THE SCHMOOZER-In-CHIEF
Tim McDonald: PR Consultant to the Wine Stars
BY ALAN GOLDFARB
Aug. 22, 2023
Whenever I would snoop around a wine event in the Valley, looking for my next story, there would be Tim McDonald, schmoozing the writers, looking to ingratiate himself – and by extension – his clients. Mind you, this affable, good-looking guy with a tightly trimmed white beard and black-rimmed glasses, was not talkin’ up the scribes in any disingenuous way. Oh no. That’s not how this PR flack operates. He always chats to you like he knows you, likes you, and he means it.
But I often wonder, how he does it? How does he get invited to all these things when none of his clients are even pouring wine there on that day? Easy. Anybody affiliated with a winery in the Napa Valley knows Tim McDonald. He’s been around these parts. He’s been working in wine going on 44 years or two-thirds of his 68 years; and he’s been in media relations since 1994.
And when you’re in the PR racket, no matter how much schmoozing you do, it ain’t about you. You’re only in service to your winery clients. But for these 1,000 words, give or take, Tim McDonald is the story.
He’s lived in Napatown going soon on three decades; and I dare say, nobody really knows how he does his job. Ironic that, that PR types – who are supposed to be these great communicators and storytellers – never tell the tale of how they go about their business. McDonald is more than willing then, to recite the ee I ee I oh of it.
“If you’re not spinnin’ things and makin’ the shit up …” he begins to tell me with inimitable jest, “I’m just myself. (I try to) be authentic, tell a story; find the emotional connectiveness. And if you get some ink -- it lends itself to be a piece of a point of sale. … If you’re not having fun in this business, you should probably find something else to do.
“… But the goal is to get ink.”
Nobody uses “ink” anymore, but you get the point. The mission is to get your clients a write up, a feature, a mention, a review, a podcast interview, which in turn (hopefully), might be a vehicle to move those bottles.
Tim McDonald was born, really, to be a salesman. And that’s what he was when he started out in wine. I can only surmise that he was not Willy Loman. He did for his clients – big wine clients such as Seagram’s and Heublein – something Willy could never do for his son Biff. If flacks were reviewed by Variety, McDonald would simply be Boffo.
He says he “helped invent” the slogan, “Tequila Spoken Here”, and introduced the concept of the margarita for Heublein and its Cuervo 1800 tequila, to which he points out, “That’s when lots of tequila started showing up on the backbar.”
The tequila catchphrase years later morphed into his PR consultancy, which he calls “Wine Spoken Here.” Spirits too is now part of the business name.
When I ask him who were his mentors as he migrated to PR, I expected him to name Harvey Posert and Dan Solomon, two giants of the genre – the former as the longtime flack for Bob Mondavi; and the latter for behemoths Gallo https://www.gallo.com/ and Delicato https://www.delicato.com/. Instead, it’s the writers to whom he was most predisposed.
Writers such as Jerry Mead, whose The Wine Trader was one of the first newsletters; and who suggested to McDonald that he should go into wine PR because “he said ‘this is a skillset you already possess’.” And others such as Robert Lawrence Balzer of the L.A. Times, and Robert Whitely of the San Diego Union-Tribune; or Frank Prial of The New York Times. They are a quartet of wine journalists, now deceased. Then there’s the very much alive, Dan Berger of the Napa Register.
“I thought of writers the same way I called on key accounts,” McDonald explains. “I’m still a sales guy and I’m not a journalist, but I understand and study writers. I like meeting up with them to have lunch, and tell some stories and be civil.
“I can be a resource for a writer, which is the most important part. When I know Dan or Prial were working on something, I’d like to be thought of as one of their sources. Networking and reading writers’ work is important because you have to know what they are writing about. I typically bought 10 newspapers on a Wednesday, which is when the wine columns would appear. You just need to be a resource and be available. If someone calls you, get back to them before sun goes down.”
When I suggest that he’s always been a schmoozer – a good talker – he says, “My wife has for years said when I go to events, ‘(potential) accounts might be there, friends might be there; you need to engage.’ Networking is about as gratifying as you can get.
“The goal is to connect with people. Schmoozing, is a primary job descriptor. I kind of always felt, you’re got to be selling; and know the game is to show them a good time. It is a method, a strategy to continue to see what people are doing. If I see someone like you, I want to know what you’re doing, what are you working on, how can I help? You have to know the writer.”
At the culmination of our discussion McDonald inquires, was I going to Michael Martini’s memorial that was held the next day? Martini was the last winemaker for his family’s iconic Louis M. Martini Winery, before Gallo bought it. I reply, “I wasn’t invited.” The Schmoozer-in-Chief rejoinders, “When you learn about celebrations of life, I didn’t think invitations were required.”