Sustainable differentiation. That was the buzzword of the day and an important component of Tom Shelton’s talk on branding and identifying market niches. In short Tom, the President and CEO of Joseph Phelps Vineyards, argued that only sustainable points of differentiation (things that make your wine or story sustainably unique) will allow a brand to [...]

Apparently, due to state prohibition laws calling for retailers to “serve the public need,” anyone (in certain states) can walk into Costco or Sam’s Club and buy liquor, beer or wine without having to fork over for membership fees. Here’s a clip from an article on this loophole courtesy of Smart Money: Thanks to some [...]

The Press Democrat, the local Sonoma County rag, has begun a new wine blog called WineAbout written by Virginie Boone. She only has one post so far, an introduction that lays out the boundaries of the blog (no cat blogging and no personal dinner stories). While I won’t get all nostalgic over the still birth [...]

Today the class is going out to Lodi to tour the Mondavi Woodbridge production facility and a couple other smaller (and it’s not hard to be smaller than Mondavi Woodbridge) wineries. Instead of joining them I’ve decided to play hooky, catch up on things and stay with the wife. One of the benefits of going [...]

Today my favorite talk was given by Prof. Jim Lapsley, the director of the OIV program. In his presentation on “State Regulatory Barriers and the Implication for Marketing,” Jim covered Why the US is a confusing system Understanding and working through the 3 tier system Goals and Alternative Strategies such as using Multiple Importers/Distributors, using [...]