Featuring Old Westminster and Catoctin Breeze wineries, this piece is published in full on The Cork Report.

Winery tourism is a big deal for the Mid-Atlantic wine industry because these states’ wineries rely on the direct-to-consumer (DTC) business model to stay financially afloat, meaning they sell out of their front door. Customers – a.k.a. tourists and visitors – must come to them. Ask any winery in the Mid-Atlantic how important “DTC sales,” which encompasses tasting room and wine club sales, is to their financial success and the answer is likely to range from “extremely” to “existentially.”

The reasons for this are myriad, but most importantly for my point: demand for (most) Mid-Atlantic wine does not result in prices and volumes high enough to retain sufficiently profitability after the cost of distribution to retailers and/or restaurants is taken into account.

DTC success hinges on close relationships with customers as it requires the customer to expend a good amount of effort to visit the winery repeatedly, and give the winery a good amount of trust to sign up for a wine club in which they may not get to choose which wines they automatically pay for and receive.

Time and trust are not things that we humans part with easily or flippantly. Continue reading on The Cork Report.