Hi All,
I’m currently building out a wine brand – – it’s a personal project of mine, goal here is to better understand the wine business, building a brand, and using this as a creative outlet (This is a small product of 125 cases or so and the goal here is to sell 1 bottle to a stranger in 2022, not become the next Caymus). I’ve hooked up with a great natural winemaker in Sonoma (family is from france, and they’ve been making wine naturally for the past 40 years).
This year is our first harvest together and everything has been done by hand. I flew out to Potter Valley in Mendocino to help where I could (mostly grunt work; sertilizing, hand bucketing into the press, and working the pump button for barreling). It’s awesome to see the work involved in making wine first hand, and amazing to see the passion of the community when everything is done without additives / chemicals.
Anyways, part of building a brand, I wanted to do some research and ask questions straight to wine drinkers. Not just natural, low invention folks, but people who LOVE all kinds of wine. So I thought the best community would be Reddit as this is a home to many passionate people.
I’d love if you could potentially help out by taking a quick 2 minute survey to help me start brand discovery: [https://forms.gle/7UNgeb7g34AEzRuR7](https://forms.gle/7UNgeb7g34AEzRuR7)
2022 Wine Line Up (very limited):
Pottery Valley Pinot Noir, 24hr Skin Contact Sparking Chardonnay, 24hr Skin Contact Chardonnay, Piquette made from Chardonnay.
by just_here_to_learn2
5 Comments
Natural wine isn’t about Google form marketing surveys.
If you’re making natural wine simply to sell into a particular market, you’re not making natural wine. Minimal intervention is for ALL stages of the winemaking process – not just the grapes.
Just make whatever you want, my guy.
Is flying out to a region experiencing one of the worst droughts in recent decades just to make one barrel of wine sustainable?
The gatekeeping is real in this thread. I think I know why folks are being hostile. Most natural wines are attached to their producers. Their personality, their land, their experience and family heritage/history. Their story of how they took their life savings and followed their passion project to make something unique with love.
Your experience sounds more like a wealthy tech developer wants to get into the wine business. So my advice is to build your story and your knowledge so you know what wine to make, you don’t need to survey. It’s hard to get behind a producer that mostly made a hands off custom crush. Where’s the love in that.
For those here that think natural wine is not a business, that’s totally false. Doing market research is important, but natty fans don’t like blatant capitalism 😂
What I’ve enjoyed most about natural wine is how inclusive the community is and how fun it’s been to be with people who have a common passion for doing something fun and sustainable rather than trying to imitate the most successful wines in the world and I commend you for trying to be a part of that group whether you know nothing at all or or a old-timer winemaker.
As far as your brand I believe stories sell more than colors and images and unfortunately price is the largest factor in decision-making.