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