Blog & Podcasts

wine business

BC Shouldn’t Grow Pinot Noir?

Well, this is going to be controversial.  The Story Sarah Marsh of Club Oenologique takes BC Pinot Noir through an absolute thrashing. This might be the most critical article on BC wine I’ve yet  read.  After all “there’s more than enough cash sloshing around the valley to bring a sense of bling to the wine trade here” yet “Okanagan Pinot Noir

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soil

What’s up With the Okanagan?

We can never stop asking “Where are we going?”  If you stop and think about how many of your conversations, especially around our work in the wine industry, focus on this very question.  And there’s conflict in the asking. Should we go here or there? Is the answer in the past, a sign we passed along the way, or is it

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wine business

3 Things I Learned About Wine Marketing from Kevin Zraly

There have been a couple of excellent pieces on the famous wine educator Kevin Zraly. Zraly played a critical role in the world-famous World Trade Center restaurant “Windows on the World”, and he has had as big an impact on wine education around the world as anyone alive.  Last week I shared Eric Asimov’s excellent article on Zraly, and Mike

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wine business

Vivino Scores Validates BC Wine’s Premium Positioning

We’re hosting a webinar April 4th on #BCWineData2021. Following on from last year’s edition, Paul has constructed a vast database on BC Wine and its competitive position. He’ll be demonstrating an interactive version of this year’s report that can respond to your specific needs for analysis and information on BC Wine by history, market share, region, wine type, scores, pricing,

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wine business

Do We Have a Millennial Drinking Problem? Part 2 – Follow Up & Responses

I got some very interesting feedback on last week’s comments on young consumers (Millennials and Gen Z) on wine. I love the dialogue. If you missed the piece you can read it here (my mom says I make some great points. Thanks mom.)  This a hot topic in the winosphere right now and for good reason.  The latest Silicon Valley

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wine business

Do We Have a Millennial Drinking Problem? Part 1

[Author’s Note: There was great follow-up to that article, you can read Part 2 here.  Eric Asimov at the New York Times thinks so. A big one. And this was reflected in the Silicon Valley Bank’s 2022 Wine Industry Report. Rob McMillan :  “In prior reports, we noted that the falling interest in wine among younger consumers, coupled with the

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wine business

BC Sparkling Sales Bubble Upwards

BC Sparkling Sales Bubble Upwards Guest Post by Paul Rickett of VARketing! Since 2016 BC Sparkling 750mL volume has grown by 94% in the five years 2016-2020. And despite all the challenges, in 2020 grew 14.5% over 2019 well above the overall BC wine volume growth of 4.5% for the year. Only the Rosé category was higher growth. However, Sparkling

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BC Wines & Vines!

John Clerides on wine education, building a wine business, and how we can make better wine

Today’s guest is John Clerides. He is the owner of the incredibly successful Marquis Wine store, the premier wine shop in BC, as well as a number of other ventures and businesses. You’ll hear from John how he modeled his store after Kermit Lynch’s Adventures on the Wine Route, why John thinks biodynamic practices lead to better wines, why generational wine making matters, what BC and Canadian wine need to start doing, and a helluva lot more.

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COVID-19

State of the Wine Industry

Silicon Valley Bank and Rob McMillan hosted a top-notch panel to discuss the state of the wine industry (you can listen here) in the United States. While American-focused, most of the data also applies to our BC wine industry, and because we lack the quantity and quality of data coming out the USA, it’s very valuable as a measure of both

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