Freie Weingärtner Wachau
Euro Strategies was asked by this famous winery in the Danube valley region of Austria to recommend a strategy for increasing sales in the UK. With a very limited sales & promotion budget, most avenues of marketing including trade advertising were impossible. FWW wines were always appreciated when tasted by UK wine writers and consumers although sales had hit a plateau and active stockists were scarce.
We recommended that all promotional funds should be directed initially to increasing distribution among elite independent wine merchants and top UK restaurants where there was a sommelier. In these types of outlets it was possible for the staff to speak to their customers directly and influence sales by their enthusiasm for a particular wine.
The key to generating this enthusiasm was to build up knowledge and confidence in the wines and the obvious way to do this was to organise visits to the winery and the vineyards.
Using our database of key wine buyers and restaurants in the UK we arranged a programme of group visits in the Spring of 1999 flying to Vienna and then by coach along the Danube to Wachau. Everyone who went on these visits came back impressed by the outstanding vineyards and the excellent quality of the wines.
Typical comments received after the visits were:
"..fresh wines of searing quality… I urge you to try them." (Nigel Logan)
"Austria produces some delicious dry wines which are not at all austere, unlike some of the wines from France and Germany in the same price bracket." (Karen Rogers).
Click here if you would like a full list of Top Restaurants and independent wine merchants who visited Austria on these visits organised by Euro Strategies in 1999.
An intensive public relations programme is now underway as the next stage of building upon this initial success.