Wine Road Board Meeting
August 10, 2017 9:00am
Wine Road Office – upstairs location
DRAFT pending approval
Absent: Devin, Mike & Thomas
9:04 Call to order
9:05 Welcome new lodging Board Member Jenny Lamarre, Fern Grove Cottages
9:06 Review/Approve June minutes – any action items
- Approve Minutes – Aaron
- Seconded – Robin
9:08 PR Report by Mysty
- Social Media
- FB – growing normally
- Twitter – Participating in Sonoma Chat / added plug in to retweet old tweets / trying different methods to see what attracts engagement
- Instagram – WR stays “private” / numbers have doubled from June to July / hashtagging is most important
- Review PR recap report
- June/July – Honeymoon pitch / field Blend Pitch / CA Wine Month Pitch / wine writer outreach
- September – honeymoon media tour
- August – October – California Wine Month / Field Blends / Wine & Food Affair / Beth in NYC / Wine Bloggers Conference / Lodging Holiday Decor
9:25 Treasurer’s Report
- Bank Account Balances:
- Checking: $74,245.01
- Savings: $200,013.98
- Beth request for Aaron to be a signing officer since he is closest in location
- Need to review bylaws to see if a lodging officer is eligible
- Discussion on possible increase in WR savings as backup if one of the events fail
- Robert motioned: Conversation in regards to increasing or movement in savings will be taken up by the executive board
- Seconded: John
- Review of Beth’s new report
- Breakdown of where money is going out and what money is coming in as well as a summation on advertising, social media, downloads.
- John requests P&L to be plugged into monthly reports – board agrees only needs to be reported to Executive Board
9:45 Access Wine Road – update
- Beth presented the email invite that will go out to our email list and to a San Diego Magazine that circulates to high end homes
- Will be out in our social media and also in a sunset Magazine email newsletter that has an over 50% open rate and reaches over 220K readers (cost is $3300.00)
- A subcommittee of Ross, Carri, Rober and John will fine tune the layout of the invite and make adjustments before November roll out
9:54 Partnership Program
- No update – still only 5 businesses have enrolled
- Laura to start making phone calls
9:56 Membership
- One new lodging member – River Bell Inn
- Assessments are on par / all assessments are due at the end of this month
9:58 Events Committee
- Magical Mystery Tours
- Wineries have reported lack of sales
- Sept/October tours have been cancelled
- Wine & Food Affair
- No news
- Rhone Event
- May 18 – the Friday night event will be a casual ticketed event at Sonoma Cider with each winery pouring Rhone wines only ($40)
- May 19- Saturday event – go from winery to winery. Each winery responsible for only pouring Rhones in a specified area ($50)
- Board does not like the current name and to discuss options via email
- Board requests Beth to provide Revenue/Expense report of the event
10:09 Marketing / PR Committee
- Sunset Celebration has been cancelled
- PodCast Conference – August
- Beth to do live podcast
- Goal is to get sponsor(s)
- Cleveland
- Director of Ohio Winery Association has spearheaded this event
- Beth’s goal is to get 30 wineries to commit – going to send an outline of the requirements to see the interest level of members
- Beth to try to get date changed from April 6th to April 13th
10:22 Old Business
- Sonoma House
- Hosting at Grapeleaf Inn
- Activities may include: reception/artwork alk/cycling/boar hunting/motivational speaker/dinners at wine-owner homes/
- Goal is to make Wine Road the go-to reference when info on Sonoma County is sought
10:30 New Business
- CA AVAs Director Meeting
- 16 AVAs met for 4 hr meeting
- Good info shared – Beth reported that WR has a lot of positive things compared to other AVAs
10:37 Adjorned
- Posted in: Minutes
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