Since the year 2000, wineries in the United States have grown from 2,000 to nearly 12,000. How can a brand stand out in the market? Dan McCole, Associate Professor in the Department of Community Sustainability at Michigan State University researches the impact of tourism on communities. He studied what makes brands that make the majority of their sales in the tasting room successful in new wine regions including Texas, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Dan shares tips on how to sell new hybrid varieties, what messaging has the biggest impact on sales, and what customers are really coming to the tasting room for (it's not wine!).

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[00:00:00] Beth Vukmanic: Since the year 2000, wineries in the United States have grown from 2000 to nearly 12, 000. How can a brand stand out in the market? Welcome to Sustainable Wine Growing with the Vineyard Team, where we bring you the latest in science and research for the wine industry. I'm Beth Vukmanic, Executive Director, Since 1994, Vineyard Team has brought you the latest science based practices, experts, growers, and wine industry tools through both infield and online education so that you can grow your business.

[00:00:37] Please raise a glass with us as we cheers to 30 years.

[00:00:41] In today's podcast, Craig Macmillan, Critical Resource Manager at Niner Wine Estates, with a longtime SIP certified vineyard and the first ever SIP certified winery, speaks with Dan McCole, Associate Professor in the Department of Community Sustainability at Michigan State University.

[00:01:00] Dan researches the impact of tourism on communities. He studied what makes brands that make the majority of their sales in the tasting room successful in new wine regions, including Texas, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

[00:01:15] Dan shares tips on how to sell new hybrid varieties. What messaging has the biggest impact on sales and what customers are really coming to the tasting room for hint It's not wine

[00:01:28] want to be more connected with the viticulture industry, but don't know where to start become a vineyard team member Get access to the latest science based practices experts growers and wine industry tools through both infield and online Education so that you can grow your business Visit vineyardteam. org and choose grower or business to join the community today. Now let's listen in.

[00:01:52] Craig Macmillan: Our guest today is Dan McCole. He is an associate professor in the department of community sustainability at Michigan state university. And today we're going to talk about some lesser known smaller wine regions and the challenges of marketing hybrid wine grape varieties to customers and some successes.

[00:02:08] So thanks for being on the podcast, Dan.

[00:02:10] Dan McCole: I'm happy to be here, Craig.

[00:02:12] Craig Macmillan: Before we, we get talking about wine in particular I'd like to kind of get oriented in your larger focus. You've done a lot of work in the world of natural resources and ag based tourism contributing to community sustainability. And I think that that's a really interesting topic just in general.

[00:02:28] Can you tell me a little bit about your work just in the broad scheme and kind of what kinds of things you're interested in

[00:02:33] Dan McCole: Yeah, sure. It's funny, I actually got into wine. I'm really a tourism scholar. And shortly after I arrived at Michigan State University, I was pulled into a project, that was looking at specifically at tourism. It was part of a larger project that looked at cold hardy wine varieties. So cold hardy hybrids.

[00:02:55] And there was a team of viticulturalists and enologists and economists. And I was sort of brought in there, for the business portion of the team specifically looking at tourism, but that also some consumer behavior questions that we had on that as part of that project. My focus within tourism is the impact of tourism on communities specifically.

[00:03:15] I'm not a hospitality guy. I look at the impact of tourism on communities. And so, you know, especially in areas like where I live in Michigan the industrial Midwest where, you know, the economy is shifting a bit. You have these places that sort of former manufacturing areas, former extraction areas for like lumber and coal and things like that.

[00:03:36] They're looking to new industries and tourism is a big part of it. And so we look at all the impacts on those communities, both positive and negative. We look at economic impacts, sociocultural impacts and environmental impacts.

[00:03:47] Craig Macmillan: it's exciting to see the growth in wine industries throughout the United States. I think that it's fascinating and it's only going to continue. In my opinion, I think we're going to see more of this, but again, then you're selling wines that are not commonly known. You're using the Frontenac one example. Marquette in particular was a variety that you had done some special work on. Tell me a little bit about what you did around that.

[00:04:12] Dan McCole: Just to echo what you're saying. First of all, about the growth in, in the number of wineries is crazy. In the year 2000, I think the U S had 2000 wineries. Now we're up to almost 12,000. That's just crazy growth. So it's not only interesting, it's just fascinating. And. A lot of that growth has happened outside of the traditional wine areas in the West Coast.

[00:04:30] It's happened, you know, in places like where I live in Michigan, but Pennsylvania, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Texas, you know, Virginia, everywhere. And that to me is quite interesting because a lot of these wineries are, they're pretty small. And they sell a lot of their wine out of the tasting room which makes it a tourism product really, because they have to drive visitors to their tasting room.

[00:04:52] So that's, that's what got my interest. But in a lot of these areas, you can't necessarily grow the traditional wines that you can out in California, for instance, in the central valley or, you know, Napa, Sonoma. Here in Michigan, we do have some areas where you can go vernifera and mostly, you know, like German varietal, the Riesling is, is quite good here, you know, cool, cool temps, but they're really in small microclimates, but a lot of the areas I tend to work in, they rely on, you know, hybrid grapes, wine grapes.

[00:05:22] And, you know, these have just developed over the last 20 years, a lot of them or, you know, some of them are a littl...

257: Understanding Winery Visitors – Increase Sales with your Messaging