These bespoke virtual wine tastings take you around the world

With the increase in online wine sales during the pandemic, many wineries have turned to virtual wine tastings to connect with guests rather than tasting room experiences.

Jackson Family Wine’s Spire Collection, which comprises 19 wineries from around the world, has a particularly unique new virtual program in which a personal wine consultant will craft a custom wine case from the Spire Collection for you to suit your tastes. The Spire Collection wineries are primarily concentrated in California, but also include farms in South AfricItaly, France and Australia, offering guests the opportunity to experience small production wines from around the world. With the Spire Collection, Jackson Family is known to buy and invest in great vineyard sites and small wineries, while taking a non-intervention approach to winemaking, allowing winemakers to continue doing what they do best. Over the years, they have accumulated aDepth and breadth of distinctive wines.

Under normal circumstancesAfterward, the Spire Collection maintains a Calistoga tasting room where members can sample a variety of wines in the portfolio by appointment only. Spire’s estate managers were inspired to create this virtual program as an alternative for members who cannot visitt the tasting room now due to COVID-19. Since launching in early April, they have hosted more than 40 individual virtual tastings, originally as a way to connect with existing collectors and members during this time and maintain personal relationships, tasting through the Spire wines that guests already had in their cellars. in addition to discussing current offers. Now, they have opened these personalized tastings to the general public.

“We understand and empathize with the uncertainty that many people feel during this time,” says real estate manager Ryan Hughes. “We felt it was important to reach out without asking for a long-term commitment. We also have something unique in offering a global and curated experience and we wanted to give people that option: explore new wines and regions. “

Guests can contact the farm team directly by email at [email protected] or by phone at 707-948-1920. Continuous membership is not required and the cost is simply the purchase of the wines.

These efforts to normalize virtual contact have paid off with increasing online sales, particularly in the mid-tier range for wines in its portfolio priced between $ 30 and $ 50. This has allowed Spire to maintain about 75% of your original sales volume. Before COVID-19, the tasting room, along with member assignments and email offerings, were the main driver of sales.

“In this new virtual world, we have an opportunity to engage with an exponentially larger audience that doesn’t limit us to who walks in the door,” says Hughes. “It is a new tool for prioritizing relationships and presents a whole new range of possibilities on how to shape our programs in the future.”

MORE VIRTUAL TASTING EXPERIENCES

Wine.com has put together an impressive 30 minute free line virtual wine tastings Inspired by wine parties or regions and featuring winemakers from rock stars like Gérard Bertrand alongside rock stars like Jon Bon Jovi guest serenades while drinking Hampton Water Rosé. Other recent tastings include John Legend and Jean-Charles Boisset tasting rosé wines from France and Saskia Rothschild guiding guests through Domaines Barons de Rothschild’s global portfolio. It is easy to register and buy wines through Wine.com and so far, the tastings have been a success. In just a few days, the first five tastings received over 5,000 subscriptions, and thanks to live streaming technology, there is no maximum limit on the number of guests.

“Before the pandemic, we were already working on creating a set of Wine.com experiences for our customers,” says Addie Wallace, director of new strategies and business ideas at Wine.com. “We have prioritized some of that work to focus first on digital experiences, but we are still thinking about a combination of long-term physical and digital experiences.”

Independent brands also host free live tastings on Instagram with their CEOs and winemakers. For example, Billecart-Salmon organizes tastings every Friday with CEO Mathieu Roland-Billecart, representing the seventh generation of the family-owned champagne house. Napa Valley Winemaker Josh Phelps and charismatic wine educator Anthony GiglioThey teamed up to create #SundaySauce, a free-flowing, bi-coastal conversation on Instagram Live about wine at 2 p.m. PST / 5 p.m. ITS T @anthonygiglio.

Zoom has been another popular platform for virtual tastings. Ehlers Estate It organizes virtual tastings every Thursday with the winemaker Laura Díaz Muñoz, while Inglenook and Donum also organize private virtual tastings through Zoom. By providing this added value at no additional cost to guests, these wineries are investing in building relationships that will virtually last long after this crisis is over.