Lazy Man and Money

Selling Wine – Almost Like Blogging

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This past holiday weekend my wife, my dog, and I headed down to the wine country of Paso Robles, California. Each year a group of 17 vineyards called the Far Out Wineries get together to host a wine tasting event. For a price of $35 you can spend 4 days visiting any of the wineries and taste their wine for free. To make it even a better deal the money goes to charity (tax deduction!) and you can win some prizes as long as you go to at least 8 of them. It’s a brilliant marketing plan to get people down there and buying their wine.

This was our third trip down to Paso in the last two and half years. One thing we noticed this time is that there are a number of new wineries popping up. I don’t know if it’s the economy picking up, but it seems like the wineries have doubled in number. When we got to Carmody McKnight I had to ask, “With all these wineries popping up, can I expect this annual wine tasting event to expand from 17 to 30 and go on for a week?” I feel like I should have known the answer…

The sommelier explained that the 17 wineries that participate are good friends and that they’ve been doing the event for nearly 30 years. It’s an exclusive club. Though the newer wineries are quite good, it’s not practical to let everyone in the club. As you start adding more people the value of being in the club actually goes down. It would be difficult to coordinate events like the annual one around Presidents Day and probably lead to the whole group collapsing under its own weight. The sommelier also pointed out that there is a delicate balance to strike. For instance the new wineries could get together to form their own network and compete with their own program.

It struck me that this is very much like blogging networks. I’m part of The Money Writers which is a group of ten bloggers. We have the same issue of newer bloggers asking to be part of our network. We feel we are a good size and adding new people would increase the complexity. And often other bloggers will go out and join other networks. The only difference is that I encourage bloggers to join networks and don’t view it as competition in the same way that the wineries do.

Can you think of some other area where this concept of a limited network enters your life? (Outside of blogging, I couldn’t think of any.) Let me know in the comments below…

Wine-Tasting: A Frugal Hobby or Not?

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For Valentine’s Day this past weekend my wife and I headed down to wine country – Paso Robles to be exact. Because we have a friend named Justin we found Justin Vineyards a natural place to start. We got there and they asked if we were Passport members. We asked what that was and it seems that 15 vineyards (known as the Far Out Wineries) got together to offer tastings all weekend long for $25 per person with the proceeds going to cancer support the Paso Robles chapter of the Wellness Community (which made $16,960.27 last year). It was a fortunate coincidence that we hadn’t planned on as a tasting typically ranges from $5-10 per person.

I keep going back and forth when I think about whether wine tasting is a frugal hobby. On one hand $12.50 a day per person to taste wine (often with great cheeses) in beautiful landscapes that look like they are out of Tuscany is fairly frugal. On the other hand, there is a powerful urge to buy at the wine-tasting. We went Paso Robles fully prepared to restock our wine-reserves, but ended up with a few extra bottles. At an average price of $20 to $25 it does add up. I would perhaps wine-tasting in the “gateway hobby” class. It seems like it may be cheap fun, but before you know it, it can get out of hand.

In evaluating anything financially, it’s important to understand the value for a dollar spent. That’s where wine-tasting really starts to shine for me. I’m generally a very reserved person, almost never one to initiate a conversation. Perhaps it’s a little bit of the wine, but it just seems that people are more friendly during wine tastings. Here are a couple of examples…

  • We spent time at Poalillo Vineyards talking with the wine-maker, now in his 70s. He had a picture of him and his wife from the 1950s that looked like it was out of a Brando film. When someone when to take a picture of it, he stopped her and showed her how to take it from the side so the flash wouldn’t produce a glare – “I was a professional photographer for 30 years…” he said. It wasn’t said in a bragging way, just a matter of fact like it wasn’t anything unusual.
  • While at the same winery, I ran into a couple of Steelers fans who just came back from the Super Bowl. We talked about the Steelers, the Patriots. My wife found comfort in her Italian roots enjoying Dean Martin and talking with the employee of the vineyard.
  • We had a great conversation with Pipestone Vineyards who make their wines “sustainably and organically”, plowed with horses on a certified wildlife habitat. Solar-power provides them with all the power they need most year. Sadly my wife liked the one wine of theirs that wasn’t grown on the property. I liked a couple of the others, but we couldn’t agree on a bottle. Instead, I’ll ask you to give them a visit if you are in the area.
  • We talked with the young couple who owns Minassian-Young Vineyards… and go to school 200 miles away in Berkeley five days a week. We had the opportunity to play with their two dogs. My wife and I came away thinking that they are either extremely leveraged or they inherited the winery from a parent.
  • While on the topic of Berkeley, we met a film professor from there. He had the cutest golden retriever we ever did see. The whole winery (including us) stopped to worship this dog. Of course, we had to talk with him about where he got his dog (since we are searching for a dog ourselves) and it turns out that it bred very locally to where we live.

By the end of the day, I realized that wine tasting isn’t just about the wine. It’s not about the pairing of wine with cheese, chocolate, or even a live band. It’s not just about the scenery or having a picnic with someone you love. It is about all of that, but it more. It’s about the 20 minutes where you and some total strangers interact almost like you were old friends. It’s about the people… and I find that there is great value in that.