plonk’s posterous

The trials and tribulations of creating a wine label

Plonk is moving along with a little help from Social Media

I recently got a call from Michelle Foust who is a manager for Wine Styles.  She told me that she had read a review by Linda Blakely (aka The Wine Diva) and was interested in trying Plonk and possibly bringing it in to her store.  All I could think was WOW! How lucky am I!
 
Michelle seems very passionate about finding unique wines and offering them to her clients.  She told me a story about spending several months tracking down a particular wine maker from Italy.  She eventually found him and is now carrying his wine.  Her clients can be proud of the work that she does for them.  Here's a list of upcoming events at her store
 
Anyway, I sent the wine and they will be tasting it today.  Hope all goes well and that we will soon be in the Atlanta market.
 
Also, Michelle made me realize that I needed to get our site up so......... here it is:
 
 
 
Thanks Michelle and Thanks to Wine Styles

   
Click here to download:
Plonk_is_moving_along_with_a_l.zip (318 KB)

The first written review of Plonk wine

As anyone who has ever created anything knows, putting your creation out there for people to try and to judge, especially the first time, is a defining moment.  I recently sent a couple of bottles of plonk to the Wine Diva, Linda Blakely, who is someone I follow on Posterous.  She definitely knows the wine biz as she and her husband owned a wine shop and I'm sure they have tasted and evaluated thousands of wines.  


I had no idea what to expect but I was pleasantly surprised when she sent me the link to her review.  Check it out for yourself and see why I'll be having a bottle of bubbly tonight.  Thanks Wine Diva!

Plonk Wine - looking for a Distributor in Colorado

It's approaching the end of January and it's time to try and expand distribution of plonk wines outside of Montana and Wyoming.  So, I decided to contact Blair Taylor of Enotec Imports in Denver.  For a young man, Mr. Taylor is one of the original fine wine importers in the States and his restaurant, Barolo Grill, is one of the finest in Denver.  I worked with Blair as a rep for his wines when I worked for a Distributor called Grand Vin.  I later sold his wines in my wine bar in Bozeman.  He's a true pro and a true gentleman.  He's why people love the wine business.
 
Anyway, I contacted Blair about Distribution in Denver and he suggested that I contact Kate Jankowski of Grand Vin.  I used to work with Kate and I'm hoping she remembers me.  I am going to try to set up a meeting and tasting sometime in late February.  I know, as my friend Kurt Winegardner says, if you want to present your wine to a Distributor, you'd better be holding it in your hand.  That means, don't just send the wine in a box and hope for the best.  They get thousands of wines for samples.  It's the story and the personality that will make the difference - at least that's what I'm hoping.  Stay tuned.

Plonk wine pics for the plonk.com website

Just wanted to share the good fortune in having my future wife, Jane Crites, be an amazing artist.  We just purchased adobe illustrator CS4 and a Wacom Graphics tablet so that she could learn how to create original images for the plonk.com website.  She has just gotten started but is already creating some great stuff.  Here are 4 wine bottles and a drawing of me.  I think at my age, drawings of me look a lot better than real life pictures so I love this idea. 
 
Anyone have any favorites they would like to vote on?

         
Click here to download:
Plonk_wine_pics_for_the_plonk..zip (303 KB)

Social Media and Wine

So, as I now enter what is more or less the 3rd month of the launch of my wine label 'plonk' I've realized that I'm really enjoying writing about the progression of the wine.  My question is, can Social Media alone create a nationally recognized wine brand?  I would love some feedback or ideas about this.

A word/question about shipping 'plonk' wine

OK
My first big question is:  How am I supposed to legally send out samples to people in the wine business in order to generate interest?
 
Quick story - My day job is in the software biz and I recently attended Blog World Expo in Las Vegas to learn more about Social Media.  The keynote speaker was Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV fame.  At the end of his presentation, I asked about the software project I was working and then I gave him a bit of information about the wine project as well.  To make a long story short, Gary told me that if I sent him my wine, he would put it on his show.  Now the shipping part begins.
 
I go online to boxvendor.com and order 20 2 bottle pack styrofoam shippers.  They took about a week to arrive and cost me just over $100 for everything.  I also bought a large stamp with our 'plonk' logo to stamp the outside of the boxes.  I boxed up 2 2-packs to send to Gary V in New Jersey and also Arthur Perley of VINO! in Berkeley, CA, who I met through this blog - the wine's on it's way Arthur!  
Now comes the interesting part.  I take the 2 boxes to UPS and as they are measuring them the counter person asks if there is wine in the boxes.  Obviously I say, "yes" to which a woman sending Xmas presents responds angrily "you can't do that - that's illegal".  She then goes on to tell the UPS guy that the reason you can't send wine is because it's flammable.  Did you get that - "FLAMMABLE".  Just as I was getting ready to address her 'concerns' I realized that I now have a brand and I must do everything I can to be polite, even in circumstances where a slight correction of misconceptions or misinformation might have been appropriate.
I won't write what happened next for fear of the BATF swat team showing up at my house for trying to send wine to those who may be interested in promoting or selling it. 
The fact that the shipping of wine is illegal, for whatever reason, is ludicrous.  Any suggestions from anyone out there on how this can be remedied?  I understand that the very Distributors that I will be trying to team up with are probably the ones most responsible for this but how am I supposed to get my wines to those Distributors if I can't send it?
 
    

Next steps - the plonk website

So now that I have sold my first 2 cases of plonk, I need to start thinking about creating a website. 
 
When I was part of the creation of the bar plonk, we were not able to get the domain plonk.com so I purchased plonkwine.com.  Once I had separated from the bar, I decided to go after the plonk.com domain.  I found the owner and offered $500.  In Network Solutions helpful bidding information they suggested that the domain was worth between $11,000 and $13,000.  I thought that my offer would be rejected immediately.  Much to my surprise the owner responded by saying that his wife was wanting some outdoor furniture and that the cost was $900.  "So", I said, "are you saying that you will sell the domain for $900".  He responded "yes.  I immediately called my smart business buddy, who is now one of my partners, and asked if he thought it was worth $900.  He said "hell yeah".
 
Needless to say, I bought the domain name and all at once I felt as though I had Boardwalk and Park Place by having the "plonk" trademark and the plonk.com domain name.
 
I am going to try to get something up by December.  The Distributor needs it and so will those who are selling the wine.  We don't have a ton of cash for someone to develop a site from scratch so I think I will look for a template on Template Monster and tweek it a bit.  I want something pro that doesn't cost a fortune.  Tough mix I know but that's where I'll start. 
 
Anything would be better than what I currently have.  See below
 
 

The plonk backdrop - to be filled in later

The idea to create this blog that follows the growth of the wine label "plonk" is something I wish I would have started about 4 years ago.  There are some great stories involving conversations with well known wine makers, lawsuits with former business partners, ins and outs of dealing with the United States Patent and Trademark Organization, Design firms for labels, State and Federal bureaucracy for working in the wine biz.  Here is a quick article about the bar posted in our local newspaper back in 2004

http://bozemandailychronicle.com/articles/2004/02/15/news/plonkbzbigs.txt

Toward the end of the article you can start to envision the kind of "partner" I would be dealing with later.

I will do my best to interweave these stories in to this blog as it unravels from this point.  Otherwise, I'll just have to just create a separate blog about that portion of the wine world.

Anyway, the story of "plonk" is in the infancy stage of finally being approved for me to ship it to my first distributor in Bozeman, Montana - Winegardner's Wines.  Why Montana?  Because that's where I live.  The wine is from Paso Robles, California and it's a delicious Syrah. 

It was finally shipped in to the Distributor about 1 week ago.  Here is the first pic of the first palette.

 Stay tuned