Comments on: The Sonoma County label war heats up

By: Sonoma County – Should it be on your wine label? « Fork It Over

Sonoma County – Should it be on your wine label? « Fork It Over — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 23:27:14 +0000

[...] Steve Heimoff over on his blog thinks that people should just make good wine — that is doesn’t matter what it says on the label — but sadly, I disagree. I wish people would just buy wine because they know a lot about what they are buying, but the truth is that people buy brands they recognize. And Sonoma, like it or not, is a brand that really needs to be sold. [...]

By: Jim Caudill

Jim Caudill — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 00:57:48 +0000

Uh, Johh, that would be a resounding yes to the work of the Cal Milk Board. See http://www.californiadairypressroom.com/Press_Releases/Case_Studies/Columbia_Business_School_Case_Study_on_Real_California_Cheese_Campaign

Actually taught in business schools and here’s why:

“The growth of the California cheese industry over the past 20-plus years is nothing short of a tremendous success story,” said the case study’s author, Michelle Greenwald, a professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business. “California cheese production grew from 281 million pounds in 1983 to the more than two billion pounds projected for 2005. It illustrates successful integrated marketing communications across a wide variety of marketing elements and channels, and illustrates the importance of consistency in marketing communications over time.”

Conjunctive labeling works, and wine tourism is an increasingly important part of any direct to consumer marketing effort. Get ‘em here, they will buy…and buy…and buy.

By: John Kelly

John Kelly — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 00:15:04 +0000

Sure I’ll go on record as saying “gee, great idea – yeah we should do that!” knowing it’s never going to happen. Nobody in Sonoma County has the authority to mandate that everyone put “Sonoma County” on the label. That’s TTB’s job and they don’t care if Sonoma County wants a publicity boost.

The closest thing we have to a trade organization is the County Vintners and Growers Alliance, and let’s say they could get a majority (hell, even a quorum) to vote on such a mandate, I predict that they might lose half their membership.

But before it ever got to that, I’d like to see a discussion of the metrics on whether adding “Real California Cheese” to the label has helped California cheesemakers sell their product, or increased cheese tourism into California.

By: Joanie Hudson

Joanie Hudson — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 18:36:34 +0000

So how would they deal with labelling that appellation then? Sounds like there will be some challenging areas of confusion from this to Sonoma Coast / Sonoma County bottlings… I do see the benefit of adding Sonoma County to the label, primarily for purposes of export and out of state. For example, out of state a lot of times people don’t know exactly where Santa Maria is, but they do know where Santa Barbara is. So it is a way to define a broader area and then get more specific. Just as sub appellations are important to let consumers know where there wine is coming from, from a broader perspective the Sonoma County inclusion would appeal to a wider variety of consumers in terms of being able to identify where a wine is from. From the perspective of somebody in the wine industry in California, Sonoma County on the label wouldn’t be needed, but from a wine marketing perspective, if you are trying to identify with an audience outside of us ‘wine geeks’ it is beneficial to include broader terms as well.

By: steve

steve — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 17:44:12 +0000

Peter, I think Carneros is the only Napa-Sonoma AVA.