‘WE BELIEVE WE HAVE NOT HIT ROCK BOTTOM’
Wineries are Choosing to Forge Ahead and Not Caving
BY ALAN GOLDFARB
May 7, 2025
“We believe that we have not hit bottom”. The italics are mine but the sentiment is from one of my winery clients addressing the perceived crisis (itals mine, again) that seems to have atrophied the wine industry. The client has taken steps to try and overcome this gnawing anxiety and I think that notion has created a culture that has put a stranglehold on the wine business; and which has enabled the perception to become the reality.
IN THE PR GAME, THE WINERY HAS TO HAVE SKIN IN THE GAME, TOO
BY ALAN GOLDFARB
April 22, 2025
The best and most interesting winery client I’ve represented as a media relations consultant was the one who told me, “I’ve loved working with you. You got me so much press attention. But I didn’t sell a lot of wine.” He was interesting because he was very smart and, as we say in the business, he gave good quote. He was attentive in that he responded extremely quickly to any queries I or a media member may have had of him. And he did so in a circumspect way, which was intriguing, genuine, and informative; and not a cliché. In other words: a journalist and by extension, a wine flack’s dream; which is why he was the best. Oh, and did I mention, he had a unique style in the vineyard and in the cellar; and his wines were really good? Subsequently, I got him a lot of ink.
CHARLES PHAN SOLIDIFIED THE ASIAN CUISINE & WINE PARADIGM
He Elevated the Genre from Under a Xenophobic Trope
BY ALAN GOLDFARB
Feb. 3, 2025
Much has been written about the death of restaurateur/chef Charles Phan. Deservedly so. He is the one responsible for elevating Asian cooking in the Bay Area and by extension, putting a dent into the racist notion that Vietnamese, Chinese, Burmese, Thai and Korean restaurant food should be inexpensive. Phan, with his Slanted Door put that shibboleth to the middle of mind because his food and service were without doubt, worthy of world-class status. Furthermore, and more germane to the readers of these pages, he showed that Asian food and wine should have affinity just as tea, sake, baijiu and soju have been for millennia.
DAVE MCINTYRE MAY BE GONE FROM WaPo BUT HE’LL WRITE ON
No Heavy Bottles and Honest Wine Reportage Will Prevail
By ALAN GOLDFARB
January 20, 2025
Dave McIntyre, the longtime wine columnist might be gone from the Washington Post, but his words and thoughts as a living, breathing thing – as with wine itself – will continue to be written.
I spoke to Dave recently. I thought it would be a rare opportunity – in light of the raison d’être in this space, which is to try and explain media relations – to find out what it was(is) like to be the recipient of PR pitches from the world of flackery. That’s because we publicist-types work in a vacuum, without much guidance or collegial interaction. In all these years, I’ve never really known if what I’m attempting to do to serve my clients well, if I’m going about it with certitude.
WILL WINE BE DUMPED LIKE AN OLD MAN INTO A TRASHCAN?
Apparently Wine is Not RTD
BY ALAN GOLDFARB
Sept. 20, 2024
The following thoughts are running though my brain as if in a pinball machine, whose theme is, Is It Really All Over Now, Baby Blue? That’s because I just finished reading my friend Tom Wark’s Fermentation discussion with the perceptive and studied journalist Erica Duecy, in which she pretty much sealed the deal on everything that we know about wine, is wrong. According to most of the trend-setting Gens of the last 20 years.
In summation, Duecy proclaims boldly and perhaps correctly, “Wine is in trouble, especially with younger audiences.” And wine is lacking sales points that Ready To Drink boast: “User-friendly formats, better price points, and a wider range of flavors.”