Observations from an AI Marketing Consultant on AI for Winery Brand Growth I’ve spent a lot of time this past quarter talking with winery owners, marketers, and operators. Mostly listening. What’s coming through isn’t hype or resistance to AI. It’s curiosity… mixed with a bit of uncertainty about where it actually fits in day to day. Questions like: How are people really using AI to find my winery? Does this actually impact tasting room traffic or DTC or not? What should we be doing differently right now, if anything? Good questions. With my feet wet, once again, now only 65 business days in the wine industry, what stood out to me in Q1 is that this shift is already happening, just unevenly. Some wineries are starting to show up in AI-driven discovery in meaningful ways, while others aren’t even aware of how they appear, and that's okay. I'll be releasing my Winery AI Marketing Readiness Survey findings next week which I hope will be

The tasting room used to be the heart of the winery business model. Walk-ins became club members. Club members became brand ambassadors. Revenue flowed predictably, and the formula worked. That’s changing. Visitation to wine regions is softening and tasting room traffic that wineries once counted on is declining. The cohort that’s most noticeably absent? Millennials and Gen Z, the consumers who should be building the next generation of wine loyalty. For many wineries, the drop-off has been gradual enough to rationalize. Blame the economy. Blame changing drinking habits. Blame competition from craft beer and cocktails. But the reality is harder to swallow: younger consumers aren’t avoiding wine country because they don’t like wine. They’re avoiding it because the traditional tasting room experience no longer competes with how they want to spend their time and money. And if wineries don’t adapt, they risk becoming relics of an industry that waited to

Your next customer will see your winery before they ever taste your wine. They'll see it on Instagram while planning a weekend trip. They'll see it on your website while deciding whether to book a reservation. They'll see it in an email while considering whether your wine club is worth joining. And in every one of those moments, they're making a decision based on what your visuals tell them about who you are. This isn't a trend. It's how people buy now. According to a 2023 study by Cloudinary and Harris Poll, 75% of online shoppers say product photos are the most influential factor in their purchase decisions. That number holds across categories, and it holds in wine. The difference is that wineries aren't just selling a product. They're selling an experience, a place, a feeling. Which means your visual content has to do more work than a product shot on a white background. It has to make someone want to be there. Most wineries know this on some level. Fe

The weather is shifting, trip-planning season is underway, and tasting room traffic is about to pick up. This is the good news. The bad news? If you're reading this and thinking "we'll get to our spring marketing when spring gets here," you're behind. The tasting rooms that stay full from April through June aren't the ones with the best wine or the prettiest views. They're the ones that showed up in someone's planning process three weeks before the trip happened. People don't stumble into wine country on a whim and wander from door to door the way they did fifteen years ago. They research. They scroll. They book. And if your winery isn't visible and compelling during that research window, you're invisible when it counts. The hotel industry figured this out years ago. Marriott doesn't wait until summer to market beach properties. They start running "book your getaway" campaigns in late winter, because they know the booking win

Why Wineries Need Influencer Marketing Now Here's a number that should reshape how you think about marketing: 69% of consumers trust influencer recommendations more than information coming directly from a brand That's not a slight edge. That's a fundamental shift in how people decide what to buy. For wineries, this matters more than it does for most industries. Wine is a considered purchase wrapped in uncertainty. Your potential customer is standing in a tasting room or scrolling through an online store, wondering: Will I like this? Is it worth the price? Am I making the right choice? Influencer content answers those questions in ways traditional marketing cannot. When a trusted voice says "I tried this Pinot and it's incredible with grilled salmon," that carries weight. It's a peer recommendation disguised as content. Instagram and TikTok now drive wine discovery among younger audiences, and 87% of Gen Z consumers say they're willing to buy products

As wineries navigate shifting consumer behavior, rising costs, and increasing compliance complexity, one thing is clear. The gap between average and top performing direct to consumer programs is widening. At eCELLAR, we see this play out every day across our winery clients. The difference is not just better wine or stronger brand recognition. It is operational. Top performing wineries are taking a more intentional approach to customer relationships, internal workflows, and conversion. Increasingly, success comes down to how well technology supports those efforts behind the scenes 1. They Personalize the Club Purchase Experience Wine clubs continue to be one of the most important drivers of long-term revenue. Managing them effectively requires more than basic functionality. Wineries seeing the most success are: Offering more flexible club structures Automating recurring processes Creating a seamless member experience across channels As club models evolve, the systems supporting them ne

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

eCELLAR's The Pulse: Making the Most of the Tasting Room Visit with Liz Mercer Date: April 22, 2026 Time: 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM PT Registration: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_D2JERMtnSdWzc0gkAaas4Q In the first session of this two part series, Beyond the Tasting Room, we explored how wineries are generating revenue beyond the tasting room and adapting to evolving consumer behavior. In Part Two, Making the Most of the Tasting Room Visit, we bring the focus back to where many of the industry’s most important customer relationships begin. We welcome back Liz Mercer, Partner at WISE, for a practical conversation on how wineries can maximize the impact of every tasting room visit. Drawing on industry data and her experience working closely with wineries, Liz will share what today’s top performing tasting rooms are doing differently. From creating more meaningful guest interactions to improving conversion, retention, and long term customer relationshi

We call it a Tasting Room, when it’s really a Sales Room. Why is that? After the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, wineries re-opened in an environment where the government was highly suspicious of any and all alcohol sales. On-premise consumption was restricted and considered the purview of saloons, which were vilified during the years of Prohibition. So, to comply with laws and distinguish themselves as places of refined moderation, wineries leaned into “tasting,” not drinking. The Tasting Room became the winery’s sales room. Over the decades, tasting rooms have become places of hospitality, education, and increasingly, dinner (or lunch). Along the way, the primary role of the tasting room—to form a connection with the consumer for the purpose of selling wine—got lost. Now, I recognize that I’m being hyperbolic here. In the contracting market we’re living in, too many wineries are focusing only on the hospitality aspect. They need to lean

When the Super Bowl and Olympics approach, we celebrate the performance we see on the field. What we don’t see is the year-round conditioning, repetition, and skill-building that made that performance possible. Winning teams don’t train only when the lights are brightest. They train all year long. The same principle applies to winery DTC teams. Downtime Is Where Advantage Is Built Periods of slower visitation or economic uncertainty can feel like a signal to pause. But research shows that the opposite approach separates leaders from laggards. A landmark study published by Harvard Business Review analyzed more than 4,700 companies across multiple recessions. The findings were striking: “Only 9% of companies emerged from recession stronger than before.” Even more telling: “Companies that balanced cost discipline with continued investment in people and capabilities recovered faster and gained market share.” Training Is a Growth Strategy,