Expert: Wine industry should embrace technologies

The wine industry is missing a huge opportunity to build stronger relationships with its consumers using new technologies like Web videos and wine blogs.

That was the blunt message delivered to wine industry executives in Napa Tuesday by a young, outspoken New Jersey wine retailer who said the industry needs to embrace change or die.

“Ninety-nine percent of the people in the wine business are really blowing it,” said Gary Vaynerchuk, director of operations for the WineLibrary, a Springfield, N. J. wine store with a popular interactive Web site.

Vaynerchuk told more than 300 industry executives at the Wine Industry Technology Symposium that he’s helped grow his family’s small wine shop into a $45 million enterprise by aggressively adopting the latest technologies.

The store’s e-commerce Web site has expanded to include blogs, reader wine reviews, and something called WineLibrary TV, which features hundreds of videos of Vaynerchuk talking to consumers about a range of wine topics in a highly personal, in-your-face style.

The wine industry for too long has catered to a handful of critics whose opinion means nothing to the average wine drinker, Vaynerchuk said. What matters far more to most people are the opinions of other consumers, and wineries need to wake up soon to this new reality, he said.

“Now everyone has got an opinion. Everyone’s got their two cents. Every single person you cross paths with in this industry — whether at an in-store tasting or a stock boy — you need to fear, and you need to embrace,” he said.