80% of Your (Unsold) Accounts Don’t Matter – So Stop Calling on Them Don’t worry; we’re not going to write another article arguing that the majority of your sales volume comes from the top handful of your accounts; we’re not sure we could even locate that poor horse’s cadaver at this point. We’re more interested in the practical implications of the 80/20 rule: the “So what?” part of this equation – how do we use this knowledge to sell more wine & spirits? Sales Resources are Limited; Limit Account Targets Accordingly For any hope of success selling all of your inventory, you must first acknowledge the salesperson’s scarcest asset: time.  Novice sales teams take a shotgun approach with the goal to win as many placements in as many accounts as possible. This sounds logical in the abstract, and would work great if it resulted in high volume; instead, unfocused activity generates a lot of one-off (time

Going Low: Making Lo-Alc Wines Isn’t Always Trendy

One Ohio winery is making low-alcohol wines as a matter of course. By Paul Vigna   You could say winemaker Joe Juniper at Vermillion Valley Vineyards in Wakeman, Ohio, is […]

While associated with fun and frivolity, sparkling wine is a complex wine of many moving parts that requires serious skill to make. We catch up with some of the leading lights in the fizz industry, from Champagne, Spain and England, to find out the secrets of their craft and the challenges surrounding creating a consistent sparkling wine style in an ever-changing climate. Synonymous with celebration, sparkling wines are easy to enjoy but challenging to create. Crafting quality fizz requires a skilled hand, well-trained nose, razor-sharp intuition and nerves of steel come harvest time, when deciding on the perfect moment to pick feels like a game of Russian roulette. Cellar masters are the wizards of the wine world, able to create a consistent style of wine each year from hundreds of elements amid increasingly erratic weather conditions. They have to be time travellers too, projecting themselves into the future when tasting aggressively acidic base wines, working out how they will harmo

Members of the Sonoma State University School of Business and Economics Community Provide Vital New Sources of Sanitizer in Fight Against Pandemic What do spirits and hand sanitizer have in common? They require alcohol. Three members of the Sonoma State University School of Business and Economics family have responded to the nationwide shortage of hand sanitizer by pivoting production from beverages to hand sanitizer. Sonoma Wine Executive MBA students Jason Somerby of New Alchemy Distilling and Travis Smith of American Winesecrets LLC and Spiritsmith LLC, and Gary Heck, owner of F. Korbel & Bros and Wine Business Institute advisory board chairperson, are utilizing their production facilities to help fight the spread of COVID-19 throughout California. They are producing and donating hand sanitizer to local and government agencies, hospitals, first responders, and other essential businesses such as grocery stores and commercial farming operations. The generosity and community-mind

MCC is proud to be part of the team that's getting much needed supplies to local hospitals. Thanks to our friends at Alchemy Distillery and Falcon Spirits Distillery for producing and donating hand sanitizer to Bay Area hospitals. Huge thanks to the dedicated MCC Napa team for their service and making sure labels are still getting out the door. It takes a team right now!