The Slow-Season Shift
The guests who walk in on a quiet November afternoon are mostly members and returning guests. Here is how tasting rooms and small hotel front desks can be ready for them.
Staff Training
Recognize the regulars outside the club
Most tasting rooms have a list nobody looks at: guests who have bought the wine for five or six years
Have you been here before?
A longtime customer from Sacramento, a club member with a library pour, and a tasting room host who never saw the difference
The Walk-In Is Decided by the Host’s First Sentence
The Walk-In Is Decided by the Host’s First Sentence By Patrick R. Dunn A guest who walks into a quiet
The Wine Does Not Sell Itself
The Wine Does Not Sell Itself Plenty of wineries still run on the assumption that great wine sells itself. Tasting
Who Tells the Story While the Owner Is in the Cellar
Who Tells the Story While the Owner Is in the Cellar Harvest pulls the winemaker out of the tasting room
Thirty Seconds of Production
Most tasting rooms already brief before a shift. Reservations, large parties, stations, what is out of stock. None of it is about what the staff say to guests. During harvest the thing changing daily is not the logistics, it is the material.
Slow the Tasting Room Down on the Days It Fills Up
Insights Slow the Tasting Room Down on the Days It Fills Up Harvest is running early across California, the tasting
Nothing Went Wrong
Stories Nothing Went Wrong Two nights in Portland at a hotel that did everything correctly, and gave me no reason
Everything but the Cabernet
A blindfolded tasting on a foggy deck above Windsor, led by a blind chemist, and the one wine I got right.