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

Wine fulfillment isn’t just about getting bottles from point A to B—it’s about delivering an exceptional customer experience while keeping costs under control. In this Wine Sales Symposium session, Devin Joshua and Jim silver from WineDirect will break down the key strategies wineries can use to streamline fulfillment, minimize expenses, and enhance customer loyalty. From smart inventory management to optimizing packaging, discover how the right fulfillment approach can drive both efficiency and satisfaction. Join us at the Wine Sales Symposium, May 14 at the Hyatt in Santa Rosa. The Secret to Seamless Wine Fulfillment: How to Reduce Costs While Improving Customer Satisfaction Register with promo code: WINEDIRECT2025 to get $20 off the ticket price Devin Joshua, VP of Fulfillment Sales Devin Joshua is a seasoned wine industry executive and currently serves as Vice President of Fulfillment Sales at WineDirect. With more than 25 years of experience across nearly every t

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

Afternoon Brief, February 3rd

Storms Are Another Disaster for Sonoma County Farmworkers Who Call for More Aid: Because of the work interruptions caused by the January storms, hundreds of farmworkers have turned to local nonprofit organizations and now the county for emergency financial aid and support...

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

SAVING THE WORLD...ONE KEG AT A TIME  After a year-long hiatus due to COVID shutdowns, we are proud to bring back the KEGGY Awards & announce the 2021 winners! The KEGGY Awards were created in 2014 to recognize our partners for their commitment to sustainability by choosing to package their wine in reusable stainless steel kegs — a truly zero-waste package.   To date, more than 20 million bottles — and approximately 45 million pounds of waste — have been diverted from the landfill through the use of Free Flow’s reusable stainless-steel kegs. Each Free Flow keg holds the equivalent of 26 bottles of wine and will save 1,560 bottles from the landfill over its lifetime. Hahn Family Wines O’Neill Vintners The Wine Group    The Hess Collection Altos Las Hormigas Blackbird Vineyards         Crimson Wine Group Folio Fine Wine Partners     Michael David Winery Miner Family Winery       Vine

Managing the business side of the wine industry is often less alluring than the art of winemaking that precedes it. Nonetheless, successful wine operations, sales, and distribution require the same precision and finesse in order to maximize profit, stay competitive, and support continued production. It is imperative to always ensure the juice is indeed worth the squeeze. Among the top concerns keeping winery owners and general managers awake at night is whether the money they’re spending to promote their wine is hitting the mark and driving a profit. Most wineries have an ERP system to centralize finance, operations, and inventory management, but pricing and promotions are generally housed in Excel spreadsheets, written on post-it notes by the sales team, or put in a separate software system entirely. These manual, disconnected pricing tools and the data they contain fail to provide a complete understanding of the return on trade investment. What your current tools may be missin

Harvest is around the corner and wineries are preparing for the arrival of bins full to brimming with ripe grapes ready to crush, de-stem and press. That means it’s time to make sure all your winemaking supplies will be at hand when the crush swings into full gear. In a typical year, you would check your supplies — everything from yeast to sulfur dioxide —and call your suppliers for understocked items. But nothing has been normal since the COVID-19 pandemic started disrupting business as usual. Many supply chains are stressed, resulting in supply shortages, shipping delays, and lack of inventory. “At Scott Labs, we’ve seen a huge influx of winery customers scrambling for filters,” says Maria Peterson, Scott Labs’ Technical Filtration Expert. “And for something as critical as final filtration before bottling, it’s essential to ensure you have what you need, when you need it, without compromising quality.” As a result, winemaker