DC Sip and Twit

Giramondo Wine Adventures hosted a "Sip and Twit" on Wednesday at the Whittemore House in DC. I was skeptical about the benefit that tweeting would add to the tasting event, and I am not sure my opinion changed much.




The way the event worked was pretty simple. To participate, you either had to sign up at the WineTwits website, or you could simply add the hashtag #sptwdc to your Tweets. They had a large monitor mounted to the wall to display Tweets as they happened (well, with a minor delay). You can see my shout out to Breaux Vineyards in the picture below. You can follow along along with the stream of tweets here to get a feel of what wines people liked and didn't like.

I think the concept has merit. In theory this type of testing would give people the opportunity to talk with each other about the wine. Instead of the person pouring the wine dictating what you should taste, a consensus could be developed amongst the crowd. To some extent it was successful, in the pictures below you can see people buried in their phones, tweeting.




I think where it starts to go wrong is with the prizes they were awarding for people who posted the most tweets during the event. When you do something like that, you wind up with too much chaff. If you read through the couple of hundred Tweets linked above, how many of them actually tell you about the wines? How many tell you something useful about what was good or bad? How many of them seem like padding to increase the user's chance of winning (including my own)?

I think one way this process could be improved is by inviting the producers/distributors who are there to open their own Twitter accounts. Again, take a look at the stream of tweets here, the ones that are probably the most useful are the ones that include the wine producer's handle (well, with the possible exception of this one :)).

If guests of the event had a way to easily tag which wine they thought "was dry, with hints of plum" or "tasted like feet" then I think the conversation becomes even easier. At the very least the wine producers who are there get immediate, and frankly invaluable, feedback on their wines.




On the other side of the equation, the wines presented were, generally, very good. I've already commented on the wines from Georgia, and will have more on that in a couple of days (they've graciously agreed to an interview).

Another standout was the wines from Solterra, they offered an excellent Carmenere. Like most Chilean wines, it is also a very good value at about $10.

Local boys Keswick and Horton were there. The newly released Keswick 2007 Heritage was excellent, as was the Horton Chocolate wine.

There were also several good wines from Sicily including a Grillo from Dinari del Duca and the House Jam Barnardo.

The Williams Corner table featured two really good wines the J. Mourat Collection and the Forlorn Hope Mil Amores.

Update: This is exactly, what I was talking about above. Forlorn Hope gathers some of the Twitter comments from the event on their blog.

The Ethics of Twitter

Barbara at Seattle Wine Gal has an interesting post on the ethics of tweeting about wine received gratis from a producer. From the post:

Is there a way of doing Social Media Marketing to it’s fullest extent without giving free products in exchange for online recognition? Is this ethical? Am I being bribed, or simply offered a great chance to taste wine and let other know what I think?

She asks some excellent questions, and questions that have become important to people who blog about wine. I don't have any answers, but I encourage you all to check out her comments and weigh in.

Sip and Twit

I am not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, as a traditional tasting, its a nice way to get introduced to the wines of Chile and Argentina (assuming GiraMondo does its usual good job of picking out wines). The introduction of Twitter into the event is what intrigues and bemuses me.

I am not sure what value Twitter adds to a wine tasting event like this. When I go to an event like this, I am interested in what my companions think, but frankly, I have no interest in what people outside of my group think. I am also skeptical about this claim:

Whereas a typical tasting involves attendees busily scribbling in notebooks, Sip & Twit participants will be able to ‘tweet’ their tasting notes and thoughts as they walk around the room. The tweet-feed will be simultaneously broadcasted locally to plasma screens around the room and globally to the online community utilizing the technology of our partner WineTwits.

First, I rarely see anyone scribbling in notebooks at tastings. At best, you see people putting stars or check marks on the sheet provided by the hosts. But even if the scribbling point is true (and admittedly, I hang out with people who are drinkers not spitters), how is people busily typing on their iPhones and Blackberries any better?

I'd love to hear your thoughts?

Wineries and Social Media Part II

Back in November I posted some thoughts on wineries using social media. I singled out Gary Vaynerchuck, but it seems that every wine consultant has social media advice for wineries.

I took a different approach. I am not a consultant, and I am not in the wine business, so any advice I have would be meaningless. Instead, I wanted to gather the thoughts of a diverse group of wineries to see how they were using social media (focused primarily on Twitter, Facebook and blogs). I sent requests out to several wineries and actually got quite a few responses. Rather than forcing this into a boring interview format, I am going to post their thoughts in a more free-flowing form. This is Part II, I have at least one more post planned, although I may try for a fourth if there is enough interest.

One of the things that repeatedly came up in my conversations with the wineries is that social media is important, but only in conjunction with other avenues of customer service. Adam Beaugh (Twitter), Director of Social Media for Jackson Family Wines, talking about La Crema Winery (Facebook):

There is a fundamental shift in communication going on right now, but I believe there needs to be a healthy blend of both traditional and social media. Shaking hands in the tasting room, responding to customer feedback on social network sites, monitoring user generated review sites such as Yelp and more traditional created content all help communicate the winery's story, passion and commitment to our consumer base.

Passion is another common theme. Winery owners/wine makers who are passionate about their wine, also seem the most likely to use social media sites. Yann Todeschini owner of Chateau Mangot (Twitter) also talks about passion:

The social media is a good way to explain our job, our passion to the customers. The wine is not only a drink, it's an historical and cultural product, and we believe in the passion we can transmit to our customers.
If we speak about US consumers, it's quite difficult for him to understand French wine, appellation, grapes variety, ageing..too much technical words…the social media are use to demystify the wine, to the customers.

Along, the same lines, Bob Lindo from Camel Valley (Twitter) sees Twitter as part of the strategy to tell people about their wines:

We don't do much marketing because we are overwhelmed with demand. However, our mantra is: make the best possible wine, win awards and tell people.

Wineries and Social Media Part I

Rebecca Gibb has an article in Decanter discussing a talk Gary Vaynerchuck gave last week at Winefuture basically saying winemakers should be more involved in social media. From the article:

Gary Vaynerchuk, the relentless host of of US Wine Library TV, told the Winefuture conference in Rioja that wine producers are 'lazy', leaving retailers to talk to their consumers rather than doing it themselves.

He also slammed producers for failing to take advantage of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to communicate with their consumers.

I have not seen the whole talk yet, just bits of it (I'll post the full talk as soon as it is available online). Clearly, Vaynerchuck is generalizing, a great number of wine producers have blogs, Facebook pages and Twitter accounts. But, I question the underlying assumption that all wine producers need to have a social media presence. Rather than lurching from new idea to new idea it makes much more sense for wine producers to understand their customers and have a comprehensive marketing strategy.

If your customer base is a demographic that uses Facebook and Twitter and it will drive sales, then, of course it is a good idea. On the other hand, if there is no benefit, then why do it? Does Opus One really need to Tweet to attract new customers (there is an OpusOne Twitter account, but it is not run by the Opus One Winery)?

What I think is glossed over in the rush to move to social media is that there is a real cost in using these services. Setting up a Twitter account doesn't cost anything. But the person who has to update that account, who has to respond to questions, who has to monitor the brand on Twitter costs money and money spent doing that takes away from other, potentially more lucrative, marketing venues.

If you don't incorporate social media into your marketing strategy and just start a Facebook page or create a Twitter account you run the risk of creating a social media ghost town: accounts that sit there unused or not updated are potentially worse than not having any presence at all.

If you want to find a list of wineries on Twitter this web page is a good place to start. It is not anywhere close to complete, but you'll see most of the wineries listed on the page follow other wineries and so on...so you can expand your list pretty quickly.

The thing is, neither Gary nor I own a winery. So, while we can pontificate as much as we want, it boils down to what do the winery owners think. For the second part of this post, I am going to ask for opinions from different winemakers. Assuming any of them respond I'll put the opinions into a coherent post and get the perspective from the real experts.