Competition is fierce in the wine business. With so many wineries and wine brands making so much wine, the consumer has virtually endless choice. Why should they pick your wine over the thousands of others available in their market? Wineries should do whatever they can to stand out from the crowd, but the opposite is…
Category: Wine Marketing
Charlie Geoghegan is a consultant in wine marketing and communications based in Bordeaux, France. This is an archive of all his published articles related to marketing wine and the business of wine.
In my personal and professional life, I spend a lot of my time on the business of wine and everything it entails. The subject of wine marketing has fascinated me since my first wine job in the Irish supermarket industry. Marketing is just as important at the entry level as it is for the luxury wine brands. All wine producers and wine companies can benefit from wine branding strategies.
In this category, you will find various articles about marketing wine internationally.
Branded house or house of brands? Brand architecture in Bordeaux wine
This is a follow-up to a previous article on brand portfolio strategy in Bordeaux. There, I looked at concepts such as the Grand Vin, the second wine, endorsed brands, and other brand extension strategies. Here, I will look at how those individual building blocks come together to make up the overall brand architecture of a…
Second wines and beyond: Brand portfolio strategy in Bordeaux wine
Bordeaux wine is a crowded and fiercely competitive market, with around 6,500 individual producers actively making wine today. The fine wine segment consists of the top 300 or so wineries, most of whom are Grands Crus Classés (“classified growths”), having been ranked in one classification or another. With some exceptions, the majority have been making…
How to read (and write) a wine technical sheet
How the wine industry communicates about wine to the consumer is fascinating. Wine companies try to communicate directly or indirectly through their wine labels, winery websites, advertising, social media and various other means. These efforts are sometimes inspiring, quite often funny or frustrating, and occasionally heartbreaking. The wine technical sheet is a key weapon in…
Strategic marketing in white Bordeaux wine
Château Fourcas Hosten is one of the leading wine producers in Listrac-Médoc, a small appellation on the left bank of Bordeaux. Some friends and I visited the estate earlier this summer when I was a little surprised to find that they have launched a white Bordeaux wine. The Médoc is firmly red wine country, after…
Marketing Petit Verdot in Bordeaux: Listrac-Médoc
Bordeaux is not the first place I look to for innovation in wine marketing, and Petit Verdot is not exactly my go-to grape variety. The region has strong links to the past, to say the least, and most of its stakeholders have at least some interest in maintaining the status quo. Encountering new product development…