What the Progress in Automotive Headlights has to tell us about Choosing which Grapes to Grow in the Midwest

The headlights on nascent automobiles were first seen in the 1880s . Similar to those which had preceded them on the railroad, these acetylene oil lanterns provided 50 feet, or so, of visibility.

With a vehicle chugging along at 25 miles per hour that 50 feet ahead of him provided the driver approximately 1.36 seconds of visibility ahead.

Fast forward into the modern era and low-beam headlights now provide about 160 feet of visibility. With the vehicle travelling at 65 miles per hour the driver has approximately 1.46 seconds of visibility ahead.

Not much has changed.

In over one hundred years of automotive engineering we have improved the ability to the driver to see the road ahead, and react to changes ahead, by one-tenth of a second.

So, has your ability to peer into the foggy road of wine improved?

Growing grapes and its first derivative, wine making, requires the ability to see into the future.

In the recent past, those in agriculture would receive insight from those with technical expertise: the sort of expertise which would say to grow this and to not grow that.

The answer today is increasingly to be found by the interactions with your customers and continuously collecting information. On a daily basis your customers will tell you what they like and what they don’t like with their purchases. Consider:

Social Networking. This is THE way to engage with the millennials. If you are not on Facebook and Twitter on a daily basis you are missing an important avenue to connect with these new wine consumers.

Direct to Consumer Sales. Most wineries think about sales only and staff the tasting room with less than knowlegable staff. Granted: Sales from the tasting room are the way to open the door for interactions with the consumer. Think of this critical face-to-face meeting as your single greatest opportunity to create a life-long customer. But you don't always sell, and if you don't sell you should not pass up this opportunity to gain some insight. Consider collecting one piece of information from each visitor.

Wine Clubs. Once signed up, wine club members retain membership on average for two years. Think: two bottles per month for twenty four months.

Bottom line: Merely keeping up with the competition is not sufficient if you are to grow your business. An aggressive set of strategies is required to connect with, gather information from, and make sales to your customers.

Oh my, another Crush?!

Brad Posts:

Labor Day weekend will be here in a couple of days and that means one thing: I am about to become very busy with the Fall grape harvest! The first wine grapes of the season have already been picked, crushed, pressed and are fermenting away quietly in stainless steel tanks.

Just last weekend, at the winery where I work part-time, forty volunteer pickers (i.e., they picked for a donation to a charity of their choice) worked their way through three cold-hardy, white wine grape varietals – La Crescent whose small, golden berries were filled with sweetness and about to burst from the recent rains tasted delicious; St. Pepin, planted in between neighboring rows (because they need other grapes to pollinate) were green-yellow and full of bright flavors; and Briana teased the growers with her gorgeous voluptuousness and full-on fruity goodness.

In just a few short hours our volunteers had hand-harvested more than 8,000 pounds of wine grapes! We promptly dispensed with the grapes.

That is just the beginning. For the past several months I have been working with regional wine growers and negotiating prices for our wine club (Eastern Iowa Wine Club) – and on Saturday we’re at it again! Last year we purchased somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000lbs and this year we surpassed 9,000lbs – and the logistics alone is a bit overwhelming! Trying to manage club member purchases, grape grower requirements, transportation, and crush-pad plans – sheesh, “what did I get myself into?”

I know its crazy-busy now but in about 6 weeks the rush will be over and our wines will be peacefully fermenting and all will be quiet. But right now the grape volume is about to get cranked up! This coming Saturday we will pick up Frontenac grapes (about 2.5 hours from here) from a grower south of Des Moines and on Sunday many of our club members will be hand picking Marechal Foch at a friend’s vineyard bright and early.

There are still lots of choices to be made: 1) do we crush and press the Foch right away or let it macerate for a few hours? 2) do we give the delestage technique a try (removing the seeds from the ferment)? 3) yeast selections? 4) enzymes? 5) fermentation temperatures? 6) and many other questions we haven’t even thought about yet.

The grapes will keep coming and coming until one day it will be over. There is a bitter-sweet aspect to the harvest season – it is exciting, exhausting, thrilling, frustrating -- and a lot of fun!

Have you ever tried a port-inspired Frontenac wine? Oh, it’s goooood.! Like I said…Fun.

Happy Crush!
~Brad