Tweets From The Cellar Door

This is a guest post from Mari Kane. She has worked in several tasting rooms throughout California, USA and is now a writer, blogger and WordPress consultant living in Vancouver, BC, Canada. She blogs about wine at Tasting Room Confidential.com and about blogging at Blogsite studio.com. Follow her on Twitter, Facebook or Google Plus.

Twitter has emerged as the most efficient method to send a short message to the world and get engagement in return. The more people engage about a wine, the more they tend to buy, and that’s why Twitter has been such a boon to the wine industry.

It’s easy to whip up 140 characters for a tweet, and with conscious use of @ user names and # hashtags users can draw anyone into their conversation with one sentence. That ease is what makes Twitter perfect for the cellar door.

A typical day at the cellar door is punctuated with down time, after all the tourists leave, and by using that down time to send a few clever tweets, Twitter can help to call more customers in.

Since juicy stories unfold in a winery every day, the tweet material never ends. And with a photo attached the tweets are more likely to get retweets.

Here are some ideas and examples for tweets from the cellar door.

Shoutout

Use @ to tag the subjects of your rave. Then, hashtag #yourwinename to advise/congratulate/thank them about the wine they purchased.

@Bellawines Today we're celebrating @bcwineshop - happy birthday Gerrit! #celebratetoday #bubblesinyourfuture

New Releases

Wines get released all year long. Tweet about every new bottling, the wine’s developing flavours, pairing suggestions, and places it’s available, all of which reminds followers to buy.

@lfngwine Sad to see it go -the 2011 Portfolio is SOLD OUT! Watch for our 2012 release on Oct 1st. #Portfolio+10

Cellar and Vineyard

Harvest time and bottling days are exciting times in a winery and are worth numerous tweets a day.

@SullivanWine We're almost done with our #Chardonnay and #SauvignonBlanc  Big reds come next!! #Harvest2014 #napaharvest

Tasting Events

Tweet about any upcoming event that involves your winery, before during, and after, and don’t forget to add a Twitpic.

@CliffLedeWine Don't miss the #wine dinner at #delfriscosboston feat @CliffLedeWine & @FELWines on 9/17 w/ our very own @luxurylee1 ht.ly/BrPT4    

Humor

Funny things happen all the time in a winery, and when they don’t you can always imagine them.

@VeuveClicquot Always chilled, never frozen. pic.twitter.com/vnSQWzdUpC

Inspirational

Pull a quote from a wine book and you’ve got yourself a tweet. Extra points for relating it to your wine.

@AlanaEstate "Drinking wine is just a part of life, like eating food." - Francis Ford Coppola  #WineQuotes

Question

Ask your followers what they are drinking tonight, what food and music they’re drinking it with, and where they’re drinking it.

@Road13Vineyards Happy #WineWednesday ! What's everyone drinking/up to this evening? #fun #wine #its5oclocksomewhere

Caveat

Tweets from the cellar door are important, but it can also be dangerous in the wrong hands. Tweeters must be deemed Twitter-fluent before being given passwords to the winery account. Always be upbeat. Avoid the personal, the political or religious. Don’t tweet anything remotely offensive.

When it doubt, throw the tweet out.

Happy tweeting!