Event News
Announcements, recaps, and practical ideas for the people who sell and market wine — straight from the Symposium stage.
Walk into a winery tasting room with no music and the silence impacts you almost immediately. Every cork pop, every chair scrape, every quite conversation permeates the space; you yourself feel like you need to be silent and reserved. Add the right soundtrack, though, and…
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Why the Tasting Room of the Future Looks More Like a Restaurant
What if wineries have been borrowing from the wrong playbook? That was the underlying provocation behind one of the most actionable sessions at the 2026 Wine Sales Symposium, where Candace MacDonald and Leith Steel of the boutique creative agency Carbonate made the case that wineries have a great deal to learn from how leading restaurants…
Wine Is No Longer the Reason People Visit Wine Country
For decades, wineries have operated under a straightforward assumption: people come to wine country to taste wine. Marketing strategist Susan DeMatei challenged Wine Sales Symposium attendees to rethink the traditional tasting room experience.
Now Available: On-Demand Virtual Access to the 2026 Wine Sales Symposium
The complete 2026 Wine Sales Symposium is now available on demand. Watch all 14 sessions and 30-plus industry experts on your schedule, revisit them as often as you like, and download every speaker’s slide deck. Virtual Access is $89 — and it never expires.
How the Right Audio Can Make or Break Your Guest Experience
Walk into a winery tasting room with no music and the silence impacts you almost immediately. Every cork pop, every chair scrape, every quite conversation permeates the space; you yourself feel like you need to be silent and reserved. Add the right soundtrack, though, and…
Conversations You Should Be Having at the Wine Sales Symposium
The Wine Sales Symposium has a great lineup of speakers with knowledge to share across a wide spectrum of wine sales and marketing topics, but the conference sessions are only one part of the insights available at the symposium; just as valuable is the chance to meet and have one-on-one conversations with the experts and…
The Wine Market Has Changed. Here’s How to Navigate What Comes Next.
The wine market is no longer simply in a slowdown – it is in structural correction. Distribution routes are tightening, consumer behavior is shifting, and the assumptions many wineries relied on even two years ago no longer hold. Wholesale channels that once provided stable revenue are consolidating or disappearing. Tasting room traffic has become inconsistent.…
vinSUITE’s New vinSIGHT Helps Wineries Predict and Prevent Lost Sales
Discover how winery sales prediction software like vinSIGHT helps wineries prevent lost sales, reduce wine club churn, and boost DtC revenue…
The Wine Club Retention Crisis
Why Wine Clubs Aren’t Working, And What’s Replacing Them For many wineries, the biggest challenge today isn’t attracting new customers; it’s keeping the ones they already have. Wine clubs once represented the most stable revenue engine for wineries. Members signed up, shipments went out quarterly, and predictable revenue flowed in. It was the foundation of…
Consumers Want to Buy Wine. Why Are We Making It So Hard?
There’s a lot of conversation right now about softening demand in the wine industry. Traffic is down, consumers are more selective, and younger buyers don’t always engage in the same way the industry is used to…
AI Poised to Revolutionize Industry with Customer Communications Reducing Winery Workloads up to 60 Percent
When “the customer is always right” in a challenging, competitive industry like wine, it’s imperative to deliver top-notch customer service in order to survive and thrive. WineSpot AI has arrived right on time to leverage cutting-edge technology that delivers instant, accurate and reliable customer response, reducing the need to spend valuable resources on an often-overwhelmed…
Reimagining the Tasting Room: Why Hospitality Is the Future of Wine Sales
Distribution Disruption, Wine Club Retention, the Future of Hospitality & More! The wine industry is entering a period of significant change. Consumer behavior is shifting, visitation patterns are evolving, and the traditional paths to market are being redefined…
The Problem Isn’t the Wine. It’s the Experience Around It.
Declining sales, rising costs, lower traffic, and younger consumers showing less interest in the product the industry has sold for years—sometimes for decades. Sound familiar?…