Standard Outreach — Getting Out and Visiting Your Neighbors

While many wineries focus their outreach efforts solely on hotel concierge, we strongly encourage expanding your visits to include neighboring wineries as well — broadening your referral network in the process.

A few best practices to keep in mind:

• Frequency is flexible and should reflect your team's bandwidth, staffing availability, and any new or updated experiences and offerings worth sharing.

• Come prepared — bring business cards, relevant collateral, and upcoming event dates. A bottle of wine is a customary and welcome touch (please review applicable laws and regulations in your area). Some wineries also bring treats from their culinary teams or homemade baked goods, keeping the visit warm and social in nature.

• Plan your routes and track your visits, particularly if multiple team members are conducting outreach. This helps avoid duplication, inefficient travel, and visits to brands that are unlikely to refer guests to you (e.g., those with competing wine styles or similar experiences).

• Involve your whole team. While some organizations limit outreach to management, we encourage including tasting room staff as well. Building neighbor relationships benefits the entire team — and for front-line employees, it doubles as valuable education.

Industry Parties

Many wineries host events exclusively for industry professionals, with the dual purpose of introducing their property and wines to new contacts while expressing appreciation for existing referral relationships.

Who to invite: The guest list can include employees from neighboring wineries, hotel and resort concierge staff, travel planners, destination management companies (DMCs), limousine and transportation drivers, restaurant wine buyers, and anyone active in the wine, travel, and tourism space. Scale your event to fit your resources — there's no wrong size.

Frequency ranges from consistent annual or bi-annual gatherings to occasional, as-needed events — whatever works best for your organization.

It is also good practice — and simply good manners — to attend others' industry events when invited, and to encourage your team to do the same whenever possible. Reciprocity goes a long way in building lasting relationships.

Small Group Industry Events

This approach is growing in popularity, particularly among smaller operations that may not have the space, permits, or resources to host a large-scale event. Think of it as an intimate get-together — formats can include comparative tastings across brands, educational seminars, or even casual potlucks. The smaller setting often lends itself to deeper conversations and stronger relationship-building, and may align more naturally with certain brand identities.

Tracking Your Outreach

Your outreach efforts are an investment — and like any investment, they should be measured. At minimum, you should be tracking the following:

• Source of discovery — Where are guests hearing about you? Make this a consistent part of every guest interaction.

• Referral volume by partner — For each outreach relationship you're actively cultivating, how many guests are being referred?

• Average spend — What is the average spend of guests coming through each referral source?

• Wine club conversion — Are referred guests converting to wine club members?

• Return visits and downstream referrals — Are those guests coming back, or sending new guests your way?

Most of these KPIs can be tracked through your POS, CRM, and reservation systems. For lower-volume operations, manual tracking is a perfectly viable option. What matters most is that you're tracking something — gut feelings, however well-intentioned, are not a substitute for measurable data and can lead to costly missteps.

Hotel Reception Pouring Opportunities

We'll cover this topic in greater depth on our Offsite Pourings resource page. That said, scheduling regular pourings at area hotels is an excellent way to strengthen relationships with those properties and naturally encourage their staff to refer guests to your winery.

Industry Association Memberships

Joining and actively participating in organizations such as the Napa Valley Hospitality Forum or the Napa Valley Vintners offers tremendous value for community engagement. Hosting Hospitality Happy Hours, attending meetings, and inviting fellow members to your property are all effective ways to network, showcase your wines, and deepen existing relationships.

It's also worth noting a growing trend of smaller, more targeted associations forming around shared goals — groups like Wineries of Westside Road, Pritchard Hill, or Downtown St. Helena are great examples of how hyper-local collaboration can create meaningful impact for participating members.