Finally, Free Wine Tastings Make A Comeback At Some California Wineries
As California wine tasting fees escalated over the past years our pocket books felt the pain. Wine tasting fees escalated with what economists call, ‘price elasticity.’ You can keep charging more and more, like $50 and $100 tasting fees because demand is arcing higher and higher.
But that ‘price elasticity’ balloon burst over the past year. The tide has turned with declining wine consumption, slowing visits to wine country. You’re not drinking enough wine.
Has the pendulum finally begun to swing back, depressing wine tasting pricing? Will we see a return to days of yore (back in 2005) with complimentary tastings?
The folks at Jackson Family Wines (owners of 30 wineries) began a retreat recently. They’re offering complimentary tastings at nine wineries during the month of October.
With caveats, they’re offering complementary tastings for up to four guests.
It’s part of the ‘Come Over October’ initiative encouraging wine lovers to enjoy the magic of harvest season. Below is a list of Jackson Family Wines properties taking part. Reservations are required for all properties and only valid through the month of October with some day restriction at various properties (ie: Monday-Friday only.)
Here we go. Make your plans to visit.
Cambria Estate Winery Santa Barbara County, CA
Copain Winery Sonoma County, CA
Freemark Abbey Napa Valley, CA
Gran Moraine Willamette Valley, OR
Kendall-Jackson Sonoma County, CA
La Crema Sonoma County, CA,
Matanzas Creek Sonoma County, CA
Siduri Sonoma County, CA
Stonestreet Estate Winery Sonoma County, CA
In the old days, when you tasted something good, you’d buy it, right? When was the last time you heard a winery with that philosophy? Free samples?
We are all for this kind of sanity. We’ll suggest it’s a test to see if Jackson should roll out complimentary tastings to all of the their properties. They’ll be looking to see if increasing traffic translates into higher retail sales and converting visitors into club members.
We’ve chronicled the decline in wine country visitation. This is hurting wineries because you can’t sell bottles of wine to people who don’t visit your winery. You can’t build a relationship with folks to sell bottles of vino.
We’re hoping this trend of lower fees continues throughout the West Coast wine regions. Perhaps complementary tastings aren’t for every winery but maybe they’ll get the picture and drop their pricing to $10 or $20 and offer to waive fees with the purchase of a bottle of wine.
Heck, we may even see the reemergence of complementary wine goblets.
Oh, never mind. Let’s just conquer this tasting fee craziness.
Some notes on our wine ranking system.
Bill & Erin Hodge write about California Wine, the estates & winemakers producing them and educational information about Vino. Living in California Wine Country provides a front row seat to the places you want to visit the most here in the Golden State.
– -✰ means -What’s next on your list of wines
-✰ means -Not liking it too much
✰ means -We’ll drink this wine, especially if it’s hosted!
✰+ means -You’ve got our attention and we might buy this wine.
✰+ + means -We’re hooked and we’re going to buy this wine.
When you see -✰/✰+ with a slash, it means we disagree.
