The Role of the Cellar Door

The role of the cellar door may at first glance appear to be obvious to us consumers, but it may not be a simple as most of us think and I sometimes wonder how obvious it is to some wineries.

Many wineries would think the cellar door is there first and foremost to sell wine and it’s a logical proposition, but in the case of large companies, the role is greater than just flogging fermented grape juice. Large companies have a large presence in the market place and with that position comes certain responsibilities.

The first is to the industry. If the larger companies do not actively encourage both wine consumption and consumer wine education, who will do it? In many respects, the consumption aspect, in theory is easy; all the cellar door has to do is to pour wine. In reality, it should go significantly further than that proposition. When someone walks into the cellar door (assuming they are not on the “get pis*ed on the cheap bus”) and shows an interest in wine, it is a golden opportunity for the winery to attract a potential customer and if they do it right, the customer may become a long term customer which is the best sort to cultivate.

People like dealing with “nice” people and most will appreciate staff that are helpful and go that little bit further than the basics. Walk into a winery like Peter Lehmann or Grant Burge, to name just two excellent examples and you cannot help being impressed with the range available for tasting and the service from the staff. In both wineries, the staff will pour you anything that is available for sale and are more than happy to spend time talking to the customer, imparting knowledge and in a subtle way, trying to sell the product. Both are impressive operations with knowledgeable staff and even if you ask a difficult, obscure technical question and they don’t know the answer, they will find out and let you know the answer. In short, nothing seems to be too much trouble which results in great customer service and satisfaction.

When you walk out of either of these two wineries, you walk out feeling good and want to go back again. From my perspective, as a result of tasting wines at these two locations over the last four years, I have wound up buying both brands after every visit. It may not have been at cellar door, but the purchases were made shortly afterwards. I am willing to bet both these two wineries wind up doing very well from visitors to their cellar doors, even if it is indirectly at the retail level rather than at the cellar door.

Essentially, what both these two wineries are doing is to effectively showcase their business, educate the consumers and in the process try and sell wine.

There are other ways to do it. For example, at one large winery (that is part of one of the big five) that I visited on my recent South Australian Tour I asked if their $45 wines were available for tasting. “Sorry, we are almost sold out at cellar door and are holding our last remaining stocks for sale,” was the answer. Very reasonable you might say and many would agree. However, this is a major wine company, the next release is not due for about six months, there is tons of the stuff still on retailers shelves and no doubt, the wholesalers still have large quantities too. Basically, that means for the next six months, this winery is losing a chance to promote their wines to people who have come into cellar door wanting to try them. If they had been given the opportunity to try the wine, some of them may have purchase the wine when they got back home. Now this would not make the cellar door any money, but it would help the winery move product at a retail level. The cellar door staff may not care about retailers, but one wonders why the winery does not try and use every opportunity available to help them sell wine. After all, the cellar door facility is there and it is manned with staff. It is just a matter of allocating sufficient wine to the cellar door and pouring it selectively.

Torbreck, and a few others charge a fee to taste their better quality wines and the fee is normally refundable if wine is purchased. Most serious wine lovers would not object to paying to taste expensive wine and it stops “the get drunk for free bus brigade.”

Most people start off drinking low-end wine and many of them stay drinking at that level all their lives, but if someone takes the time to visit a winery, in many cases they are people that hold some interest in wine. These consumers are prime prospects for conversion to better quality wine, and wine that is more profitable. Doesn’t it make sense for wineries to try and encourage these visitors to expand their horizons and hook them on better quality wine? If they don’t do it, who does the industry expect will do it? So, to my way of thinking, there is a responsibility, for the larger players in the industry in particular, to foster wine education but in doing so, there is a large economic opportunity as payback if it is done well.

The smaller the winery, the bigger the challenge, but in many cases, the more critical it is to take the opportunity. If you are a Duck Muck and sell out of everything almost prior to it being bottled, then you may not need a cellar door now, but if you expand production then it may become a necessity. As much as Rockford has a cult following, they still rely heavily on cellar door for sales for much of their production. If you want an example of a winery that has made the most of cellar door sales and looking after their customers, then it is hard to find a better example than Rockford. They also do a huge amount to try and educate their customers at cellar door.

If the objective of having a cellar door is to

·         Showcase the company and its products

·         Educate the public

·         Build demand for the brand in the overall market place – not just at CD

then just having a couple of low end wines available for tasting is not enough to achieve the objectives.

If the aim is just to have a presence in the area in which the grapes come from and measure it as its own profit centre, then the approach of many of today’s large wineries is perfectly apt (to the bean-counters at least, who is running the company?).

Copyright © Ric Einstein 2004