REthink Wine Blog

As the summer solstice draws closer, many of us eagerly anticipate what summer brings, such as longer hours of sunshine, flavorful produce such as heirloom tomatoes, strawberries, peaches, watermelon and corn, picnicking, and taking long weekends or the annual summer vacation.

Planning your trip around events that are happening in a place you are visiting can highlight your experience. Following is a list of events that include food, wine and entertainment utilizing the great outdoors. Rest assured, there’s something for everyone.

Aloha Napa
The St. Helena Chamber of Commerce hosts musical picnics in Lyman park for Free. This year Judd and Holly of Judd’s Hill will be kicking off the series with their band, The Maikai Gents featureing the Mysterious Miss Mauna Loa.

Zen and the art of wine drinking
If you’re looking for a place to bring a picnic, relax and be at peace with your food and wine, Arista’s Japanese-inspired water garden is the place to go.

Toga! Toga!
Engelmann Cellars hosts their Movies in the Park with themed events. Events include inviting man’s best friend to a show and an adult themed toga night.

Celebrate with a blast!
Twisted Oak celebrates their Fifth Anniversary with a Birthday BBQ Bash. Ticket prices include both food and wine and an opportunity to taste library wines dating back to 2002!

Follow up the event by viewing fireworks on the lake, as the Vallecito Chamber of Commerce hosts their annual fireworks show.

Love him or hate him but there is no denying the power of Gary Vaynerchuck. He has exploded into the wine world with his powerful voice, his unique methods of reviewing wine, and his love for life. Disclaimer - I consider Gary a friend and am a huge fan. I like his disruptive approach to wine, his goal to democrotize and empower consumers, and his zest for life. If you want a great history of Gary, read this article. If you want to know him, meet him at any of his events or follow his twitter http://twitter.com/garyvee where you will get a mix of vicious promotion and statements that let you know Gary is a great guy, for example - “Wine + Board Games + Friends = BEST NIGHT EVER!”, or ” So excited to be alive! and to be alive in this amazing time when at 2 am I have all of u to hang with, THANK YOU everything/everybody!”, or ” thnx everyone for yappin on AIM, hope everyone has a house full of LOVE today and u are spending time with friends and FAM! See u guys soon!”

Sometimes I don’t agree with the way he describes wine and I am sure that wineries feel the same. I mean really, it must be hard to have someone publicly comment on the product you have crafted with TLC. But good or bad, as long as he mentions it, sales increase. I’ve heard MANY stories where he loves a wine, sells through it, and when the consumers want more, he points to the wineries. Moreover, there is a Anti-Gary group that just buys everything he pans. Amazing.

He is a huge advocate of winery and retailer Direct to Consumer as well as Direct to Trade efforts (yes, Gary is one of the major retailers who loves the concept of buying DTT). Needless to say, he is a HUGE winery advocate.

He is the newest and without question, the most prominent wine personality in the US today. His internet reach, his ability to garner mainstream media attention (Conan O’Brien cameos that are great to watch), and his usage of Web 2.0 has him as the most watched and listened to wine critic in the world. You may argue that point but I would contend that the numbers don’t lie. You can watch his show daily at http://tv.winelibrary.com/ or at http://www.hulu.com/the-thunder-show. He also has released his first book 101 wines - which is a hilarious, accurate, and wonderful new approach to how he analyzes wine. I won’t steal his thunder (pun intended) by sharing the content of the book, but if you are in the wine industry it is a fun read. I know he is already at work writing the next version and I hope one of your wines gets mentioned. I also hope you try to put it in your tasting room or sell it. I think that promoting that type of fun in wine is good for the industry and will continue to capture the attention of our largest growing wine population - the Millennials.

Hats off to Gary, he really is one of the people helping to change the wine industry for the better.

As a post script - Gary will be at our Annual Symposium speaking about innovation. If you have not seen him, please try to come. It is open to all of our winery partners and as a non-Inertia winery partner you can rsvp to try to get in since we have limited seats. For everyone that comes we’ll be giving away a copy of his book for you to enjoy as we do.

Invites to all Inertia clients went out this morning to our Annual Direct Symposium.  This years theme is “Innovation” and we are really excited about the content we’ve been able to build for the day.

First, we have three great speakers;

Ted Jansen, Inertia CEO will be speaking on how Inertia is bringing INNOVATION in technology, partnerships and new initiatives to help our winery clients build their direct sales. 

Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV, demonstrating how INNOVATION in consumer engagement can help both build a brand and grow direct sales.

 John Hinman, of Hinman & Charmichael, on ways for wineries to manage through these dynamic times, and how market opportunity is breeding INNOVATIONS for wineries to leverage - all of which ultimately benefit the consumer.

This year we will also have breakout sessions, allowing for smaller groups to focus on topics of specific interest to them.  To ensure you’re getting the most out of your day with Inertia, we invite you to “vote” for your breakout session topic/s of choice. Topics with the most votes will be covered in any one of 6 breakout sessions.   Go to http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=hLax5WW8gesYWJB_2f9rROEA_3d_3d to log your vote.

Helping our clients grow their business is a key value at Inertia, and we are confident that the information you will glean from this years Symposium will be of great value to all of you.

Look forward to seeing on July 11th,

Mitch Schwartz, VP Sales and Client Development 

Let us show you how to maximize this opportunity with reduced costs and higher margins.

The most successful wineries maintain three basic principles that make for a successful direct sales strategy and successful allocation; Inertia is hosting your personal introduction to  cutting edge technology that includes a best of breed allocation platform and NO CHARGE for compliance.  We will share with you how we can improve your current level of service to your clientele,  save you valuable time and improve efficiency.

We cordially invite you to be our guest, June 10th, 2008 at Copia in Napa. We’ve brought in top talent to give you best practices and tips of the trade that you can implement immediately.

Looking forward to seeing you on June 10th!

RSVP to angela.duerr@inertiabev.com

Today a great man, who challenged status quo, believed that a rising tide raises all ships, was a sharer of knowledge, and set the foundation for an entire industry, passed away. Robert Mondavi was also one of the most altruistic men in this entire valley.  Several of us had been fortunate enough to have met Robert Mondavi, and he was a constant source of inspiration for us in both life and business.  Without his leadership and example, Inertia would probably be a very different business than it is today, and Napa might not be the origin of New World wines.  He was a great man who will be missed by many. 

At Inertia, we believe that every success we realize is a tribute to his legacy, as we continue in our pursuit of his dream to help everyone enjoy wine and life.  We hope you all take a moment at the end of this day to open some wine and toast a great man.  

The Inertia Team

Dear Inertia Friends and Family,

It’s been an incredible last two years at Inertia, with almost 100% growth year on year. We’ve seen the realization of our industry-wide compliance solution, REthink Compliance, as well as the take off of our Direct-to-Trade initiative. Our partnerships have grown, and - most especially - our management team has grown.

You’ve heard me talk about our “All Star” team of executives – seasoned professionals who bring extensive experience in all facets of direct sales, marketing, product development and technology applications – and now I’m excited to announce our biggest addition yet.

On May 20th, Ted Jansen will join our management team as Chief Executive Officer. Ted joins us from Expedia.com, where he led the company’s North American initiatives. Ted is a multi-talented executive with significant experience in on-line luxury product marketing. Most recently from Expedia.com, he also spent over 7 years on the management team with Walt Disney and over 5 years leading ecommerce and retail initiatives for both Disney and online luxury travel companies.

At that time, I will move into the Chief Strategy Officer role, leading both business development and product development initiatives. I will also retain a seat on the board, ensuring that I will continue to be very engaged in leading Inertia to its end goal: To Help our Partners Sell More Wine Direct.

How did we get here?

The concept of using technology to disrupt an antiquated and dysfunctional supply chain and instead offer a high margin, high velocity parallel distribution channel is something we eat, breathe, and sleep every day at Inertia. Our goal is to build a transactional platform that allows wineries to interact and with customers in a cost efficient, scalable manner. And by doing make the direct channel one of the most viable and profitable channels in the wine industry.

To truly be the “change agent” we see ourselves becoming, I looked at some of the most successful innovation companies out there: Google, Yahoo, eBay, Microsoft… Every one of these companies demonstrated a similar story: the founder(s) built a company that had great success, but in order to bring it to full scale, each brought in an experienced CEO and worked hand-in-hand with them to ensure the scalability and success was achieved.

Based on the continued growth we’ve seen in our own business, I decided it was time to bring ourselves to the next level, as well.

We recently announced the dates of our annual Client Appreciation Symposium in July. At this Symposium, each of you will have a chance to meet Ted, in both our presentations, as well as during our Client Appreciation Party and Golf outing. I encourage each of you to attend for the great content, as well as for the opportunity to meet Ted and many of the other great new people we have added to the team.

I feel blessed to have such a passionate, devoted team as well as a wonderful group of partners that are all oriented to help the wine industry Sell More Direct.

I look forward to this exciting new time in our future… I hope you join me in that excitement.

At our little company we like to say that when someone has strong skills or do something great that they have “strong kung foo” (yes, I know it is spelled wrong). Today is my blog day and I looked at the ominous screen wondering what should be my topic. Fortunately I was inspired by an email from George Vare (the Chairman of our Board and a great mentor to our entire team) and I thought today would be a nice day to put up a list of people in the wine industry that have “strong kung foo.” This is by no means a comprehensive list, but rather those who immediately came to mind. There are other great Kung Foo Masters out there. I also made an attempt to categorize these people to show where their kung foo is strongest. Please feel free to comment on people in the industry that you think have strong kung foo - I very much would like to see them added to this list.

Grandmaster Kung Foo (A category with only one member)
George Vare

The Legends of Kung Foo
Robert Mondavi
Michael Moone

Winery CEO Kung Foo
Mary Ann Tsai - Luna Vineyards
Erle Martin - Pine Ridge
Scott Weiss - Fosters
Tom Shelton - Joseph Phelps

Best wine sales Kung Foo
Gary Vaynerchuk - Winelibrary.com (and cult of personality Kung Foo)
John Tichenor - Brown Forman

Guys behind the scenes you may not know but they make all the magic but they do, Kung Foo
Chris Edwards - Wine Tasting Network
Tom Wark - Wark Communications
John Hinman - Hinman and Carmichael

Consumer Direct Kung Foo
Miryam Chae - Fosters
Lesley Kiefer Russell - St. Supery
Jennie Haug - Revana
Jason Williams - Lancaster
Samantha Lloyd - Niebaum Coppola
Jim O’Shea - Sterling Vineyards
Matt Wood - Icon Estates

Financial Kung Foo Wizards
Rob McMillan - Silicon Valley Bank
Bill Price - Texas Pacific Group
Prescott Ashe - Golden Gate Capital
Christian Whipple - Pacific Premier Vitners
Vic Motto - Global Wine Partners

Not sure how to categorize their crazy good kung foo, kung foo
Jeff Stai - Twisted Oak
Marc Engel - BRSgroup.com
John Collins - Fosters
Lesley Berglund - WISE, WITS, Aged Cabernet
Tammy Boatright - Wattle Creek

Wine techie Kung Foo
Philip James - Snooth.com
Jason Coleman- Winelog.net
Joel Vincent - Openwineconsortium.com
Michael Brill - Crushpad

People fighting the good fight kung foo
Paul Kronenberg - Family Wine Makers
Steve Gross - Wine Institute
Kenneth Star - SWRA

People that buy ink (digital or real) by the gallon and use it well Kung Foo
Cyril Penn - WBM
Eric Jorgensen - WBM
Alder Yarrow - Vinography
Tina Caputo - Wines and Vines
Howard Goldburg - NYT, et al
Mark Fisher - Dayton Daily News

The Peter Foo Awards (great guys with the name of Peter that have had a major influence on the wine industry)
Peter Marks - Icon Estates
Peter Granoff - Founder of Virtual Vineyards - Ferry Building Wine Merchants
Peter Sisson - Founder of Wineshopper.com - Serial entrepenuer

Now mind you there are many, many more and I just listed those who first came to mind. Here are some suggestions for kung foo categories you may look to add: most innovative small winery kung foo, best tasting room manager kung foo, best winery marketing kung foo, etc, etc - I look forward to your comments and to you helping me add to this list.

The Wine 2.0 “Spring Fling” event, in case you hadn’t heard, was held this last Thursday at the Crushpad in San Francisco. The Crushpad, takes up the better part of of a city block in The Dogpatch neighborhood, just past AT&T park. The event started at seven, so some colleagues and I hailed a cab just before and made our way over. We spotted the entrance marked with Roshambo’s fifty foot wine wagon, check out the website to sneak a peak, it’s pretty impressive. Afraid of being a bit early, we found just the opposite, as it seems fashionably last was somewhere around six-thirty.

We walked in, grabbed our goblet, and started the second leg of the evening. They claimed to have over 40 wineries participating and I believe I tasted from at least 45, so lack of winery participation didn’t seem to be a problem. Soon all the faces from OWC and various wine related groups on Facebook seem to come to life. The 2.0 portion of the event included the who’s who of wine related sites such as Lloyd Benedict of American Winery and Mark Angelillo of snooth. It’s interesting to see that not only is the average age of wine consumers dropping, those that are bringing wine and technology together are the twenty-somethings that started their careers in tech and and saw the value it could add to the wine industry. Cheers to the folks who put the shindig together, I just need to clear the wallet out to make room for all the business cards I’ll collect at next years event.

It’s that time again - time for our Annual Consumer Direct Symposium which will be held on Friday, JULY 11th at COPIA. The symposium will be held in the theater at COPIA during the day; we’ll adjourn to the gardens in the evening for our Client Appreciation Party and enjoy some music, food, wine, and fun – all in the name of appreciation!

Our Annual Golf Scramble will be held at Chardonnay Golf Course on Saturday, July 12th. Even if you don’t golf, it’s sure to be a fun time. So, save the date for two days of learning and fun. More details to come. Hope to see you there!

I consider myself a pretty open minded male of the species and having worked in the wine industry for a while, I have to say, it’s refreshing to see an event that celebrates all of the rising female stars in the wine industry. I attended the first Women for Winesense Grand Tasting last year in San Francisco, which honored Margrit Mondavi and Kathryn Hall. You gotta check out some of the speakers WWS has lined up for this year. There’s Leslie Sbrocco of Check Please at KQED, Mary Hall of Harlan Estate, Mia Klien of Selene Wines, Dawnine Dyer of Dyer Vineyards, Julie Johnson of Tres Sabores, Susan Sokol Blosser of Sokol Blosser Vienyards.. They also have some Chron 100 Top Chefs and wine directors from San Francisco’s A16, SPQR and Aquerello and District Wine Bar will be speaking, as well.

I’ve included a link so you can check it out. This is truly shaping up to be a Grand Event at the CIA in St. Helena. Definintely worth at trip up to wine country for the weekend. Ok, enough enlightenment, time to go back to my cave….Enjoy, here’s some more information on this great event…

Women throughout the country with a passion or professional interest in wine will descend on the Napa Valley May 2-4, 2008 to attend the Women for WineSense’s 2008 Grand Event, Celebrating Women in Wine. This year’s action-packed, three-day event will be hosted by Honorary Chair Michaela Rodeno, CEO of St. Supery Winery and celebrates the best and brightest women in wine.

The Grand Event kicks off the weekend with a wine reception at Paraduxx Winery in Napa on Friday evening. Saturday’s all-day program takes place at the legendary Culinary Institute of America at Greystone in St. Helena, CA and combines exciting educational seminars along with the Women for WineSense Awards Presentation and a Grand Tasting Event. The festivities continue on Sunday with rare, behind the scenes winery tours and tastings at Quixote Winery, Spring Mountain Winery, Swanson Vineyards, EMH Winery, Palmaz Vineyards, Paloma Vineyard, Schweiger Vineyards and St. Supery Winery.

Karen Jess-Lindsley, Chair of the Grand Event shared, “This is a great opportunity to bring together exceptional women in the wine industry as well as wine drinkers who are eager to expand their wine knowledge. After last year’s very successful Grand Tasting at the Four Seasons in San Francisco, it is a real pleasure to bring this event to the heart of Napa Valley.”

The 2008 Women for WineSense Grand Event educational program on Saturday begins at 9 a.m. with a series of seminars on wine & food pairings, organic and biodynamic vineyard practices, sensory training and perspectives from the next generation of women in the wine industry. The morning sessions will be followed by the Women for WineSense Awards presentations including the 2008 Rising Star awards, the 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award and the 2008 Hall of Fame Award, which is housed at COPIA in Napa. The awards will be presented by Women for WineSense co-founders Michaela Rodeno, CEO of St. Supery and Julie Johnson, owner of Tres Sabores.

At the luncheon following these awards, the keynote address will discuss ‘Icon Wines and the Women Behind Them’. Panelists include Mia Kline, Owner-Winemaker of Selene Vineyards, Dawnine Dyer, Owner-Winemaker of Dyer Vineyards and Mary Hall, Vineyard Manager for Harlan Estates Vineyard. The panel will be moderated by Deborah Brenner, author of “Women of the Vine: Inside the World of Women Who Make, Taste and Enjoy Wine.”

Afternoon seminars focus on the sensory evaluation of wine, including such mysteries as the role music may have in the enjoyment of the wine. Speakers include luminaries like Elaine Honig, founder of Wine, Women and Shoes, and Leslie Sbrocco, author, media personality and Emmy Award winner. Saturday’s program concludes with a Grand Tasting of wines from iconic wineries with women in key leadership roles, be it as owner, winemaker or vineyard manager.

The price for the complete weekend package, including Friday’s Wine Reception, Saturday’s Educational Seminars, Lunch & Grand Tasting plus Sunday’s special programs is $195 ($150 for WWS members). Tickets for Saturday only are priced at $140 ($115 for WWS members). Admission to Friday’s Wine Reception is $30 ($20 for WWS members); Sunday’s special program ticket is priced at $40 ($30 for WWS members). Tickets are available online at www.wwsgrandevent.org. Program attendance is limited to 250 participants. Proceeds from the event will underwrite the educational programs and activities of Women for WineSense and fund scholarships for women in viticulture, winemaking and wine education.

Participating Wineries

These exceptional wineries will be pouring at the afternoon wine tasting event May 3rd, WWS Grand Event Celebrating Women in Wine. Each of these wineries has a woman winemaker, vineyard manager, president and/or owner. We salute these wineries, their impressive wines and the amazing women behind them.

§ Abacela Winery

§ Bond Estates

§ Bonny Doon Vineyards

§ Cakebread Cellars

§ Ceja Vineyards

§ Chinook Wines

§ Clif Bar Family Winery

§ Corison Winery

§ Delectus Winery

§ Drinkward Peschon

§ Fisher Vineyards

§ Frog’s Leap

§ Gabrielle Collection

§ Gundlach Bundshu

§ Handley Cellars

§ Inman Family Wines

§ Nicholson Ranch

§ Palmeri Wines

§ Rielle Wines

§ Selene Wines

§ Sokol Blosser Winery

§ St. Supery Vineyards and Winery

§ Sterling Vineyards

§ Tres Sabores

§ Women of the Vine Cellars

Chronicle Top 100 Restaurant Chefs speak at Women for Winesense Grand Event

One of the many seminars at the 2008 Women for WineSense Grand Event educational program on Saturday will feature restaurant owners form the recently announced San Francisco Top 100 Restaurant List. Let Co-owner and Sommelier of A16 and SPQR Shelly Lindgren and Co0owner Suzette Grisham-Tognetti of Acquerello, help you find nirvana in the seminar “Perfect Harmony: Wine & Food Pairings”. Anyone who has enjoyed coq au vin with a glass of Burgundy or French fries with Champagne knows the bliss that comes with the perfect pairing of food and wine.