Marketing matters

Wines & Vines, July, 2005 by Richard Paul Hinkle

Many's the winemaker who began operations figuring that all he had to do was make good wine and the world would blaze a path to his tasting room. The inevitable rude awakening came, as it always does, when he discovered that he might actually have to sell the stuff. As in marketing, sales and promotion.

OK, now what? Go wholesale? Work the retail stores? Or try and go direct to the consumer? That's the route Deborah Cahn and Ted Bennett fell into when they moved north to the wilds of Mendocino County's Anderson Valley in 1973 to plant Gewurztraminer, make wine and then sell it.

"It wasn't our choice to sell directly to the consumer," Bennett says. The former owner of Pacific Stereo, he had a pretty good sense of how sales and marketing work--for consumer audio products. His first sales trip quickly convinced him that wine would be different. Far different.

"I had scheduled a bunch of retailers in Sacramento. Big market. Not too far away. My first appointment was with Darrell Corti of Corti Brothers. Now here's a man I have grown to respect immensely. He knows the business. He tasted my wine and liked it. I asked him if he'd carry my wine. He said, 'Absolutely not.' 'Why?' I asked. And he told me that, one, there was not a lot of demand for Gewurztraminer in general, and that, two, there was virtually no demand at all for dry Gewurztraminer. The second retailer said that Darrell was right, and that I should sell the wines myself, so I cancelled the rest of my appointments immediately and headed back to Philo."

The entire venture, from the outset, had been predicated on Bennett's fanatical love of Alsatian wines. "Gewurztraminer became our prime determining factor," Bennett says. "When we began planting our vineyard here in 1973, our initial plantings were two-thirds Gewurztraminer and one-third Pinot Noir." (That ratio is now one-third Gewurztraminer, one-third Pinot Noir, and the remaining third divided among Chardonnay, Pinot Gris, White Riesling and Muscat.)

"Deborah and I were bowled over by the Anderson Valley. Husch was harvesting Gewurz in late September, and Edmeades (just across the highway) was picking it in October. I knew that the best wines came from vineyards where the fruit ripens late in the growing season, and the fruit they were picking was mighty impressive."

But, after getting their winery going in 1975, they still had to sell the wines, however good they were.

"Deborah and I decided that the only way to promote a product for which there is no natural demand was to get them to taste it. We initially decided to go after restaurants. So Deborah went around with our wines--she had Aaron in a Snuggly and was visibly pregnant with Sarah, so maybe they'd be a little solicitous--and poured them for the restaurateurs. That way, they could imagine how the wine would do with their cuisine. Chez Panisse in Berkeley was our first restaurant, and still our biggest promoter. Maybe I shouldn't say this, but it's always been one of our favorites.

"Then we got the tasting room going. Again, that's so people can taste the wines. People will always tell you what they like and what they don't like, but when they have a chance to taste the wines, all of a sudden their palates open up a little. Those were pretty lean years. I mean, we sold everything we owned, and mortgaged the rest. It took us 10 years to get to the point of positive cash flow."

Navarro Vineyards is, today, at 40,000 cases. Twenty percent of that goes to Bay Area restaurants like Chez Panisse, Hayes Street Grill, Zuni Cafe, Oliveto, Gary Danko and, near the winery, Albion River Inn and Little River Inn. "The other 80% is sold directly to the consumer," Ted continues, "either here in our tasting room or off of our mailing list, by phone or over the Internet. Our mail and phone sales are slowly diminishing, while our Internet sales are growing."

Perhaps the biggest, most effective tool in their arsenal is the new-release newsletter that Cahn writes three times a year. Each wine has its own story, and there are real people behind each of those stories. Many of the Navarro employees have been with the company for decades.

"We like the people who work for us, and even our vineyard workers have health and dental plans, vacation time and profit-sharing," Bennett adds. "Maybe that comes out of our '70s Berkeley selves, but agricultural workers shouldn't be disrespected, with hourly wages and no benefits."

Cahn notes, "We can't compete with the corporate farmers, but by selling direct to our customers, we have slightly higher margins, so we can still be more democratic employers. That is a benefit to the community we live in, and that means a lot to us. Always has."

All of that shows through in the newsletter.

"Our advantage, if we have one, is that our sales are personalized," Cahn says. "Ted and I sell our wines bottle-by-bottle, not pallet-by-pallet. We used to be in the tasting room a lot, and our staff there is very good at bringing customers into wine. We try to be inclusive, and if that means letting our politics show, well, so be it. I think too many wineries--in their tasting rooms, in their newsletters--stay too distant. They're flowery, without really saying anything. They don't let their selves show. We do. We're pro-green. We're pro-sustainable. That's why we treat our employees the way we do."