In the Wine Industry Where Patience is SOP, PR is Treated as a Double Standard
May 25, 2022
By Alan Goldfarb
It’s baffling, in an industry whose very premise is predicated upon patience -- after all, we know how long it takes a vineyard to come to fruition, or a wine to be ready for release – that when it comes to media relations, vintners’ impatience for achieving brand awareness is akin to hyperdecanting in a paint shaker.
That is, winery clients want their publicists to get them media results, now! “Get me in the Spectator”. “I want Asimov to write about me.” “Send Lettie and the WSJ, my wines.”
During my tenure as winery flack, I have been successful engaging with, and getting the Wine Spectator, the New Yok Times, and Lettie Teague to take a look at my client’s stories and wines. But as is the timeline norm in my field of play, it can – and often does (if at all) take weeks and even months for those stories, mentions, reviews, to be generated.
Winiarksi, McIver & Portet Just Keep on Keepin’ On
By Alan Goldfarb
May 17, 2022
Old vintners might fade away but for a troika of wine icons who are now in the background but still very much with us, they’ll never be forgotten. Certainly not by yours truly.
I was absolutely surprised and gratified when Warren Winiarksi, Bill McIver, and Bernard Portet reached out to me recently after the announcement of this website was launched.
Warren, the ever erudite, gracious, and brilliant mind behind Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars called to congratulate me for my All Winery Media Solutions public relations business.
Women in Wine Deserve (nay) Command Your Support – Now!
By Alan Goldfarb
May 5, 2022
Some might consider this a stretch; and might say, what does this have to do with wine and/or media relations? It well might be a stretch and it only has to do with wine and PR, tangentially. But I’ve got to say something. I and hopefully you, will also say something. We’ve got to support women. Otherwise, who the hell else is going to do that, in this climate except, of course, women themselves.
In this context, I support Katie Kelly Bell, Forbes; Virginie Boone, Wine Enthusiast; Lisa Denning, Grape Collective; Jess Lander, San Francisco Chronicle; Elin McCoy, Bloomberg; Esther Mobley, San Francisco Chronicle; Deborah Parker Wong, SOMM Journal; Sasha Paulsen, Napa Register. As well as Sara Schneider, Robb Report; Lettie Teague, Wall Street Journal; Lisa Adams Walter, Wine Women Radio; Kim Westerman, Forbes; MaryAnn Worobiec, Wine Spectator; and Jessica Yadegaran, Bay Area News Group.
In the Annals of Winery PR-ing or How I Got a Client’s Story Told
April 28, 2022
Pass.
It’s another type of expletive of a four-letter word with at least four different meanings. But we publicist-types know it as the meaning we dread the most; as in: “No thank you, we pass” or worse yet in our collective worst nightmarish imaginations: Take that pitch and get that stuff out of here. We’re not interested. We don’t want anything to do with it. And/or: Did you really think we’d bite on that boring, uninteresting story?
Our job as PR flacks is chiefly about sending pitches on behalf of our clients, to media members. The point is to attract attention to that pitch. So that said media person sees the benefit to their readers, listeners, or audience, enough so to cajole them to write a story, taste the clients’ wines, or agree to an interview with the client on a podcast or radio show. Getting a media “hit” ain’t easy. If it were, you wouldn’t need me or my colleagues, who toil every day to come up with a pitch that won’t strike out, but to spin a story that’ll be hit out of the park.
WHY NEWSPAPER FOLK MAKE THE BEST FLACKS
Take It From the Deans of Winery PR
By Alan Goldfarb
April 19, 2022
We were sitting on deck chairs, next to the pool in the backyard of Harvey Posert’s house, if I recollect, on Zinfandel Lane in St. Helena. This I believe was in 2009 when I began a slow transition from wine journalist to winery PR flack*. Harvey was explaining – and revealing to me what I took as sacred PR inside baseball secrets – which wine writer was on the “take” (meaning they accept freely, wine, dinners, lodging, etc.) and which media types never take anything; but I’d better watch out, because she’s as an old-school newspaperwoman as there is; and she writes what she believes to be the truth about your wine.