Have you ever wondered what the owners of a Vineyard and Winery do during the dormant winter months?
Maybe you haven't even thought about it…
Whatever, your thoughts might be, we decided that it would be a good idea to provide an overview of the things that we have been working on this winter just in case you might be wondering. And besides, it provides us something to write about!
Marketing
Over the past few months we have been working heavily on the marketing and branding of our business venture. We're very pleased with our efforts due to the acquisition of the domain name “TheVines.Com” and the establishment of our web presence and social media presence all around this domain name.
So let me start at the beginning…
Our marketing efforts started with the creation of a list of possible Vineyard/Winery names. From there, we went to our parent domain registrar company to see what domains were available out of the list of business names we had settled on. To our surprise, one of the ideas that we had for a company/brand name (The Vines) actually had the domain name coming up for auction too.
The benefit of this name is that it comes with the much recognized .com extension and the name itself is only 7 characters long. All of which adds to the search engine friendliness of the website which should help boost our rankings when people are looking for vineyard/winery listings in the Kansas area.
The bidding process for the domain name was a long drawn out 7 day event with approximately 20 bidders from around the world bidding for the domain name. In the end, we came out the winner of the domain purchase. However, it wasn't until after we purchased the domain that we learned of it's origins and who the previous owners actually were.
If you google the term “the vines band” you will see that the original owners of this domain were the Rock Band The Vines. The wikipedia listing for this band states;
The Vines are an Australian rock band formed in 1994 in Sydney. Their sound has been described as a musical hybrid of 1960s garage rockand 1990s alternative rock. The band's current line-up consists of vocalist and guitarist Craig Nicholls, bass guitarist Tim John and drummer Lachlan West.
According to the same Wikipedia page the band broke up somewhere around the middle of 2014, but has etched their mark in history and left behind a very valuable domain name that we are honored to have acquired.
So now you know how and where The Vines originated from.
Our Web Site
After establishing the ownership of the domain we set out to build our web presence by creating this website and our blog.
Our goal is to use this website as our primary source of information about our vineyard/winery for our customers.
In addition, once the vineyard and winery are open to the public, this website will provide an updated list of events along with a mechanisms for our patrons to signup and reserve their seats to these events.
Social Media
Along with the creation of our web site we have been very busy working on our social media presence with the establishment of our Facebook Page and Twitter Page.
We are developing a process to keep both of these social media avenues updated with information from our website. One thing that you will notice when you visit our social media pages is that we were not as fortunate to get the same account names as our domain name. Hence, when you visit these pages you will see our other domain name “CountryVinery” in use on these two sites.
We regularly post updates to our Facebook page as well as Tweet about our activities. So we encourage you to follow us and join in by commenting on what we have going on.
Logo / Label Design
We've been spending a lot of time lately working on the design of our logo and labeling for our wine. We have come up with some great ideas but nothing that we can say is finalized at this time. (We have included a sample of what we have been working on for one of our Pinot Noir batches of wine)
This is definitely a work in progress and we still have a long way to go until we can decide on a finalized design. But I thought it might be fun to throw out an image of our labels that we used on our last batch of wine.
We'd love to hear some feedback on what you like or don't like about our initial design.
Wine Making
This is our favorite… We have been spending a lot of time, in the “kitchen”, perfecting our wine making practice and churning out some wines for our own private reserve.
We enjoy the wine making process and really have a lot of fun trying different fermentation processes and recipes to see what wines we can make that we know we would enjoy drinking.
So far we have processed wine batches that include Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, and a Red Blend which is our most favorite wine ever.
Summing It All Up
The winter months for a vineyard/winery may be dormant months. But, for the owner it is a time to work on the things that seem to take a back seat to the vineyard during the growing season.
Soon it will be spring and the work of establishing new vineyards complete with trellis systems, irrigation, and crop management will kick into full swing and occupy the vast majority of our time.
Therefore, we will take advantage of the winter months to do the “Other Things” that have to be done.
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