What's the Point of Wine Tasting and What Wineries Get Wrong - An Editorial on the State of Napa Valley
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Sterling Vineyards adds a Tram Ride to Entice Visitors
I’ve been writing about wineries and wine tasting for a long time but I’ve been tasting wine longer. Don’t fact check me here but I do recall reading that it was Robert Mondavi who first started FREE wine tasting in Napa with the thought that if you tried it you might buy it. I started wine tasting back around 1980, just four years after the Judgement of Paris competition that out Napa on the map. Back then all tastings were free and as a 21 year old kid it was a blast driving up and down Highway 29 and just stopping at any winery that looked interesting for a free sample.
Today of course the free tastings have all but dried up (there’s one left that I know of) and I often get into debates with my friends in the industry over the purpose of wine tasting. Now if you’re in the industry perhaps look away but I think there’s a philosophical divide between wineries and your standard Napa visitor over what the purpose of wine tasting is all about.
To the winery it goes back to the Mondavi belief that if you try it you will buy it. But wineries in Napa have huge overhead and like a Vegas casino need a lot of cash to keep things running. So wineries need to sell wine to visitors, especially for wineries who make wines you won’t find in supermarkets and on restaurant wine lists. Every customer is an opportunity to sell wine or a wine club.
But here’s where I often argue with my friends in the industry - the standard wine taster isn’t thinking at the wine tasting experience as a way to decide which wines to buy. No, they are looking at the wine tasting experience as the final product, a fun way to spend a few hours or a weekend drinking good wine and having a good time. They might buy wine, they might join the club, but that wasn’t their main intention when they walked in your front door. Think about it - Do you buy every food item you sampled at Costco? No, you only buy the ones you really liked and there are probably many times you didn’t buy anything even though you liked it.
And yes, I am making sweeping generalizations here as there are still plenty of people who do buy cases of wine and plenty of wineries who offer stellar hospitality even if you don’t. But I think the wine industry needs to address how they can cater to both the wine buyer and the wine taster. Maybe it’s a simple as returning to the lower cost (and lower expectation) bar tastings that reduce the winery’s cost while addressing the customer who isn’t necessarily a wine buyer? I’m not saying I have a good plan but I am interested in what you have to say - feel free to comment below.
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