I few people have asked what shows we will be doing this year and what our travel schedule looks like.
The simple answer is; “not many, or much”.
We really need a website upgrade and I want to get a shaker table for the crusher destemmer. That means I’ve cut the travel and marketing budget back to almost nothing. We won’t be doing the Family Winemakers shows or the Chronicle show at Fort Mason. Those three alone add up to about $3000 in expenses so that puts us at least part way there to the website work.
We get invited to pour at dozens of events each year and usually would only do a few. This year so far the only things we have scheduled are private events and fundraisers. As those come up we’ll let people know about them.
The travel budget is also being sidelined for the shaker table (total cost about $28,000, so we will need to save for awhile for that one). If the Spring release goes well I might add some money back in to the travel budget, but we’ll have to see how sales go.
We would like to do an east coast swing and hit DC, Philly, NY and Boston. We’ve had so many requests to come visit that we really would like to get that done. We’d also like to get to Florida, and back to Chicago and Nashville.
We do know that we’ll have visitors coming by the winery more this year than last, and we will be open at least three times this year. When those events come up we’ll let people know as well.