The Auswine Forum

The following is the summary of a survey of winery tasting rooms in the USA. From what has been discussed in the Tasting Charge thread it is likely that some of the findings from in the survey would apply to Australian cellar doors. The comments from the Kunde Estate on how and why they charge are interesting.

Also check out Figure 5 of the survey. Its quite clear that the smaller the number of cases of wine produced the greater the reliance on the tasting room for wine sales. Remember that when you visit a boutique winery!

Wine Business Monthly's 2006 Tasting Room Survey has shed light on some of the trends shaping today's tasting rooms. This year's survey revealed that roughly half of respondents now charge for tasting, with average fees falling between $3-6. While it is generally expected that wineries should charge more for reserve tastings or when serving food, West Coast wineries top the chart with many charging $10 for a "bare bones" tasting. In addition, about 43 percent of tasting rooms reported that they apply tasting fees to a customer's purchase.

Smaller wineries and those located beyond the West Coast are more dependent on non-wine sales than larger wineries: 68 percent of all sales from wineries producing fewer than 5,000 cases annually is earned through the tasting room, whereas only 23 percent for wineries producing over 500,000 cases.

This year's survey also looks at tasting room employment patterns. Part-time employees are staffed 83 percent of the time. As far as training goes, it is no surprise that job shadowing ranked highest as a training method and formal sales training ranked lowest. The lack of formal training at many wineries may point to reasons why tasting rooms are not bigger profit centers.

...................................

Kunde Estate, located in Kenwood, California, gives visitors a choice of two tastings. The estate tasting is $5 per person and $10 per person for reserve selections. The estate tasting fee, however, can be applied to a purchase of wine, and those who partake in the reserve tasting may keep their glass as a souvenir.

"Part of the reason we went to charging for tasting was because we were finding a lot of people come taste who weren't interested in the wines," Kunde Estate consumer direct manager Jody Stewart said. "It was more like a party. Two and a half years ago we were getting lots of traffic, which is a great thing, but the people who wanted to taste different varietals and really experience the winery were being shoved in the back. Charging for tastings helped slow down how many people are in the tasting room at once, and now they are the people who are truly interested in wine. We welcome everyone, but it made for a more comfortable and safe atmosphere when we started charging for tasting."

Clearly, charging for tasting may reduce the number of visitors, but those visitors are likely to be more interested in wine for reasons other than the free alcohol.

Mike

KMP wrote:Kunde Estate, located in Kenwood, California, gives visitors a choice of two tastings. The estate tasting is $5 per person and $10 per person for reserve selections. The estate tasting fee, however, can be applied to a purchase of wine, and those who partake in the reserve tasting may keep their glass as a souvenir.

"Part of the reason we went to charging for tasting was because we were finding a lot of people come taste who weren't interested in the wines," Kunde Estate consumer direct manager Jody Stewart said. "It was more like a party. Two and a half years ago we were getting lots of traffic, which is a great thing, but the people who wanted to taste different varietals and really experience the winery were being shoved in the back. Charging for tastings helped slow down how many people are in the tasting room at once, and now they are the people who are truly interested in wine. We welcome everyone, but it made for a more comfortable and safe atmosphere when we started charging for tasting."

Clearly, charging for tasting may reduce the number of visitors, but those visitors are likely to be more interested in wine for reasons other than the free alcohol.

Mike

Sorry Mike, I really don't buy reasons like this being a validation for charging a tasting fee here in SA:

A lot of the bus tours and such are welcomed by the cellar doors, so I would guess they would get some sort of kickback. I would seriously doubt they would get absolutely nothing out of catering for large groups as this.

In such cases where they figure people aren't going to buy, the premium wines are usually kept under the counter for serious/loyal customers. I guess that's where the intelligence & experience of the CD staff kicks in.

Finally a lot has been made here recently about serving people under the influence due to the legal consequences, and you can be pretty sure that even if a CD staffer doesn't know the first thing about a faulty wine or bugger-all about the wines in general, they'll stop pouring if they think someone is getting out of hand.

The only reason to charge a tasting fee is to recover costs/make money on the tasting stock, it's as cut and dried as that. The problem is that there are a lot of free tastings available across Adelaide already at the various sales outlets, so unless there's something extra for the fee (ie. premiums not normally available anywhere, or the tasting platter experience at Shaw & Smith) it's just not worth it.

Cheers,
Ian

Ian

Even though Kunde Estate is in Sonoma rather than the tourist-haven that is Napa they still get a few buses out that way. The place even has a "Hospitality & Events Manager" and a number of different formats for tours of the winery. So they want visitors, just not the freeloaders.

Leaving the decision about who gets to taste the reserve/premium wine (under the counter) up to cellar staff implies that cellar door staff actually have experience in picking out the serious from the non-serious. In the USA, as the Survey reports Job shadowing is the most common type of training for new tasting room employees, followed by being provided formal written materials. However, only about 55 percent of wineries stated they offer responsible beverage hospitality training (Chart 10), and only one in five employees receive formal training.

The levels of formal training is really quite poor, maybe its better in Oz – but I would doubt it given some of the experiences I’ve had.

Mike

KMP wrote:Ian

Even though Kunde Estate is in Sonoma rather than the tourist-haven that is Napa they still get a few buses out that way. The place even has a "Hospitality & Events Manager" and a number of different formats for tours of the winery. So they want visitors, just not the freeloaders.

Leaving the decision about who gets to taste the reserve/premium wine (under the counter) up to cellar staff implies that cellar door staff actually have experience in picking out the serious from the non-serious. In the USA, as the Survey reports Job shadowing is the most common type of training for new tasting room employees, followed by being provided formal written materials. However, only about 55 percent of wineries stated they offer responsible beverage hospitality training (Chart 10), and only one in five employees receive formal training.

The levels of formal training is really quite poor, maybe its better in Oz – but I would doubt it given some of the experiences I’ve had.

Mike

Again one could point to cost cutting measures resulting in this sort of thing: the staff are poorly trained and can't distinguish between geniune wine appreciaters and troublemakers (along with their ass from their elbow). The solution: the premium wines are locked away altogether, reserved only for those willing to pay a fee, a great way of further reducing costs.

This is the sort of thing you could expect from corporates who do the bulk of their sales through the major retailers/grocers and are willing to employ undertrained/resourced staff for the sake of saving a buck, but for any cellar door claiming to be in the 'boutique' category in this state it could be something near suicide. It's just too competitive between the number of cellar doors plus the opportunities to taste the same wines elsewhere for free (or a very minimal charge, usually with food or some other bonus).

If it's a genuine boutique/small operation I think any wine lover would turn up expecting the staff to be well trained and knowledgeable, otherwise it's pretty easy to get an impression that they don't know what they're doing or they're not a very good winery. That's an impression they wouldn't want sticking, and in an electronic world where a bad word can get out pretty quickly you'd think it's not a risk worth taking, especially when there are so many other places to go here instead.

That said there are exceptions to the rule, and it may be a different story interstate and overseas (especially where a tasting fee has been widely/uniformly adopted in a region, and there's a lack of other venues to try the same wines for less or nothing at all).

Cheers,
Ian

n4sir wrote:In such cases where they figure people aren't going to buy, the premium wines are usually kept under the counter for serious/loyal customers. I guess that's where the intelligence & experience of the CD staff kicks in.
Ian

n4sir,

What do you do if you have a 'serious/loyal' customer and another customer in the cellar door at the same time?

How do you let one customer try the 'reserve' range without offending the other customer?

From my experience the tasting charge has nothing whatsoever to do with costs. It has everything to do with discouraging large numbers of pissy tourists just out to kill time on the cheap.

There is nothing worse than having a bus load of barely interested tourists coming into a cellar door while you are trying to taste the wine.

I believe that the tasting fees will become more common in Australia. Hopefully this will result in better service, fewer bus tours and the chance to try the super premium wines of Australia.


Billy B

Billy Bolonski wrote:

n4sir wrote:In such cases where they figure people aren't going to buy, the premium wines are usually kept under the counter for serious/loyal customers. I guess that's where the intelligence & experience of the CD staff kicks in.
Ian

n4sir,

What do you do if you have a 'serious/loyal' customer and another customer in the cellar door at the same time?

How do you let one customer try the 'reserve' range without offending the other customer?

No offense intended Billy B, but that's the point of keeping it under the counter isn't it?

If it's a paticularly big group the bottle gets hidden under the counter or in the back room, and while nobody's paying attention a new glass is poured out of vision and then handed to the serious drinker(s) while no one is watching.

If you're just talking about a couple of customers at a CD it's no big deal - they can be served too, and if anyone gets greedy they get politely told they've tried it already or only one bottle is opened/day and that one's exhaused (as it's out of sight nobody knows how much was in the bottle). It's not rocket science but I've seen it done a bit, and if the staff are good it's quite effective as long as they're careful.

As far as bus loads of toursits go, big signs with "NO BUS TOURS" as I've seen at some CDs should the job very adequately.

Tasting fees will not result in better service or fewer bus tours at cellar doors, something I'm pretty sure Mike will attest to from his previous comments. If a modest fee permits tasting premium wines that are expensive and otherwise unavailable to try (ie. like Torbreck) or a good wine/food sampling experience (ie. Shaw & Smith) with a rebate on purchase, fair enough, but a fee to sample a base range available anywhere is nothing more than a money generating exercise.

Cheers,
Ian

n4sir

VERY DANGEROUS!!!!

When you start judging customers on how they look to you then trouble is coming your way. Eventually you WILL get caught trying to slip wine to some customers and not others. You will only succeed in pissing people off. If it happenned to me I would never buy wine from them again and bad mouth them like crazy. NOT WORTH IT!

I am always upfront and honest with customers. YOU ALWAYS GET CAUGHT EVENTUALLY.

No, big signs saying 'Buses by appointment' etc. do absolutely nothing. The buses drive straight past them. I have seen that hundreds of times.

I have seen wineries making gates that are too low for buses to enter. I think that is the best. Make them walk from the main road.

Tasting fees can improve the service. If you remove the time wasters and pissy tourists then the staff have the time to dedicate to interested customers.

Small fees are enough to discouage most disinterested customers. Refunded on purchase and there is no problem.

One of those situations where a few bad apples ruin it for the rest of us...



Billy B

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one then Billy.

The thing to remember about Cellar Door Sales is that the original premise of it was to assist in wine purchases, ideally at the Cellar Door. These days, too many people take the tastings as a right rather than the privilege that it is. How many other industries do you know that offer free samples of every product they make with no obligation to buy? How many restaurants can you go to and ask to try everything on the menu before deciding if you will dine there?

I imagine that wineries would like to take back the control over what happens at Cellar Doors. Charging for tastings helps with this. Wine tasting at the Cellar Door can be a unique and fun learning experience and wine purchased under these circumstances will always have good memories associated with it. This is part of the purpose of Cellar Door tastings.

There are no figures available on how many people buy at Cellar Door based on the experience and how many remember the experience and buy later. Charging means that most of the people tasting at cellar door will be interested and if Cellar Door is part of the marketing of a label then surely that means that the winery will be getting the best value for its marketing dollars (Charging for Cellar door tastings will not recoup the cost of the wines)

I feel a Penn & Teller moment coming....

... on second thought I'll behave myself and let this slide.

Really don't like tasting charges myself. We do run a pretty successful cellar door.

If people make the effort to get to our cellar door, its up to us to have the wines that they want.

If we don't have the products they want, thats our problem, not theirs (and they shouldn't have to pay for it!) Its bad business to force people to buy something they don't want...causes resentment against the brand!

Bottom line is we are consumers as well, and have been known to visit the odd cellar door. Nearly always we buy a bottle (if its really bad/ bad value we don't), but we are generally pretty good customers.
On one trip to SA we came back with 26 doz!

If we were forced to pay a tasting charge , I think I'd turn around and leave.
Anyone else got any thoughts on the issue?

Smithy,

You let any customer who comes in the door try all your wines right?



Billy B

Remember when you were young and naive? When the world offered many new experiences? When you would experiment with different things (your mileage may vary )?

I feel over the last few years I have given this wine thing a try, and grown to like the stuff. I could then try further, and worked out exactly what I like. I could not, and perhaps would not have done it without the cellar door, and their (mostly) informative and generous staff.

Remember, we live in a country dominated by Coke and VB. This is slowly changing, but it would be a backward step if the wine industry and its legions closed its doors. That tour bus you just refused could contain a few more potential long term customers. Afterall, how did you guys get hooked on this wine thing in the first place?

Billy
We let all our customers try all our wines.
Its a basic principle here that you can NEVER tell who is going to buy what.

People are always surprising you.
Nicely
Cheers

Smithy
PS Love the lap dog Billy!

As we own a boutique winery in Israel, with a lovely and busy C.D, I can say that it is hard to predict who gone a buy and who is coming for a free drop.
We had a lot of talks about our policy (what to pour) and we have decided to pour every thing from the all series. We found that people are appreciating the effort, and in return almost everyone is purchase wine.
In the end of the day our C.D is doing very well.
A few days ago I had a chat with a person who is working in a C.D and this person said that there is a big different between people coming in a bus tour or by themselves. He said that the people coming on bus tour are looking for entertainment with less intention on purchase, then the other.
In California the situation is different then most of the Australian C.D with lot of traffic and buses coming. In this case different strategic should be imply.

smithy wrote:8)
Billy
We let all our customers try all our wines.
Its a basic principle here that you can NEVER tell who is going to buy what.

People are always surprising you.
Nicely
Cheers

Smithy
PS Love the lap dog Billy!

Smithy,

Right On! Love your work.

I agree, you should treat all your customers the same.

Hopefully I will get a chance to visit your cellar door real soon.

The dog is very cool. Not mine unfortunately. When I get a big backyard......


Billy B

Good topic

I don't go to tastings at cellar doors unless I have an intention to buy. I just feel its taking advantage. I have no problem not buying if there is nothing I like.

One of the great benefits of cellar purchase is getting something that can't be obtained elsewhere. I always look for that.

Don't like tasting charges but I understand why they might be there, however I don't ever recall being asked to pay. Keeping up the service is hard in some places with the volume of people and like all wine experiences, some of the enjoyment is situational so great people will make a difference and incidentally sell more.

smithy wrote:8)
Its a basic principle here that you can NEVER tell who is going to buy what.

And just because someone doesn't buy anything from the cellar door doesn't mean you're out of pocket from his visit, as he may still buy your wine in the future.

Most times when I visit wine regions, as I have taken a plane flight to get to the area, and knowing the restrictive baggage limits for the flight back home, I am unable to buy very much from the cellar doors. Therefore, if I really like a particular wine, and I know it's freely available at the local wine store back home, I just buy it back at home instead to save weight in my baggage. Usually the only wines I will buy at cellar doors are wines that are sold at cellar door only, or are otherwise difficult (or more expensive) to obtain back home. Also, if the wines have a large markup on them at the cellar door, I also will just buy them back at home where they are cheaper.

Also, regarding charging for tastings. Generally that's a real "turn off" for me. I tend to think that if a winery needs to make their money from tastings rather than wine sales, then the wine can't be very good. If the wine is good enough, it'll sell itself. If the winery is very well known and highly regarded, then I may be willing to pay a small fee to taste the premium range, but if it's a winery that I don't know much (or anything) about, then I will just walk out instead of paying to taste, as I know that most likely the wine will be terrible and I'll have wasted my money. For example, in the past when I have payed to taste at some local Qld wineries, the wine has been of very poor quality and I have left feeling ripped off and cheated from the experience. I need to feel that I'm getting good value for money if I'm paying a tasting fee.

Bill