Getting into the festivities of global Cabernet Day – how and where to get involved

Who makes Australia’s best Cabernet Sauvignon? Now, I’m sure you all have your favourite? Is it from the region of Coonawarra, the Yarra Valley, McLaren Vale, Mudgee or does Margaret River take your fancy? There’s so much diversity and regional examples to explore.

Cabernet Day on 1 September is a great opportunity to put region against region and see just how Australian Cabernet Sauvignon has evolved to stand along the finest in the world. Momentum is growing globally for this international social media event and Australian wineries are keen to show you the best wines they are producing. Register on http://cabernet.eventbrite.com/ to get involved.

We’re hearing reports of back vintage wines being pulled out of the cellar, exclusive new releases being sent to sample and international distributors (yes including those from New Zealand) who sell in Australia also getting into the action. This is an event for everyone to participate in.

WHERE TO GO TO GET INVOLVED:

There will be a general tweet up from 7-8.30pm EST for anyone who wants to get involved at home, but you’re not restricted to that time zone. There are events and free tastings happening all over Australia. Summary of some of the global events can be found here  and the big free tastings are as follows:

SYDNEY:

Where: Coast Roof Top Bar and Restaurant

The Roof Terrace, Cockle Bay Wharf,

Darling Harbour, Sydney, NSW 2000

Time: 4- 6.00pm

ADELAIDE:

Where: The Qwoff Boys Headquarters

15b Richard Street,

Hindmarsh SA 5007

From 6pm

Spots are limited so please email justin@qwoff.com.au for availability

COONAWARRA

Zema Estate Winery,

Riddoch Hwy,

Coonawarra

5.30pm to 6.30pm

BAROSSA VALLEY

Wolf Blass Visitors Centre

97 Sturt Hwy

Nurioopta, SA 5355

5-7pm

BRISBANE:

Wine Experience

150 Baroona Rd,

Rosalie, Brisbane QLD 4064

When: 5pm kick off

MCLAREN VALE

d’Arenberg Winery

Osborn Road
McLaren Vale SA 5171

When: Between 1 and 3pm

Winemakers – please bring a bottle of Cabernet along

 PERTH

The Left Bank Café, Bar and Restaurant

15 Riverside Drive

East Fremantle WA 6158

5pm – 7pm

MARGARET RIVER

Join Kate Morgan from Fraser Gallop, Brad Wehr from Wine By Brad and Mantra and Viren Goundrie from Stella Bella as they taste and discuss a range of top Australian Cabernet.

Must – Margaret River

107 Bussell Highway

Margaret River WA 6285

From 5.30pm

WINERIES:

If you want to submit samples for the tastings, download Cabernet Day Address-Labels and get your samples out to the venues.

REMEMBER: Please include your twitter handle on the bottle if you have one so people can tweet about your wines, mark the RRP and include an order form for people who love your wine on the evening. This is a great opportunity to show your wines so please think about what Cabernet best represents your brand (maybe it’s something unique or back vintage release)

Those who make the most of these varietal days really think about how they can engage and educate their consumers and make it simple to get involved. Some suggestions you might want to consider:

• Sell sample packs and spread the word to your consumers on your database – this is an opportunity for you to talk to your customers about your products and the wineries who think through how they will spread
• Collaborate with other wineries in your region – maybe hold a tasting in your local vistor centre and get consumers involved – advertise collaboratively and get people along to try the Cabernets from your region
• Get your retailers excited – hold tastings on the day in store with some of your retail customers and watch the stream of tweets on a site like www.twitterfall.com
• Educate – it’s intimidating for some consumers to talk about wine so help them on the journey. Provide some information about the wines, upload videos, think about how you can create content in advance of the day so people can hear your messages whilst tasting your wines.

Making fine red wine? Pinot Noir Day, Cabernet Day and Grenache Day are just around the corner

There has been lots of wine tweet ups over recent months, and for many of us in the industry, there is a risk of getting some tweet up fatigue. However, I challenge you to think about these big global days as more of an opportunity to engage with your consumers and the trade about your products – you don’t need to participate in all of them, but if varietal days are focusing on products that are your strengths, there’s a global audience there to talk to, facilitate trial and raise awareness.

Many of these varietal days have now been going for a few years and as the first sort of wine tweet up events are gaining real momentum as people work out the best way of participating and capitalizing on learnings from past events. What you make of these days is really dependent on how you participate and how broadly you engage your customers to help tell the message.

The recent #Chardonnay day tastings attracted an audience with reach of over 4.2 million people globally with over 3000 people getting involved and tweeting. To give, some context, as Rick Bakas noted “For one day, the reach and impressions of the #Chardonnay day community rivaled and surpassed that of the world’s largest wine publication.”

We don’t have the exact local figures, but in Australia we certainly had the largest global participation and there’s been lots of anecdotal reports from retailers, producers and consumers alike that a range of new chardonnays were discovered and it’s helped a long way with a discussion about the different styles of Chardonnay being produced.

Now are you interested in how this can be of value to your brand?

THE RUNDOWN – DATES AND SITES TO REGISTER

Here’s the dates and rundown on where you can get more information – it’s not just an event for Australia so if you’re a producer from another country, get involved and start to gather some interest. Australian based headquarters and tasting venues will be posted by the end of the week.

• Pinot Noir Day – 18^th August 2011

This one has a bit of a twist, it’s called Pinot Smackdown and whilst tweeting about your favourite Pinot Noir, you also need to vote by Country – so come on Australian producers, get involved and add #au to your tweets aswell to show our Pinots are amongst the best in the world.

More information – visit the host Ed Thralls website on Winetonite
 Register on eventbrite –

• Cabernet Day – 1 September 2011

The Northern Hempishere will be all over this one and early indications showing that this could possibly be the largest global tweet up held to date. Australia making some amazing Cabernet so let’s show the world how good our Cabernet can be!

Some tips on how to get involved from Rick Bakas website

Register on eventbrite site

• Grenache Day – 24 September 2011

 Some information 

WHAT’S COMING NEXT:

Over the next week I’ll be posting information about where and when to get involved in Australia as well as where to send samples for wineries who have great wines that they want to include in tastings. If you’re keen on hosting a function where people can go to participate, DM me on twitter (@mastermindtb) and I can add your venue to the samples list.

Hope you’ll get involved!

Keen to understand more about tweet ups – here’s some of my previous posts that might be of interest

• Tweet Ups – what is all the Buzz about 
• Listening to brand mentions – useful to monitor what’s being said about your brand in these events

PS – incase you were asking what about Shiraz/ Syrah? – I am planning on hosting a big Shiraz event next March/ April – timing to work better with Southern Hemisphere release schedule so if you’re making great Shiraz, fear not, an opportunity is coming!

The buzz about Google +: What you need to know

There’s been lots of discussion over the past week about the introduction of Google’s own social network platform named Google +. Just two weeks since the initial beta launch there’s reports that there may be over 20 million users by the weekend.

Like the introduction of other new social media platforms, Google + will continue to evolve and release new functionality as they irons out bugs and gets functionality right. There’s a useful cheat sheet on mashable that explains some of the key terminology if you’ve just got involved and an introductory video that helps put the platform in context.

My initial thoughts:
Some may say that there’s enough time already spent updating existing social networks and we don’t need a new one added into the mix. However, as technology evolves, it’s pertinent to explore some of these new tools and consider how they may be integrated into your existing communications mix.

I already use google for so many of my online activities – google analytics for my website, key word tracking via Google alerts, ad words campaigns, email, google business etc., that I can see potential for this network if they get it right. With so much power in their search engine, google knows the importance of this social space. They are already showing some great features that will challenge their big rival Facebook including:

• Personalising Circles to share content– I love that I can build my own communities of interest and share relevant messages and content to a particular group without needing to share to everyone I’m connected with. Whilst there’s some ability to do this on Facebook with personal lists, this feature has much more relevance and reduces the risk of over-sharing if you set up the right circles from the outset.
• Hangouts present a real opportunity to connect and host discussions. These are basically a video chat room using your webcam – I’ve yet to explore it fully and it’s only basic functionality at the moment but I can see much broader relevance as this is rolled out for Virtual wine tastings, Customer Service responses etc.
• Google Sparks – a great way to find people with common interests and also source content to share with your own community. Rather than having to search using hashtags or key words via platforms like twitter this helps to organise content simply in a good stream of activity.

There’s already applications developed for some mobile phones (Iphone coming soon) allowing you to upload from your mobile and I suspect as the Beta testing gets more feedback we’ll see other functionality emerge – (already reports coming through that a new series of changes will emerge before the week end). You can also embed the +1 Function into your existing website to encourage sharing.

What about a business profile? Should I be setting one up?

If you’re a business/ winery thinking about setting up on Google + there’s no need to rush in and immediately set up an account. Google has indicated that they are working on a version for brands/ businesses that will be similar to Facebook Fan Pages to be released later in the year. Sit back and play with the consumer profile functionality for now and wait till the proper business platform is ready to be released.

Like any new platform, it will take time to learn and changes will constantly take place but it’s another opportunity to build a community and connect with people who have common interests. Need an invitation to get involved? Let me know or connect with me here.