"Free Wine" Is An Answer To the Demand Problem

"Free tastings" speak to falling visitations at wineries

If you ever wanted an example of the theory of Supply & Demand in action, you may want to take a look at the announcement from the Boisset Collection that its Napa Valley winery Raymond Vineyards and Sonoma County winery DeLoach Vineyards, will begin offering complimentary (free) wine tastings in their tasting rooms.

Yes, there is a caveat. The free tastings are restricted to Thursdays and Sundays. But it’s a start. But a start at what?

Jean-Charles Boisset, the charismatic Proprietor of the Boisset Collection, put it this way: “We believe in the power of education and fun to ignite the next generation of wine consumers at every age. Our wineries are platforms for connection, inspiration, knowledge, and excitement.”

If I’m reading this correctly, the new free tasting room experiences at Raymond and DeLoach vineyards are meant to attract a younger clientele who may not be in the market for the $50 to $175/person tastings offered at Raymond or $25 - $80 tasting fee at Deloach on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. But this variable tasting schedule announced by Boisset is exactly what was called for in the 2024 Silicon Valley Bank DTC Report.

Boisset is attempting to address an issue that is plaguing the wine industry: not enough young people drinking and not enough young people traveling to wine country and its wine tasting rooms. The No-Fee Thursday and Sunday program should help these two venerable wineries bring in bodies if word gets around. But the real problem Boisset is in a struggle to address is perception.

Writing at Wine-Searcher about the 2024 Silicon Valley Bank Direct Sales Report last year, report W. Blake Gray noted that “In Napa County, the average fee is now $75 for a regular tasting and $138 for reserve. For Sonoma County, the numbers are $43 regular, $81 reserve. No other region comes close; the next-most-expensive region is Oregon ($33 regular, $61 reserve.”

The word is out. Going to wine country, including the somewhat less exclusive Sonoma County, is expensive. In Napa, visit three tasting rooms and on average you’ll spend $225 a day, maybe to taste somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 wines. In Sonoma, it’s $126 for a stop at three wineries. This doesn’t include buying a single bottle of wine, let alone opting for the “reserve” tasting.

According to the Community Benchmark survey of 550+ wineries, tasting room visitation in 2024 was down 7.5%. For the first four months of this year, visitation to tasting rooms was up 1.4% in January, down 10.5% in February, down 6.1% in March, and down 10.1% in April.

Today at 9:00 am Pacific, Silicon Valley Bank’s Rob McMillen will lead a panel to discuss the release of he 2025 Direct To Consumer Wine Report. Beyond the contents of this important report, the panel will focus on the following issues:

Market trends that show glimmers of hopeful news as we progress through the current business cycle.

Personalized, community and experienced-based marketing strategies that are being used to successfully engage with younger consumers.

Making sense of the ever-fluctuating wine club, tasting room and wholesale channel sales percentages.

The potential benefits of piloting variable, traffic-based tasting fees.

You can register to attend the virtual discussion.

There has been speculation among some industry types that the economic tumble taken by wine is at a bottom. This is another way of saying, “Hopefully, at this point, the only way is up”. And at some point, this is true. The bottom is reached, people start to travel more frequently to wineries, and wine sales begin to increase, and not just in a small price category but across the board.

My reading of the stats and the press releases about No Fee Thursdays and Sundays tells me we aren’t there yet.

Tomorrow’s “Silicon Valley Bank Direct-to-Consumer Wine Report Virtual Event” may help answer where we are with wine sales.