Oh sure, there’s a ton of romance and history in the origins of winemaking. And every boutique enterprise, no matter how large or small, has a charming tale to tell about their artisan craft and how it all got started. But at the end of the day, wineries live or die by their numbers. No matter how compelling the story or how good the wine, if the numbers don’t work, the business is bound to fail. To avoid that, it’s imperative for wineries to have rock-solid data on their day-to-day fiscal operations so they’re able to determine the overall health of their organization. That’s where having the right financial infrastructure in place becomes critical. Set Up for Wine Industry Protea Financial is an outsourced, operational financial partner intentionally focused on the complexities and challenges of wineries. Winery owners need accurate bookkeeping, timely reporting and proactive inventory management in order to drive profitability. With 12+ years in the business

Pairing Wine with Multicultural Cuisine:  J Winery’s ‘Shifting the Lens’ Program Is Breaking Old Paradigms

By Dr. Liz Thach, MW Chef Rashida Holmes grew up enjoying the delicious Afro-Caribbean soul food recipes passed down by her mother and grandmother from

Quest for Well-being, Thirst for Experimentation, and Pursuit of Sustainability: Verallia unveils its 2025 Trends for the Wine and Spirits Market Each year, Verallia, the European leader in glass packaging, presents its Trend Book for the wine and spirits market. Created this year in collaboration with Barcelona-based agency Morillas, the Trends Book aims to inspire and highlight key sector developments and future directions. For 2025, four major trends emerge in response to more engaged consumers seeking new experiences and prioritizing well-being above all. This Trends Book will also introduce new designs ready to be developed by Verallia’s teams. Reflecting new wine and spirits consumption practices, the 2025 Trends Book is viewed through the lens of three distinct consumer profiles. The Drink Personas shaping new market horizons The Eco-activists: Concerned with environmental issues, they favour brands committed to sustainability (local production, recyclable packaging,

Since I started working at Lumo, I’ve been intrigued by a paradox that lies at the heart of water management in agriculture.  On one hand, growers understand that irrigation is one of the most important tools they have at their disposal for increasing crop quality and yield. They know it’s absolutely crucial to put on the right volumes at the right times.  And yet, many growers don’t actually know exactly how much water they’re applying. They lack real-time visibility and volume-based control.  How could that possibly be?  Two reasons: operational difficulty and cost. Most growers don’t know the precise volumes of water they’re applying to their crops, even though they know just how important it is to get those volumes right, because, at least before smart valves were invented, it was both too hard and too expensive to be exact.  Let’s take the operational piece first. When you’re relying on an irrigator to open

Turnkey SMS Wine Marketing -- Now Available Grow Profits without Growing Your Workload Wine merchants looking to elevate consumer experience and sell more wine with SMS don't need to do-it-yourself. SMS Wine Marketing Services delivered by VinterActive empower any brand to benefit from the best practices of preference-based wine marketing by offering these white-glove services: Full-Service SMS Wine Marketing Management Let VinterActive manage every aspect of your promotional SMS messaging, including planning, production, sending, and measuring the performance for up to 4 targeted text messaging campaigns/mo.   1-to-1 Coaching for New SMS Wine Marketers Jump-start your SMS success with personalized coaching delivered by certified professionals in DTC wine marketing and text messaging.   Preference-Based SMS List Building Campaign Quickly convert existing contacts into a powerful opt-in list of SMS subscribers using VinterActive's multi-media approach (web/email/so

Whenever the topic of wine comes up, and the discussion continues longer than it takes to uncork a bottle of the good stuff, sniffing a cork suspiciously, or say ‘hold my wine’, the conversation will invariably gravitate towards what many consider the wine capital of the world. Not quite a natural disaster, but close Not to put too fine a point on it, I firmly believe that France, and more specifically Bordeaux with its 65 appellations and more than 7,000 châteaux spanning hundreds of thousands of acres, is the wine capital of the world. And this is why recent news about the French government moving to spend €200 million to destroy 80 million gallons of excess wine utterly shocked me (read more here). What can we do about this vinous loss? Other than cracking a lame joke starting with ‘I know this guy …’ and which then delivers a punchline based on traveling to France to drink a fair portion of said doomed wine, nothing much. Which leads me t

FX Matt Beverage Co. has been breaking paradigms with consumer beverages for more than a century. We're thrilled to join forces on an innovative partnership that enables brands, both large and small, to choose glass with Drinktainer and get to market faster. Read how it can help your brand: https://ow.ly/Hb2r50Pnyxx #innovation #brands #packaging #beverages #RTDs 

Creating a business plan for sustainable packaging can be a challenging task. To gain management buy-in and approval, the business case should be thorough and include the project scope, timescale, options, costs, resources, ROI, benefits, team members, risks and other factors. In addition, evolving consumer and market forces are shifting the sustainability paradigm and creating long-term growth opportunities for consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies. Here are three marketplace insights that strengthen the business case for sustainable packaging. Despite the fact that sustainability-marketed products are 16.1%* of the market, they delivered 54.7% of the CPG market growth (2015 – 2019). Sustainable Products Sell Products positioned as sustainable are increasing their market share as consumers seek products that align with personal values and lifestyle choices. From 2015 to 2019, sustainability-marketed products delivered about 55% of the market growth in consumer packaged good