If a winery in Napa County wants to know what Napa County allows the winery to do (how many visitors, etc.), the document most often cited is the “Napa County Winery Database.” It can be found here:

https://d2l2jhoszs7d12.cloudfront.net/state/CA/Counties/Napa%20County/Planning,%20Building%20&%20Environmental%20Services/httpswww.countyofnapa.org/Forms/Public%20winery%20database%202019-02-25_201902251623100147.pdf

Here is a letter to the editor of the Napa Valley Register which appeared on April 13, 2024.

Letter: Questions about County maintained winery information

By Julie Ann Kodmur

Transparency and accountability in government are hot topics today. I was extremely surprised when I bumped up against this recently.

In October, I submitted a public-records-request to Napa County asking for documents detailing how and when the Napa County Winery Database was created, maintained, and updated.

I asked how the county officially recorded pre-Winery Definition Ordinance winery entitlements after the WDO was enacted in 1990.

I asked why the Database is absent from the County’s website, considering that one could search “Napa County Winery Database” on Google and access a PDF from March 2019.

In late December the county responded, stating they have no documents that address my questions. Specifically, they said that “the requests do not correspond with categories of records that the County maintains. The County made a reasonable effort to locate and produce records that it determined were responsive.”

The response they gave me suggests that the County lacks a structured system or database for documenting wineries’ entitlements. However, recent testimony during the Lindsay Hoopes v. Napa County trial indicates that County compliance officers referenced the database while conducting code enforcement activities. From attending the trial I saw the myriad of conflicting interpretations and opinions which County staff express about the regulations. This is extremely concerning.

In reality, then, there does exist a winery database utilized by staff and the Planning Commission. However, the database is not accurate nor reliable; it’s full of inconsistencies and contradictions. Nowhere does the County clarify or acknowledge any of the discrepancies and inaccuracies in the Database.

Wineries! Hotel and restaurant industry colleagues! Please reach out to the Board of Supervisors, the County Planning Department and the County CEO to encourage transparency and better government/business practices, please! Maybe the “wine community” at large can spur some corrective action as far as the (frankly) colossal mess around the winery database.

Julie Ann Kodmur

St. Helena

https://napavalleyregister.com/opinion/letters/letter-questions-about-county-maintained-winery-information/article_79c6b5cc-f769-11ee-ba90-7b4fb3af4cef.html

The calendar pages are flying away—it’s unbelievable that we’re two and a half months into a new year!

If you can, take a breath, step away from the computer…and look at your communications efforts and see how you’re doing.

Have you refreshed the copyright date at the bottom of your website?

Do you have fact sheets up on your website for all of your current releases (and likewise, downloadable bottle photos and labels)? Are the bios of your principals current, with appealing photos?

Do you have a news or blog page which has been updated since 2024 arrived?!

How often are social media posts happening? Are they a mix of ‘serious’ content and a lighter touch, with glimpses of ‘real’ people, vineyards, barrels? Can you occasionally quote from feedback from customers? What about sharing/reposting images and messages from the outside world?!

How often are you sending eblasts to your mailing list/club members? Are they always bottom-line-oriented, or are you trying to slip in occasional ones which don’t have a heavy sales message? Maybe you have a new solar array or are planting a new varietal or one of the wines has won a big award?

Anything to re-think about the tasting room experience? Lately I’ve been hearing back that visitors to tasting rooms are uncomfortable with heavy-handed “join our club” focus as wines are being presented.

Good old-fashioned public relations! Do you have a new winemaker? New certification for the vineyard? A new distributor or importer? There may be news lurking in your world which could be announced and attract some eyeballs.

Good old-fashioned community relations! Do you supply rack cards to hotels or tourist-welcome offices? Is that card correct and up-to-date or does it maybe need a refresh? Do you visit local concierges with gift bottles and rack cards? If not, might that be an idea?

Personality! Are there local issues where the winery should have a voice? Those might be politics or not…but subjects where neighbors and customers might like to learn that the winery is a long-time supporter of the local Boy Scout troop….or children’s art center….or a local horse rescue organization.

Speak up and speak out. Every gesture you make can generate that slight increase in awareness which may or may not be scientifically measurable but may cause one more car to turn into your parking lot!

It’s OND, guys! All of us in the wine business are scurrying to handle the last three months of the year uptick in sales. At the same time we’re seeing some prognosticators predicting dire times.

I’d like to take an entirely different tack. If you take a quick trip around the internet to see how wineries and wine-related entities are communicating, there’s a lot of good cheer, and most importantly, clever and memorable messages happening. Wineries telling personal stories, pulling the curtain back to share behind-the-scenes moments, moments of humor and fun.

For example, did you know you could saber a Champagne bottle on the slopes? Maximilian Riedel shared how to do it.  What about helping your customers wrap a bottle?!

Want to brush up on bilateral cordons? Stu steps in. Or what about letting a winery transport you to Japan for a sushi-making lesson?

Don’t you need a Christmas sweater? Dave Phinney has one for you.

Share your creativity with a unique way to share holiday spirit.

A moment of beauty in the vineyard, a drone capturing erosion control or just sharing an iconic Italian landscape.

and the footprints of a visiting bear.

Hats off to Inglenook, who welcomed the community and the St. Helena Community Band in its historic setting.

Jean-Charles really did it, in his leopard boxers, jumping in to stomp grapes in his boxers.

And Josh took the challenge from the cellar crew to dig out a tank.

Don’t forget the obvious: what does your tasting room look like, all decked out for the holidays?! Wintry weather scenes are always appealing too.

Photogenic young winemakers are the focus of a tongue-in-cheek series in Bordeaux.

Then there’s aspirational imagery, enjoying gold dust on your cappuccino on your travels.

Or sharing the winery dog’s adventures, from naughty to nice.

My advice?

“Crank up” that iPhone! Don’t worry about how polished your vignette may or may not be: if it shares a ‘real’ moment in the life of your winery, go for it, share it, give it a fun caption! You never know what kind of virality you might possibly spark!

Have you finished watching the second season of The Bear? Spoiler alert: stop reading if you haven’t!

I can’t stop thinking about it. Incredibly nuanced dialogue, very fleshed out characters, compelling camerawork. Nervous-making storyline.

But of course after the first wave of “what great storytelling” I started thinking about the lessons for those of us in the wine business.

• The drama and theater and soap opera of what goes on behind the scenes, that our customers don’t see. Getting ready to open a winery. Getting ready to open a tasting room. Going on the road for winemaker dinners, walkaround tasting events, charity auctions. Do you have the right POS ready? Oops did you forget, are you wearing perfume/cologne? Did you bring the crummy corkscrew or the good one? How do you get people to sign up for your mailing list or become a club member?

• Then the curtain goes up, as it did in the last episode of the second season, when The Bear treated their friends and family to a run-through of the menu and the experience. You’re pouring your wine, waiting to hear what the customer says (or doesn’t say). Maybe that’s in the elegant stillness of your tasting room or maybe it’s in the raucous setting of a big tasting event. And what do you get? How honestly can you engage (“no it’s actually not sweet”)? Is the customer always right? The Bear would say resoundingly “yes.” When you’re pouring wine the answer may be a “yes…but…” The line between respecting a customer’s opinion of your wine and wanting to tell them they’re an idiot! Which of course you never do! Or of course become a patient educator, detailing varietals, barrels, soil, weather, viticulture, all the thousands of variables that go into that sip of wine. I recently was asked to pour wine into a goblet set into a leather necklace at a big public tasting; as I started to, I saw there was other liquid in there, stopped, mentioned that, only to be challenged with “yes, I know.” Big lesson for me: “the customer is always right.” If they want to drink a cuvee of multiple unknown wines, of course, that’s their prerogative.

• Ambient noise, as it were! In The Bear, much is made of eavesdropping and being able to quickly course-correct based on what you (over)hear. There’s a great vignette where Richie overhears that the people at the table have never been to Pequod’s, a famous pizzeria in Chicago, and they’re about to move out of Chicago. So after a quick discussion back in the kitchen, Richie runs out to pick up an order of that pizza, brings it back, the chef cuts it up stylishly and decorates it with micro basil and Richie triumphantly brings it out to the table and delights the guests. And another wonderful moment is when the staff (at another restaurant) discuss having overheard people at a table talking about how long they’ve saved up to be able to eat this dinner….and there’s an unhesitating decision to comp these people their dinner. The cinematography is marvelously muted on this—just a quick shot of the overwhelmed faces and gasps of astonishment when the customers hear this.

• The surprise of great sensitive service. It made me remember an anecdote Gary Vaynerchuk used to tell about how he and his team ‘stalked’ a customer on their social media, saw that they were fanatical for a certain football player, went to Ebay and bought a signed jersey from that player and sent it to the customer. That generated enormous good will and enormous purchasing from not only the grateful customer but a friend or two: here’s Gary explaining. With today’s sophisticated point of sale capabilities, sending customers happy birthday wishes (at the very least) is embarrassingly easy, but do we do it?

• The Bear is all about the ensemble, the team. In the wine world, it’s all too easy to credit the winemaker for the beauty of the wine and not credit the hands that grow the grapes as well as all the other back-up singers in the band—the tasting room staff, the cellar crew, the lab person or people, not to mention the owners and ‘back office’ crew, who churn out label copy and social media posts and sign checks.

• Storytelling: this is the element of marketing that you don’t even hear any more, you’ve had it so pounded into your brain. Yet. Why did you plant those grapes at that exposure with that row direction in that soil, with that kind of trellising? What are those design elements on the label, how do they give context to your winery’s name? What does the winemaker really like to eat with that Sauvignon Blanc? In The Bear we see what goes on in top-notch restaurants, wait staff dutifully reciting every element in a dish and how it’s prepared; why don’t we emulate that more when we talk about our wines?

It all boils down to hospitality. You’re welcoming people into your restaurant, in The Bear, or your winery. Is it serene and home-like? Is it cool and cold and corporate-hotel-ish? What’s the vibe? Friendly? Rustic? ‘Don’t touch’ beautiful or ‘how fun’ lively in terms of décor and mood? Whatever it is, be true to it.

In The Bear there are dishes we glimpse which are breathtaking for their beauty and wit (a cannolo called The Michael)—yet the show also reminds us every second of how important the context is. In The Bear, that’s one of the characters we’ve come to love approaching a table already knowing their special proclivities (Chef Sydney’s father doesn’t drink, so they’ve prepared a ‘pop cart’ with elaborate non-alcoholic options). When Chef Carmy gently pours a hot liquid over a dish, melting it all, the table oohs and ahs. Ditto for presenting wines, whether it’s in the shadow of Corinthian columns or a humble barn, whether you’re pouring from a Riedel decanter into a Riedel glass that’s varietally specific…or not.

Please go watch The Bear! Watching these many characters go through their paces will prompt you to rethink everything you do in presenting your wines.