Has this board ever REALLY helped or hurt a winery?

Often times when we debate the merits of a wine or style of wine one of us reminds the group that we are a bunch of geeks that represent a tiny fraction of the market and our opinions ultimately bear little resemblance to what the rest of the wine consuming world thinks. Given our relative insignificance, do you know of any instances (perhaps aside from Maison Ilan) in which the board’s posts may have significantly affected the bottom line or reputation of a particular winery? I’m particularly interested in the viewpoints of actual winemakers. I believe our underlying predisposition is to generally be civil and complimentary, and to follow the “if you can’t say anything nice don’t say anything at all” rule, based partly upon the idea that we might have some influence on someone’s well being. But I wonder how much actual feedback folks have experienced.

Absolutely - sometimes significantly. The feedback I’ve received over the years truly shows that for VERY small wineries, this community can make/break them significantly - not entirely, but significantly. Hopefully some of those winemakers speak up, but I can think of half a dozen right off the top of my head

I can’t imagine WB wasn’t responsible, in some way(s), for the PC mess. And MI comes to mind, as well.

There are also a few that rely strongly on BerserkerDay in their sales strategies for the year

If we’re naming names…Rhys and Rivers Marie come to mind. Liquid Farm also.

Agreed. And I think it works both ways. I’ve had winemakers contact me a week or two after BD and I’ve had to tell them I’m all tapped out. In some cases I have seen winemakers either try to preempt BD or join the fray.

I can only authentically speak for my own buying practices, but the answer is absolutely.
First, there are plenty of wines I first bought purely due to being made aware by the board. Some of those are now mainstays in my cellar. Scholium, Bedrock, La Clarine, Sandler, Forlorn Hope, Enfield, Cruse come to mind, but there are numerous others.
Second, WB posts often allow me to buy with some confidence, buying more bottles from an unfamiliar producer than I might if I felt I was blindly taking a swing at it.

This would be EMH! I have 3 MAJOR sales events per year: BerserkerDay, the release of my Special Selection as a future offering (and this year it included the new, one-time Sparkles Selection), and the post-bottling offer on what has become known as my “regular” Black Cat.

There are certainly other sales that occur throughout the year, but these are 3 major events for me. There was conversation about changing the BerserkerDay format for 2017. Waiting to hear from Todd what that means.The 2016 format was perfect for me, but I felt the auction being more long term did not help it.

John Cabot would be nothing…NOTHING without Todd!!!

If not for Berserkers, I’d still be buying Hourglass and would have missed the boat on Karen and John’s inaugural vintage of JEC Rutherford Reserve.

On the flip side, I’d have probably bought another board member’s / winery owner’s product if I hadn’t known how nasty he was to another board member / winery owner.

I doubt this influences either business very much, but if there are more like me it will eventually make a difference.

PC and MI dug their own graves.
This board helped a lot of PC customers, but they were going to end up where they did with or without this board. The huge lawsuits alone were enough to bring them down. Maybe this board contributed to a run that might have accelerated the process a couple months.

No doubt that Ray owes 100% of his early success to direct purchases and investing from WB members. Without them, he does not move his first two to three vintages. He was a hell of a hype man and people here were the perfect target audience. All roads lead to Burgundy, or is that Barcelona?

His demise was his character, and WB maybe accelerated his fall.

And I nothing without John!!!

I think it’s highly likely that this board has made a big difference in the success of some small wineries, though it’s probably a pretty small group. Wineries like Liquid Farm, Rhys, Tercero, Bedrock, Arcadian, Kutch and Cabot come to mind (I’m totally just guessing here, I have no information on this point).

I am more doubtful that it has been the undoing of any wineries. Most of the strong negatives on this board are directed at wineries that are too large and/or too robust for the disdain of WB to make much of a dent, plus those are almost by definition wineries which don’t have a significant portion of their fans and customers here at WB. From what I can tell, wineries like Kosta Browne, Quilceda Creek and Chateau Pavie seem to be doing just fine despite being horribly uncool here at WB.

Again, I do think think the number of wineries that have been affected significantly by WB is pretty small - I don’t think we move the needle in a way that matters to the big picture of the wine business.

An interesting question.

I do think that over time board favourites (and to a lesser degree pariahs) develop on different wine forums, and this has a bigger effect than we’d imagine. Whether right or not, specialist forums are seen as areas to tap into expertise, to understand an area the reader doesn’t know. Whether it is a coffee forum, travel forum or wine forum, they are often seen as (mostly) unbiased routes to the insider knowledge in that area. It does help that spammers aren’t tolerated, so the reader (often a lurker) has the marketing filtered out and sees a less sugar coated assessment. So it’s more than just what forumites buy.

There is some responsibility of course, not in curbing a negative opinion, but to always be honest and fair in our views. If you like Pavie and QC, then be brave and post your honest views of their wines, even if it feels like there is an angry mob who’ll attack you for it.

It used to be easy to buy Gonon.

I think Rivers-Marie was doing fine well before this board. But yes, I think many have greatly benefited from these discussions.

I’d be curious if anyone has ever been hurt by WB? I can’t think of anyone in particular.

(first time post, long time lurker)

I made my first Rivers-Marie purchase today solely based on what people have written about here! =)
cheers!

Man this board sucks

No offense folks but no need to post about whether your buying decisions have been shaped by WB: that’s kind of a given. I’m asking about something slightly different.