community Champion 🔹 Truman Prewitt — Sculpterra Winery & Vineyards  The Unity Award 🔹 Karen Darling — Bella Vineyards Feedback MVPs 🔹 Adam C. — Somerston Estate 🔹 Marian Kildahl — Imagery Estate Winery  Super Users 🔹 Harry Bagnaschi — Treasury Wine Estates 🔹 Doug M. — The Duckhorn Portfolio 🔹 Jessica Hartin — JUSTIN Vineyards & Winery Early Adopter Excellence 🔹 Far Niente Wine Estates 🔹 Hess Persson Estates  🔹 Laurel Glen Vineyard 🔹 Sangiacomo Family Wines Transformation Champions 🔹 Alyssa Kosan 🔹 Eric Mueller — Antica Terra 🔹 Kevin Jessen — Firstleaf User of the Year 🔹 Rebbecca Ingalls — Crimson Wine Group Congratulations to our 2026 honorees! Lea

Join wine industry icon Karen MacNeil, RedChirp co-founder Jennie Gilbert, and Laurelle Turner-Clemons from Hess Persson Estates for a practical, idea-packed webinar to help you promote and sell your wine using the Come Over October campaign for creative traction.  Co-created by Karen, Kimberly Noelle Charles, and Gino Colangelo, the Come Over October campaign is focused on telling the positive story about wine by celebrating togetherness, connection, and hospitality. The campaign has experienced extraordinary success thus far—reaching nearly 2 billion media impressions in its first year. In this session, we’ll highlight how your winery can easily participate, benefit, and be a part of Come Over October this fall.  You’ll get proven text message marketing strategies, ready-to-use SMS campaigns, and expert tips to drive traffic and boost sales, all tailored to the Come Over October theme. Whether you're joining for the first time or returning for ano

Bridging the Gap: APS Packaging Launches Experiential Learning Fund for Future Wine & Beverage Leaders APS Packaging, in collaboration with the UC Davis Department of Viticulture and Enology, took a group of students to tour Hess Persson Estates and Infinity Bottling! We noticed the need for real-world skills and industry knowledge in the classroom, so we kick-started the “APS Packaging Experiential Learning Fund.” This fund is a game-changer for students as it provides students with invaluable opportunities, including field trips, guest speaker presentations, and hands-on education focused on bottling and its significance. A huge thank you to David Davenport and Jessica Tuteur from Infinity Bottling, Mimi Storts and Andy Strasser from Hess Persson Estates, and Sergio Ciocchetta from MBF North America for taking the time to talk to us about the importance of automation. Automating a bottling line boosts efficiency, consistency, and cost-effectiveness, making it a vita

EasyCheck has found a wonderful home at Hess Persson Estates - congratulations on being the first EasyCheck installation in the US!🍷 It was awesome implementing cold and calcium stability in your winery's lab, Amanda Curley! We are thrilled to support your saving time and energy consumption with this Steroglass analyzer. Are you curious if automation would be useful for your lab? Please reach out, we would be happy to chat with you!

With the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic receding, wineries are increasingly upgrading and modernizing equipment for the vineyard, winemaking, and packaging to optimize and automate more manual processes. Machinery like depalletizers is gaining traction because they play a crucial role in automating the handling of bulk glass. Bulk glass lowers costs and the winery’s carbon footprint by eliminating third-party charges for packing glass into cases before delivery. It reduces the number of trucks (and thus CO2 emitted) by 35 percent or more. Mimi Storts, Senior Director of Planning and Operations at Hess Persson Estates, recently upgraded the Hess Collection bottling line. She explains, “At Hess Collection, we had only one bottling line, and it was nearing its end of life. Quality is number one, so we wanted the new bottling line to maintain that quality and retain our internal quality oversight.” Storts also needed two capabilities the old line didn’t have: to h

Tim and Sabrina Persson Introduce Stalworth; New Icon Rutherford Cabernet

Nearly a Decade in the Making, New Rutherford Icon Cabernet Sauvignon Crafted by Winemaker Celia Welch to Launch Late March 2022 (Rutherford, Calif.)— January 19, 2022—Tim and Sabrina Persson, the […]

Hess Persson Estates uses text messaging to convert prospects, deepen customer engagements and drive new revenue channels Hess Persson Estates is recognized as one of the premier family-owned and family-led companies in the world of wine, and it stands committed to pushing boundaries and elevating standards to craft wines of distinctive character. Each of the family’s portfolios of wine – The Hess Collection on Mount Veeder and the Lions Head Collection of Napa Valley— are known for producing highly acclaimed luxury red wines, committed to sustainable farming and winemaking practices. Always looking for new and innovative ways to reach prospects and convert sales, Hess Persson engaged with RedChirp. This text messaging platform is rapidly building a following among Napa Valley wineries of all sizes. RedChirp allowed Hess Persson’s DTC team to interact with prospects and customers in a uniquely accessible and direct way. This superior experience delivered increas

Connecting with customers in an era marked by a pandemic and rapidly shifting business landscape has never been more crucial – but there are ways to do it effectively and an innovative new company may have the blueprint for success. RedChirp™ is arming the wine industry with the ability to do real time communication with customers using a platform they know and love – texting. “Wineries waste a lot of time and energy on phone tag,” RedChirp Founder, Jennie Gilbert points out. “Most people won’t pick up a call from a number they don’t know. Not only can you send 10 texts in the time it takes to make just one call, but people also read and respond to text messages quickly.” Gilbert cites research that shows 59 percent of consumers reply to text messages sent with RedChirp within two minutes, with an impressive 92 percent replying in less than five. Text message communication also lets wineries provide a more delightful customer exper

Oct 19th @ 10am PST on Zoom No one answers their phones anymore. It’s harder than ever to get email past spam filters. But everyone reads and responds to their text messages. It’s not just for friends and family anymore; 89% of consumers want to text with businesses too. We’ll cover the legalities to watch out for and share practical examples of how wineries like Hess Persson, Judd’s Hill, and others are using text messaging to connect with customers, save hours previously wasted on phone tag, and sell more wine.  Upgrade your customer experience by making it easier to connect with your customers via text through RedChirp's Commerce7 integration. Learn how the integration between RedChirp and Commerce7 saves time, reduces operational friction, and makes it easier to serve your customers as an effective team.  Register Now "We loved RedChirp even before the Commerce7 integration, but now we're even more excited because we can access t