Hokapsig
Senior Member
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2011
- Messages
- 1,190
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well, 2017 has started and we have done 5 wine shows and 2 fundraisers. We have past the halfway point of money made in 2016 after just 6 weeks. We are still learning and selling.
We learned that sweet wines sell 10 to 1 over dry wines, though there are areas/shows that are almost all dry wine drinkers. We learned to take a dry wine and make it a sweet wine and were able to sell to both sweet and dry drinkers. We also took carboys of wines sitting around since our hobby days of home winemaking and blended them together to make another wine. After a TTB label approval, those wines have sold out. A blend of Carmenare with Red Zin did very well, and a party wine of Corot Noir, Cab Sauv and Red Zin appeared as "Winemaker's Blend" and sold out too.
Finding time to clean tanks, bench test and bottle is hard to do. We (the wife and I) would spend from 6 to 1130 bottling and cleaning in preparation for weekend shows, only to sell out and have to do it all again the next week, which is a good problem to have. Purchasing the pickup truck has given us some freedom to run for bottles and juice, and we got some magnetic stickers for the truck which makes us look more professional.
Thanks to Runningwolf for the heads up on equipment which a winery was selling as he was voluntarily going out of business, ffemt for all his counselling, truck use, physical help and wine selling expertise, and Julie for mentoring me along in the early days. More to come.....
We learned that sweet wines sell 10 to 1 over dry wines, though there are areas/shows that are almost all dry wine drinkers. We learned to take a dry wine and make it a sweet wine and were able to sell to both sweet and dry drinkers. We also took carboys of wines sitting around since our hobby days of home winemaking and blended them together to make another wine. After a TTB label approval, those wines have sold out. A blend of Carmenare with Red Zin did very well, and a party wine of Corot Noir, Cab Sauv and Red Zin appeared as "Winemaker's Blend" and sold out too.
Finding time to clean tanks, bench test and bottle is hard to do. We (the wife and I) would spend from 6 to 1130 bottling and cleaning in preparation for weekend shows, only to sell out and have to do it all again the next week, which is a good problem to have. Purchasing the pickup truck has given us some freedom to run for bottles and juice, and we got some magnetic stickers for the truck which makes us look more professional.
Thanks to Runningwolf for the heads up on equipment which a winery was selling as he was voluntarily going out of business, ffemt for all his counselling, truck use, physical help and wine selling expertise, and Julie for mentoring me along in the early days. More to come.....