I was at the wonderful Clos Pepe yearly event this August. I am thankful to our gracious hosts, Steve and Cathy for the invite. Ironic then, that the following experience took place at Clos Pepe, whom I’ve already mentioned as doing a great job communicating on the net in their own way, notably via @clospepe and @weshagen on Twitter. I was happy to chat with Wes again and we left with a couple of bottle of his wine.
Communications skills are a must for wineries. I recall the Lavinia manager in Paris saying they had over 12,000 wines in stock. Pushing the name out there starts with communication. A man came up to me at one of the tasting tables and asked if I was French because he saw the Palmer t-shirt I was wearing. Yes, this shirt is the perfect conversation starter. We got to talking and it turned out it he is a French winemaker who moved to California some years ago. It sounded like a classic “immigrant” success story with the added interest in that it was about wine. He was right to come and talk. He told me his wines were made in the old world, not the California style. I asked him for a card, and when he handed it to me I noticed there was no email address on it, so I asked him to write that on the card. (There was a web site URL, so perhaps he was wary of being put on a mailing list?)
Well, as our vacation progressed we were thinking this fellow might make an interesting subject for a column or an interview. I emailed him on August 9th, 2010, asking if he’d be interested in telling his story to the world. No reply to date.
I mentioned the winery name to a friend who was coming to our mid-August wine gathering, he was kind enough to bring a bottle of the wine. I liked it, it was 100% California, fruit forward (which is not always a bad thing IMO) 15%+ alcohol (which isn’t always bad…). I can like it, I can drink it, but I can’t call it “European style”.
Bottom line, the wine was 100% new world, the online presence 100% old.
