What’s your take on wine festivals?  I think it’s a great opportunity for consumers to get out and meet a lot of people and get a chance to taste the wares of area winemakers all in one place.  Unfortunately, you can sometimes feel like just a number in the crowd which can taint the experience a little, depending on what you are looking for.

We went to the Georgia Fine Wine Festival today at Blackstock winery and it was a beautiful day. The food and music was fabulous (big props to The Kip Dockery Jazz Quartet), but my experience at the tasting tents of the various area wineries was mixed I must say.  I’ve been to most of the wineries that were present save for just a few (Yonah Mountain, Persimmon Creek and Sharp Mountain) and the wines were all very nice with a few really good standouts.  Unfortunately, there were just so many people there, I couldn’t help but feel like cattle being moved along as fast as possible like an assembly line through the tasting and this messed up my expectations of the “experience” I was to have this day.  Additionally, most of the folks working these tasting tents were hired help and not the winemakers themselves, except for a few.  Oh, and by the way, if you’re going have hired help pouring your wines, please instruct them never to use water to “rinse” your glass between tastings – I saw this on more than one occasion – and PLEASE make sure they engage with your potential customers!  As those of us who are vying for the Murphy Goode opportunity are continually preaching to the high heavens, it’s all about interactivity and engagement to build long-lasting relationships and ultimately evangelists, not about selling that bottle today.

For a positive example, I actually got to chat for a short while with Brannon, the assistant winemaker and son of the owner of Wolf Mountain Vineyards, Karl Boegner.  He was a very cool dude, a future’s so bright he had to wear shades stud, and explained his wines well as he poured for patrons.  He made a connection and was opened to my inquiries about various winemaking components of his wines and he easily obliged.  If it wasn’t for this one experience on the day, I may have been completely disappointed.  Thanks, Brannon!

So, festivals are nice and can be fun on a nice summer day, but if you don’t leave those patrons thinking about you, your wine or that one experience they’ll remember when they get home, you may have lost them forever.

In keeping with the “southern” flavor, here’s the 2009 Texas Wine Festival as surveyed by Ashley Bellview of A Really Goode Girl fame: