I’m getting back to my blog after a long absence and that is true of the FAQ series as well. So, let’s get started. Whether someone schedules one appointment, or a series of appointments with me I ask them to email me a list of issues they hope to cover. For them, it helps to…

Once again, these are real questions asked by real clients, quoted verbatim. Therefore, I believe they will resonate with most first-time importers or anyone thinking about entering the wine business at the wholesale level. What would be the best order of the steps to get started? For example, do we start exploring potential distributors before…

These are actual questions that I am asked many times by prospective new importers, sometimes in different forms but always from a similar perspective. Many of the answers are not cut-and-dried unfortunately. But they might stimulate your own thought process to find the answer that best suits you. The question I am most often asked…

Playing the Odds – Winery Email Campaigns

The 3-Tier system has been explained at length in my books and online by others so I won’t spend more time here with the same thing. But it remains a hard concept to grasp, especially when you’re new to the US alcohol business and perhaps think there are exceptions, such as when an importer is…

A friend of mine was recently struggling with the concept of “branding” herself as a writer, which caused me to reflect on what it can mean in the wine industry, in an entirely different way than we normally explore the subject, even in an entirely different way than I have explored it before in my…

For my entire importing career my focus was on wine, including sparkling and fortified which have some unique characteristics when it comes to labeling and licensing. But these are basically minor variations on standard wine principles. When I started submitted malt beverage labels to TTB for approval for clients, it opened up a whole new…