Hunting the world’s most engaging wine brands. 

How I’ve turned a career into a quest. 

I’ve never been much of a drinker. Honestly, my earliest experience with drinking started at 15 and usually resulted in NOT being chosen to be on anyone’s beer pong team. I went through college and can count on both hands how many times I’ve been really intoxicated. It just wasn’t my thing.

So when I moved from Nebraska, having already been a sommelier and a fine wine wholesaler, to the Napa Valley to create my own wine brands- it came as a shock to about everyone that knew me. I was given the opportunity to create two private label wines for a friend that owned a chain of restaurants in Omaha. I don’t think anyone thought I could actually pull off but hay- I’ve been known to jump face first in most things I’ve done in life.

A year and half later, I’ve created a few wine brands that are still in market and found that there really isn’t anyone dissecting the actual beverage brands themselves. We score the shit out of anything we can put in a glass but no one rates anything after the juice is gone. The brands.

It’s perhaps the most overused word in and around wine country- “the brands, the brands, the brands”. Everyone say’s it, very few actually build them right. But like wine, “right” is a matter of opinion. One thing isn’t debatable, when a supplier talks about their brand, they will fight you if you don’t agree. So I’m going to pick some fights.

I’m on a mission to find the world’s most engaging brands. I want to know what the inspiration was, what the execution strategy is, who is the consumer and how do they reach them. I’m going to be using a multi-channel viral platform to launch videos with brands that have caused a stir with their approach, some classic’s and other unknown disruptive little devil. All in search of the most engaging brands.

Stay tuned. We’re going to piss some people off, learn a lot and I’m going to blog every word of it. I’m not a writer, my grammer is off (although my wife is a business writing major) and people tell me that I’ve got some balls. So we will see.