Pandemic disruptions seemed to pose the biggest obstacles, but West Coast fires were far more damaging.
Brianne Day makes a wide array of wines from the Willamette and Applegate Valleys in southern Oregon. Along with the usual pinot noirs and chardonnays, she also uses unexpected varieties and makes creative blends that are always a treat to try. When the pandemic struck in March 2020, she feared the worst, as her Day Wines tasting room closed along with the restaurants where many of her wines were sold. “I freaked out,” she said. “I couldn’t see how my winery and many like mine would make it. I couldn’t see how our distributors were going to make it. And without them, my entire business changes.” When I spoke to Ms. Day and others in the wine industry in the spring of 2020, they were scrambling to find a way of selling wines, worrying whether they would be able to pay their workers and concerned about how their businesses would survive. A year later, their worst fears were not realized. Instead, as the pandemic threatened their way of working, many were able to adapt. Through flexibility and timely government loans, some producers did better in 2020 than they ever imagined was possible. “I am utterly surprised with how last year turned out and the direction of the current year,” Ms. Day said earlier this month. Like many small wine producers around the country, Ms. Day was used to doing business in a time-honored fashion: placing her wines in good restaurants around the country where, in the context of fine food and other excellent bottles, and with the help of the sommeliers talking directly to diners about her wines, her brand would grow. A few times a year she, or a representative, would travel to key markets, speaking directly about the wines to restaurants, retail shops and consumers, hoping to build interest and loyalty. The pandemic made that business model impossible. Faced with that predicament a year ago, Sara and Matt Licklider, the proprietors of Lioco Wine Company, a small California producer that makes balanced, nuanced wines, were simply trying to survive. They furloughed their nine-person staff, including themselves, and pivoted to direct sales to consumers, bypassing the distribution network to restaurants, which had largely shut down. “I’m not sure what our business will look like on the other side of all this,” Ms. Licklider told me last year. In 2021, the business looks pretty good, Mr. Licklider said, though, as predicted, a lot different than it had before. “We had to make some pretty aggressive changes to our operations,” he said. “We shrank, we streamlined, we got lean and mean.” Instead of focusing on restaurants, they put their energy into their mailing list, customers with whom they had developed a relationship either through their website or their tasting room in Healdsburg in Sonoma County. They met with consumers and retailers over Zoom. They sent out videos they had shot on their phones. Even with Paycheck Protection Program loans they were not able to hire back all their employees, but they got by with a smaller team. “Our direct sales went through the roof,” Mr. Licklider said. “It felt deeply personal that people were going out of their way to purchase wine directly.” Some wine industry analysts have long urged wine producers to step up their direct internet sales.
