Best sellers: what moves in tasting rooms

Wines & Vines, August, 2003 by Jane Firstenfeld

On a brilliant Sunday morning, a dozen well-dressed adults belly up to a long bar and chat convivially as clean-cut servers hustle to keep their glasses damp. The room is architecturally striking, with slate floors and cathedral ceiling; trestle tables display colorful arrays of earthenware and crystal; preppy apparel shares floor space with crates of wine. Except for the bar, it could be a Union Street boutique in San Francisco, but this is, in fact, the tasting room at Kunde Estate Winery & Vineyards in Kenwood, Sonoma County.

There was a time in living memory that winery tasting rooms were simply that--places where, perhaps after an obligatory tour and almost always gratis, winery staff poured and described samples of their specialties and gently persuaded their guests to purchase a bottle or a case. If anything besides wine was offered for sale, it was probably for practical and perhaps immediate use: corkscrews and wine glasses being the most obvious examples. A relaxing drive in the country, the wine, the process of making it, a possible conversation with someone involved in that process, these were the attractions at all but the grandest Napa Valley operations when I began visiting wineries in the 1970s.

Well, just as winemaking in the United States has grown into a multi-billion dollar industry, tasting rooms have evolved, some of them taking on blockbuster proportions as they serve voracious flocks of seasonal tourists. And just as the number of wineries has proliferated, so has the variety of wares available in their tasting rooms.

Tableware, jewelry, gourmet packaged food, books, and crafts of all ilk have joined the wine glasses, cork pullers and logo shirts of yore. You could furnish and accessorize your home, stock your refrigerator and fill your closets by browsing through just a few well-chosen tasting rooms, if a recent visit to half-a-dozen wineries along a five-mile stretch of Sonoma Highway is any indication.

Is all that seemingly miscellaneous merchandise overshadowing the wines? Nope, it turns out, just complementing the vintages, like wine well-paired with a carefully chosen meal. Even at Kunde, which would have to rank as one of the more elaborate tasting room retail operations, merchandise other than wine accounts for a mere 20% of tasting room sales, according to tasting room manager Jody Stewart, who decides which products merit prized floor space in her operation. "Wine-related merchandise and Kunde logo wearables are what we specialize in," she says, "but wine glasses and our chocolate sauces, ranging from $8.95 to $17.95," make up most of the sales volume.

"These items are unique to the wine country, and give our clients something to go home with to remember their trip," Stewart says. Kunde's private label food items are the most profitable of her inventory. Stewart buys seasonally, and rotates merchandise to keep the room "looking fresh." And, even if they are not the most profitable, Stewart insists, "Logo wearables are a must!" Kunde's logowear and other items are also available through the winery's wine club, newsletter, and online at kunde.com.

A few miles up Sonoma Highway, the tasting room at St. Francis Winery is equally attractive, with a garden view and a stone fireplace, but here, the merchandise selection is stripped down. In fact, retail room manager Lisa Verbish chose to discontinue any nonwine-related items to make better use of limited space and keep the focus on the wine. Her biggest sellers are $19 logo hats, cork pullers at $9.95, maps, $12.95 and a variety of cookbooks.

"These are reasonably priced gift items," Verbish notes, and they are also easily packable. Verbish sells more logo hats in summer and more food products in fall.

Food products and ceramics are her most profitable performers, but, she says, logowear and bottle openers are absolute essentials. Verbish estimates her nonwine merchandise contributes about 10% of the tasting room sales, and some merchandise is also available online at stfranciswine.com.

Nearby, across the highway, the cooperative Family Wineries of Sonoma Valley tasting room concentrates even more determinedly on the wine. Operated by Deerfield Ranch Winery, Mayo Family Winery, Meredith Wine Cellars, Nelson Estate Vineyards, Noel Wine Cellars, Sable Ridge Vineyards and Sunce Winery, most of the floor space is occupied by the tasting bar, and the rest is shared by the seven wineries. Tasting room manager Bill Taylor makes most of the decisions, "but he usually confers with us--the owners. But he knows that we never want to get too far from the theme of wine accessories or wine motif items," according to Janae Franicevic, owner/manager and self-proclaimed "wine wench" of Sunce, who was pouring on my Father's Day visit.

Logo T-shirts and wine glasses, wine country refrigerator magnets, corkscrews, gift wine boxes and bags, bottle stoppers and small, decorative wine barrels share shelfspace with gourmet olive oils. Franicevic gleefully showed off her most profitable item, a wineglass stamped with the Sunce logo in 14 kt. gold, which at $5 each bear a 250% mark-up. "They are in the right price range for a customer to make an impulse buy." Many people collect wine glasses, she notes, adding, "it's the perfect memento and we need to order glasses anyway for wine tasting, so if we over-buy, we're not worried."