A difficult year, a Wine Bloggers Conference and my potential role in the future of the wine country experience

As this week approaches its climax, I face a very memorable and paroxysm-inducing experience for my liver at the 2nd Annual North American Wine Bloggers Conference at the Flamingo Hotel in Santa Rosa, California. And yet before I show up Friday morning, I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to those who have made it possible for me to attend.

For I was not going to attend this year.

I simply could not afford to go. The cost of attendance for business-related blog writers had doubled this year over last, and yet the real reason I had decided to decline was that I’ve been out of work for quite a long time: July 31st makes one full year of being unemployed at my profession as a technical writer. It’s the longest period in my adult life in which I’ve been without a paycheck. Not for any lack of trying to improve my situation, mind you – I simply could not justify the cost. And therefore I was truly going to miss hobnobbing with my family of wine-loving scribes and scalawags, makers and mentors, brothers and sisters.

It’s not news that the California economy has been poor. Relative to other U.S. locales, the technology sector as exemplified by my local Silicon Valley economy has been even worse. And to top that off, my tour business has dried up.

It’s not to say that my website isn’t getting visitors. In fact, quite the opposite: my hit rate has sprung dramatically upward since early Spring. Even Alexa.com now ranks californiawinehikes.com as being at or near the top 250,000 websites worldwide for traffic – quite a leap in traffic compared to this time last year. Interest in me and conversation via Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook has rocketed in that timeframe, too; in the case of Twitter, that interest has reached well beyond the subscription level of my blog, and in much quicker fashion. These things have occurred despite the decrease in frequency of my blog postings over the same timeframe. But despite the heat-map stats telling me that 50% of my website visitors on average over the past six months are clicking through to my shopping cart, it’s become painfully obvious that they’re not clicking further: nobody since January has purchased a single California Wine Hikes tour. Those numbers are staggering, and they’re problematic.

Mind you, I’m not griping. But I am scratching my head. Nevertheless, I’m only facing a reality that many business owners large and small are facing. In short: in a down economy, the general population, despite maintaining some lifestyle interests, is and has been pulling back on discretionary purchases. They’re beginning to save, they’re staying home instead of traveling, and they’re not spending on luxuries. Certainly, despite my site stats, guided hiking and wine-tasting tours are a luxury not included in the same vein as keeping a roof over the family’s head or putting food on the table. In my particular niche, it’s easier to justify buying a tangible bottle of wine than it is to justify the purchase of an intangible tour guide service for which perceived need is not nearly so great. (Until you’re actually participating in a winehike, that is – you can trust me on that point.)

And so I find myself scrambling to execute my next moves. I’m not always certain about what those next moves should be. But I do know that over the last four years, the collective notion of combining wine and hiking has yielded a very tangible Gestalt.

Some wineries are already folding, unable to stay afloat – the aptly-named Midlife Crisis Winery being a recent prime example. And yet other wineries are finding ways to keep the interest in their products high, even employing social media strategies to bring in new consumers. These strategies seem to be working; at least there appears to be interest in the wineries who are executing on them. Time will tell if such strategies will positively affect the bottom line. But in the meantime, these wineries are initiating and maintaining conversations with many wine-loving consumers. One of those consumers is me.

I want to work with these and other wineries who have acknowledged a passion and desire to build two-way relationships with their customers. I especially want to work with California wineries that maintain their own vineyard plantations. Why? It’s simple, really: you have a beautiful property that exists beyond the experience contained within your consumers’ wineglasses, plus you have a built-in supply of wine club members eager to experience your wines. In my view, those wine club members are also eager to know not only about the grapes that go into each glass of your wine that they pour, but the land upon which those grapes grow.

That land is key to so much of what draws every wine lover to his or her love of wine, whether they know it or not. For anyone who’s ever spent a day walking the land – or merely working or exercising outdoors – it’s no stretch to believe that such an experience only heightens the desire and taste for the good food and wine that can follow.

Big Lake and hillside Cabernet vines showcase their allure at St. Supery’s Dollarhide Ranch

I’d like to say that as a naturalist, I know a few things about the relationship between love of wine and love of land. I therefore put forth the notion that a reasonably large proportion of your wine club membership will always appreciate a guide who can connect them to the land which ultimately bears the wines that they love. That connection may be vital to my business in the short run; but to your business as a winery, it will undoubtedly reap multiple long-term benefits, the best of which will be the building of a solid and loyal base of repeat purchasers – purchasers not only of wine but of real, honest, trail-dust-breathing wine experiences. The kind of people who tell others about what they’ve experienced only because you chose to approach them.

Heck, I probably don’t have to sell you with that last paragraph; you’ve no doubt walked your vineyards and know what it means to want to be out there on the land every chance you can. But why keep that to yourself? It’s a potential revenue stream. So I would ask you to consider another way in which you can solidify your customer base via the experience channel – the winehiking experience channel.

Think about it, won’t you? And then, please share your thoughts with me on twitter – I’m @winehiker.

The beauty of Hahn Estates’ vineyards under the Santa Lucia Range

In the meantime, I plan to personally show my gratitude to all of the following individuals and organizations – people who found common purpose in supporting and funding a scholarship program that has made it possible for a number of wine bloggers to attend the 2nd Annual North American Wine Bloggers Conference. As a recipient of this scholarship, I can now anticipate networking with the members of my wine family new and old, people I may not have otherwise had the chance to learn from and engage with this coming weekend – laments from my liver notwithstanding.

To each of you I say: thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Individuals

Melissa Dobson, Family, Love, Wine
Thea Dwelle, Luscious Lushes
Marcy Gordon, Come For The Wine!
Ward Kadel, WineLog
Megan Riley Kenney, Wannabe Wino
Jeff Lefever, Good Grape: A Wine Manifesto
Diane Letulle, Wine Lovers Journal
Amy & Joe Power, Another Wine Blog
Liza Swift, BrixChicks
Ed Thralls, Wine Tonite!
Joel Vincent, Wine Life Today
Michael Wangbickler, Caveman Wines

Organizations

~winehiker

Related posts:

• The 2009 Wine Bloggers Conference: a foundation for raising the collective spirit
• The Three E’s of the California Wine Hikes Active Travel Philosophy
• Reflections on a good year, and a window to the next

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 21st, 2009 at 12:00 pm and is filed under gear, grape squeezins. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.