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As wineries explore social media, one of the decisions to be made is sampling wine bloggers. Like the traditional wine press, positive reviews from bloggers can provide good content for customers searching for your wine online. But a bad review can be damaging and continue to show up years after the review was posted.

Since wine reviews are subjective, wineries risk negative reviews every time a sample is sent out so making the call on bloggers is similar to traditional wine critics. My rule of thumb is if you sample critics then also sample wine bloggers and vice-versa. But it’s not always so clear cut and there might be good reasons to only sample bloggers.

The most successful wine brand to follow this strategy is Stormhoek. Three years ago they started sampling bloggers and did not submit any samples to critics. The result was a global conversation about their brand and an increase in sales as these online blogger recommendations got people to try their wine.

The thing that made Stormhoek such a compelling story was that it delivered surprisingly good value in it’s price category. Although South African wines had a market position, particularly in the UK, Stormhoek wines tasted more like they came from Australia or New Zealand. European bloggers began posting about these wines and the next year similar results were realized as the brand was introduced to U.S. consumers.

But what makes the Stormhoek story interesting from a marketing viewpoint is they didn’t target wine bloggers in their outreach. Instead, they sent samples to any blogger who requested them and sponsored “geek dinners” and other technology events where they supplied the wine. In effect, the wine became secondary to the discussions at these meet-ups.

So what the folks at Stormhoek really did was sample their potential customers and not actively seek reviews from wine bloggers. Think of it as an extension of the winery tasting room.

But sampling potential customers may not be cost effective for all wineries so other tactics such as sponsoring parties or events with bloggers is another way to get the online conversation going. I’ll be exploring this strategy in a future post with a case study.

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