In Alloro Vineyard with Owner and Winegrower Dave Nemarnik

Tour Alloro Vineyard in the Willamette Valley with Owner and Winegrower Dave Nemarnik.

Alloro brings Old-World allure to Oregon, just 30 minutes southwest of Portland. The 80-acre estate is a bucolic homage to Italian tradition, from its iconic Tuscan farmhouse and culinary gardens to the heirloom sheep that graze the vineyard cover crops.

Alloro is Italian for laurel a salute to David Nemarnik's Italian / Croatian heritage, and the Laurel Ridge site itself. Holistic agricultural practices and respectful stewardship create terroir-driven wines showcasing purity of fruit with a clear sense of place.

https://www.allorovineyard.com

http://www.austinbeeman.com

This is Episode #68 of Understanding Wine with Austin Beeman. Download the Video directly here.

Barolo Boys. The Story of a Revolution. Wine Documentary Review.

In the 1980s and 90s, a small cadre of young men in Piedmonte, Italy aggressively broke with the winemaking traditions of their fathers. Born of economic necessity, these “Barolo Boys” embraced French techniques including intensely ripe fruit and the use of New Oak French Barriques. It was a revolutionary move causing scandal in Italy, but also resulting in enormous financial and cultural rewards. The wines were beloved by critics both within Italy and overseas.

Barolo Boys: the Story of a Revolution (2014) tells this story primarily through interviews with the people that lived it.

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The trailer is below:

For the first time on the big screen, Barolo Boys. The Story of a Revolution tells the fascinating story of a group of friends who bring a revolution in the Langhe, and how Barolo exploded as a world phenomenon.

I rate this movie 87 points on the 100 Point Wine Rating Scale popularized by Robert Parker, Wine Spectator, and others…

The best things about Barolo Boys:

If you are new to the story of the Barolo Boys or are first being exposed to the wine region of Piedmont, you’ll likely find this a pleasant overview. The story is told clearly and concisely. The characters and their dilemmas are well drawn. There are also some soaring videography of Barolo’s beautiful vineyards.

The most precious parts of this documentary, however, are the intimate interviews with some of the Barolo Boys: Elio Altare, Marc de Grazia (Barolo Importer), Giorgio Rivetti, Robert Voerzio, Bruno Ceretto and more including Barolo Girl Chiara Boschis. Preserving for posterity the first hand accounts of their figure is a blessing. Many of these winemakers are of advanced years and their isn’t likely must time left to document their stories. See the full list here.

The least effective parts of Barolo Boys:

The documentary is quite short, coming in at only 64 minutes, and yet often feels slow and bloated. You could easily trim this to 45 minutes and lose nothing. There is so much more to say about this topic that is interesting. Long sequences of marching bands and soccer players didn’t add to the film. I definitely believe that this film was padded to get to feature length for festival submissions.

In addition, the filmmaking was at times amateurish. The directors didn’t seem to trust the film’s ability to keep our attention in flashback. They are digitally over-processed in the style common to college film students. It makes the film feel cheaply made. This is unfortunate because there are other times, specifically vineyard photography, where everything is smooth and professional.

The last major flaw is the intro and outro by Joe Bastianich. He simply lacks any charisma onscreen. You feel bad for him as Bastianich is a deer in the camera’s headlights. Don’t feel too bad for him, though. He has famous parents and manages dozens of awesome restaurants around the world as well as Eataly. But he should not have been in this documentary and his introduction may make many people turn it off prematurely.

In Conclusion:

If you are new to the story of the Barolo Boys, you’ll get a lot out of this. I do recommend that you watch Barolo Boys even if you are already knowledgeable about them. It is great to see the vineyards of Piedmonte and many of the prominent winemakers of Barolo. Not a bad way to spend an hour.

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FTC Disclosure:

• I rented my copy of this documentary.

• In my job at Cutting Edge Selections, we currently sell in Ohio and Kentucky some of the wineries referenced in this documentary, but most of the wines and the major importer featured in the documentary are with direct competitors of Cutting Edge.

How to Stop Losing Wine Club Members in One Easy Step

For independent wineries to survive and thrive in the challenging present, they are going to need to adopt business strategies that go beyond the conventions of this industry. One of the best ways to do this is to learn from outside the wine business and adapt what you learn. Of course, the challenge is to find something both powerful and cost effective.

I recently came across an idea that is easy and inexpensive to implement with the power to revitalize the most profitable sales channel for independent wineries.

The Winery Wine Club.

Imagine you’ve just joined a winery’s wine club.  Perhaps you visited the winery and had a wonderful time.  You tasted delicious wine, met some cool people, and enjoyed a beautiful view of the vineyards.  You will now be sent an interesting selection of wine every couple months.

Congratulations!  You have become one of the winery’s most profitable customers — but you will be out of their wine club in 18 months!

For all the time effort and money put into customer acquisition, the average winery club member only lasts for eighteen months.  That is a painfully short time for the most profitable part of a winery’s business.

Anything that can increase that average - even little bit - will put real money towards the bottom line. It is vitally important.

Allow me to introduce HighRIse - a customer relationship management company.

—I’m not selling their service, I want you to imitate one of their great ideas—

They have been so successful that, as of this writing, they are no longer accepting new customers. They attribute some of that success to an unconventionally human interaction.

After signing up a new customer, the support team at HighRise records a short personal video for that customer. The customer is addressed by name, given access to a real human being, and asked what help they specifically need.

It’s an absolutely amazing relationship-builder between the business and its customers. The videos aren’t professionally shot - most are taken from a shaky camera phone, with poor lighting - but they are always well received. So well received, in fact, that they tend to get shared on social media quite a bit, generating a lot of press for HighRise. Something as simple as a thirty-second video welcoming a customer to a product has real capacity to build goodwill, social capital, and genuine connection between a customer and a company.

In the wine business, we call this hospitality. This is just the digital version.

Can you imagine the impact on club members if the owner or winemaker would take the time to send them a personal video once a year?

I can.

*Quote from “Company of One” by Paul Jarvis.

**Photo by Vicente Veras on Unsplash